Background

The collection includes around 1,900 productions of the ‘Deutscher Fernsehfunk’ (DFF), founded in East Berlin in 1956 and known as ‘Fernsehen der DDR’ starting in 1972. It comprises 1,600 feature films, series, and TV shows, over 200 documentaries and reports, and around 100 animated films. Entertainment formats popular in the GDR, such as ‚Polizeiruf 110‘, ‚Das unsichtbare Visier‘, ‚Der Staatsanwalt hat das Wort‘, and ‚Spuk unterm Riesenrad‘, are as much a part of the collection as literary adaptations like ‚Draußen vor der Tür‘, ‚Der zerbrochene Krug‘, ‚Der kaukasische Kreidekreis‘, and ‚Jugend ohne Gott‘.

Biographical films (biopics) portray historical figures such as Martin Luther, Robert Koch, Ernst Thälmann, and Johann Sebastian Bach. Numerous well-known German actors and actresses, including Manfred Krug, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Angelica Domröse, and Eva-Maria Hagen, appear in the feature films and series. The documentaries and reports were filmed both in the GDR and in many other countries around the world—including Vietnam, Antarctica, Cuba, Somalia, Yemen, the Soviet Union, and South Africa.