Director Kurt Maetzig is celebrating his 100th birthday today. Kurt Maetzig is one of the co-founders of the DEFA and its first artistic director. He is one of the most important representatives of East German film. He was also in charge of the weekly newsreel Der Augenzeuge and the first president of the German University of Cinema, today’s Film and Television University “Konrad Wolf”, in Potsdam-Babelsberg.
The management board and the staff congratulate Kurt Maetzig on this wonderful jubilee. We hold his lifetime achievement in high regard. With his films, Kurt Maetzig has always been a pioneer in terms of genre and topic.
Dr. Carl Woebcken
CEO of Studio Babelsberg
Dr. Carl Woebcken, CEO of Studio Babelsberg AG: “The management board and the staff congratulate Kurt Maetzig on this wonderful jubilee. We hold his lifetime achievement in high regard. With his films, Kurt Maetzig has always been a pioneer in terms of genre and topic. Many of his works have become film classics. He struggled for a critical, but always fair look at the GDR reality and the East German cinema, pointing out the problems and conflicts.”
Kurt Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten (1947) was the most successful film of the post-war period. In September 1949, prior to the establishment of the GDR in October, his film Die Buntkarierten was the first East German entry at the Cannes Film Festival. Monumental commissioned works like the Ernst Thälmann-films and Das Lied der Matrosen (1958) followed. He directed the first science-fiction-film of the DEFA, Der schweigende Stern, and the critical Das Kaninchen bin ich (1965), which was banned by the SED's Central Committee.
