Universum Film AG
Encyclopedia
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany
, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic
and through World War II
, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945. After World War II, UFA continued producing movies and television programmes to the present day, making it the longest standing film company in Germany.
as a government-owned producer of World War I
propaganda
and public service films. It was created through the consolidation of most of Germany's commercial film companies, including Nordisk
and Decla. Decla's former owner, Erich Pommer
, served as producer for the 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which was not only the best example of German Expressionism
and an enormously influential film, but also a commercial success. During the same year, UFA opened the UFA-Palast am Zoo theatre in Berlin.
Pressured by the US film industry, in late 1921 UFA was merged with Decla-Bioscop, "with government, industrial and banking support" and a near-monopoly in an industry that produced around 600 films each year and attracted a million customers every day. In the silent movie years, when films were easier to adapt for foreign markets, UFA began developing an international reputation and posed serious competition to Hollywood.
During the Weimar
years the studio produced and exported an enormous, accomplished, and inventive body of work. Only an estimated 10% of the studio's output still exists. Famous directors based at UFA included Fritz Lang
and F.W. Murnau; under chief producer Erich Pommer
the company created landmark films such as Dr. Mabuse (1922), Metropolis
(1927), and Marlene Dietrich
's first talkie, The Blue Angel
(1930).
In addition to avant-garde
experiments and lurid films of Weimar street life, UFA was also the studio of the bergfilm
, a uniquely German genre that glorified and romanticized mountain climbing, downhill skiing, and avalanche-dodging. The bergfilm genre was primarily the creation of director Arnold Fanck
, and examples like The Holy Mountain (1926) and White Ecstasy (1931) are notable for the appearance of Austrian skiing legend Hannes Schneider
and a young Leni Riefenstahl
.
The studio over-extended itself financially during the late 1920s, partly as a result of the expensive production of Metropolis, and was taken over by the press baron, former Krupp
manager, and DNVP
leader Alfred Hugenberg
in March 1927.
Hugenberg in the course of the Nazi Machtergreifung
on 30 January 1933 became Reich Minister of Economy in Hitler's cabinet. He resigned in June, nevertheless the company became a compliant producer of Nazi propaganda
films supervised by Hugenberg's cabinet colleague Joseph Goebbels
. His Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
essentially controlled the content of UFA films through political threat. Because of this, Lang, like many of his UFA colleagues, would soon leave Germany to work in Hollywood. Decrees by the Reichsfilmkammer
established in July 1933 officially banned the employment of artists of Jewish
descent.
During the 1930s UFA produced both lighthearted musicals and comedies (starring such genuine talents as Truus van Aalten
) – and, as the Nazi Party gained power, odious examples of antisemitic propaganda.
In March 1937 Hugenberg was forced to sell his shares to the Cautio Trust
company, which was actually controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. Thereby the Nazis de facto held 72% of UFA's shares and implemented their party fellow Carl Froelich
as a production supervisor at the management board. In 1942 the company was nationalized totally by the Third Reich as the monopoly parent company of the German state's film industry, under which were absorbed all other production and distribution companies still active at that time like Bavaria Film and Wien-Film
(former Tobis-Sascha-Filmindustrie
AG) with their studio facilities.
During the war the studio made several part entertainment, part propaganda feature films using the Agfacolor
process, such as Münchhausen (1943) and Kolberg
(1945). The studio's design was also an inspiration to the newly constructed Manchukuo Film Association
.
During the 1960s, the UFA name and logo were co-opted by a West German chain of movie theaters. DEFA went out of business soon after German reunification
in 1990, but UFAs old Babelsberg Studios
now house a number of independent production companies as well as a theme park and museum devoted to the history of German film. Attempts were made in West Germany
to resurrect UFA as a production company, but failed to produce more than a few films. During 1991, UFA was re-established as a major producer of television programs. Now it is part of the transnational Bertelsmann
corporation.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
and through World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945. After World War II, UFA continued producing movies and television programmes to the present day, making it the longest standing film company in Germany.
History
UFA was created during November 1917 in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
as a government-owned producer of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
propaganda
Propaganda film
The term propaganda can be defined as the ability to produce and spread fertile messages that, once sown, will germinate in large human cultures.” However, in the 20th century, a “new” propaganda emerged, which revolved around political organizations and their need to communicate messages that...
and public service films. It was created through the consolidation of most of Germany's commercial film companies, including Nordisk
Nordisk Film
Nordisk Film , established in Denmark in 1906 by Danish filmmaker Ole Olsen, is the oldest continuously operating film studio in the world. Olsen started his company in the Copenhagen suburb of Valby under the name "Ole Olsen's Film Factory" but soon changed it to the Nordisk Film Kompagni...
and Decla. Decla's former owner, Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer was a German-born film producer and executive. He was involved in the German Expressionist film movement during the silent era as the head of production at Decla, Decla-Bioscop and from 1924 to 1926 at Ufa responsible for many of the best known movies of the Weimar Republic such as...
, served as producer for the 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which was not only the best example of German Expressionism
German Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
and an enormously influential film, but also a commercial success. During the same year, UFA opened the UFA-Palast am Zoo theatre in Berlin.
During the Weimar
Weimar culture
Weimar culture was a flourishing of the arts and sciences that happened during the Weimar Republic...
years the studio produced and exported an enormous, accomplished, and inventive body of work. Only an estimated 10% of the studio's output still exists. Famous directors based at UFA included Fritz Lang
Fritz Lang
Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute...
and F.W. Murnau; under chief producer Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer
Erich Pommer was a German-born film producer and executive. He was involved in the German Expressionist film movement during the silent era as the head of production at Decla, Decla-Bioscop and from 1924 to 1926 at Ufa responsible for many of the best known movies of the Weimar Republic such as...
the company created landmark films such as Dr. Mabuse (1922), Metropolis
Metropolis (film)
Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist film in the science-fiction genre directed by Fritz Lang. Produced in Germany during a stable period of the Weimar Republic, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and makes use of this context to explore the social crisis between workers and...
(1927), and Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich
Marlene Dietrich was a German-American actress and singer.Dietrich remained popular throughout her long career by continually re-inventing herself, professionally and characteristically. In the Berlin of the 1920s, she acted on the stage and in silent films...
's first talkie, The Blue Angel
Der blaue Engel
The Blue Angel is a film directed by Josef von Sternberg in 1930, based on Heinrich Mann's novel Professor Unrat. The film is considered to be the first major German sound film and it brought world fame to actress Marlene Dietrich...
(1930).
In addition to avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
experiments and lurid films of Weimar street life, UFA was also the studio of the bergfilm
Mountain film
A mountain film is a film genre that focuses on mountaineering and especially the battle of man against nature. In addition to mere adventure, the protagonists who return from the mountain come back changed, usually gaining wisdom and enlightenment....
, a uniquely German genre that glorified and romanticized mountain climbing, downhill skiing, and avalanche-dodging. The bergfilm genre was primarily the creation of director Arnold Fanck
Arnold Fanck
Arnold Fanck was a pioneer of the German mountain film....
, and examples like The Holy Mountain (1926) and White Ecstasy (1931) are notable for the appearance of Austrian skiing legend Hannes Schneider
Hannes Schneider
Johann "Hannes" Schneider was an Austrian Ski instructor of the first half of the twentieth century.He was born in the town of Stuben am Arlberg in Austria as a son of a cheese maker. In 1907 he became a ski guide at the Hotel Post in St. Anton, Austria where he began work on what became known as...
and a young Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl was a German film director, actress and dancer widely noted for her aesthetics and innovations as a filmmaker. Her most famous film was Triumph des Willens , a propaganda film made at the 1934 Nuremberg congress of the Nazi Party...
.
The studio over-extended itself financially during the late 1920s, partly as a result of the expensive production of Metropolis, and was taken over by the press baron, former Krupp
Krupp
The Krupp family , a prominent 400-year-old German dynasty from Essen, have become famous for their steel production and for their manufacture of ammunition and armaments. The family business, known as Friedrich Krupp AG Hoesch-Krupp, was the largest company in Europe at the beginning of the 20th...
manager, and DNVP
German National People's Party
The German National People's Party was a national conservative party in Germany during the time of the Weimar Republic. Before the rise of the NSDAP it was the main nationalist party in Weimar Germany composed of nationalists, reactionary monarchists, völkisch, and antisemitic elements, and...
leader Alfred Hugenberg
Alfred Hugenberg
Alfred Ernst Christian Alexander Hugenberg was an influential German businessman and politician. Hugenberg, a leading figure within nationalist politics in Germany for the first few decades of the twentieth century, became the country's leading media proprietor within the inter-war period...
in March 1927.
Nationalization
National conservativeNational conservatism
National conservatism is a political term used primarily in Europe to describe a variant of conservatism which concentrates more on national interests than standard conservatism as well as upholding cultural and ethnic identity, while not being outspokenly nationalist or supporting a far-right...
Hugenberg in the course of the Nazi Machtergreifung
Machtergreifung
Machtergreifung is a German word meaning "seizure of power". It is normally used specifically to refer to the Nazi takeover of power in the democratic Weimar Republic on 30 January 1933, the day Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor of Germany, turning it into the Nazi German dictatorship.-Term:The...
on 30 January 1933 became Reich Minister of Economy in Hitler's cabinet. He resigned in June, nevertheless the company became a compliant producer of Nazi propaganda
Nazi propaganda
Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...
films supervised by Hugenberg's cabinet colleague Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
. His Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
The Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda was Nazi Germany's ministry that enforced Nazi Party ideology in Germany and regulated its culture and society. Founded on March 13, 1933, by Adolf Hitler's new National Socialist government, the Ministry was headed by Dr...
essentially controlled the content of UFA films through political threat. Because of this, Lang, like many of his UFA colleagues, would soon leave Germany to work in Hollywood. Decrees by the Reichsfilmkammer
Reichsfilmkammer
The Reichsfilmkammer was a public corporation based in Berlin that regulated the film industry in National Socialist Germany between 1933 and 1945...
established in July 1933 officially banned the employment of artists of Jewish
History of the Jews in Germany
The presence of Jews in Germany has been established since the early 4th century. The community prospered under Charlemagne, but suffered during the Crusades...
descent.
During the 1930s UFA produced both lighthearted musicals and comedies (starring such genuine talents as Truus van Aalten
Truus van Aalten
Geertruida Everdina Wilhelmina van Aalten was a Dutch actress who appeared in many German films in the 1920s and 1930s.-Early life:...
) – and, as the Nazi Party gained power, odious examples of antisemitic propaganda.
In March 1937 Hugenberg was forced to sell his shares to the Cautio Trust
Trust law
In common law legal systems, a trust is a relationship whereby property is held by one party for the benefit of another...
company, which was actually controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. Thereby the Nazis de facto held 72% of UFA's shares and implemented their party fellow Carl Froelich
Carl Froelich
Carl August Froelich was a German film pioneer and film director.-Apparatus builder and cameraman:...
as a production supervisor at the management board. In 1942 the company was nationalized totally by the Third Reich as the monopoly parent company of the German state's film industry, under which were absorbed all other production and distribution companies still active at that time like Bavaria Film and Wien-Film
Wien-Film
Wien-Film GmbH was a large Austrian film company, which in 1938 succeeded the Tobis-Sascha-Filmindustrie AG and lasted until 1985...
(former Tobis-Sascha-Filmindustrie
Sascha-Film
Sascha-Film, in full Sascha-Filmindustrie AG and from 1933 Tobis-Sascha-Filmindustrie AG, was the largest Austrian film production company of the silent film and early sound film period.-History:...
AG) with their studio facilities.
During the war the studio made several part entertainment, part propaganda feature films using the Agfacolor
Agfacolor
thumb|An Agfacolor slide dating from the early 1940s. While the colors themselves hold up well after 60 years, damages visible include dust and [[Newton's rings]].Agfacolor is a series of color photographic products produced by Agfa of Germany...
process, such as Münchhausen (1943) and Kolberg
Kolberg (film)
Kolberg is a 1945 German propaganda film directed by Veit Harlan and Wolfgang Liebeneiner. It opened on January 30, 1945 simultaneously in Berlin and to the crew of the naval base at La Rochelle. It was also screened in the Reich chancellery after the broadcast of Hitler's last radio address on...
(1945). The studio's design was also an inspiration to the newly constructed Manchukuo Film Association
Manchukuo Film Association
, also known as the "Manchuria Film Production", was a Japanese film production company in Manchukuo in the 1930s and 40s.-Early history:...
.
After World War II
After the end of the Second World War UFA ceased activity, and initially was so associated with the Third Reich that even reissues of its non-political product were possible only by removing all reference to the company from the credits. Furthermore, the UFA studios were located in the Soviet zone of Berlin and were incorporated subsequently into the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). The new studio, DEFA (Deutsche Film AG), carried on the UFA tradition with many directors returning from exile, while actors and technicians were recruited from the old company.During the 1960s, the UFA name and logo were co-opted by a West German chain of movie theaters. DEFA went out of business soon after German reunification
German reunification
German reunification was the process in 1990 in which the German Democratic Republic joined the Federal Republic of Germany , and when Berlin reunited into a single city, as provided by its then Grundgesetz constitution Article 23. The start of this process is commonly referred by Germans as die...
in 1990, but UFAs old Babelsberg Studios
Babelsberg Studios
The Studio Babelsberg, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg, Germany, is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. Founded in 1912, it covers an area of about . Hundreds of films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel were filmed there...
now house a number of independent production companies as well as a theme park and museum devoted to the history of German film. Attempts were made in West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
to resurrect UFA as a production company, but failed to produce more than a few films. During 1991, UFA was re-established as a major producer of television programs. Now it is part of the transnational Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann
Bertelsmann AG is a multinational media corporation founded in 1835, based in Gütersloh, Germany. The company operates in 63 countries and employs 102,983 workers , which makes it the most international media corporation in the world. In 2008 the company reported a €16.118 billion consolidated...
corporation.