Universum Film AG

Universum Film AG, better known as Ufa or UFA, 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 during its brief existence from 1917 to 1945.

Related Topics:
Germany - Weimar Republic - World War II - 1917 - 1945

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UFA was created on December 18, 1917 in Berlin 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 1919 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which proved the best example of German Expressionism, a commercial success, and an enormously influential film. In the same year, UFA opened the UFA-Palast am Zoo theatre in Berlin.

Related Topics:
December 18 - 1917 - Berlin - World War I - Propaganda - Erich Pommer - The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - German Expressionism

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In 1921 UFA was privatized. It became the leading production company in an industry that cranked out 600 films a 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.

Related Topics:
1921 - Privatized - Hollywood

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In 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, producing landmark films such as Metropolis, M and Marlene Dietrich's first film,The Blue Angel.

Related Topics:
Weimar - Fritz Lang - F.W. Murnau - Metropolis - M - Marlene Dietrich - The Blue Angel

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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 Ecstacy" (1931) are notable for the appearance of Austrian skiing legend Hannes Schneider and a young Leni Riefenstahl.

Related Topics:
Bergfilm - Hannes Schneider - Leni Riefenstahl

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The studio over-extended itself financially in the late 1920s, partly as a result of the expensive production of Metropolis, and was taken over by Alfred Hugenberg in March 1927. Hugenberg was connected to Krupp, sympathetic to the Nazis and the company became a producer of Nazi propaganda films after Hitler took power in 1932. Joseph Goebbels' ministry of propaganda essentially controlled the content of UFA films through political pressure and threat. One such threat to Fritz Lang in 1933 resulted in Lang leaving Germany the next morning, leaving behind a sizable fortune, a large collection of primitive art, and his entire career. Lang, like many of his UFA colleagues, would end up working in Hollywood.

Related Topics:
Alfred Hugenberg - 1927 - Krupp - Nazi - 1932 - Joseph Goebbels

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During the 1930s UFA produced both lighthearted musicals and odious examples of anti-Semitic propaganda. In 1937 the Nazi Party bought up 72% of Ufa's shares, and in 1942 UFA was totally nationalized 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 and studio facilities active at that time.

Related Topics:
1937 - Nazi Party - 1942

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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 accomplished only by removing all reference to the company from the credits. Furthermore, the UFA studios were located in the Soviet Zone of Germany and were subsequently incorporated 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. DEFA went out of business soon after German reunification in 1990, but the UFA studios in Babelsberg 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 a production company, but failed to produce more than a handful of films. During the 1960s, the UFA name and logo were coopted by a West German chain of movie theaters. In 1991, UFA was re-established as a major producer of television programs. Today it is part of the transnational Bertelsmann corporation.

Related Topics:
Second World War - German Democratic Republic - DEFA - German reunification - West Germany - Bertelsmann

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