Germany: Post-WWI to Post-WWII

Vampire Count Orlok expresses interest in a new residence and real estate agent Hutter's wife.

Drama series focusing on the Bavarian Grandauer family and the historic events between 1897 and 1954. At the end of the 19th century, police officer Ludwig Grandauer marries the mother of his illegitimate son, Agnes. After some years, they move to Munich with their three children Karl, Luise, and Adolf, where Ludwig works at the police headquarters called "Löwengrube". During the next decade, the children have to learn to care for themselves because Agnes and Ludwig both die. When Karl returns from World War I, everything has changed. Luise is married to Max Kreitmeier who owns a bakery, while Adolf joins a new nationalist party called NSDAP. Karl himself is more moderate and works for the police like his father. In the 1920s, he gets to know Traudl Soleder, daughter of a bourgeois family whose brother Kurt fights against the up and coming Nazi movement. After their wedding, Traudl's bugging mother also moves in. When Hitler comes into power in 1933, Karl remains a police officer, but doesn't join the party, while Adolf makes a career in the law. Meanwhile, Kurt's situation worsens because he is married to Sara, a Jewess from Berlin. During World II, the Grandauers' sons Rudi and Max become soldiers and their parents lose their flat during an air raid. They barely survive, while Adolf loses his wife and children except one son. In the post-war era, Kurt and Sara, as victims of the Nazi system, have many benefits, but also have to live with the same people who harassed them before. They drift apart more and more, but after Kurt is nearly killed in a car accident, they move to Berlin together. Karl and Traudl mourn for their allegedly killed son Rudi who suddenly returns and wants to catch up on his youth. Meanwhile, his brother marries the daughter of a former Nazi. The story ends on New Year's Eve 1954: the whole family is reunited, but something seems to be wrong with Traudl's old mother.

When the moon is full, young men die attempting to reach the mysterious blue light in the mountains.

The disturbing biography of Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss.

A successful writer, home-schooled in his youth, masquerades as a student at a secondary school to experience all the fun and pranks he missed out on.

Strange events happen in a small village in the north of Germany during the years before World War I, which seem to be ritual punishment. Who is responsible?

Depicts the cultural history of Berlin during the Weimar Republic through interviews with a number of persons who were involved in literature, film, art, and music during the period.

This historical-biographical film begins in the first days of November 1918 on the western front. News comes to the soldiers of a revolutionary uprising in Kiel. Young Thälmann, a soldier against his will, would like to join the expanding conflict on the side of his comrades in Hamburg. As the revolution becomes threatened by the betrayal of the right-wing Social Democrats and the splintering of the working class, he nevertheless tries unremittingly to unite the workers. The reactionaries grow ever stronger and the neediness of ordinary people multiplies. In this dire situation, the Hamburg police commissioner would like to block the unloading of a ship full of provisions that were sent from Petrograd as a message of solidarity. But Thälmann prevails in unloading it. The high point and conclusion of the first part of the Thälmann films is established at the Hamburg Uprising in October 1923.

The village of Schabbach experiences the shifting fortunes of Germany from 1919 to 1982.

After World War I, a war hero returns to Berlin to find that there's no place for him--he has no skills other than what he learned in the army, and can only find menial, low-paying jobs. He decides to become a gigolo to lonely rich women.

Berlin, 1923. Following the suicide of his brother, American circus acrobat Abel Rosenberg attempts to survive while facing unemployment, depression, alcoholism and the social decay of Germany during the Weimar Republic.

An elderly professor's ordered life spins dangerously out of control when he falls for a nightclub singer.

In 1924, Oskar Matzerath is born in the Free City of Danzig. At age three, he falls down a flight of stairs and stops growing. In 1939, World War II breaks out.

The life of the worker Hans Behnke and his family from 1925 to 1945 in Berlin. Hans ultimately does join the Nazi party, but still shows signs of disagreement with their ideology.

The film chronicles the rise and fall of Germany's most famous a capella group, the Comedian Harmonists, in 1930s Germany.

In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city's mastermind falls in love with a working-class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.

Colognian commissioner Gereon Rath moves to Berlin, the epicenter of political and social changes in the Golden Twenties.

In late-1920s Berlin, Franz Biberkopf is released from prison and vows to go straight. However, he soon finds himself embroiled in the city's criminal underworld.

Two men and two women enjoy a pleasant Sunday at the beach amid the unending toil of the working week.

Mutter Krause and her children live in the poorer section of Berlin's Wedding district. The film depicts the cruelty of poverty and communism as a rescuing force that reaches Mutter Krause and the child too late.

When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.

The second part of the Ernst Thälmann films encompasses the time period between 1930 and Thälmann's murder in 1944. It shows Thälmann's battle to achieve a united front with all German workers against the National Socialists, his arrest following Hitler's seizure of power and the eleven years of his incarceration, in which he is unwavering in his beliefs until his death. An attempt to free him on the part of his comrades ends disastrously, and a corrupt offer of freedom from Göring himself receives Thälmann's refusal. He must also witness how his brave fellow Socialist Aenne Jansen in the women's prison across from his tragically loses her life during a bombing raid. The second primary character of the film is Aenne's husband Fiete Jansen, who already proved his loyalty to Thälmann's side as a friend and fighter in the first part. As the commander of the Thälmann Battalion, he fights in Spain on the side of the people and later in the ranks of the Red Army toward a speedy end to the war against Fascism.

In early-1930s Germany, a passionate stage actor faces a dilemma: renounce his apolitical stance and comply with the Reich's doctrine, or face oblivion. But, Faustian bargains never end well. What is the price of success?

A female girlie club entertainer in Weimar Republic era Berlin romances two men while the Nazi Party rises to power around them.

1930s Berlin. Dr. Jakob Fabian, who works by day in advertising for a cigarette company and by night wanders the streets of the city, falls in love with an actress. As her career begins to blossom, prospects for his future begin to wane.