Kinemathekverbund's The 100 Most Important German Films

M is German director Fritz Lang’s masterpiece that illustrates the portrait of a child murderer that has caused an entire city to begin rioting. The film is based on actual events.

Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.

Berlin is Walter Ruttmanns black and white documentary of Berlin in 1927. The big city symphony shows a day in the life of metropolitan Berlin. Showing the industrial uprising as well as the lives and working circumstances of the time.

Although the critics in 1922 didn’t find the film to be anything special, a few years after it’s release it was called innovative and a landmark in cinema history. German director Murnau’s vampire film holds claim to one of the most, if not the most important German expressionist film and a foundation for horror films.

People on Sunday is an semi-documentary experimental 1930 German silent film created by amateurs with a small budget. With authentic scenes of the metropolis city of Berlin People on Sunday is the first film from the later famous screenwriters/directors Billy Wilder and Fred Zinnemann.

Murderers Among Us was the first German film after the Second World War. Filmed in the Soviet occupied section of Berlin in the summer of 1946. The film would be the first film about the wreckage from the war and the first film produced by DEFA.

The Blue Angel / Der Blaue Engel is a 1930 German film from Josef von Starnberg. An adaptation of the 1905 novel “The Blue Angel: Small Town Tyrant.”

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.

In post-WWI Vienna, Greta (Greta Garbo), her kid sister, and retired dad try to make it through tough times.

Diederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the powers-that-be if he wants to wield power himself. His life motto now runs: bow to those at the top and tread on those below. In this way, he always succeeds: as a student in a duel-fighting student fraternity ...

Kuhle Wampe is a socially criticized German film from 1932 that was banned shortly after its release. The film is the only communist motivated film from the Weimar Republic.

Prague, Bohemia, 1820. Balduin, a penniless student, falls in love with Countess Margit, a wealthy noblewoman whom he has saved from drowning.

A group of German boys are ordered to protect a small bridge in their home village during the waning months of the second world war. Truckloads of defeated, cynical Wehrmacht soldiers flee the approaching American troops, but the boys, full of enthusiasm for the "blood and honor" Nazi ideology, stay to defend the useless bridge.

Yesterday Girl is an acerbic, deliriously fractured, incisive, and darkly comic satire on a young German woman (and archetypal embodiment of the postwar generation), Anita G.'s (Alexandra Kluge) search for happiness, liberation, and independence in the illusive wake of a transformative national recovery

Mutter Krause, her daughter Erna and her son Paul live in a tenement in the poorer section of Berlin's Wedding district. Along with them lives "the Tenant", his soon-to-be bride Friede, who works as a prostitute, and her child whose name isn't revealed in the film. Mutter Krause is a quiet, long-suffering old woman who earns what little she can ...

In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem - a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.

Arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse sets out to make a fortune and run Berlin. Detective Wenk sets out to stop him.

Two barge skippers fall in love with the same woman.

An aging doorman, after being fired from his prestigious job at a luxurious hotel, is forced to face the scorn of his friends, neighbours and society.

After Siegfried's dead, Kriemhild marries Etzel, the King of the Huns. She gives birth to a child, and invites her brothers for a party. She tries to persuade Etzel and the other Huns, that they kill Hagen, the murderer of Siegfried, but he is protected by her brothers. A fierce battle begins to force her brothers to give Hagen to her.

Siegfried, son of King Siegmund of Xanten, travels to Worms, capital of the Burgundian kingdom, to ask King Gunther for the hand of his sister, the beautiful Kriemhild.

As a young couple stops and rests in a small village inn, the man is abducted by Death and is sequestered behind a huge doorless, windowless wall. The woman finds a mystic entrance and is met by Death, who tells her three separate stories set in exotic locales, all involving circumstances similar to hers.

Vienna in the beginning of the twentieth century. Cavalry Lieutenant Fritz Lobheimer is about to end his affair with Baroness Eggerdorff when he meets the young Christine, the daughter of an opera violinist. Baron Eggerdorff however soon hears of his past misfortune...

On 1 November 1895, the brothers Max and Emil Skladanowsky presented their pioneer film work and legendary Bioscop program in Berlin′s Wintergarten Theater. With live musical accompaniment, the compilation program included short film sequences with famous artists of the time: Italienischer Bauerntanz, Komisches Reck, Der Jongleur, Das boxende Kä...

Bad planning and shortages prevail on an East German construction site. Foreman Hannes Balla uses unconventional methods to overcome the problems. New Socialist Unity Party secretary Werner Horrath is charged with bringing the rough-and-ready builder crew into line. The task seems doomed to fail as the two men compete for the affections of young...

The film tells the tragical story of the life of Lola Montes who was a great adventurer and stopped being the attraction of her circus after having been the lover of various important men.

God and Satan wager on the soul of a learned and prayerful alchemist as part of their eternal war over Earth.

The series (11 episodes) tells the story of the village Schabbach, on the Hunsrueck in Germany through the years 1919-1982.

Germany in Autumn has no typical plot; it mixes documentary footage with standard movie scenes to present the mood of Germany during the late 1970s. The film covers 2 months in 1977 when a businessman was kidnapped and murdered by the left-wing terrorists known as the RAF-Rote Armee Fraktion (Red Army Faction). The businessman was kidnapped in a...

Franz Biberkopf has served four years in prison. His return to normal life is not successful.

The story of Madame DuBarry, the mistress of Louis XV of France, and her loves in the time of the French revolution.

The Marriage of Maria Braun is a collage of the times in Germany after the war, economic miracles, and a portrait of a woman who in her circumstances wants to emancipate and have a successful and happy career. The film is a masterpiece from German director Fassbinder.

Legendary, immortal nobleman Baron Munchausen regales a lovestruck woman with tales of his amazing adventures.

Die Büchse der Pandora, meaning Pandora’s Box, is a classic German silent film from director Pabst. This is the third film about the Lulu-Stoffes character from Frank Wedekind and is deemed a masterpiece.

A mansion is a large and stately dwelling house for the wealthy.

Fritz Lang directed this sequel to his nearly four-hour Dr. Mabuse silent of 1922. The film opens with Detective Hofmeister (Karl Meixner) spying on the activities of a criminal syndicate. Not realizing he has been seen, Hofmeister is attacked by the thugs and later turns up out of his mind.

The infamous propaganda film of the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg, Germany

A traveling projection-equipment mechanic travels in Western Germany along the East-German border, visiting worn-out film-theatres. meets up with a depressed young man whose marriage has just broken up, and the two decide to travel together.

In a boarding school, a student observes in passive disgust as his two friends manipulate, humiliate and torture a fellow student, justifying their every act.

Jorgos, a migrant worker from Greece, joins a group of young people in Munich usually hanging around. This foreigner incites hostility and jealousy among them, and he is insulted as a "Communist" and "Greek dog". After having been attacked, Jorgos talks to Maria of his wish to return home.

Singing sailor Hannes, who now entertains the crowd at St. Pauli's Hippodrome after years at sea, promises his dying brother that he will take care of his ex-girlfriend Gisa. Taking Gisa to Hamburg to live with him, Hannes quickly falls in love with her, but soon has to face Gisa's affection for another man, Willem.

The mechanic Behnke wants to join the Nazi party to secure a good living. However, after his Jewish neighbors have been taken away, he changes his views. Trying to remain "a non-political man," he withdraws from reality and becomes a Nazis laborer.

Kurt Hoffmann′s satire concerning Germany′s development during the first half of the 20th century tells the story of two schoolmates - Hans and Bruno. They could not be more different. While Hans is ambitious and must always work hard for his career, it seems that the happy go lucky Bruno is carefree.

A poet is hired by the owner of a wax museum in a circus to write tales about Harun al Raschid, Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper. While writing, the poet and the daughter of the owner, Eva, fantasize the fantastic stories and fall in love for each other.

A sensitive girl is sent to an all-girls boarding school and develops a romantic attachment to one of her teachers.

The murderer “Boss” Huller – after having spent ten years in prison – breaks his silence to tell the warden his story.

April 1945. Because he stole two boxes of chocolate, the soldier Rudi is sentenced to death by the court-martial judge Dr. Schramm. Rudi manages to escape from the firing squad at the last minute due to an air force attack, and since the end of the war has been making a meager living as a street peddler. Years later, Dr. Schramm is now a respect...

A German journalist is saddled with a nine-year-old girl after encountering her mother at a New York airport.

The drama of a youthful triangle among gang leader Freddy, his brother Jan, and bad girl Cissy, in one of the first considerations of juvenile delinquency in post-war West Germany.

After a chance encounter with a wanted man, a woman is harassed by the police and press until she takes violent action.