Fred Düren

End of Innocence is a two-part television film that focuses on the work of the German Uranium Association during World War II. At Farm Hall in England, the ten German nuclear scientists interned there as part of Operation Epsilon learn of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima in August 1945. In flashbacks, the development of the German uranium project is recapitulated chronologically from the discovery of nuclear fission by Otto Hahn to the work of Kurt Diebner at the Heereswaffenamt to the experiments of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics under Werner Heisenberg and Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker at the Haigerloch research reactor in spring 1945.

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A film about the experiences of a cab driver who drives a young, heavily pregnant woman who has collapsed in a store to hospital. The encounters during the subsequent search for the future father so that he can take the expectant mother's things to the hospital are shown. The GDR leadership argued that the film should be banned.

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Kathe Kollwitz was 47 years old, and already a well established artist in Germany and abroad when Peter, her youngest son, volunteered to join the German army in WWI and was killed two weeks later. This painful tragedy changed Kollwitz's life and art forever.

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This film, based on a story by Theodor Storm, revolves around the young Hauke Haien, who lives near the sea and improves the safety of the inhabitants with his new ideas for building dykes. However, his new methods and his rejection of conservative traditions, such as the "sacrifice" of a living creature when building a dyke, are not welcomed by the local population, which leads to him meeting with great rejection and ultimately even becoming his undoing.

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The plot revolves around three men waiting to be deported in a prison. To escape the monotony, they form chess pieces from their bread rations, with which they then play against each other. Grünstein, a Polish Jew, proves to be a real talent, because although he is a beginner, he manages to defeat even the experienced player Lodeck, a German sailor, with his "Grünstein Variant".

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1985 East German television recording of a production of the play of the same name.

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In the fall of 1945, nineteen year-old Mark Niebuhr, is accused of murder and is jailed as a prisoner of war in Warsaw, Poland. He maintains his claim of innocence throughout long periods of solitary confinement. When Mark is placed among a group of Polish criminals, he becomes the target of their aggression. Later, Mark experiences true hell in a communal cell with fanatical German war criminals. Turning Point is based on actual events from Hermann Kant's novel of the same name.

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It is the time before the First World War - in a fishing village on the Baltic Sea coast, the unusual love story of the young, ambitious lawyer Belling and the fun-loving actress Franziska begins. The young couple believes in career in the neighboring big city, would not be there the rich businessman of Elchem, who limits their love power of his money. Franziska has found an admirer and patron in the entrepreneur - a woman between two men who plays, but cleverly he makes the couple financially dependent on himself... The film adaptation of the novelle by Heinrich Mann describes the moral decay of a social layer fixed on success and money at the beginning of the 20th century.

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In a small village in West Prussia in the 1870s, Germans, Poles, Gypsies and Jews live together as neighbors. One night Johann, a German mill-owner, secretly opens the dam gates and floods the mill of his Jewish rival Levin. After his business is ruined and his calls for justice go unanswered, Levin leaves town.

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An adaptation of Theodor Storm's novella "Hans and Heinz Kirch".

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Sunny is the singer of a band trying to establish itself in the East Berlin music scene. They play regular gigs in small towns, but Sunny feels out of touch with the audience and with her life as a whole. She begins a relationship with Ralph, an amateur saxophonist and philosophy student, who writes her a very personal song—but his obsession with death and unfaithful lifestyle are not for her. After getting into a quarrel with a band member who harasses her and telling off a show host, she is thrown out of the band. Abandoned, she struggles to regain control over her life.

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Berlin, 1948: Paralyzed and robbed of her memory, Fleur regains consciousness after a serious fall. The doctor treating her recognizes that her problem is of a psychological nature and encourages her to face up to her past. The daughter of a brothel owner is reluctant to look back: on a hapless childhood, her relationships with bon vivant Dr. Goldner and the politically committed locksmith Philipp (Hilmar Thate) as well as the difficult period of fascism... This exciting journey into the German past is based on Dinah Nelken's novel "Das angstvolle Heldenleben einer gewissen Fleur Lafontaine".

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A writer researching an international partisan group during World War II meets with a contemporary witness. Together, they visit the sites of the events in Poland, which bring back memories for the woman. Television film based on the novella of the same name by Kurt David.

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This musical comedy based on an opera by Jacques Offenbach incorporates a twist on the classic Greek myth: Orpheus, a music teacher at a girls’ school in the ancient Greek city of Thebes, actually does not miss his wife Eurydice that much – until the gods and Offenbach himself pressure him to retrieve her from Hades.

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Young seminary student Franziskus has been ceremonially ordained. He wants to escape the harshness and injustice of the world and devote himself to the service of God in the quiet seclusion of a monastery. He is also hoping to forget the beautiful lady Aurelie, whose life he saved in a flooded brook and with whom he spent an amorous night. He knows that her father would never allow her to marry him. But the devil dressed in a monk's habit and under the name Viktorin intervenes in Franziskus's destiny and attempts to lead him astray. To do so he first uses the diabolical elixirs kept at the monastery as a rare relic. When the young monk gets expelled from the monastery, Viktorin prepares another trap with the help of Aurelie's stepmother Euphemie.

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Adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's novella for East German television, produced in 1965/66, not shown until 1972.

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The clever but poor farmer Klaus infuriates the rich big Klaus with his mischief. But little Klaus always manages to get out of the most difficult situations and emerge victorious in the end. But one day, big Klaus has a fit and wants to drown little Klaus. Now he once again has to rely on his intuition and his wit ...

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As a painter in the court of King Carlos IV, Goya has attained wealth and reputation. He believes in King and Church, yet he is also a Spaniard who dearly loves his people. This contradiction presents him with a dilemma.

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The starting point of the story is a scandalous affair that took place in West Germany at the end of the 1950s. It began with the unexpected death of a member of the Bundestag who was known to the public as a well-paid lawyer and influential man in politics. What was not known, however, was that he mysteriously died of poisoning in a foreign hospital for the poor. It was concealed that the deceased, as a contact person for a Swiss arms company, represented a West German arms contract worth 2.5 billion marks. The Military Counterintelligence Service tried everything to conceal the explosive events...

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Polizeiruf 110 is a long-running German language detective television series. The first episode was broadcast 27 June 1971 in the German Democratic Republic, and after the dissolution of Fernsehen der DDR the series was picked up by ARD. It was originally created as a counterpart to the West German series Tatort, and quickly became a public favorite.

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August 24, 1937: a day in the life of expressionist sculptor and author Ernst Barlach (Fred Düren). Barlach lives in the small town of Güstrow, keeping to himself and wanting to steer clear of politics. On this day he learns that the Nazis have dragged his famous 1927 sculpture The Hovering Angel out of the Güstrow Cathedral. Barlach begins to reflect on his life of “inner emigration” and on his work.

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In the spring of 1969, a young man from a small town arrives at the partner company in Berlin, where he falls in love with red-haired Rita. A love story about "everyday heroes," in which director Egon Günther continues his idiosyncratic formal experiments with actress Jutta Hoffmann, which he began in "Junge Frau von 1914" (Young Woman of 1914).

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A German couple start a silent campaign against Hitler's dictatorial reign after the loss of their only son at the front.

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The writer Schaffrath enters the office of Dr. Hans Kahler, a graduate engineer, and asks if he may look around the facility, as he intends to write a report on the workers in the new section of an oil refinery.

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In 1914 Berlin, bank heiress Leonore Wahl and struggling Munich student Werner Bertin fall passionately in love, defying class and her parents’ expectations. Their idyll is shattered by the outbreak of WWI: Werner, swept up in patriotic fervor, is conscripted to the Western Front, while Leonore, pregnant and abandoned, faces her family’s condemnation and a clandestine abortion. Set against the tumult of war, the film explores idealism, social divides, and the personal costs of duty and desire.

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In 1914 Berlin, bank heiress Leonore Wahl and struggling Munich student Werner Bertin fall passionately in love, defying class and her parents’ expectations. Their idyll is shattered by the outbreak of WWI: Werner, swept up in patriotic fervor, is conscripted to the Western Front, while Leonore, pregnant and abandoned, faces her family’s condemnation and a clandestine abortion. Set against the tumult of war, the film explores idealism, social divides, and the personal costs of duty and desire.

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In Scotland in 1751, young David Balfour is shanghaied aboard a ship where he meets Jacobite rebel Alan Breck Stewart with whom he escapes to the Scottish Highlands, dodging the redcoats.

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Germany in the 18th century. Two brothers rebel against the narrow confines of the small state and feudal despotism. However, Franz and Karl Moor have very different motives: Franz is interested in satisfying his personal needs, power and wealth, while Karl has a vision of a new, better society. To achieve this, he needs support. He finds it in a gang of robbers, of which he becomes the leader. He soon learns that anarchy can neither rally the masses nor challenge the existing order.

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In order to escape her narrow and restrictive life, Senta, the daughter of a rich shipowner, seeks refuge in her fantasies and dreams. In this realm of imagination, a bold and restless sea captain appears to her—the Flying Dutchman—who is cursed to wander the seas forever. In her obsessive dreams, Senta frees this man through her love for him.

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A wild story set in eighteenth-century Prussia. Alexander can do everything that a real devil of a fellow must be able to do: ride, shoot, love and devise clever plots. As a result, he is able to climb the ladder from herder to chamber master, where he makes a fool of the feudal lords.

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Daniela – a single mother, whose boyfriend left for the US – believes wholeheartedly in Cuba's revolutionary new order. Meanwhile, in Florida, a plot is afoot. Under the command of an American officer, four Cubans ex-patriots and a Guatemalan land on the Cuban coast to prepare a US invasion of the island. Daniela's superior, the corrupt Cuban officer Palomino, is secretly helping the invaders and the young woman becomes entangled in the intrigue.

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A two-part East German documentary tracing Russia’s transformation from the Tsarist Empire to the Soviet Union, from the 1917 October Revolution to the achievements of the space program. Directed by Andrew Thorndike and Annelie Thorndike, the film assembles extensive archival footage to chart political upheaval, ideological consolidation, and technological ambition in twentieth-century Russia. Produced by DEFA and first broadcast on East German television in 1963.

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During the Second World War, an old fortress is transformed into a detention camp for arrested allied generals who the Germans provide with every possible comfort. In the nearby garrison camp, however, hundreds of captured private soldiers try to survive hunger and cold.

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