Jews made significant contributions to the development of the German film industry prior to the rise ofNazism. By 1933, around 20% of German professionals in the film industry were Jewish.[1] Nazi antisemitism, including a ban on Jewish professionals in the film industry and culminating in theHolocaust, caused an exodus from Germany of film professionals, many of whom were Jewish or non-Jews with Jewish family members. Many of the remaining Jewish film professionals who were unable to escape were murdered, includingKurt Gerron,Otto Wallburg, andPaul Morgan.[2] The seizing of German film studios by the Nazis during the 1930s marked the demise of a Golden Age of German cinema marked by innovative filmmaking, includingGerman expressionist cinema and a number of films now regarded as masterpieces.[3] Notable Jews during Germany's Golden Age of Cinema includeHedy Lamarr,Peter Lorre,Billy Wilder,Conrad andRobert Wiene,Fritz Lang,Hans Janowitz,Ernst Lubitsch,Jules Greenbaum,Erich Pommer,Robert Siodmak, andMax Nivelli. Some non-Jews such asDouglas Sirk fled because they had Jewish spouses or children. Some Jewish Holocaust survivors and refugees who returned remained active in West German or East German cinema, includingLudwig Berger,Inge Meysel,Hans Jacoby,Hans Oliva-Hagen (father of singer and actressNina Hagen), andBuddy Elias (a cousin ofAnne Frank).
The cinema of theWeimar Republic, between 1918 and 1933, is considered to be Germany's Golden Age of Cinema. On March 28, 1933,Joseph Goebbels delivered a speech at the Berlin Hotel Kaiserhof to a crowd of film industry professionals announcing that the film industry would be expected to conform to "volkish contours" and that Jews would be expelled from the film industry. By the next day, executives at theUFA GmbH film studio began hiring Jewish workers and cancelling contracts. The German film industry publicationFilm-Kurier began publishing articles denouncing "studio Jews".[4] By 1934, so many Jewish directors, producers, and other professionals had been expelled from the industry that UFA's head of productionErnst Hugo Correll complained that the quality of the German film industry had substantially declined.[5]
In 1938, followingKristallnacht, antisemitic legislation banned Jews from attending cinemas. The Jewish Cultural League in Berlin, which had been founded in 1933 after the Nazis came to power, created a Jewish cinema to allow German Jews to watch primarily German and American films in a Jewish communal space. The Jewish movie theater was popular until it was closed by the Nazis in 1941.[6]
German Jewish film professionals who fled Germany often continued to work in the film industry in countries they fled to, including the United States, the United Kingdom,[7] and elsewhere. Approximately 800 German directors, producers, composers, actors, and writers fled to Hollywood, many of them Jewish.[3]
In 2001, the Jewish-themed filmAlles auf Zucker! became a hit with German audiences.[8]