Konrad Wolf - his work as a person and as a filmmaker, his significance for our time
Konrad Wolf (1925 - 1982) was the son of the doctor and writer Friedrich Wolf. His older brother Markus Wolf was later the long-time head of the GDR's foreign intelligence service. After Hitler seized power, the family emigrated to Moscow. Konrad Wolf acquired Soviet citizenship and came into close contact with Soviet film. He joined the Red Army at the age of seventeen and in 1945, at the age of nineteen, was one of the troops that took Berlin. For a short time in April 1945, he was the first Soviet city commander of Bernau near Berlin. He studied at the Moscow Film Academy. He then worked as a director at DEFA, where he made a large number of challenging and critical contemporary films. From 1965 until his death in 1982, he was president of the GDR Academy of Arts. His long period in office shows that he led the Academy with great human skill and success in terms of content. The study of his life and his cinematic work makes an important contribution to the reappraisal and critical appraisal of the GDR system and is therefore - beyond the gripping plot of his films - still relevant and significant today.
