In contrast to the situation after World War I, when Germany helped set the pace in many newer forms of art and entertainment, most notably in the genre of motion pictures, both East and West Germany were slow in finding métiers of their own in the cinema in the early decades after World War II. Directors such as Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau, and G.W. Pabst, who had virtually defined cinematic art in the 1920s and early ’30s, had no counterparts to rescue German film from the slough of mediocrity into which it had fallen as a result of the Third Reich. Leni Riefenstahl, one of Germany’s leading filmmakers of the 1930s, was tapped by the Nazi regime to produce many of its propaganda films, including Triumph des Willens (1935; Triumph of the Will). Most noteworthy German filmmakers, such as Lang, Lubitsch, and Billy Wilder, relocated to Hollywood, where they enriched American cinema with their work, as did German actors such as Marlene Dietrich, Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre, and Conrad Veidt.

After World War II the studios of the giant UFA (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft) in Babelsberg (a suburb of Potsdam), the center of German film production from 1917 to 1945, were in East German hands; the industry continued as a government-owned enterprise known as DEFA (Deutsche Film-Akademie), noted for animation, documentaries, and feature films, some of which achieved recognition at international film festivals. DEFA was privatized into six divisions in 1992, and its historical film stock has been preserved by the publicly owned DEFA Foundation.

In the 1960s West Germany’s changing demographics, plus the encroachment of television, caused the collapse of its domestic film market. A group of young filmmakers, first organized at the Oberhausen Film Festival in 1962, established das neue Kino, or the New German Cinema. Relying on state subsidy to subsist, the members of the movement sought to examine Germany’s unbewältige Vergangenheit, or “unassimilated past.” The New German Cinema had little commercial success outside of Germany, but it still was internationally influential. The critical acclaim afforded directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Volker Schlöndorff, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Wolfgang Petersen, and Percy Aldon helped reestablish West Germany as a serious filmmaking country, as did the work of actors such as Klaus Kinski, Bruno Ganz, and Hanna Schygulla. Women directors, such as Margarethe von Trotta, Helma Sanders-Brahms, and Doris Dörrie, also came to prominence during the 1970s and ’80s.

Germany’s reunification in 1990 cut short attempts to forge a national cinematic identity in eastern Germany, though some notable productions marked the following decade, among them Tom Tykwer’s Lola rennt (1998; Run Lola Run), Katja von Garnier’s Bandits (1996), Herzog’s Mein liebster Feind (1999; My Best Fiend), and Wenders’s Buena Vista Social Club (1999). Some noted German filmmakers also found significant success in the United States. Roland Emerich, for example, established himself in the action-adventure genre, and Wolfgang Petersen (Das Boot, 1982) became one of Hollywood’s more-noted practitioners of the thriller. Moreover, many of Hollywood’s most prominent cinematographers, composers, and production artists have also hailed from Germany. Fatih Akin, a German director of Turkish descent, represented the next generation in German filmmaking, and his films, which frequently drew on the immigrant experience, were favourably compared with those of Fassbinder. (For further discussion, see history of the motion picture.)

Arts festivals

The arts are celebrated with a proliferation of festivals in Germany on a scale scarcely equaled in any other country. Most major cities and scores of small towns and villages sponsor festivals that celebrate all genres of music, film, and the performing arts. Among the most renowned of these is the Bayreuth Festival, which celebrates the works of Richard Wagner. Founded by the composer himself in 1876, it is still under the direction of his descendants. The oldest German festival is the Passion play, first held in 1634 and now held every 10 years in Oberammergau in southern Bavaria to celebrate the town’s deliverance from the plague.

Berlin alone has five major festivals: the Berliner Festspiele, a celebration of music, the performing arts, visual arts, and literature; the Berliner Jazzfest in November; the Berlin International Film Festival in February; the Theatertreffen Berlin (“Berlin Theatre Meeting”), featuring productions from throughout the German-speaking world; and the Karneval der Kulturen (“Carnival of Cultures”), a festival of world cultures. Munich has an opera festival in July and August, with emphasis on Richard Strauss. Festivals in Würzburg and Augsburg are dedicated to Mozart. Ansbach has a Bach festival, and Bonn has one celebrating Beethoven. Other noteworthy events include Documenta, an arts festival held every five years in Kassel that draws hundreds of thousands of visitors, the International May Festival in Wiesbaden, and the Festival of Contemporary Music in Donaueschingen. Expo 2000, Germany’s first world’s fair, was held in Hanover.