GDR film history accounts for a large part of the photo collection. Film and production stills from more than 700 DEFA feature films and publicity stills of Progress Filmverleih are in stock.
The DEFA photo stock includes

• the works of Wolfgang Staudte in Babelsberg
• DEFA′s international coproductions
• approximately 170 films for children and young people from 1950 to 1993
• the banned and censored "Plenumsfilme" from 1965 and 1966
• the last DEFA films produced during the time of the German reunification

From the early years of film, valuable photo documents like film stills from Carl Mayer′s lost film Der Dummkopf (1920), from Robert Wiene’s I.N.R.I (1923) and Arzen von Cserépy′s Fridericus Rex (1922/23) have been preserved.



A priceless rarity is a photo album on Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau′s 4 Devils, a film from 1928 that is considered lost. Of the 59 pictures taken by photographer Max Munn Autrey, 21 had been unknown so far. A comparable collection of film / production stills and actor portraits from a Murnau film made for 20th Century Fox does not even exist in the US.

With regard to Ufa history, the estate of cinematographer Günter Anders is a highlight. Consisting of more than 2,300 film and production stills, the estate contains, among others, photos from famous propaganda films like Bal paré (1940), Pour le Mérite (1938) and Kadetten (1941).



Stocks of individual photographers are especially remarkable, such as the production stills and protraits of DEFA photographer Karin Blasig and the Günter Linke collection. Linke became famous for his cover photos and on-location reports for the magazine "Filmspiegel".

The majority of the 20,000 photos from foreign films comes from Soviet film production, which had a strong presence in GDR cinemas from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. This stock includes photos from the works of Soviet directors like Sergej Eisenstein, Sergej Bondartschuk, Nikita Michalkow and Andrej Tarkowski.



Almost every important creator or work of DEFA documentary film is represented. From the early years of GDR documentary film production, there are, e.g., photos from the films of Karl Gass and Andrew and Annelie Thorndike. Moreover, the work of the succeeding generation of directors – such as Gitta Nickel, Jürgen Böttcher, Karlheinz Mund, Winfried Junge, Volker Koepp or Helke Misselwitz – has been documented with numerous photos.