Wolfgang Staudte

Wolfgang Staudte (9 October 1906 – 19 January 1984), born Georg Friedrich Staudte, was a German film director, script writer and actor. He was born in Saarbrücken. After 1945, Staudte also looked at German guilt in the cinema. Alongside Helmut Käutner, he was considered the only German post-war director of any standing who, after 1945, could look back on continuous artistic filmmaking far removed from Heimatfilm and the suppression of history. Staudte's films stood for politically committed cinema as well as for professional craftsmanship, for film art and (good) entertainment with a social claim. His most important work came in the ten years following World War II, in which he worked with the DEFA in East Germany. The main focus of his work was to highlight the limits of German national pride. His work in anti-Nazi films, such as The Murderers Are Among Us (1946), was also a personal working-through of his film career under the Nazis (he acted in the antisemitic film Jud Süß). Following 1956, he worked in West Germany. By the 1970s, his work was no longer considered particularly modern and he moved to television. He appeared on shows such as Der Kommissar and Tatort. He is the great-uncle of the German-Iranian director and novelist Andy Siege.