UFA GmbH


UFA GmbH, shortened to UFA, is a film and television production company that unites all production activities of the media conglomerate Bertelsmann in Germany. The original UFA was established as Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft on December 18, 1917, as a direct response to foreign competition in film and propaganda. UFA was founded by a consortium headed by Emil Georg von Stauß, a former Deutsche Bank board member. In March 1927, Alfred Hugenberg, an influential German media entrepreneur and later minister of the economy and minister of agriculture and nutrition in Adolf Hitler's cabinet, purchased UFA and transferred ownership of it to the Nazi Party in 1933.
In 1942, as a result of the Nazi policy of "forcible coordination" known as the Gleichschaltung, UFA and all of its competitors, including Tobis, Terra, Bavaria Film and Wien-Film, were bundled together with Nazi-controlled foreign film production companies to form the super-corporation UFA-Film GmbH, with headquarters in Berlin. After the Red Army occupied the UFA complex in 1945 in Babelsberg, and after the privatization of Bavaria and UFA in 1956 in West Germany, the company was restructured to form Universum Film AG and taken over by a consortium of banks. However, in film production and distribution, it failed to revive and went into receivership.
In 1964, Bertelsmann's Chief Representative, Manfred Köhnlechner, acquired the entire Universum Film AG holdings from Deutsche Bank, which had previously been the main UFA shareholder and which had determined the company's business policy as head of the shareholders' consortium. Köhnlechner bought UFA, which was heavily in debt, on behalf of Reinhard Mohn for roughly five million Deutschmarks. Only a few months later, Köhnlechner also acquired the UFA-Filmtheaterkette, a movie theater chain, for almost eleven million Deutschmarks.
In 1997, UFA and the Luxembourgish rival CLT established the joint venture CLT-UFA, which, following the takeover of British rival Pearson Television, was restructured as RTL Group in 2000. Now, UFA GmbH works as a subsidiary of RTL Group's production division Fremantle, which had been formed out of Pearson TV, and is responsible for all production activities of Bertelsmann and Fremantle in Germany. Until August 2013, eight subsidiaries operated under the UFA umbrella: UFA Fernsehproduktion, UFA Entertainment, Grundy UFA, Grundy Light Entertainment, UFA Cinema,, Phoenix Film and UFA Brand Communication.
In August 2013, UFA underwent an organizational restructuring that simplified the company down to three production divisions. Today, UFA Fiction, UFA Serial Drama, UFA Show & Factual and UFA Documentary are the four units responsible for production.

History

Establishment from 1917

An early step towards the founding of UFA was taken on January 13, 1917, with the creation of the Bild- und Filmamt by Germany's Supreme Army Command. Formed as a reaction to the perceived advantage of Germany's enemies in the realm of film propaganda, Bufa's task was to use film for psychological warfare.
The plans envisaged by the German General Staff – especially those of Erich Ludendorff – went far beyond the creation of Bufa. Ludendorff foresaw a large-scale, state-controlled film corporation that would serve national interests. In this spirit, Universum-Film AG was founded as a consolidation of private film companies on December 18, 1917 in Berlin. The company's starting capital was 25 million Reichsmark : among the contributors were the German government, the War Ministry and Deutsche Bank. The board chairman of the new company was Deutsche Bank director Emil Georg von Stauß.
Prior to establishing the company, the General Staff had considered taking over the e. V., which had been founded in 1916. This agency was too much under the influence of heavy industry and, in particular, of Alfred Hugenberg, chairman of Krupp. Hugenberg would later take over UFA in 1927.
Three main film companies formed the nucleus of UFA from the end of 1917:
More companies joined UFA not long after:
  • Joe May's May-Film company, with film duplicating plant and glass-house studios at Weissensee Studios. The studios were previously owned by Continental-Kunstfilm, whose production had slowed since 1915 and didn't join UFA.
  • Greenbaum-Film joined in 1919, but the deal was disastrous for Jules Greenbaum who died in a mental institution in 1924.
  • Decla-Bioscop. Originally founded by Jules Greenbaum in 1902 as Deutsche Bioskop AG, sold to Carl Moritz Schleussner in 1908 and moved to Neubabelsberg); merged in March 1920 with Erich Pommer's Decla-Film which had been formed in 1915 out of the confiscated assets of the German branch of the French Éclair to form Decla-Bioskop: Taken over by UFA in October 1921.
UFA continued to sign production agreements with various independent producers:
Given that Germany had been – and continued to be – largely cut off from film imports due to World War I, the new company had ideal conditions for their conquest of the German market.
The mission of UFA at the time of its founding was the production of films – feature films, documentaries, cultural films and weekly headline films – designed to function as propaganda for Germany abroad. However, after mounting tensions between the company's founding members, Deutsche Bank was able to prevail and implement their approach to film production as a business rather than for military objectives. Instead of propaganda films, UFA now produced elaborate entertainment films such as Sumurun.
UFA was already in 1921 producing the lion's share of German feature films, and in that year it was privatized. Starting in 1922, large ateliers in Neubabelsberg and on Oberlandstraße in Berlin-Tempelhof were made available for film production. In 1926, the facilities were expanded by means of the construction of the largest studio hall in Europe at the time. In 1923, after Decla-Bioscop AG and others were taken over, Erich Pommer became head of all production operations and discovered and fostered many stars, including Emil Jannings, Pola Negri, Conrad Veidt and Lya de Putti. During this era UFA was a leader in the time of the German Expressionism, experienced a further boom, and emerged as a direct competitor to Hollywood with films such as Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, Die Nibelungen, Variety and Faust.

Hugenberg (1927–1933)

In 1927, UFA found itself in serious financial trouble. After the stabilization of the German currency starting in November 1924, the German film industry in general entered a period of crisis: foreign sales stalled due to low profit margins, and the German market became profitable once again for American film giants. The resulting concentration on a few large German film companies, which came together to unite production, distribution and presentation under one UFA's managers made severe miscalculations with regard to two large-scale productions, Nibelungen and Metropolis in 1924-1926. This situation was made even worse as the result of a gag contract they had entered into in 1925 with the American companies Paramount Pictures and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In March 1927, with the company facing bankruptcy, Alfred Hugenberg – Chairman of the German National People's Party and owner of the Scherl-Gruppe, a powerful media corporation – bought the company. The new general director was Ludwig Klitzsch; Hugenberg himself took over the chairmanship of the supervisory board; his deputy was banker Emil Georg von Stauß.
At first, nothing changed in UFA's production policy. In 1928, Erich Pommer was replaced as head of production by Ernst Hugo Correll, who led the company through the transition to talking pictures or "talkies". UFA gained an advantage over smaller companies in the realm of talkie production as a result of a contract with Tobis-Klangfilm, which simplified the licensing situation for UFA.
Nevertheless, UFA has recorded unsurpassed artistic successes with films such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Woman in the Moon to this day. Asphalt or entertainment movies such as Melody of the Heart or the musical film The Three from the Filling Station are produced by the UFA. In 1930, the company enjoyed worldwide success with the film The Blue Angel, starring Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings, directed by Joseph von Sternberg.

Nazification (1933–1937)

UFA experienced a new commercial boom in the Nazi era, not least due to the government's protectionist measures, which freed the company from bothersome domestic and foreign competition, sometimes even incorporating their production facilities and staff. On top of that, by occupying almost all of Europe, the Nazi regime also provided UFA with new sales markets, as well as placing distribution outlets in such "neutral" countries as the United States. By 1938, after taking over foreign film production facilities in France, Belgium and other countries, one third of the company's sales came from abroad. UFA's economic boom made it possible to further expand the so-called "star system," which had already been developed in the silent film era. The highest paid UFA stars in the Nazi era were Hans Albers and Zarah Leander. Veit Harlan was the highest-earning director.
In addition, as a result of the nationalist German spirit that already dominated the company, UFA was perfectly suited to serve the goals of National Socialist propaganda in film. Hugenberg had been named Reich Minister of Economics immediately following the Nazi takeover of January 30, 1933, and made UFA openly available for Joseph Goebbels' propaganda machine, even though Hugenberg was removed from his post shortly thereafter under pressure from Hitler. In an act of anticipatory obedience to the Nazi regime, UFA management fired several Jewish employees on March 29, 1933. In the summer of 1933, the Nazi regime created the Film Chamber of the Reich, which adopted regulations officially excluding Jewish filmmakers from all German studios.