GERMANIA FILMS S.A. IN ROME – The

Third Reich’s Italian connection

“Germania Film S.A. of Rome was the trustee in Italy of the Great German Film Production Houses, to which all the German production houses belonged, as well as all the companies responsible for domestic distribution, export, and technical services. Founded in December 1936 as a representative in Italy of Tobis, under the name of Tobis Italiana, this company assumed its current name in 1940, with the representation of all the other German production houses. Germania Film was the point of confluence of the Italian-German cinematographic collaboration as an ideal center between the two cinematographies, which was entrusted with the task of spreading in Europe and the world films increasingly representative of Italian and German taste, culture and genius.”

Translated from: Forme di collaborazione ecoproduzione nel cinema italiano(1930 – 1950) Dottorando Relatore, Paola Maganzani Giulia Fanara, Universita Roma, 2019-2020

Germania Film S.A. published a 190-page hardbound guide book in 1942 with an overview of the German film industry, a fold-out organisational chart, and with hundreds of B&W photographs of German directors, actors and actresses. The book’s title was German Cinema – Organization, Managers, Production Companies, Directors, Actresses, Actors.

The General Director of Germania Film was Dr. Ernst Purger, who had worked in Germany with Tobis Filmkunst, and moved to Rome to run the Italian film distributor, Film-Unione. He then assumed leadership of the newly established Germania Film to assist German film productions wishing to shoot in Italy, with Italian productions needing to be shot in Germany, and coordination between the importation of German films to Italian cinemas, and the export of Italian films to Reich cinemas. You could say that Germania Film was the lynchpin between Hitler’s Reich and Mussolini’s Fascist Italy for all matters to do with motion pictures.

In the May 1942 issue of the Ufa Feldpost newsletter for Ufa film studio staff who were serving in the German Armed Forces, there appeared a front-page article headed “Dr. Klitzsch in Rome.” Klitzsch was then the General Director of Ufa, Germany’s top film studio. We translate the short article here:

Dr. Klitzsch in Rome

Director General Dr. Klitzsch, accompanied by Councillor Faber and Mr. Purger, was received by Minister Pavolini on the occasion of his visit to Rome,  after he had visited the Director General for the film industry, Eitel Monaco. Director General Dr. Klitzsch spent a day at the Cinecittà, the Italian Film Academy, and the Luce Institute. In the evening, he attended the premiere of “U-Boats Westward” at the Cinema Barberini. In attendance were the Minister for Popular Culture Pavolini, the Minister for Africa Minister Teruzzi, Minister of Corporations Rieci, the German businessman Baron v. Plessen, the President of the Italian Film Chamber Graf Volpi, Dr. Schultz, Carl Melzer, the president of Cinecittà and ENIC [film distributor], Freddi, high representatives of the German and Italian armed forces and the military attaché of Japan. The film achieved a great success.

The importance of Germania Film can perhaps best be illustrated by its role in saving the 1943 Luftwaffe feature film of Karl Ritter, Besatzung Dora, when the film crew and cast had arrived in Rome in early October, 1942, en route to North Africa to film the war scenes in the desert vital to the film’s plot.

After the OKW’s Major Loytred urgently telephoned Ritter on 20 October at the Luftwaffe Fliegerhorst in Gostkino [Ritter’s filming location in the Occupied USSR, about 150 Kilometers south of Leningrad] to make haste or lose transport to the Dark Continent, the Dora team finished the Eastern Front battle scenes and arrived in Rome in the first week of November. Unbeknownst to Germany and to Karl Ritter, the British had long ago broken Rommel’s military secret codes, could read all of his battle plans, and were to take Tobruk within days. Ritter’s own plans to film on that front were thus crushed. Germania Film came to the rescue, by providing immediate access to the famed Cinecitta studio lots and workshops, to build a Tobruk street with palm trees, Africans, a belly dancer, and even African monkeys. Furthermore, Ritter was given permission to film in the sandy beaches  of the Ostia National Park west of Rome, where a wrecked Ju88 reconnaissance aircraft had been hastily trucked from Sicily to provide the key African desert scenes needed to save the film.

Ritter’s private diary entry, written the day after he and the crew and cast arrived in Rome, stated:

7 November, Sunday. Rome. My 54th birthday!

I write my diary in bed. Breakfast. Herr Purger from Germania Film telephoned and immediately wished me a happy birthday. We took metro Line 8 to Via Bori 15 – to the front of a very pretty house of Germania Film,142 which handles all German film enterprise in Italy. Herr Purger greets us. We were photographed in front of the house, and then shown the press office and the other offices and after a discussion he summoned the Production Manager, Delago.

ABOVE PHOTO: The Italian film magazine which published this photo had a long caption running alongside the right of the image as follows.

"Prof. Karl Ritter arrived in Rome, where he visited the headquarters of Germania Film and Film-Union. This well-known German film director has been entrusted with the direction of the Ufa-produced film “ Crew Dora,” centering on the heroic exploits of a reconnaissance aircraft.

Karl Ritter, who holds the rank of Major in the Luftwaffe, and who already served the 1914-18 war, travels to Africa to film in the desert a scene in which the crew of the immobilized German aircraft is rescued by an Italian aircraft.

Here we see Prof. Karl Ritter (who is accompanied by his son Heinz, the film's cameraman) visiting Germania Film, where he was received by Director General Ernst Purger and Chief Press Office Giuseppe Marotta. (photo Salvatori - Germania Film)

His diary entry three days later stated:

10 November 1942

I can’t sleep any longer and had the same thoughts – where are we to shoot Africa, under the circumstances? Time is pressing and we have nothing for it. In addition, there’s the English offensive in Egypt, the Americans landing in French Morocco and Algiers.

It was shortly after this diary entry that Ritter got the news that it was no longer possible to film in Africa, which was now virtually lost to Rommel and the Africa Korp. This is when Germania Film stepped up and saved the day.

Germania Film S.A. ended its work when the Germans retreated from Rome in 1944. Purger was involved with the Venice Biennale in 1951, according to the September 4, 1951 issue of Der Spiegel.  He career and life thereafter is unknown to us.

NOTE:

 The fascinating full story about the fate of  Karl Ritter'sBesatzung Dora is told for the first time in the book The Making of The Crew of the Dora by William Gillespie, from which some of the material above was drawn. The book is in print and available to purchase via this website's Poster & Book Shop, or from International Historic Films in Chicago, Illinois, USA here. The book and the remastered DVD of the actual Dora film with English subtitles can be purchased there, as well, and there is a combo offer for both book and DVD at a savings.  You can find much more background about the book and film on this website.