Film screening "I Was Nineteen" by Konrad Wolf

Film screening "I Was Nineteen" by Konrad Wolf

As part of this reflection, and in recognition of the Konrad Wolf Year 2025, marking the 100th anniversary of the filmmaker’s birth, we are screening I Was Nineteen by Konrad Wolf. The film opens a four-part series dedicated to his work, exploring how cinema engages with historical memory and its relevance today. This programme continues our broader series on remembrance culture, titled 80 Years: Past, Present–Future?

The film series is curated and introduced by Professor Seán Allan.

The film I Was Nineteen is about Nineteen year-old Gregor Hecker, who returns to Germany in April 1945 with a Red Army scouting group. Having fled the country with his parents when he was eight, Gregor feels like a stranger on German soil. Like his soldier friends Sascha and Wadim, Gregor is ashamed of the German people. But when he meets a concentration camp survivor who had been sentenced for opposing the Nazis, Gregor becomes convinced that a different, better Germany is still possible.

GDR 1967 | Director: Konrad Wolf | 119 mins | Feature Film black and white | German with English subtitles.

Konrad Wolf (1925–1982) was one of the most important directors in the German Democratic Republic and a central figure in DEFA films. After his family emigrated to Moscow in 1934, he returned to Germany at the age of 19 as a soldier in the Red Army – a formative experience for his later film work. His works, such as Sterne, Der geteilte Himmel, Ich war neunzehn and Solo Sunny deal with German history, anti-fascist memory and social responsibility. Politically socialised at an early age, Wolf remained true to the ideals of communism, but repeatedly asked critical questions. In 2025, his 100th birthday will be celebrated with retrospectives, film restorations and events – an occasion to rediscover his cinematic legacy.

Seán Allan is Professor of German at the University of St Andrews and holds a Joint Research Professsorship at the University of Bonn. He studied at the University of Cambridge and spent a year studying Theaterwissenschaft at the Humbodlt Universität in what was then East Berlin. His publications include DEFA. East German Cinema, 1946–1992 (co-edited with John Sandford, 1996), Re-Imagining DEFA: East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts (co-edited with Sebastian Heiduschke, 2016), and a monograph on the East german ‘artist film’, Screening Art. Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema (2019). Together with Sebastian Heiduschke he has just published a new volume entitled Documenting Socialism. East German Documentary Cinema (2024).

Picture: DEFA