Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft, better known as DEFA, was the public-owned film studio in East Germany throughout that country's history.


DEFA was founded in the Spring of 1946 in the Soviet zone of protection in Germany as the first film production company in post-War Germany. While the other Allies, in their zones of occupation, viewed a rapid revival of a German film industry with suspicion, the Soviets valued the medium as a primary means for re-educating the German populace as it emerged from twelve years of Nazi rule and mindset.
Headquartered in Berlin, the company was formally authorized by the Soviet Military Administration to produce films on May 13, 1946, although Wolfgang Staudte had already begun work on DEFA's first film, Die Mörder Sind Unter Uns (The Murderers Are Among Us) nine days earlier. The original company board of directors consisted of Alfred Lindemann, Karl Hans Bergmann and Herbert Volkmann, with Hans Klering as administrative Secretary. Klering, a former graphic designer, also designed DEFA's logo.[1] On August 13, 1946, the company was officially registered as a joint-stock company. By the end of the year, in addition to the Staudte film, it had completed two other feature films using the former Tobis studio facilities in Berlin and the Althoff Atelier in Babelsberg. Subsequently, its principal studio would become the one in Potsdam originally built by Ufa in the 1920s.
On July 14, 1947, the company officially moved its headquarters to Potsdam and on 13 November 1947, the company "stock" was controlled by the Socialist Unity Party or SED, which had originally capitalized DEFA, and pro-Soviet German individuals. Soviets Ilya Trauberg and Aleksandr Wolkenstein joined Lindemann, Bergmann and Volkmann on the board of directors, and a committee was established under the auspices of the Socialist Unity Party to review projects and screen rushes.