Andreas Kötzing, born in 1978, is a research associate at the Hannah Arendt Institute for Research on Totalitarianism in Dresden and a lecturer at the University of Leipzig. He researches the cultural and media history of the 20th and 21st centuries. His dissertation in modern and contemporary history, defended at the University of Leipzig in 2012, was published in 2013,  Kultur- und Filmpolitik im Kalten Krieg. Die Filmfestivals von Leipzig und Oberhausen in gesamtdeutscher Perspektive.

Oberhausen, 1980: An animated film from the GDR surprises with an unexpected creative density. In Lutz Dammbeck's adaptation of the Brecht poem ‘Ulm 1592’, the dream of flying emerges from pink primordial ooze and is shattered by the rulers' lack of imagination chiselled into Ulm Minster. In his next film, Dammbeck varied the theme and created an even more disillusioned, abysmal allegory with EINMART, which was no longer accepted for the Short Film Festival competition. 

Wolfgang J. Ruf is an author, publicist and lecturer. His range of topics includes cultural policy, theatre, film, media, literature, history, politics and contemporary history. He was editor-in-chief of the magazine Die Deutsche Bühne and press officer of the Deutscher Bühnenverein, as well as chief dramaturge at the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe. From 1975 to 1985 he was director of the West German Short Film Festival.

‘Hütes’ is the name of the dumplings that sisters Lene and Berta prepare in their home region of southern Thuringia. The name is derived from the request ‘Hüte es!’ (‘Protect it!’) , and indeed the region portrayed by Volker Koepp, just a few kilometres from the inner-German border, seems to have preserved something that has stood the test of time. In Oberhausen, the film was awarded the main prize by the jury of the Adult Education Association.

A shady walk through the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weißensee. As conceptually clear and coherent as the film is, its genesis and censorship history was complex. Jeanpaul Goergen reconstructed it for a highly readable article, which also goes into detail about the premiere in Oberhausen in 1966.