Paul Wegener
Also Known As: Paul Hermann Wegener
Biography: Paul Wegener was a German actor known for his pioneering roles in Expressionist films. He can also be considered a father of horror for his breakout role in The Student of Prague (1913). Wegener maintained a career throughout and after the Nazi era, starring in his last film in 1948.
Department: Acting
Place of Birth: Arnoldsdorf, West Prussia, Germany [now Jarantowice, Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Poland]
Adult: No
Birthday: December 11, 1874
Age: 150 years old
Gender: Male
Deathday: September 13, 1948
Popularity:
Known For:
The Golem
Overview: This mostly lost film is often confused with director Paul Wegener third and readily available interpretation of the legend; Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920). In this version of the golem legend, the golem, a clay statue brought to life by Rabbi Loew in 16th century Prague to save the Jews from the ongoing brutal persecution by the city's rulers, is found in the rubble of an old synagogue in the 20th century. Brought to life by an antique dealer, the golem is used as a menial servant. Eventually falling in love with the dealer's wife, it goes on a murderous rampage when its love for her goes unanswered.
Genres: Horror Fantasy
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1915-01-15
Popularity:
A Daughter Of Destiny
Overview: Hanns Heinz Ewers' grim science-fiction novel Alraune has already been filmed twice when this version was assembled in 1928. In another of his "mad doctor" roles, Paul Wegener plays Professor Brinken, sociopathic scientist who combines the genes of an executed murderer with those of a prostitute. The result is a beautiful young woman named Alraune (Brigitte Helm), who is incapable of feeling any real emotions -- least of all guilt or regret. Upon attaining adulthood, Alraune sets about to seduce and destroy every male who crosses her path. Ultimately, Professor Brinken is hoist on his own petard when he falls hopelessly in love with Alraune himself. Alraune was remade in 1930, with Brigitte Helm repeating her role, and again in 1951, with Hildegarde Knef as the "heroine" and Erich von Stroheim as her misguided mentor.
Genres: Drama Fantasy Science Fiction Horror
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1928-01-25
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The Golem: How He Came Into the World
Overview: In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem - a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.
Genres: Fantasy Horror
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1920-10-28
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Kolberg
Overview: During Napoleon's victorious campaign in Germany, the city of Kolberg gets isolated from the retreating Prussian forces. The population of Kolberg refuses to capitulate and organizes the resistance against the French army, which immediately submits the city to massive bombardments.
Genres: War History Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1945-01-30
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The Student of Prague
Overview: Prague, Bohemia, 1820. Balduin, a penniless student, falls in love with Countess Margit, a wealthy noblewoman whom he has saved from drowning.
Genres: Drama Fantasy
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1913-08-22
Popularity:
The Living Dead
Overview: A crazed scientist murders his wife, walls her up, then flees. A reporter sets out to track him down. Remake of Unheimliche Geschichten (Richard Oswald, 1919).
Genres: Horror
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1932-09-06
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The Magician
Overview: A young woman, Margaret Dauncey, is caught between the forces of a charlatan magician, Oliver Haddo, whom she is unable to resist, and the love of a handsome surgeon, Arthur Burdon, who has saved her from being a helpless cripple by performing a delicate operation on her spine.
Genres: Drama Horror Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1926-10-24
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S.O.S. Die Insel der Tränen
Overview:
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1923-11-01
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Only a Comedian
Overview: A moving actor at the rococo era shows the power-hungry-crude minister of a small state prince in the barriers, while he makes use of his resemblance to the sovereign and slips in his role. - Double role for Rudolf Forster who plays his figures very much chilly.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1935-09-02
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Sumurun
Overview: The favorite slave girl of a tyrannical sheik falls in love with a cloth merchant. Meanwhile, a hunchback clown suffers unrequited love for a traveling dancer who wants to join the harem.
Genres: Adventure Drama Romance
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1920-09-01
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The Loves of Pharaoh
Overview: The Ethiopian King offers his daughter to a powerful Pharaoh to secure peace between the two countries.
Genres: History Drama Romance
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1922-02-21
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Der große Mandarin
Overview:
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1949-02-18
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Vanina
Overview: Vanina loves rebel leader Octavio, who gets caught. He gets a pardon and marries Vanina. When he is captured again, Vanina helps him to escape prison. They are both caught, and after his execution she dies from grief.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1922-10-05
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The Weavers
Overview: Die Weber (1927), a rousing German tale of the 1844 weavers’ revolution.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1927-04-29
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Glanz und Elend der Kurtisanen
Overview: Balzac adaptation: Escaped convict moves into a brothel where he becomes father to a boy. But his advantageous position is eventually threatened by one of the whores who has fallen in love with the convict's grown up son.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1927-01-01
Popularity:
The Great King
Overview: King Frederick II (aka "Frederick the Great") of Prussia is engaged in a major battle against the Austrian army at Kunersdorf, and things aren't going well. The Austrians are inflicting major casualties, and his army is beginning to crumble. Defeat seems inevitable when a combination of events gives him hope that he may pull victory from the jaws of defeat after all.
Genres: History Drama War
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1942-03-02
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Hochzeit auf Bärenhof
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1942-06-08
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Lucrezia Borgia
Overview: Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, has three adult children: Juan, who is virtuous and has a sweetheart who is a woman of the people, Lucrezia, who is virtuous and wants to marry Alfonso, and Cesare, who is wicked and lusts after Lucrezia, Juan's girlfriend, and probably others. Cesare has vowed to kill any suitor for Lucrezia's love, and he has three thugs to carry out his wishes. Bodies fall into the Tiber, into the Colosseum (with lions prowling), and onto the Vatican floors.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1922-10-20
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My Life for Ireland
Overview: A Nazi propaganda movie from 1941 directed by Max W. Kimmich, covering a story of Irish heroism and martyrdom over two generations under the occupation of the British.
Genres: Drama War
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1941-01-02
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Evinrude
Overview:
Genres: Adventure Western
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1914-02-21
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The Golem and the Dancing Girl
Overview: As a practical joke, an actor impersonates the screen monster he made famous. A lost film.
Genres: Horror Comedy
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1917-07-10
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Diesel
Overview:
Genres: Drama History
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1943-02-09
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The Pied Piper of Hamelin
Overview: A traveler comes into a town overrun with rats and vermin. He promises to free the place of the pests and names his price. When the townspeople refuse to pay him after he has done what he promised, he plays his tune again with consequences. This film survives in incomplete/fragmentary form.
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1918-12-19
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Inge and the Millions
Overview: A well scripted and captivating thriller about the owners of a small private bank in Berlin, squeezing money out of honest business firms, causing their bankruptcies, and then trying to smuggle the cash into Switzerland.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1933-12-22
Popularity:
Der Mann mit der Pranke
Overview: "The Man with the Paw" is what people call the very successful banker Wiegant, who is desperately in love with Lena Kroning, the wife of the lawyer Hugo Kroning. So as to be nearer to her, Wiegant hires her husband to be the bank's lawyer. Shortly thereafter, Wiegant is suspected of having conned the Countess Steindorff during a telephone conversation; but he never did. During the relevant period of time, he was with Lena "having tea" (uh huh), which he conceals from the lawyer-husband, so as to protect Lena.
Genres: Crime
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1935-10-30
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Zwielicht
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1940-04-19
Popularity:
Wenn die Sonne wieder scheint
Overview: The Termoehlens belong to the old farming class in Flanders. Their estate does well and their flax is the best far and wide. And as is the custom, old Termoehlen is like a ruler over his family, the servants and the maidens. Even his son Ludwig, who has just returned from agricultural school with all his ideas on how to improve the farm, doesn’t stand a chance. When Ludwig falls in love with the maiden Rieneke – known as Schellebelle – his father become a despotic enemy.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1943-01-01
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Tierarzt Dr. Vlimmen
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1944-01-01
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The Molander Case
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1945-01-01
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Das Recht auf Liebe
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1939-11-24
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The Strange Case of Captain Ramper
Overview: Paul Wegener gives one of his most active performances here as Captain Ramper, a heroic aviator who makes a pioneering flight across the Arctic accompanied only by Ippling, his faithful mechanic (Kurt Gerron). Near the North Pole, their plane develops engine failure and crashes in the desolate wastes. Ippling dies straight off but Ramper finds a supply base containing food which has been left behind by a previous expedition. After fifteen years in the Arctic wastes, Ramper has considerably mutated.
Genres: Horror Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1928-01-11
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The Mystery of Johann Orth
Overview: A Hapsburg archduke in the 1880s gives up his title, changes his name, marries a Viennese actress, and then disappears with her on a South American ocean voyage.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1932-11-20
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Hans Trutz in the Land of Milk and Honey
Overview: A stylized fairy tale in which a farmer sells his soul to Satan in exchange for prosperity.
Genres: Drama Fantasy Horror
Original Language: xx
Release Date: 1917-11-01
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The Yoghi
Overview: An Indian mystic uses his power of invisibility to scare a young inventor.
Genres: Drama Horror Fantasy
Original Language: xx
Release Date: 1916-09-01
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Fundvogel
Overview: Young Jan Bergwall visits his grandmother, the so-called centenary, at Woyland Castle. There he meets his cousin Andrea, who everyone calls "Fundvogel". Jan is fascinated by the young girl's beauty, and soon there is an erotic tension in the air between the two. Although they both have strong feelings for each other, they are afraid to make a commitment, even though their domineering grandmother is determined that they marry. Panicked that he might feel obliged to marry Andrea, Jan escapes from this place. Andrea is deeply disappointed and seeks revenge. Out of spite, she becomes involved with the falconer Bartel and is later raped in a wooden hut. The centigress, concerned about morals and customs, then sends Fundvogel to a convent. She escapes from there and flees into the arms of Jan. When he learns from a letter from the countess what has happened to Andrea, he leaves her a second time. In her despair, Fundvogel then throws herself off a bridge into the floods with suicidal intent.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1930-05-19
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Marshal Forward
Overview:
Genres: War Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1932-11-23
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Hans Westmar
Overview: Nazi film about the story of a Nazi Storm Trooper named Horst Wessel--here called "Hans Westmar"--who took part in street brawls and assassinations in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s against Communists and other opponents of the Nazis, and was killed by Communists not long before this film came out.
Genres: Crime
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1933-12-13
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The Immortal Heart
Overview: Nuremberg durting the time of Albrecht Durer and the famous geographer Martin Behaim: the locksmith Peter Henlein is looking for a way to make bullets more accurate by designing a new form. Just as he welds together two round balls into an elongated shape, he believes he's discovered that his assistant Konrad is trying to alienate his wife from him. There is a struggle, during which Henlein's new kind of bullet strikes him in the chest. The doctor, unaware that there are two bullets lodged in his body, because there was only one shot, only removes one.
Genres: History Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1939-01-31
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Dr. Terror's House of Horrors
Overview: A man of mystery known only as Doctor Terror recounts seven stories from his casebook of personal encounters with evil and the supernatural.
Genres: Horror
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1943-02-10
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Madame DuBarry
Overview: The story of Madame du Barry, the mistress of Louis XV of France, and her loves in the time of the French revolution.
Genres: Drama History
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1919-09-18
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In geheimer Mission
Overview:
Genres: Drama Crime
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1938-12-16
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Eyes of Love
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1951-10-25
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Rübezahl's Wedding
Overview: In this film, the people of a Tyrolean town climb up into the nearby mountains, searching for a place where they can hold a picnic and a spring festival: ideally, a place where they can eventually erect dwellings and cultivate crops. Led by the local nobleman (Arthur Ehrens), they find an appropriate spot, and the festivities begin. Some children briefly perform a charming folk dance. Suddenly the Rübezahl arrives and threatens to kill all the townsfolk if they don't leave immediately.
Genres: Fantasy
Original Language: xx
Release Date: 1916-01-01
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Figures of the Night
Overview: "Night people". Thomas Bezug, the richest man in the world, is a solitary, domineering and cruel cripple, who hardly can move on his crutches. He dwells a fanatical love for his son, whom he holds like a monkey in a cage. His servants are defaced dwarfs. His secretary is trying to steal Bezugs assets. These are the night people.
Genres: Drama Horror
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1920-01-09
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Die Welt ohne Waffen
Overview: An engineer develops a device that will disarm any electrically power device, in an attempt to prevent armed conflicts.
Genres: Science Fiction
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1927-12-31
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Arme kleine Sif
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1927-08-31
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Der Schatz der Gesine Jakobsen
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1923-04-24
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Das Liebesnest
Overview:
Genres: Romance
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1922-12-31
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Monna Vanna
Overview:
Genres: Drama History
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1922-12-21
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Svengali
Overview: The hypnotist Svengali makes an artist's model sing, but cannot force her love.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1927-09-06
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Living Buddhas
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1925-05-11
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Stärker als die Liebe
Overview: 1938 German film.
Genres: Romance
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1938-09-22
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Das Mädchen von Fanö
Overview:
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1941-01-24
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Der Mann aus dem Jenseits
Overview: Film by Manfred Noa.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1926-02-26
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The Film in the Film
Overview: The only surviving excerpt of a documentary on film production in Weimar Germany, featuring the different personalities of several famous directors of the era at work on the set including Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene, and E.A. Dupont.
Genres: Documentary
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1924-06-26
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A Man Wants to Get to Germany
Overview: On the eve of the Great War, an expatriate German working in Latin America learns that the Fatherland is in peril, and risks various obstacles to get back to Europe to join the ranks of fighting men.
Genres: Adventure
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1934-07-25
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Herzog Ferrantes Ende
Overview: In medieval Italy, a group of men plot to kill a cruel and despotic duke.
Genres: Drama Horror Adventure
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1922-11-01
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Dagfin
Overview:
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1926-12-20
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Der Galeerensträfling
Overview:
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1920-07-23
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Sleeping Beauty
Overview: An adaptation of the famous fairy tale.
Genres: Family Fantasy
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1917-12-20
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Steuermann Holk
Overview:
Genres: No genres available
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1920-11-14
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Roswolsky's Mistress
Overview: Mia Verhag loses her job as a chorus singer when she rejects the advances of the theatre director. While she is in the grips of despair, she encounters the millionaire Roswolsky, who takes her to his luxurious house and gives her a key to the garden gate, allowing her to visit the surrounding park whenever she pleases. This chance meeting sends rumours flying everywhere, and soon Mia appears on the front pages of all the newspapers as Roswolsky’s mistress. The city’s merchants and creditors compete to lend her money, and she lands the leading role in the theatre’s new production. There, she falls in love with Count Albich – but, believing the rumours, he avoids her. Mia follows him to Monte Carlo, while Roswolsky himself falls genuinely in love with her and plots to take Albich out of the running. A grand drama is set to unfold.
Genres: Drama
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1921-09-02
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Der verlorene Schatten
Overview: A man sells his shadow to gain success and fame but soon suffers the terrible consequences of that deal.
Genres: Fantasy Drama Horror
Original Language: de
Release Date: 1921-02-03
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FASCISM(s): A Film in Six Parts
Overview: Six sequences about Fascism and its segments throughout history.
Genres: Documentary Drama Horror
Original Language: en
Release Date: 2025-03-02
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The Golem
Overview: A shortened, sixty-minute version of Der Golem, re-edited for US release and featuring a score by Cordula Heth.
Genres: Horror Fantasy
Original Language: en
Release Date: 1960-04-04
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