Tobis Film

Tobis Film was a German film production and film distribution company. Founded in the late 1920s as a merger of several companies involved in the switch from silent to sound films the organisation emerged as a leading German studio. From 1933 until 1938 Tobis controlled the dominant Austrian producer Sascha-Film which was known as Tobis-Sascha. From 1932 it also owned a majority share of one of the main Portuguese producers known as Tobis Portuguesa, a name which the company kept even after the german participation was terminated at the end of world War II.

During the Nazi era it was one of the four major film companies along with Terra Film, Bavaria Film and UFA. In 1942 all these companies were merged into a single state-controlled industry bringing an end to Tobis' independent existence. Nonetheless, films continued to be released under the Tobis banner.

One of the studio's employees Horst Wendlandt later (1971) founded a new distribution company which is also known as Tobis.

Selected filmography

• Land Without Women (1929)
• Where the Lark Sings (1936)
• Adventure in Warsaw (1937)
• Truxa (1937)
• The Broken Jug (1937)
• The Gambler (1938)
• Wibbel the Tailor (1939)
• The Journey to Tilsit (1939)
• We Danced Around the World (1939)
• Renate in the Quartet (1939)
• Robert Koch (1939)
• The Fox of Glenarvon (1940)
• Falstaff in Vienna (1940)
• Titanic (1943)
• Anna Alt (1945)

Bibliography

• Bergfelder, Tim. International Adventures: German Popular Cinema and European Co-Productions in the 1960s. Berhahn Books, 2005.
• Kreimeier, Klaus. The Ufa Story: A History of Germany's Greatest Film Company, 1918-1945. University of California Press, 1999.