In 1911, the company Bioscop built its first glass–film studio in Neubabelsberg. The first filming began as early as February 1912 for The Dance of the Dead by Danish director Urban Gad. In 1920 the Deutsche Bioscop Gesellschaft merged with Erich Pommer's Decla-Film GmbH into „Decla Bioscop“. In 1921, Decla-Bioscop merged with Universum Film AG (UFA) which had been founded in 1917. This company built the large studio (which is now known as the "Marlene Dietrich Halle") in 1926 for the major film production of Metropolis by Fritz Lang. The first German sound stage in Babelsberg, the Tonkreuz, was built during 1929. Melodie des Herzens/Melody of the Heart with Willy Fritsch was the first German full-sound film. This was followed in 1930 by the premiere of The Blue Angel by Josef von Sternberg with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings in the main roles.
From 1933 to 1945, around 1,000 feature films were made in the studios and on the studio lot. Under the direction of Hitler's propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, the studio churned out hundreds of films including Leni Riefenstahl's openly propagandistic Triumph of the Will. The virulently anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süss (The Jew Süss), shot in 1940, was also made at Babelsberg.[2]