Konrad Wolf was born in Hechingen in 1925 and died in Berlin in 1982. In 1933, his family emigrated to the Soviet Union. At the age of 18, he joined the Red Army and came to Germany as a lieutenant in 1945. He studied Directing at the Moscow Film School in 1949 and worked as an assistant director to Kurt Maetzig at the DEFA Studios in 1953.