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Josef Goebbels, the man who almost single-handedly developed the field of propaganda into an art form, would, for a day, be the leader of World War II Germany. Goebbels was born in the German Rhineland to strict Catholic parents. He was short, standing at 5'5", of small stature and thin build, and had a sharp, prominent nose and an oily, sallow complexion. He was rejected by the German army in World War I on the basis of being a cripple, specifically, he had a club foot for which he wore a brace, contracted after a bout of osteomyelitis. After Germany was defeated, Goebbels joined the National Socialist Workers Party, more infamously known as the Nazi party, which opposed the democratic Weimar Republic that had been set up to govern Germany. Because of his impressive oratorical skills and uncanny ability to slant arguments to his view, Goebbels was considered an ideal leader in the Nazi party. It was there that he met Hitler in 1925. Though they both shared a hatred of Jews, Goebbels, a dedicated socialist, initially tried to expel the relatively capitalistic Hitler, who he saw as simply an opportunist. He would change his tune, however, when Hitler rose in rank to become leader. Hitler rewarded Goebbels with a post as Nazi district leader of Berlin, where he would wage year-round political campaigns that eventually drained the organization of virtually all of its funds. He met and married divorcée Magda Quandt around this time. Though their membership grew, the Nazis didn't manage to attract a sizable enough number of voters - especially in Berlin - to attain any kind of legitimate political power, due to both the rebounding German economy and a distrust of the gang of street thugs within the Nazi party called the Sturm Abteilung (SA). However, after the US stock market crashed in 1929, the European economies took a tremendous hit, and the resulting worldwide economic depression hit Germany especially hard. The dire economic straits of many Germans were tailor-made for a demagogue like Hitler, and, slowly, he began to take power; first as Chancellor in 1933, then as Führer in 1934. Goebbels was named minister of entertainment and propaganda, a position that gave him have sole discretion as to what books, magazines, films, radios, newspapers, etc., could print, say, or show. Knowing the media power where the influencing of people was concerned, he searched for a director to place as the head of UFA, Germany's leading film studio. In a famous meeting, he offered the position to respected German director Fritz Lang, who tried to excuse himself by saying that he had Jewish grandparents, to which Goebbels curtly replied, "We will decide who is Jewish!" Lang promptly fled the country and Goebbels settled on a rising female director, Leni Riefenstahl, as the "official" Nazi filmmaker. She directed two documentaries on the party's Nuremburg rallies of 1932 and 1933. The first was disowned by Riefenstahl because of the little time she had to prepare and the fact that it was never shown publicly because the film featured Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, who along with many SA leaders, was murdered by the Nazi high command when they moved against the SA, just after the film was completed. Their second attempt, on which Goebbels assisted Riefenstahl extensively, is perhaps the most famous propaganda film ever made: Triumph of the Will (1935). It took almost a year to prepare from the miles upon miles of footage shot. It was a success worldwide, but was not particularly popular in Germany at the time. Goebbels then commissioned Riefenstahl to shoot the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which the Nazi leadership assumed would be dominated by German athletes. The Germans did win the total medal counts, but African-American sprinter Jesse Owens shattered the myth of Aryan dominance by winning gold medals in four different events - more than any other competitor - and was idolized by the German crowds.

After World War II broke out, Goebbels was responsible for creating a massive propaganda body of work by the German government, much of which still remains recorded. He was known to use almost anything for propaganda purposes, such as posters from French and German movies with Jewish stars as examples of the "typical Jew." Even when Germany was crumbling in 1945 and the Allies demanded unconditional surrender, Goebbels used that as a motivational tool to demonstrate that every German needed to fight or face destruction.

As Allied forces began to advance toward Germany, a paranoid and rapidly deteriorating Hitler had many of his assistants executed or imprisoned, but Goebbels was given the title of "Defender of Berlin." Hitler committed suicide by gunshot on April 30, leaving Goebbels as the next in command to take over the faltering government, which, by then, controlled only a small part of Berlin. As both Soviet forces on one side and American and British forces on the other closed in on the capital, Goebbels was well aware of the fate he would meet if he were captured alive. On May 1, 1945, he reluctantly endorsed the plan his wife had conjured, which she had communicated to Albert Speer, and permitted her to drug their six children with morphine and proceed to poison them to death through the administration of a cyanide capsule. Later that day, after requesting a moment of privacy with his wife from the onlooking SS soldiers, he shot her in head, as they had also planned, and then took his own life within seconds. Soviet troops, who Goebbels had always boasted would never get to Berlin, found him and his wife partially burnt and unburied outside the Fuhrerbunker. He was survived only by a stepson from Magda's first marriage.

Volker Pispers was born on 18 January 1958 in Rheydt [now Mönchengladbach], Germany. He is a writer and actor, known for Beziehungen - kein schöner Land, Scheibenwischer (1980) and Neues aus der Anstalt (2007).

The family soon moved to Königsberg in East Prussia, where Sielmann grew up. During his school days he was already interested in the animal world. At the age of 18, Sielmann presented his scientific observations at the Zoological Institute in Königsberg. After graduating from high school, Sielmann studied biology at the University of Königsberg. While studying, he turned to animal observation, which he also captured on film. Sielmann made his debut as an animal filmmaker in 1938 with his first sound film "Birds over Haff and Meadows". After the outbreak of the Second World War he was exempted from military service for ornithological research.

Among other things, he worked on the island of Crete, which was occupied by the German Wehrmacht. After the end of the war, Sielmann joined the Institute for Film and Image in science and teaching in 1947, where he worked as a director and cameraman until 1958. The animal observer also produced film material for school lessons here, which shaped generations of students in western post-war Germany. The sophisticated technology that Sielmann used in his animal films attracted particular attention. In his documentary about "The Carpenters of the Forest" in 1954, for example, he filmed the woodpeckers from inside a previously prepared tree trunk.

The co-founder of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Briton Peter Scott, brought Sielmann into his BBC television series, which then took over and broadcast all of the animal observer's films. Sielmann shot his first feature film in the Congo in 1957 on behalf of the Belgian royal family: "Ruler of the Jungle" was an international success and won a prize at the Moscow Film Festival. In 1960, Sielmann became self-employed. He subsequently provided German television and school lessons with numerous productions. Sielmann undoubtedly achieved his greatest fame and popularity through the TV series "Expeditions into the Animal Kingdom", which he produced continuously in over 170 episodes for ARD until 1991.

During the 1980s, Sielmann became increasingly involved in ecological issues. He drew attention to threatened natural and landscape areas in the Federal Republic. The animal and nature conservationist hit the headlines in the wake of German reunification in 1989/90 when he suggested converting the former "death strip" on the inner-German border into a national park. In the fall of 1991, Sielmann opened a new broadcast project on RTLplus with "Sielmann 2000 - Return to the Future", which led to the discontinuation of his ARD series. However, the new series also had to be stopped early for financial reasons.

Following this, Sielmann realized the series "The Heinz-Sielmann-Report" on Sat.1, which he produced together with the WWF and was first broadcast in 1993. In 1996 he produced four episodes of the program "Sielmann's Nature Adventure" for the same private broadcaster. In 1994, Sielmann set up a nature conservation foundation named after him, which acquired a natural area in Brandenburg around 2002 as a habitat for endangered animal species. In 1995 he published his autobiography with the book "My Life". In the meantime, Sielmann had withdrawn from active filmmaking to devote himself entirely to his foundation.

Sielmann has received numerous awards for his film work, including five federal film awards. In 1987 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit First Class and in 1993 the Grand Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Also in 1993 he received the WWF's "Golden Ark". Sielmann has been an honorary professor at the University of Munich since 1994. The Grand Cross of Merit with Star of the Federal Republic followed in 1997. In autumn 2001, the animal researcher was awarded the Görlitz Meridian Nature Film Prize. In October 2004, the animal filmmaker received the international prize from the economic and environmental initiative B.A.U.M.

In 2005 he was awarded the Order of Merit of the State of Brandenburg and the German Environmental Prize. In 2006, a primary school in Crinitz was named "Heinz-Sielmann-Schule". Sielmann was married and the father of a son who had already died.