"Beautiful like the gardens of Sanssouci... " a Potsdam Travel Page by Maria250

..only half an hour away from Berlin by taking either car or subway.
The city of Potsdam is considered "a magnet for day-travelers and a must for visitors of Berlin-Brandenburg. Located to the south-west of Berlin, Potsdam was founded in 993 and became the seat of the Prussian royal family in the 18th century. It is now the capital of the state of Brandenburg.."

Potsdam and its Babelsberg Studios are known for their film industry. Movies shot (partly or less partly) in Berlin/or Babelberg for example are: "Æon Flux" (2005), "Around the World in 80 Days" (2004), "Beyond the Sea" (2004), "The Bourne Supremacy" (2004), "Cabaret" (1972), "The Constant Gardener" (2005), "Enemy at the Gates" (2001), "Equilibrium" (2002), "Funeral in Berlin" (1966), "The story of boxers Joe Louis and Max Schmeling" (2002), "Mission Impossible III" (Production work only 2006), "Night Crossing" (1981), "The Pianist" (2002), "The Quiller Memorandum" (1966), "Ripley's Game" (2002), "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1965), "The Punch Bowl" (1944)..

.."The Punch Bowl" (Die Feuerzangenbowle).. tells the story of a famous writer going undercover as a pupil at a small town gymnasium after his friends tell him that he missed out on the best part of growing up by being educated at home. The story takes place during the Weimar Republic in Germany. The novel by Heinrich Spoerl was published in 1933 and was adapted to film three times..This German comedy classic was one of the last big movie productions in Germany before the end of the Nazi era and has gained cult status at German universities since the 1980s..

"The Punch Bowl" (Die Feuerzangenbowle) was produced by Ufa Studios in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Filming was drawn out by shooting scenes to perfection to save the younger actors from being drafted into the war. Nevertheless, by the time the movie was released, the German army had suffered massive casualties and some of the actors had been killed on the battlefield despite these efforts.The transformation of the accomplished writer back to a not-so-innocent schoolboy is an example for the cheerful escapism popular in German movies at the end of World War II. In 1942, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had called for the production of predominantly entertaining films in Germany to distract the population from the political and moral debacle of the war..

Given its historic context as being produced in Nazi Germany, the movie is of an ambivalent nature. The charm of the teachers in the movie lies in their old-fashioned attitudes and individual quirks. As representatives of an older, non-fascist generation, they were a nostalgic reminder of a lost past to the wartime generation in Germany.." (wikipedia)