Weissensee

Friedemann Fromm's Weissensee (German: Weißensee) won the Grimme-Preis (the most prestigious German television prize) in 2011 for its first series, and would go on to run for four series totalling twenty-four episodes broadcast on ARD between 2010 and 2018. The series is widely considered the most accomplished long-form German television treatment of the late East German state and its security apparatus, alongside Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's earlier feature The Lives of Others (2006).

The series was created and principally written by Annette Hess, a German screenwriter who would later write Ku'damm 56 and Ku'damm 59 for ZDF. Hess developed the project across the late 2000s with substantial historical-research consultation from former Stasi archive staff and dissident-rights organisations including the Bundesbeauftragte für die Stasi-Unterlagen (the Federal Commissioner for the Records of the State Security Service of the former GDR).

The cast pairs Florian Lukas, Anna Loos, Jörg Hartmann, Hannah Herzsprung, Ruth Reinecke and Uwe Kockisch in major roles across the run; the production was shot largely on location in real Berlin districts including Weißensee itself (the Pankow borough that gives the show its name) and at preserved East German interior locations across the city. Cinematography rotated across the series' four seasons. The show is now widely cited in academic discussions of German cinematic and televisual reckonings with the GDR, alongside the Donnersmarck feature and Christian Petzold's Barbara (2012).