Georg Wildhagen was born in Hannover in 1920 and died in 1990. He studied music at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and, in 1945, became the director of the Hamburg Opera. His directing work with DEFA included an adaptation of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and a musical comedy adaptation of Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor, which he also wrote. From 1956 to 1961, Wildhagen lived in the USA, where he studied television and communications and worked for American television studios. In 1961, he returned to West Germany, where he created about 100 television productions over eighteen years. He was one of the directors of the (West) German TV station ZDF and staged operas in Zurich, Frankfurt am Main, and Berlin.

Filmography The Marriage of Figaro (Figaro's Hochzeit) 1949; The Merry Wives of Windsor (Die Lustigen Weiber von Windsor) 1950; Miss Dubarry (Die Dubarry) 1951; Wedding Bells (Hochzeitsglocken) 1954; A Night in Venice (Komm in die Gondel) 1953; A Day in Paris (Ein Tag in Paris) 1966.