The initiative for the setting up of a new film archive came from Hanns Wilhelm Lavies, who immediately after the war, on his own initiative and without any organisational backing, began intensively collecting films and film-related documentation in Berlin and the West German zone of occupation.
However, with the support of Curt Oertel, Lavies' collection was accepted in 1948 for placement at Wiesbaden, and was moved the following year to Schloss Biebrich.
Lavies, as the creator of the collection, remained as the head of the new operation, which however he continued to run as his own private endeavour; this brought him into repeated conflict with his funders in the film world.
He stayed however until 1 January 1959, by which time most of the underlying organisational problems had been resolved.
As proper storage of the vulnerable archive material and film stock was not possible in the Institute's premises, part of the collection had to be stored offsite in the Bundesarchiv ("German Federal Archive"), founded in 1954, and systematic sorting and conservation of the DIF film prints did not start until 1958.