The award, founded as the Adolf-Grimme-Preis in 1964, is named after the first general director of
Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk,
Adolf Grimme. The award was endowed by the German Community College association and is granted to productions "that use the specific possibilities of the medium of television in an extraordinary manner and at the same time can serve as examples regarding content and method". One of the first award winners was in 1964, for his TV movie
Sonderurlaub, about a failed escape from the
German Democratic Republic.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder received an honorable mention in 1974 for his film
World on a Wire. By 2014, German veteran director
Dominik Graf had received ten awards for his various films. Danish director
Lars von Trier was awarded a Grimme-Preis in 1996 for his miniseries
The Kingdom. Director
Christian Petzold has been awarded the prize twice, for his films
Wolfsburg (2003) and
Something to Remind Me (2001). In 2016,
Edward Berger's series
Deutschland 83 was one of the four recipients in the principal "fiction" category. The TV series
Dark became in 2018 the first
Netflix show to receive the award. ==Description and significance==