Rudolf Jugert was a German film and television director, educated in medicine, philology, and the arts. After early work in theater and film training in Rome, he became a successful postwar film director, known for acclaimed melodramas and socially conscious films in the late 1940s and 1950s. From the 1960s onward, he focused mainly on television, where he gained greater artistic independence. Jugert died of cancer in 1979.