It is still an unanswered question why the silent film director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau named himself after the town of Murnau. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, born on December 28, 1888 as Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in Bielefeld; died on March 11, 1931 in Santa Barbara, California, is considered one of the most important German film directors of the silent film era. The surname "Plumpe" was probably difficult to bear for such a sensitive person as Murnau. As an actor he first called himself Helmuth, then Wilhelm Murnau. Perhaps Murnau came to the town for a summer holiday with his friend, the writer Hans Ehrenbaum-Degele. Perhaps they were visiting Murnau on August 28, 1910, the day when the Munich architect Emanuel von Seidl invited the Berlin director Max Reinhardt to show scenes from Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" as a "natural theater" in his park. The books of the writer Oskar Wilde from the possession of F. W. Murnau, with handwritten inscriptions including: “F Wilhelm Murnau. Christmas 1910” are probably the first evidence of his renaming from Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe to F. W. Murnau. A photograph documents his visit to the Murnau area, taken between Eschenlohe and Oberau, by car and chauffeur in 1924.