Anyone seen the German 'remake' (1939)?
Die Reise nach Tilsit (1939) was based upon same story as Sunrise.
As far as I can tell, it's not available anywhere, which may be partly because the director Veit Harlan nowadays is mostly notorious for the horrible (but technically brilliant), anti-semitic melodrama Jud Süss (1940). After directing some big budget historical color extravaganzas for the Reich, he did little work after the war. In 1958 he became "uncle-in-law" to Stanley Kubrick when Kubrick wed his niece Christiane.
It would be interesting to watch the film both on its own merits and to compare with Sunrise. Here's a synopsis (in German) with some clickable stills:
http://www.murnau-stiftung.de/de/suchergebnis.asp?ID=721
And a contemporary article from the German film magazine "Filmwoche", with a rather sinister picture of the director:
http://film.virtual-history.com/page.php?id=1680
In this version, the villainous "Woman from the city" is a Polish woman. And the film had its German premiere on November 2, 1939, just two months after the German army invaded Poland. Was the character's nationality a coincidence, or a very conscious choice made on the instructions of Propaganda Minister Goebbels? (Even though the film was of course planned and shot well before the actual invasion.)
When the film premiered in neutral Sweden in 1942, it was under the title Soluppgång, meaning, literally, Sunrise, so there it seems they were conscious of the relation to the Murnau classic.
There was a further version of Reise nach Tilsit (1969), made for TV.
"De gustibus ain't what dey used to be."