The West seen from the East during the Cold War. This 2-disc DVD set presents four films produced by the East-German DEFA about West-Germany, American imperialism, the unresolved Nazi past and the corruption of the power elite. In Martin Hellberg's Das verurteilte Dorf (The Condemned Village), the inhabitants of a West-German village resist the eviction of their village for the construction of an American military air- port, Joachim Hasler adapted for Chronik eines Mordes (The STory of a Murder) a novel by Leonard Frank in which a young woman murders the newly enthroned mayor of Würzburg and uncovers his Nazi past. Ami go home by Ella Ensink and Brüder und Schwestern (Brothers and Sisters) by Walter Heynowski, are documents of political propaganda while the texts in the booklet explain the historical context.
The films
Das verurteilte Dorf (The Condemned Village) - East Germany1952 - Directed by: Martin Hellberg - Written by: Jeanne Stern, Kurt Stern - Cinematography: Karl Plitzner, Joachim Hasler - Music: Ernst Roters - Cast: Helga Göring, Günther simon, Eduard von Winterstein, Albert Garbe, Marga Legal, Albert Doerner - Produced by: DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme - Premiere: February 15, 1952
Ami Go Home - East Germany 1952 - Directed and edited by: Ella Ensink - Written by: Karl Gass - Produced by: DEFA-Studio für Dokumentarfilme - Premiere: December 17, 1952
Chronik eines Mordes (Cronicle of a Murder) - East Germany 1964 - Directed and photographed by: Joachim Hasler - Written by: Angel Wagenstein, based on the novel "Die Jünger Jesu" by Leonhard Frank - Music: Gerd Natschinski - Cast: Angelica Domröse, Ulrich Thein, Jiří Vrtála, Bohumil mída, Siegfried Weiß, Martin Flörchinger, Willi Schwabe, Hans Klering, Antje Ruge - Produced by: DEFA-Studio für Spielfilme - Premiere: October 10, 1964 -
Brüder und Schwesern (Brothers and Sisters) - East Germany 1963 - Directed and written by: Walter Heynowski - Cinematography: Christian Lehmann, Hans Eberhard Leupold, Gerhard Münch, Horst Donth Music: Jean Kurt Forest - Produced by: DEFA-Studio für Wochenschau und Dokumentarfilme - Premiere: October 4,1963 -
About the films
For more than forty years, Bavaria was a hell of a long way from Babelsberg. In the 1950s, anyone who wanted to move from Brandenburg to Bavaria or Franconia had to cross the green border, and then even a much more closely guarded wall. What remained for the East Germans, who even in the deepest GDR times were always more interested in the West, i.e. also in Bavaria, than the other way around, was West German television. ARD and ZDF. Bavaria presented itself in the living rooms of the East Germans with Löwe Leo, KOMÖDIENSTADEL and Inspektor Wanninger. Then also with KIR ROYAL. A short time later, the Wall came down, and Bavaria could once again be entered with one's own feet, visited with one's own eyes. Sometimes, quite rarely, the Babelsberg-based film company DEFA also ventured into film material that it located in Bavaria. DAS VERURTEILTE DORF (CONDEMNED VILLAGE, 1951), for example. Or DER PROZESS WIRD VERTAGT (THE TRIAL IS POSTPONED, 1958), FREISPRUCH MANGELS BEWEISES (ACQUITTAL FOR LACK OF EVIDENCE, 1962), FOR EYES ONLY STRENG GEHEIM (FOR EYES ONLY TOP SECRET, 1963) and CHRONIK EINES MORDES (CHRONICLE OF A MURDER, 1965). Behind the lurid titles, which often associated something criminalistic, even tragic, were almost always seriously intended approaches to political developments and facts in the Federal Republic. Stories of a kind never or almost never seen in West German film. The solidarity-based resistance against U.S. occupation officers, for example, who want to depopulate a Franconian village and build a military airfield in its place (DAS VERURTEILTE DORF). This was a different kind of Heimatfilm than the one invented in the Federal Republic: no cheerful singsong à la GRÜN IST DIE HEIDE (THE HEATH IS GREEN), nothing about Edelweiß and Almenrausch, but a hard, existential clash of power, military and people. The fact that DEFA, against its better judgment, claimed a revolutionary popular front in the Federal Republic, against the Americans, but also against its own American-obeying authorities, was due to the times: DAS VERURTEILTE DORF was made when the Cold War was raging at its fiercest and, in view of the Korean War, threatened to tip over into a hot one worldwide. What DEFA was most concerned with in its West German films was the abundantly clear demonstration that the Federal Republic under Chancellor Adenauer was anything but serious about coming to terms with its National Socialist past. In the process, the Babelsberg filmmakers blanked out all efforts to promote bourgeois democracy and concentrated instead on pillorying the disastrous work of former Nazis in West German politics, business, culture and the judiciary. Especially in the military. Former Nazis, who were now once again in charge in the West, were not allowed any transformations in a democratic direction in the DEFA film.
The image of the enemy cultivated in DEFA films had firm contours: The enemy was the old, unteachable Wehrmacht officer, but not the little soldier; the corporate boss, not the worker; the bishop, not the village priest; the corrupt publishing director, not the individual, thoroughly upright journalist striving for enlightenment. Enemies were always those who sat in power. The corresponding films were never free of clichés, distortions, foreshortenings, colportage effects - on the contrary. And they had a clear political function, namely to awaken and reinforce doubts about the purification of the West German elites among the GDR audience, for whom they were primarily staged.
Ralf Schenk
DVD features (2-disc DVD)
DVD 1
- Das verurteilte Dorf 1952, 103'
- 18 pictures from the shooting
- Aufnahmen von der Premiere im MAS-Kulturhaus Geismar 1952, 4'
- Ami go home 1956, 32'
DVD 2
- Chronik eines Mordes 1964, 88'
- 20 pictures from the shooting
- Brüder und Schwestern 1963, 38'
- 20 pages bilingual booklet with texts by Ralf Schenk, Inge Bennewitz and Manfred Heidel
DVD credits
Edited by: Filmmuseum München
DVD authoring: Tobias Dressel, Gunther Bittmann
DVD supervision: Stefan Drössler
First edition November 2024
