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Heimkehr
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Wikipedia article
{{Infobox film
| name = Heimkehr
| director = Gustav Ucicky
| producer = Karl Hartl, Wien-Film
| writer = Gerhard Menzel
| starring = Paula Wessely
Attila Hrbiger
Carl Raddatz
| music = Willy Schmidt-Gentner
| cinematography = Gnther Anders
| editing =
| distributor = Universum Film AG
| released =
| runtime = 96 minutes
| country = Germany
| language = German
| budget = 3.7 million (equivalent to in 2009)
| gross = 4.9 million (equivalent to in 2009)
}}
'Heimkehr' (English: "Homecoming") is a 1941 Nazi German anti-Polish propaganda film directed by Gustav Ucicky.
It received the rare honor "Film of the Nation" in Nazi Germany, bestowed on films considered to have made an outstanding contribution to the national cause.Erwin Leiser, 'Nazi Cinema' p69 Filled with heavy-handed caricature, it justifies extermination of Poles with a depiction of relentless persecution of ethnic Germans, who escape death only because of the German invasion.Robert Edwin Hertzstein, 'The War That Hitler Won' p286-8
Plot
In the Woy Voivodeship in eastern Poland, the German minority is oppressed by the Polish majority. The physician Dr. Thomas does not have any hospital available and his daughter Marie, who teaches at a German school, and needs an important operation, watches when her school is seized by Polish authorities and demolished by an angry mob. Dr. Thomas protests to the mayor, noting the constitutionally guaranteed minority rights; however his protest falls on deaf ears. Marie and her fianc, Dr. Fritz Mutius, drive to the provincial capital, in order to put their protest to the Voivode (governor), but they are not even received there either. Deciding to stay in the capital in order to call on the court the next day, that evening they go to the cinema. They are accompanied there by her friend Karl Michalek, who has been pressed into service by the Polish Army. When they refuse to sing the Polish national anthem 'Mazurek Dbrowskiego' with the rest of the audience, Fritz gets grievously hurt by the furious Polish crowd. Marie tries to take her betrothed to a hospital, but he is refused admission and succumbs to his injuries.
Back home, the acts of violence against the German minority continue to increase: Marie's father too becomes the victim of a Polish attack and is blinded as a result; the wife of innkeeper Ludwig Launhardt, Martha, dies after being struck by stones thrown by Poles. When during the Invasion of Poland the German villagers meet secretly in a barn, in order to hear Hitler's speech of 1 September 1939 before the Reichstag, they are discovered, arrested and imprisoned. Marie keeps up their spirits with the promise that they will escape, that Germans are deeply concerned about them, and that they will be able to return home and hear neither Yiddish nor Polish, but only German.Erwin Leiser, 'Nazi Cinema' p70-1 They are abused by the prison guards, but escape through an underground cellar and, scarcely avoiding a massacre, are saved by invading Wehrmacht soldiers. The German escapees ready for their resettlement into the "homeland", while widowed Ludwig Launhardt asks for Marie's hand. At the end of the film the German trek crosses the border into the Reich. The conclusion shows an enormous picture of Hitler set up at the checkpoint.
Cast
The main roles were as follows: Paula Wessely, 'Maria Thomas'; Peter Petersen, 'Dr. Thomas'; Attila Hrbiger, 'Ludwig Launhardt'; Carl Raddatz, 'Dr. Fritz Mutius'; and Hermann Erhardt, 'Karl Michalek'.
Other parts were played by Otto Wernicke, 'Old Manz'; Ruth Hellberg, 'Martha Launhardt'; Elsa Wagner, 'Frau Schmid'; Eduard Kck, 'Herr Schmid'; Franz Pfaudler, 'Balthasar Manz'; Gerhild Weber, 'Josepha Manz'; Werner Fuetterer, 'Oskar Friml'; Berta Drews, 'Elfriede'; Eugen Prei, 'Salomonson'; and Bogusaw Samborski as the mayor.
Casting for the minor parts played by Jewish and Polish actors was done by Igo Sym, who during the filming was shot in his Warsaw apartment by members of the Polish Union of Armed Struggle resistance movement. After the war, the Polish performers were punished (ranging from official reprimand to prison sentence) for collaboration in an anti-Polish propaganda undertaking.
Historical context
Hitler intended Poland to serve as the Lebensraum for the German people, and declared that only the soil, not the people, could be Germanized.Richard Bessel, 'Nazism and War', p 36 This did not mean a total extermination of all people there, as Eastern Europe was regarded as having people of Aryan/Nordic descent, particularly among their leaders.[https://archive.today/20120527021449/http://www.dac.neu.edu/holocaust/Hitlers_Plans.htm HITLER'S PLANS FOR EASTERN EUROPE] Germanisation began with the classification of people suitable as defined on the Nazi Volksliste, and treated according to their categorisation.Richard Overy, 'The Dictators: Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia', p543 Those unfit for Germanisation were to be expelled from the areas marked out for German settlement; those who resisted Germanization were to be sent to concentration camps or executed.
To foment support, Nazi propaganda presented the annexation as necessary to protect the German minorities there.Cinzia Romani, 'Tainted Goddesses: Female Film Stars of the Third Reich' p145 Alleged massacres of Germans, such as Bloody Sunday were used in such propaganda, and 'Heimkehr' drew on such attempts although allowing the Volksdeutsche characters depicted to survive.Robert Edwin Hertzstein, 'The War That Hitler Won' p289 The introduction explicitly states that hundreds of thousands of Germans in Poland suffered likewise.Robert Edwin Hertzstein, 'The War That Hitler Won' p287 Many terror tactics depicted were those used by the Nazis themselves against minorities.Pierre Aycoberry 'The Nazi Question', p11 Pantheon Books New York 1981
Similar treatment was given to anti-Serbian propaganda, in 'Menschen im Sturm'.Robert Edwin Hertzstein, 'The War That Hitler Won' p. 293
Baltic Germans were also to be settled into this land. The secret supplementary protocol to the 1939 MolotovRibbentrop Pact included a resettlement plan by which approximately 60,000 ethnic Germans were resettled into the Reich.Lynn H. Nicholas, 'Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web' p. 204 Nazi propaganda included using scare tactics about the Soviet Union, and led to tens of thousands leaving.Lynn H. Nicholas, 'Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web' p. 207-9 After racial evaluation, they were divided into groups: A, 'Altreich', who were to be settled in Germany and allowed neither farms nor business (to allow for closer watch), S 'Sonderfall', who were used as forced labor, and O 'Ost-Falle', the best classification, to be settled in the Eastern Wallthe occupied regions, to protect German from the Eastand allowed independence.Lynn H. Nicholas, 'Cruel World: The Children of Europe in the Nazi Web' p. 213 Similar support therefore was fomented with the use of film to depict Baltic and Volga Germans as persecuted by the Bolshevists, such as the films 'Frisians in Peril',Erwin Leiser, 'Nazi Cinema' pp. 40-41 'Flchtlinge',Erwin Leiser, 'Nazi Cinema' p29 and 'The Red Terror'.Erwin Leiser, 'Nazi Cinema' pp. 44-45.
Production and reception
The creation of the film was based on pictures by the artist Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhuser, who in January 1940, on Heinrich Himmler's orders, took numerous sketches when he accompanied a trek of resettlers from Volhynia. The indoor shots ran from 2 January to the middle of July 1941 in the Wien-Film studios at the 'Rosenhgel' in Liesing, at Sievering Studios and the Schnbrunn Palace gardens in Vienna. The external shots took place between February and June 1941 in Polish Chorzele and Ortelsburg ('Szczytno') in East Prussia. The picture was submitted to censorship at the Film Review Office on 26 August 1941, it was G-rated and received a top attribute as "political and artistical particularly valuable".
The first public performance took place on 31 August 1941 at the Venice Film Festival in the 'Cinema San Marco', winning an award from the Italian Ministry for Culture. The festive Austrian premiere followed on 10 October 1941 at the Viennese 'Scala-Kino' in the presence of 'Gauleiter' Baldur von Schirach, the premiere in Berlin on 23 October 1941 simultaneously at the 'Ufa-Palast am Zoo' and the 'Ufa-Theater Wagnitzstrae'. The film grossed 4.9 million Reichsmark, thereby below expectation. Nevertheless, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in his diary referred to Wessely's performance in the prison scene as "the best ever filmed".
After the end of World War II the Allies banned any showing of the film. Director Ucicky was also banned from working, although this ban was waived by Austria in July 1947, whereafter he resorted to the 'Heimatfilm' genre. Paula Wessely and her husband Attila Hrbiger became the acclaimed dream couple of the Vienna Burgtheater ensemble. The Austrian author and Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek stated that 'Heimkehr' is the worst propaganda feature of the Nazis ever. She utilized some text fragments in her 1985 play 'Burgtheater. Posse mit Gesang', causing a major public scandal. The film's rights are held by Taurus Film GmbH.
See also
*Nazism and cinema
*'Aftermath'
References
* Kanzog, Klaus, 1994. 'Staatspolitisch besonders wertvoll: ein Handbuch zu 30 deutschen Spielfilmen der Jahre 1934 bis 1945'. Munich: Schaudig & Ledig.
* Trimmel, Gerald, 1998. 'Heimkehr: Strategien eines nationalsozialistischen Films'. Vienna: W. Eichbauer Verlag.
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