Funeral of a countess
Funeral of a Countess is a co-production of a feature film by German TV and Südwestfunk by Heiner Carow from 1992 based on the story of the same name from the book Silvester mit Balzac and other stories by Wolfgang Kohlhaase from 1977. The plot is based on a true one Incident.
action
In 1952, a will was opened at Gut Mollwitz in the Lüneburg district , as Countess Henriette Else Amalie von Mollwitz died. In the will she stipulated that she would be buried next to her husband, who is buried in her homeland, which is now in the territory of the GDR and which she left in 1945 because of the invasion of the Red Army . The funeral home Bastmann (West) receives the order to bring the coffin to the inner-German border , where it will be taken over by his twin brother, the funeral home Bastmann (East), who will then take it to the village of Mollwitz in the Demmin district .
Arriving there late at night, the undertaker hands the coffin to the resident pastor Nothsack, who first sets it down in the church in front of the altar. The next morning the pastor telephones the responsible superintendent Kunefke to clarify the responsibilities, because he is no longer in office because he is already retired. Nevertheless, he is given the task of taking care of the matter. Together with the farmer Fetzer, a member of the church council, they decide to avoid any sensation and to respect the dignity of death, although they anticipate problems from certain quarters.
Of course, the news gets around quickly and the village policeman Mattfeld explains the situation to the mayor Otto Brause who has moved in. The first way leads the two to the pastor, where they can be shown the documents accompanying the non-local corpse, as the mayor puts it. As a result of the review, the countess is first confiscated. The people's policeman tells of case studies that were taught at the police school and the mayor then decides to open the coffin to make sure that the countess is really inside. This is a difficult undertaking, since it is a zinc coffin , but it works with a hammer and chisel and in fact it is the deceased countess who lies in it, as the pastor confirms. The mayor then calls a meeting of the comrades of the SED . In a vote, the majority of the nine comrades declared that the countess would not be buried in the village and would be sent back to the west. The district leadership of the SED declares its consent.
Now a problem arises again: Since the district management wants to reinsure itself in Berlin , the story with the opened coffin comes up and it is found that according to a Prussian hygiene order from 1907, which is still valid, opened zinc coffins may no longer be transported. Thus, only a burial in Mollwitz comes into question. But that creates new arguments, because the pastor wants a burial in the row of the deceased Mollwitz citizens, while the mayor demands a grave on the edge of the cemetery on a wall. While two villagers are already digging a grave according to the priest's wishes, the mayor begins to dig a second hole at his preferred location. Here he also learns that 18 grave wreaths have already been ordered from the nursery for the burial. Although the mayor does everything to prevent a solemn transport of the coffin, with the funeral escort of a large part of the Mollwitz residents to the cemetery, the countess can be laid to rest in the grave provided for her by the pastor.
After the fall of the wall, two Mercedes with Lüneburg license plates drive up to the property of the Mollwitzer Gutshof in the Demmin district, which the occupants observe intensely.
Production and publication
Funeral of a Countess was first broadcast as a color film on January 5, 1992 by Das Erste .
background
The last noble owner of the Stolpe estate on Usedom in Western Pomerania , Freda Countess von Schwerin , was expropriated in 1945 as part of the land reform in the Soviet occupation zone. She had to leave the estate and went to Lüneburg, where she lived as a welfare recipient until her death in 1957. Since she had asked in her will for her burial in Stolpe, she was transferred to the GDR . There the countess, still popular with her former farm workers and employees, was buried in the cemetery in Stolpe with great sympathy from the local population, while the SED district leadership and council of the Wolgast district tried to prevent a public burial through concealment and a roadblock.
criticism
Frank Junghähnel remarked in the Berliner Zeitung :
"The strip was as people like to say of the Mecklenburgers: a little sedate and brittle, not immediately accessible, with insidious humor."
In the Critique of the New Age , Reinhard Wengierek writes:
“What once inspired the author to a sovereign irony, regardless of how it was assessed, to a light-footed narrative allegro, collapsed in the cinematic reprocessing into a melancholy largo, a boring lament about the betrayed revolution. Anyone who sticks to socialism with heart and soul is not able to sing a biting funeral song as a bereaved; at least not yet. "
For the lexicon of international film , the film was a grotesque comedy against the backdrop of German-German post-war history.
literature
- Wolfgang Kohlhaase New Year's Eve with Balzac and other stories , Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin, 1977
Web links
- Funeral of a Countess in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Funeral of a countess at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Hans Josef Graf von Schwerin: Countess Freda von Schwerin, b. from Kleist. In: Stolpe Castle on Usedom - history and future. (= Usedom-Wolliner Blätter 4th ISSN 1611-3322 ), 2nd edition, Störr, Ostklüne 2010, ISBN 3-937040-03-X , pp. 9-12.
- ^ Adrian Bueckling : noble seats on Usedom. In: Usedom-exklusiv.de. Retrieved April 15, 2018 .
- ↑ Berliner Zeitung of January 7, 1992, p. 14
- ↑ Neue Zeit of January 7, 1992, p. 7
- ↑ Funeral of a countess. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 23, 2018 .