Carl Peters (film)
Carl Peters is an anti-British National Socialist propaganda film by Herbert Selpin from 1941. The historical model for the film was the colonialist life's work of the founder of the German East Africa colony, Carl Peters .
Today it is a reserved film from the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation . It is part of the foundation's portfolio, has not been released for distribution and may only be shown with the consent and under the conditions of the foundation.
action
The film begins in Neuhaus an der Elbe . Peters is invited by his uncle Karl Engel to live with him in London for a while. After a few years, he offers Peters to find him a job in the British Colonial Office. Peters refuses, however, because he would then have to become English. Instead, he developed colonial plans for Germany in London. When he learns that a colonial society has been founded in Germany , he travels back to Germany because he is hoping for support there. Since his demands both with the colonial association and in the Foreign Ministry with the Legation Councilor Dr. Kayser, who is a converted Jew, cannot be heard, he travels to Africa on his own .
When he arrived in Zanzibar , he tried to win over the German consul there for his plans. But he explains that neither he nor a colony that Peters would found would be protected by the Reich government . Peters then negotiated arbitrarily with some African chiefs and signed all the necessary contracts before the British and a Belgian expedition. Before he can present the contracts in Berlin, Peters has to survive a serious illness and a poison attack by the British Secret Service. Peters survived both and finally received a letter of protection from the emperor for his colony.
On a new expedition to Africa, Peters again has to struggle with various resistances. Not only are the English trying again to kill him, but the Jewish colonial director at the Foreign Office also orders an attack on Peters. The latter does not fall victim to Peters, but to his friend Jühlke. While Peters is able to successfully complete his expedition, bad news arrives from Berlin: Chancellor Bismarck has been dismissed and Peters has been recalled as Reich Commissioner .
Back in Berlin, Peters has to answer to the Colonial Committee of the Reichstag . In particular, the Social Democrats in Parliament are accusing Peters of various offenses. Although it turns out that a dark-skinned bishop, who was brought by the English as a witness, told the untruth about Peters and Peters delivered a fiery defense speech, the resistance against Peters across the faction boundaries is too great. Carl Peters is dismissed from service in the Reich for abuse of authority.
Production and reception
The film was produced by Carl W. Tetting for Munich-based Bavaria Film , who also loaned it. The book Carl Peters - A German Destiny in the Struggle for East Africa by the author Erich zu Klampen served as a template , which the film partly follows right into the dialogues. The depiction of the Jewish Legation Councilor Kayser, a caricature of the real Paul Kayser , goes back to this nationalist book from 1938, but was also cut anti-Semitic and anti-democratic for the film .
To represent the African population, 300 black prisoners of war were forcibly recruited and 50 black Germans were employed. The “Reichsmusikzug” of the Reich Labor Service was involved in various scenes in the musical arrangement . The German premiere took place on March 21, 1941.
He received the ratings of state-politically and artistically valuable, culturally valuable, popular education, youth value.
Without reflection, the film glorifies the work of the controversial German Africa explorer and colonialist Carl Peters and reproduces the historical context incompletely or misrepresented. The murder of Karl Jühlke (1886 in Somalia) is associated with Peters' vigilante justice (1891 on Kilimanjaro). The fourth European on the expedition, August Otto , the businessman who died in Africa , does not appear at all. It also paints a negative image of parliamentary institutions such as the Reichstag .
After the end of the Second World War , the high command of the Allied victorious powers prohibited the performance.
After Erwin Leiser, the central scene of the film is Carl Peters' appearance before the parliamentary committee of inquiry, in which Peters “as the spokesman for a Hitlerist policy of conquest in the uniform of a Wilhelmine Reich Commissioner” campaigns for the colonialist interests of Germany and against the British Empire and the English Imperialism on the one hand and against its opponents in the committee of inquiry, who, according to Leiser, are not accidentally Jews , takes a stand. According to the film, the fact that Peters' ambitions for German East Africa ultimately fail is the fault of parliamentarism , which has not yet been overcome by the Führer principle .
See also
- List of German feature films premiered in the German Reich during the Nazi era
- List of German films banned under Allied military censorship
Web links
- Carl Peters in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Carl Peters at filmportal.de
- Carl Peters detailed discussion at Telepolis Part 2 Part 3
- Carl Peters at Murnau Foundation
literature
- Illustrierter Film-Kurier - No. 3185, program booklet for Carl Peters , ed. from the United Publishing Companies Franke & Co., Berlin.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Manuel Köppen: With the 'Third Reich' around the world - coding of the foreign in fictional film, in: Manuel Köppen and Erhard Schütz (ed.): Art of Propaganda - The film in the Third Reich. 2. revised Ed., Peter Lang, Bern 2008, p. 263, fn. 14.
- ↑ Annette von Wangenheim. (2001). Pages in the dream factory - black extras in German feature films [documentation]. WDR.
- ↑ Erwin Leiser : "Germany, awake!" Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, p. 147.
- ↑ Hans Schmid: I am me. Telepolis, February 16, 2014, accessed April 28, 2019 .
- ↑ Leiser 1968, pp. 88, 90.