The Adlon. A family saga

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Movie
Original title The Adlon. A family saga
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2013
length 300 minutes
Age rating FSK part 1: 6,
part 2 and 3: 12
Rod
Director Uli Edel
script Rodica Doehnert , Uli Edel
production Oliver Berben
music Marco Meister , Robert Meister , Bernd Wefelmeyer
camera Hanno Lentz
cut Julia Oehring
occupation

The Adlon. A family saga is a three-part German television film that was first broadcast on Second German Television on January 6, 7 and 9, 2013 . It was produced by Oliver Berben and directed by Uli Edel . The scene of many scenes is the Berlin Hotel Adlon , which forms the intersection of the story about the founding family Adlon and about a second, fictional family. The film covers the period from the hotel's building permit in 1904 to its reopening in 1997. It takes place in various epochs in recent German history, from the German Empire to World War I , the “ Golden Twenties ” and the National Socialist era with the Second World War , the post-war period , the first years of the GDR through to Berlin in the 1990s.

action

In the framework of the film in 1997, to which the film repeatedly returns in leaps and bounds, the very old Sonja Schadt gives short summaries of the historical events.

Part 1 (1904–1918)

The restaurant owner Lorenz Adlon is planning to build a large and modern hotel in the heart of Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate . He found the support of Kaiser Wilhelm II , who frequently booked the hotel for state guests after it opened in 1907. The successful colonial entrepreneur Gustaf Schadt is one of Adlon's friends and financiers . The fate of the Schadt family forms another and more dramatic storyline alongside that of the Adlon family.

Alma, the daughter of Gustaf and Ottilie Schadt, has an inappropriate relationship with Friedrich Loewe, the son of the coachman, which is not without consequences. In order to avoid a scandal, the grandmother Ottilie Schadt passes the secretly born daughter Sonja as her own child. Alma is supposed to marry the noble officer Siegfried von Tennen, but she refuses and turns to the American photographer Undine Adams, with whom she finally emigrates to the United States and remains there until after the First World War. Her daughter Sonja stays with her grandparents and grows up as their daughter. Galla, the black maid of the house, becomes a close confidante for her. The child's father, Friedrich Loewe, got a job as a page at the Hotel Adlon, where he was promoted to concierge over the next few years .

The first part ends with the First World War and the revolution in Berlin, which finally leads to the end of the German Empire. After the loss of the German colonies , Gustaf Schadt returns to Berlin terminally ill and dies a little later. On her deathbed, he tells Sonja that in truth her supposed sister Alma is her mother. Alma returns to Berlin with her partner Undine for the funeral of her father and also makes contact with Friedrich Loewe, whom she finally brings together with their daughter. The German-American Hedda Berger appears in the Adlon with Alma and Undine and arouses the interest of the junior boss Louis Adlon .

Part 2 (1918–1933)

The Hotel Adlon during the Weimar Republic , 1926

At the beginning of the second part, Ottilie Schadt, deeply affected by the death of her husband, takes her own life. Alma returns to America with Undine, Sonja refuses to accompany her and moves into an apartment in the Adlon. There she met the Jewish pianist and journalist Julian Zimmermann and fell in love with him.

Louis Adlon divorced his wife Tilly, with whom he had five children, against his father Lorenz's wishes, in order to marry Hedda Berger. In 1921 the senior boss Lorenz Adlon was run over by a truck at the Brandenburg Gate and died a little later. Son Louis and his new wife take over the hotel and run it through the chaos of the inflationary period . In the "Golden Twenties" the hotel flourished, achieved world fame and housed the most important personalities of the time.

Sonja Schadt begins a career in broadcasting ; She loses sight of her friend Julian Zimmermann until after some time she is invited to his Jewish wedding with the actress Tamara Lieberkoff. A childhood friend, Sebastian von Tennen, Siegfried von Tennen's brother, accompanies them. Siegfried has since joined the NSDAP and has become a leading SA man in Berlin. After Josephine Baker performed in Berlin in 1926, an SA troop led by Siegfried led racist protests in front of the theater , during which Galla was fatally shot. Sonya's male companion Julian and Sebastian are called race-mixers beaten. A report to the Berlin police remains inconclusive.

At the beginning of the 1930s, Julian Zimmermann, who separated from his wife, and Sonja Schadt finally meet. After the National Socialist " seizure of power ", Sonja comes more and more into conflict with the new rulers in her radio work. A meanwhile adapted Sebastian von Tennen, active in a leading position in the Haus des Rundfunks , tries to win her over to the “new ideas”, but she has to experience how her friend Julian is arrested after the Reichstag fire and taken into “ protective custody ” for three years .

Part 3 (1933–1997)

Sonja Schadt visits Julian Zimmermann in the protective custody camp and tells him that she is pregnant. He was not released until three years later and returned to Sonja and daughter Anna-Maria. He wants to leave Germany. The Gestapo arrests him when he receives a false British passport . Sebastian von Tennen is committed to ensuring that Julian does not appear in court, but "only" is deported abroad. Since he believes Sonja betrayed him and decided to work with the Nazis, Julian takes their daughter with him and remains missing. Sonja resists Sebastian's advances and quits the radio. She finds a job at the reception at her father's side at the Adlon.

In the hotel Louis Adlon tries to stay out of politics, which means that the Adlon is avoided by the Nazis, although Louis and Hedda Adlon join the NSDAP. During the Second World War, and especially in the battle for Berlin , the Adlon became more and more of a military hospital. In 1945 Louis and Hedda leave the hotel to move to their estate in Neu Fahrland . Friedrich Loewe and his daughter Sonja hold the position in the hotel. Louis Adlon, who is in poor health, is arrested, interrogated and released by a Russian detachment, but dies of a heart attack on the way home to his estate .

After the end of the battle for Berlin, the Russians occupy the Hotel Adlon, which is still largely intact. There the wounded Siegfried von Tennen, meanwhile SS- Hauptsturmführer, found refuge and is hiding in the wine cellar. He is discovered and pursued during a drinking bout of the Russian soldiers. As a result of the shooting, a fire breaks out in which most of the hotel burns down. Siegfried von Tennen remains missing, while Friedrich Loewe becomes a victim of the flames while trying to save him.

The hotel is expropriated by the Russian occupiers and Sonja Schadt is entrusted with the provisional management. Sebastian von Tennen, who lost a leg in the war, is returning to Berlin. He becomes Sonja's partner and her partner in running the hotel.

In 1952 an Israeli socialist appears at a congress in the GDR , whom Sonja recognizes and addresses as her daughter Anna-Maria. After seventeen years she found out from the initially dismissive young woman that Julian was alive. He is a respected journalist in Israel, is married and has two other daughters. Anna-Maria wants to study in the GDR and needs an affidavit from Sonja that she is her biological daughter.

In 1953, Sonja is said to testify as a witness in a Nazi trial against Siegfried von Tennen, whom she believed to be dead, but who escaped the hotel fire. In the course of the meeting with the brother of her partner, she learns the truth about the events of 1936 and the deportation of Julian Zimmermann. In order to have Sonja to himself, Sebastian had asked his brother to deport Julian and his daughter, whereby Julian was supposed to suggest that Sonja had betrayed him and no longer wanted the daughter. This is the end of Sonja's relationship with Sebastian, who leaves the hotel without a discussion.

The new Hotel Adlon 2005

In the same year Julian visits Berlin and they meet Sonja, where they both reconcile. But Julian then returns to his family in Israel. Sonja ran the hotel until it was closed by the GDR authorities in the 1970s and then moved into the house of her late mother on Long Island .

The last scene of the film takes place again in the present in 1997, when 93-year-old Sonja tells the whole story to a female page in the newly built Hotel Adlon. So you now also learn that she now lives on Long Island with her husband, Julian Zimmermann, who has been widowed for twenty years. Finally, Julian turns up with Anna-Maria and her granddaughter.

Minor characters

In addition to the family history of the Adlons and Schadts, the scriptwriters invented or introduced a number of people who are in some way connected with the Hotel Adlon.

Margarete Loewe, Friedrich Loewe's sister, appears as a Spartakist in the Adlon during the riots in Berlin at the end of the First World War . In the Weimar Republic she worked for the Adlons in the switchboard and occasionally “smuggled” into “better society” at the side of her niece Sonja Schadt. In the Third Reich , she married a National Socialist who initially did not return from World War II. At the end of the war she helps the injured soldiers and civilians housed there in the hotel / hospital. At the beginning of the 1950s she meets her husband again, who survived the war, and moves in with him in West Berlin before the Wall is built .

A real person is Samuel Wilder, already called "Billie" back then, who went down in film history as Billy Wilder . He is a colleague of Julian Zimmermann's journalists who tried to be employed as a gigolo in the Hotel Adlon in the 1920s, but gave up on his own initiative. When Julian's arrest in March 1933, Wilder managed to escape to France and finally to the USA. After the end of the war, he appears as a soldier in the US Army in the Hotel Adlon.

In 1945, together with Billy Wilder, Louis Adlon jun. on, Louis Adlon's son from his first marriage, who also became an American soldier and war correspondent . There is a turbulent scene with him from the twenties, where he stays at the Adlon at the side of the silent film star Pola Negri and insults and compromises his father and his second wife Hedda in their lingerie .

Another episode concerns the fictional character Tamara Lieberkoff, the Jewish actress and ex-wife of Julian Zimmermann. She shows up at the Adlon during the bombing raids on Berlin and takes a room for one night. The next morning she is found dead in her bed. She killed herself to avoid being transported to the east.

occupation

role actor episode
Sonja Schadt Nona Maaß 1
Josefine Preuss 1-3
Rosemarie Fendel 1-3
Louis Adlon Heino Ferch 1-3
Hedda Adlon Marie Bäumer 1-3
Alma Schadt Maria Ehrich 1
Anja Kling 1-2
Friedrich Loewe Kai Malina 1
Wotan Wilke Möhring 1-3
Margarete Loewe Katharina Wackernagel 1-3
Siegfried von Tennen Alexander Becht 1
Jürgen Vogel 2-3
Sebastian von Tennen unknown child actor 1
Johann von Bülow 2-3
Lorenz Adlon Burghart Klaussner 1-2
Ottilie Schadt Sunnyi Melles 1-2
Undine Adams Christiane Paul 1-2
Galla Thelma Buabeng 1-2
Tilly Adlon Evamaria Salcher 1-2
Gustaf Schadt Thomas Thieme 1
Kaiser Wilhelm II. Michael Schenk 1
Rudolf Johannes Klaussner 1
Julian Zimmermann Ken Duken 2-3
Billy Wilder Arndt Schwering-Sohnrey 2-3
Louis Adlon Jr. Tom Schilling 2-3
Tamara Lieberkoff Nora von Waldstätten 2-3
Josephine Baker Ligia Manuela Lewis 2
Anna-Maria Zimmermann Zaira Sunshine Niepmann 3
Mathilde Bundschuh 3
Soviet. Officer in the Adlon Waléra Kanishcheff 3
Madame Otero Ana Kavalis 1

production

The producer of the film, Oliver Berben , worked from the first idea to the finished film for over ten years. The production company was MOOVIE - the art of entertainment GmbH , a subsidiary of Constantin Film . The production costs amounted to about ten million euros; the production was u. a. Funded by the FilmFernsehFonds Bayern (400,000 euros), the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg (800,000 euros) and the Film- und Medienstiftung NRW (750,000 euros).

There are 103 speaking roles in the television film and there were more than 2000 extras. The working title of the film was Das Adlon - Ein Hotel. Two families. Three fates . The shooting took place from June 20, 2012 to September 28, 2012 a. a. in Berlin, Brandenburg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria. The Brandenburg Gate was scanned in for the film so that it could be used as a true-to-original animation in the various eras. In the Bavaria film studios , a 30 meter long and 6 meter high replica of the Adlon facade was also built as a backdrop. Numerous scenes were shot in the mirror foyer of the Theater des Westens , and some were taken in the dome hall of the Berlin Olympic site .

Rosemarie Fendel can be seen here in her last TV role.

reception

Audience ratings

The film achieved top ratings on all three broadcast days and a market share of well over 20 percent for ZDF. All three films were the most-watched TV event of the day, and the good market share of the first part increased significantly in the two following parts.

date Spectators
(total)		 Market share Spectators
( 14 to 49 year olds )		 Market share
(14 to 49 year olds)
0Jan. 6, 2013 8.53 million 22.5% 1.91 million 12.5%
0Jan. 7, 2013 8.28 million 24.2% 1.73 million 13.5%
0Jan. 9, 2013 8.74 million 25.7% 1.71 million 13.3%

criticism

The fact that the creators of Das Adlon had invented a second narrative line about the Schadt family in addition to the characters of the Adlon family was received differently by the critics. For Evelyn Roll from the Süddeutsche Zeitung that was “Poetry and Truth. An always tried and tested, always permissible and occasionally ingenious narrative method for dramatizing historical, true material. ”The fictional thread brings everything that a great narrative needs. Others thought that the history of the hotel and the real people associated with it had offered enough interesting material, but apparently “more heart and pain, drama and din, politics and pathos” were needed. The Adlon family received little weight, little was learned about them, which did not satisfy the “primary curiosity of the public”. The fictional thread seems arbitrary or "moderately original". A sign of this is the two separations of a mother from her daughter.

If Barbara Sichtermann from Tagesspiegel found the imperial era, the 1920s and the Nazi followers aptly portrayed, taz critic Sven Sakowitz was irritated that Wilhelm II was one-sidedly "sympathetic comedian", but the Russians at the end of the war " exclusively as drunk and brutal thugs ”. Others regretted that the hotel was only a backdrop, a “dull background”, that “there was hardly any look behind surfaces, not behind those of the characters or those of the hotel.” For Sakowitz, the evoked “spirit of community” was between Difficult to bear for the boss and the employees, you learn “next to nothing about the working conditions at the Adlon.” Manuel Brug of the world similarly remarked : “The moral is simple: Let the world go to pieces outside the revolving door , keep it inside they together, the people as a hotel are a community of fate welded together by the name 'Adlon' mumbled as a mantra. "

The critics stated several times that the first part dragged on and was the weakest of the three parts. The three-parter then gained momentum and became a "pretty respectable melodrama". He is strong where he revolves around Sonja, thanks to her actress Josefine Preuss. Sven Sakowitz says: “To rely on an actress in a project of this magnitude who is hardly known to the very large audience and who was previously at home in the lighter genre is brave. [...] Preuss masters the challenges with confidence and impressively registers in the serious subject with this performance. "According to Manuel Brug, Preuss' face makes one look, you meet" a young actress who is as powerful as it is disciplined "; their shape is "one of the reasons" to look at the three-part suit. He also praised other members of the "impressive, [...] convincing star line-up", such as the reserved Wotan Wilke Möhring. Elsewhere, Heino Ferch was mentioned as "great and complex" or Jürgen Vogel as "one of the best villains on German television for a long time".

Overall, the critics rated Das Adlon mixed. In Die Presse it was said that Sonja's words at the end of the film also apply to the film as a whole: “not bad, not good, not wrong, not right.” Manuel Brug (Die Welt) called the three-part series a “great television opera” and Uli Noble a "solid [n] clothing arranger". Just as the rebuilt Hotel Adlon is a “fake”, the TV fiction lacks the aura: “The proportions are crooked because too much was squeezed into it”. According to Barbara Sichtermann (Der Tagesspiegel) , the makers took considerable risks. The fact that an old lady recalls the sinking of a flagship in retrospect is reminiscent of the film Titanic , which "thanks to the rapid sinking of its location [had no trouble] maintaining the Aristotelian unity of place, time and plot". The Adlon story, spanning decades, represents a more complicated project that threatens to “break up the material into a series of episodes”. In addition, it requires the age-dependent cast of some characters with at least two actors. The dramaturgical problems of this production have not been solved, but it does contain "considerable individual pieces" of scenes worth seeing. Andreas Kilb from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung expressed the opinion that the drama “continues to sink back into the costume series floor, in which it is rooted, despite intermittent booms.” Edel “sets up everything exactly as the public television screen demands.” “ Harmless, ”said Klaudia Wick in the Frankfurter Rundschau . “Hotel Adlon only becomes great where it can indulge in grand gestures and private feelings. But unfortunately that is no more than elegant entertainment for an older ZDF audience that is tired of the socio-political debate. ”For Evelyn Roll (Süddeutsche Zeitung) , the three-part series was a“ big cinema ”and a“ small sensation ”. Only the end she found “a little dreamlike and sweetish. As if public editors suddenly got into the scripts, because TV stories always have to end well and conciliatory. "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate. (PDF; 34 kB) The Adlon - Part 1. Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, December 7, 2012, accessed on March 15, 2016 (test number: 136 259).
  2. ↑ Release certificate. (PDF; 34 kB) The Adlon - Part 2. Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, December 10, 2012, accessed on March 15, 2016 (test number: 136 300).
  3. ↑ Release certificate. (PDF; 34 kB) The Adlon - Part 3. Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry, December 7, 2012, accessed on March 15, 2016 (test number: 136 283).
  4. ↑ Wilder only uses the spelling "Billy" after he left for the USA
  5. ↑ a b c d Evelyn Roll: Room with a view. Süddeutsche Zeitung, January 5, 2013, accessed on December 21, 2016 (two pages).
  6. ↑ a b The Adlon. A family saga at crew united
  7. ↑ dpa: The Adlon. A family saga. focus.de , January 2, 2013, accessed December 21, 2016 .
  8. ^ Sabine Sasse: The Grand Hotel on the German Abyss. Hotel history as a TV film. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 15, 2012, accessed on November 21, 2018 .
  9. ↑ Berliner Zeitung: Adlon film works: Scanned in from the Brandenburg Gate , accessed on January 12, 2013.
  10. ↑ Manuel Weis: Primetime check: Sunday, January 6, 2012 (sic!). Quotemeter.de , January 6, 2013, accessed December 22, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Manuel Weis: Primetime check: Monday, January 7, 2013.quotemeter.de , January 8, 2013, accessed on December 22, 2016 .
  12. ↑ Fabian Riedner: Primetime check: Wednesday, January 9, 2013.quotemeter.de , January 10, 2013, accessed on December 22, 2016 .
  13. ↑ a b c d e f g Manuel Brug: Outside the revolving door . In: Die Welt , January 5, 2013, p. 25
  14. ↑ a b c d Die Presse, January 6, 2013: Only the pages are still around
  15. ↑ a b c d e f g Andreas Kilb: The singing, sounding screen antiquity. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 5, 2013, accessed on December 22, 2016 .
  16. ↑ a b c d Barbara Sichtermann: Decisive yes and no . In: Der Tagesspiegel , January 6, 2013, p. 26
  17. ↑ a b c Klaudia Wick: Much, but too little . In: Frankfurter Rundschau , January 5, 2013, p. 37
  18. ↑ a b c d e Sven Sakowitz: Too much to tell . In: taz , January 5, 2013, p. 39