The miracle of Bern

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Movie
Original title The miracle of Bern
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 2003
length 118 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
JMK 6
Rod
Director Sönke Wortmann
script Sönke Wortmann,
Rochus Hahn
production Sönke Wortmann
Hanno Huth
Tom Spieß
music Marcel Barsotti
camera Tom Ferryman
cut Ueli Christians
occupation

Lubanski family:

National football team:

Other:

The Miracle of Bern is a feature film by the director Sönke Wortmann from 2003, who also wrote the script together with Rochus Hahn . It tells the story of Germany's unexpected victory at the 1954 World Cup in Bern (the so-called miracle of Bern ). In addition, the film describes the difficulties of a returned prisoner of war who can no longer find his way around in his old life, but who, parallel to the German success, is getting closer to his son and his family again.

action

overview

While the miner Richard from Essen was a soldier at the front and later a Soviet prisoner of war, his family learned to get along without him. He is one of the so-called late returners , his family has not seen him for over 12 years. After his return in 1954 he discovered that his older son Bruno was very critical of his role in the Nazi era and sympathized with communism , his daughter Ingrid flirted with British occupation soldiers (the former enemy) and his eleven-year-old son Matthias, who was in his Absence was born, sees Helmut Rahn as a role model and father figure. For the time being, he does not manage to fit into his family again.

Helmut Rahn and the players of the national team were invited to the Grünwald Sports School on May 26, 1954 to prepare for the soccer World Cup. Rahn is frustrated because he is not a regular player and the national coach Sepp Herberger is only used against Hungary in the preliminary round . In the tournament, the German team managed to get into the final as an outsider.

The relationship between Richard and his son Mattes is slowly improving, and Helmut Rahn will also be placed in all games after the preliminary round. In the final against Hungary he scored the decisive goal for the 3-2 final score, with which the German team achieved a sensation on July 4, 1954, which, after years of dejection in the post-war period, triggered an undreamt-of wave of euphoria in the country, but also patriotism and National feeling .

Storylines

Instead of a "pure" sports film, Wortmann made a film that also shows the social conditions in post-war Germany. The whole Lubanski family represents various aspects:

  • Father Richard represents the generation that lost many years in a senseless war. He comes back from being a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union with severe trauma , and at home he is no longer the respected father figure and breadwinner of the family, but rather a burden to his family.
  • Mother Christa is a classic rubble woman who has laboriously created a new existence in her small pub.
  • The seventeen year old son Bruno, who grew up with the crimes of the Nazis, became a communist. He believes in Marx's vision of a classless society. Since he thinks that the Marxist ideals will actually be implemented in the German Democratic Republic , he emigrates there.
  • The sixteen year old daughter Ingrid embodies those who receive American culture and modern musical styles with open arms. Although she is also a conscientious worker, she does not want to deal with the war all the time, but wants to enjoy her life too.
  • Matthias (nickname Mattes), the youngest at the age of eleven, stands for those children whose fathers spent many years at the front or in captivity and thus had to grow up without a father. While looking for a substitute father, he found one in Helmut Rahn.

In addition to this family, the young couple Ackermann from Munich is introduced: Annette Ackermann, née von Hadding, comes from a wealthy family, her husband Paul is a sports journalist for the Süddeutsche Zeitung . This gives the film the opportunity to present the chic, glamorous side of the 1950s. The couple's ironic gibberish creates a cheerful counterpoint to the rather sad homecoming story; In addition, the often different point of view that men and women have of football is discussed.

The historic event "Soccer World Cup" is another storyline of the film. In this, the film focuses exclusively on the German team, in particular on coach Herberger, captain Fritz Walter and above all Helmut Rahn, who bridges the gap with the history of the Lubanski family through his friendship with young Matthias.

coping with the past

Films set in the post-war period are often related to the Nazi dictatorship and the war. It contains a scene in which the older son accuses the father of simply “marching along”, to which the father replies that as an individual one cannot do otherwise. The son then quotes the slogan "You are nothing, your people are everything", which was a principle of the National Socialist worldview and describes the subordination of the individual.

Later, when the father slowly thaws out, he tells his youngest son about his imprisonment in the Soviet Union and also mentions previous war crimes on the German side. He also says that Russian farmers gave him food and that a Russian welcomed him warmly on the way back, although (or because) his son had died in the war.

In the film, an “old German” attitude is compared to a “modern” one several times. The national coach Herberger talks to a Swiss cleaning lady about her and his "children" (in his case the players) and is instructed by her that the children do not always have to be punished immediately, as is common in Germany. The scene contains a linguistic anachronism when Herberger's mouth was taken from the American saying “The early bird catches the worm”, which was not common in Germany until the 1980s.

This contrast is particularly discussed in the Lubanski family: the father, whose life previously consisted only of command and obedience, wants “discipline” and “order” in the family, especially with his children. The mother refers to the achievements and successes of herself and the children in difficult times, and that without his reproaches they were a happy family under the circumstances before his return. When the father slaps his youngest son in the face, he also warns him with the words “a German boy doesn't cry”. When he is the one who starts to cry at the end of the film, he is comforted by his son with the words that a German boy can cry too.

Footballer actor

Shooting in Cologne-Weidenpesch
Shooting in Cologne-Weidenpesch
Film set in Krefeld-Uerdingen

All the actors who portray the German and Hungarian footballers in the film actually played at least in the major league football. Knut Hartwig , who played Fritz Walter, played 71 games in the 2nd Bundesliga for Wuppertaler SV . Hartwig's former WSV club colleague Christian Broos (as Werner Kohlmeyer ) played a total of 47 second division games. Matthias Sellmann (as Fritz Laband ) worked for Borussia Dortmund and 1. FC Saarbrücken in the nineties . The actor Sascha Göpel was in his youth a. a. at Rot-Weiss Essen and Bayer 05 Uerdingen on the ball. Michael Wurst , who was also known for the TV show Star Search , where he reached the semi-finals, played the Hungarian defender Jenő Buzánszky . The actor and director Simon Verhoeven , who played the center forward Ottmar Walter, also had a career as a youth player for TSV 1860 Munich and played in the Bavarian school selection.

background

  • Louis Klamroth , who plays Matthias Lubanski, the son of Richard Lubanski in the film, is the actual son of Peter Lohmeyer .
  • After Matthias found out about the defeat of Rot-Weiss Essen at Alemannia Aachen at the beginning of the film and sat bent over by his rabbits, he sighed: “And we will never be German champions in life.” The Essenes became German champions the following year .
  • One scene in the film depicts Adolf Dassler . The shoemaker and kit manager who equipped the team with innovative football boots with screw studs is the founder of the Adidas company .
  • Jürgen Leinemann , Spiegel author and author of the Herberger biography Herberger. A life, a legend , has a guest appearance in the film as a journalist during the first press conference. At the beginning of the credits you can also see the director Sönke Wortmann sprinting after a horse and cart.
  • The reporter Herbert Zimmermann is portrayed by the comedian Andreas Obering ( Till and Obel ). The original sound of Zimmermann's well-known radio report was not used in the film for dramaturgical reasons.
  • During the replay against Turkey, the German team is shown in the dressing room in white jerseys. In fact, she was wearing green.
  • The first version of the Goggomobil , which is parked near Rahn's house and often shown in the film , was not produced until 1955. The model that can be seen in the film only started in 1964.
  • The car Richard and his son Mattes drive to Bern in towards the end of the film is an Auto Union 1000 U (by DKW ). This vehicle was not manufactured before 1959.
  • The sound recordings for the Bern Wankdorf Stadium were made in the south stand of the Westfalen Stadium. The recordings did not take place during a game, but specifically for the film before a game against Hansa Rostock. Modern stylistic support should explicitly be avoided.
  • At the end of the film the sentence “The Elf from Bern never played together again” is faded in and at the beginning of the credits the dedication “In memory of Helmut Rahn”. Helmut Rahn died about two months before the cinema release in Germany.
  • The shooting took place from June 10, 2002 to August 10, 2002 in Cologne , Duisburg , Krefeld ( Dujardin Weinbrennerei and Grotenburg Stadium ), Oberhausen , Recklinghausen , in the Bochum-Dahlhausen Railway Museum , at other locations in the Ruhr area and in Thun, Switzerland.
  • The production costs of the film were estimated at around 7.3 million euros.
  • The cinema release in Germany was on October 16, 2003. In Germany around 3.68 million cinema-goers were counted.
  • The costumes are by Ursula Welter .

Awards

  • 2003 Golden Screen (for reaching 3 million viewers in 18 months).
  • European Film Award 2003: Nomination for Tom Fährmann in the category Best Cinematography .
  • Locarno International Film Festival 2003: Audience award to Sönke Wortmann.
  • New Faces Award 2004: Young actor award for Sascha Göpel
  • German Film Prize 2004: Presentation of the audience prize as German Film of the Year , presentation of the film prize in silver for best feature film . Nomination for the film award in gold for best feature film , nomination for the film award in gold for Sönke Wortmann for best director , nomination for the film award in gold for Johanna Gastdorf as best supporting actress .
  • Bavarian Film Award 2004: Director's award for Sönke Wortmann and supporting actor award to Johanna Gastdorf.
  • German Camera Prize 2004: nomination for Tom Fährmann in the camera feature film category .
  • San Francisco International Film Festival 2004: Audience award to Sönke Wortmann for the best narrative feature film.
  • Ashland Independent Film Festival 2005: Audience award to Sönke Wortmann for best film drama .

Film festivals

The film was made together with the other German productions Goethe! , Almanya - Welcome to Germany and The Big Dream shown at the first German Film Week in North Korea, which took place from November 4th to 8th 2013 in the Taedongmun cinema in Pyongyang.

literature

Musical from the film store

On November 23, 2014, the musical of the same name penned by Martin Lingnau and Gil Mehmert had its world premiere in the new Theater an der Elbe (Hamburg). Among the main actors are Dominik Hees as Helmut Rahn and Vera Bolten as mother Christa Lubanski , who also sings the signature song Miracle Happened .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for The Miracle of Bern . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , July 2003 (PDF; test number: 94 779 K).
  2. ↑ Age rating for The Miracle of Bern . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ↑ kicker special issue: 50 years of miracles in Bern .
  4. ↑ IMDb locations ( Memento from August 3, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  5. ↑ IMDb audience numbers ( Memento from August 2, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  6. ^ First German Film Week in North Korea. In: www.goethe.de. Retrieved January 4, 2016 .
  7. ↑ New musical miracle for Hamburg ( Memento from March 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ 60 years after the miracle of Bern: Helmut Rahn shoots Germany back to the World Cup! ( Memento from July 22, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  9. ↑ www.rp-online.de: Vera Bolten plays in the "Wunder von Bern" 9 September 2014