Priam's Treasure (TV movie)
| Television broadcast | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Priam's treasure |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| year | 1981 |
| length | 188 minutes |
| production | NDR in cooperation with ORF |
| camera | Guenther Wulff |
| First broadcast | May 27th + June 3rd 1981 on ARD as a two-part television film |
| occupation | |
| |
The Treasure of Priam is a two-part television film by Karl Fruchtmann . Tilo Prückner plays Heinrich Schliemann , Olga Karlatos and Angela Schmid his wives.
The film describes the life of the German archaeologist Schliemann against the background of the Wilhelminian era and the educated middle class in the German Empire. The highlight is the excavations of Troy, Schliemann's lifelong dream, where he finds the (supposed) treasure of Priam . The success of his efforts against all setbacks and resistance made Schliemann a hero of his time and brings him close to archaeologists like Johann Joachim Winckelmann .
action
Heinrich Schliemann is a young man who loves to travel, and as a businessman in Amsterdam and St. Petersburg, he has made a not inconsiderable fortune. It is extremely easy for him to learn foreign languages. Within just one year he can communicate in Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. After finding a position as a correspondent and accountant, he quickly rises to the head of the correspondent office and begins to learn Russian, as his employer has close trade relations with the Russian Empire . After he founded a trading branch in St. Petersburg on behalf of his bread maker, he managed to open his own trading house in the city within a year. After a short time he can afford servants.
After Schliemann had spent two years with his brother in California and founded a bank for gold trading there, which successfully invested in railroad projects, he returned to Europe and married the Russian merchant's daughter Katharina Lyshina in St. Petersburg, which further strengthened his social position. The couple has three children. During the Crimean War, he succeeds in increasing his fortune.
After Schliemann made the decision to retire from business life in order to pursue his newly discovered love for archeology, he learned Latin and ancient Greek, traveled to Asia as well as North and Central America and wrote his first book. He also studies languages, literature and archeology at the Sorbonne in Paris. His first research trip takes him to Greece. It is also the time when he for the first time deals more intensively with the Troas , which surrounded the ancient city of Troy , and conducts intensive research on the presumed location of the legendary city of Priam .
His marriage has since failed and Schliemann starts a new relationship with the very young Sophia from Greece. After Schliemann repeatedly had problems obtaining an excavation permit from the Turkish government for Troy, he succeeded in doing so after several attempts. He discovers a city gate, from which a wide opening street leads to a house he interpreted as the palace of Priam, near which two months later he found the so-called Priam's treasure. Schliemann sees his self-imposed task as fulfilled.
To Schliemann's displeasure, however, the majority of German scientists continue to refuse him the professional recognition he longed for. In Great Britain, however, his find was received with great interest by the professional world and caused a sensation and resulted in an invitation with a highly regarded specialist lecture at Burlington House .
history
Heinrich Schliemann (1822–1890) was a German businessman, archaeologist and pioneer of field archeology , who was the first researcher to ever carry out excavations in Hisarlik , Asia Minor . There he found the ruins of the Bronze Age Troy, which other researchers had also suspected there.
The treasure of Priam was named after the mythical Trojan king Priam , to whom, as it turned out later, it could not be assigned due to the temporal context. The find includes around 8,000 items. The treasure that Schliemann gave to the German people in 1881, which has been in the Völkerkundemuseum Berlin since 1885 , was brought to Russia as looted art after the Second World War , where it is still to be found today.
Priam was the son of Laomedon and Strymo . He was the sixth and last king of Troy (Ilios) in Greek mythology. In his Iliad , Homer describes decisive war scenes during the siege of the city of Troy (Ilion) by the army of the Greeks.
criticism
Gerhard Prause wrote in Zeit Online "right up to the inevitable bed scene [...] everything is there that a television game needs today". Nevertheless, “the two million project, probably the most complex NDR production of the year […] turned out to be lengthy and boring.” This is not only due to “the often far too long passages in foreign languages (Schliemann as a linguistic genius), the most important of them Parts for people who do not understand Dutch, not Russian, not Italian, not modern or ancient Greek, not even Turkish, would be translated by subtitles. The main reason for this is that the director and author Karl Fruchtmann “presupposes too much”. The viewer learns “next to nothing” about Schliemann's intention as well as about himself, who “was the only one who believed in the real existence of the Homeric world against a phalanx of room scholars” and also “had proven it”, and also “ far too little about the 'treasure of Priam', although the whole long film is so hot ”.
Web links
- The treasure of Priam in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Priam's treasure at filmportal.de
- The treasure of Priam adS fernsehserien.de
- The treasure of Priam Information adS deutsches-filmhaus.de
- The treasure of Priam various film images adS alamy.com
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gerhard Prause : Troja's second destroyer In: Zeit Online, May 29, 1981 (from the archive Die Zeit No. 23/1981).