The oath of Rabenhorst
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The oath of Rabenhorst |
| Country of production | GDR |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1987 |
| length | 82 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hans Kratzert |
| script |
Gudrun Deubener Hans Kratzert |
| production | DEFA , KAG "Red Circle" |
| music | Gunther Erdmann |
| camera | Wolfgang Braumann |
| cut |
Helga Krause Carola Schäfer |
| occupation | |
| |
The Rabenhorst Oath is a DEFA German children's film directed by Hans Kratzert in 1987 .
action
The village of Rabenhorst in Altmark 1949: The sawmill director's son, Ernst Weise, founds the League of the Righteous with his friends Thomas and Renate. Your meeting point will be a ruin near the village, the aim is to help the poor. Their role model is Klaus Störtebeker , about whom Ernst has read a book. He lends the book to Thomas, who was resettled by farmer Mehrin with his mother and grandmother, but is only tolerated there.
The group advocates justice with its means, but in its attempts to do good it tends to create unrest. They only tell the poor when wood can be picked up from the sawmill, steal a blanket from a farmer that they give to new teacher Mathies, and use a daring action to force a farmer to take in homeless resettlers. The three of them also have more and more problems with the group around bully Willi and Bodo. The League of the Just meets less and less, partly because Thomas is to be trained as an altar boy at the instigation of his Catholic grandmother . New teacher Mathies in turn founds a pioneer group in the village, which Thomas and Renate join. Ernst takes a stand against the pioneers, who in his opinion cannot achieve anything, and in protest also dissolves the League of the Just.
The pioneers learn from the village pastor that the meadows on which farmer Mehrin grazes his cows actually belong to all of the villagers. Thomas puts up a sign in front of the cow pasture that identifies the meadow as public property. Mehrin destroys the sign, whereupon Ernst drives the cows from the pasture. Renate is overrun by the wild cows and has to be taken to the hospital. Ernst and the action of the pioneers are sharply criticized in the community council meeting, but Mathies takes the side of the children. They apply to the community representatives that the Bruchwiesen will belong to the children in the future, and the community representatives agree.
After lengthy discussions, the children decide to build a playground on the meadows. Many peasants in the village help and also Thomas, who as an altar boy is supposed to take off his pioneer badge but refuses, is dismissed as an altar boy and can thus help with the construction of the “pioneer village”. A little later the playground is ready and Ernst, who helped with the construction, can also be present at the grand opening. One of Bodo's group warns Renate that Bodo and his cronies are up to something that night, but nobody listens to them. At night Willi, Bodo and their buddies sneak into the playground and set it on fire. Renate tries in vain to put out the fire. Ernst and Thomas, who run to the playground, alarmed by the fire, manage to overwhelm the firemen. Only now does Ernst realize that his resentment towards his friends was stupid.
production
The Oath of Rabenhorst was filmed in 1986 in Lühsdorf , part of Treuenbrietzen since 2003 , and had its premiere on February 8, 1987 in the Capitol in Jena . On October 7, 1989, the film ran on DFF 1 for the first time on East German television.
Barbara Braumann created the costumes, and Erich Krüllke designed the film .
criticism
The contemporary critics found that the film “does not want to explain everything very thoroughly, that some things remain open, that individual thought is stimulated. And the given time picture is correct ”. Other critics wrote that the spark did not jump to the viewer. The film has structural defects and suffocates “in the uniformity of what is presented”.
Later critics complained that the film had no center due to the multitude of conflict areas and people - “moments of tension are lost and jumps arise. The blood brotherhood of three children who want to stand up for social justice would be a viable subject. But the possibilities of such a substance have not been exhausted. Instead, an ideological schematization sets in, which leads to a transfigured and flattened view of history. "
For the film-dienst , Der Schwur von Rabenhorst was a "strikingly agitating children's film about the beginnings of the pioneering organization." Frank-Burkhard Habel called it a "very schematic children's film, unfortunately not a differentiated, coherent picture of the post-war years" shows.
literature
- F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 529-530 .
- The oath of Rabenhorst . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, ISBN 3-89487-234-9 , pp. 361-363.
Web links
- The oath of Rabenhorst in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Rabenhorst's oath at filmportal.de
- Rabenhorst's oath on progress-film.de
- Rabenhorst's oath at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ HU: Secret Covenant of Justice . In: Neue Zeit , February 10, 1987.
- ↑ Peter Herrmann: The spark does not jump over . In: Filmspiegel , No. 19. 1987, p. 14.
- ↑ The Oath of Rabenhorst . In: Ingelore König, Dieter Wiedemann, Lothar Wolf (eds.): Between Marx and Muck. DEFA films for children . Henschel, Berlin 1996, p. 362.
- ↑ The Oath of Rabenhorst. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 529 .