The old and the young king
The old and the young king is a German historical film by Hans Steinhoff from 1935. In the broader sense, the film is one of the so-called Fridericus Rex films about the person of the Prussian king Friedrich II. Although ostensibly a drama about the conflict between Father and Son is the work of a Nazi propaganda film that primarily aims to convey the Führer principle . The film was banned by the Allied military government , but was not classified as a conditional film after the establishment of the Federal Republic of Germany .
action
Potsdam, the time of the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm I. While the royal family is sitting at the breakfast table, Crown Prince Friedrich , known as Fritz , loses so much money at the gaming table that he has to sign promissory notes. At the morning roll call of the grenadier regiment , the Crown Prince appears late in a desolate state and thus enrages his father. The king would like to prepare his son for the future role as ruler and sees his occupation with music and literature with great displeasure.
For his part, Fritz is angry about the harsh treatment of his father and plans to flee to England to his mother's family via France . His friend Katte is supposed to help him with this project , but the lieutenant, who is committed to the soldier's ethos, initially refuses. The father-son conflict comes to a head when Fritz pretends to have a lower gambling debt than the one that the king had to settle earlier. As a punishment, the Crown Prince, whom the King insults as a liar and coward, is placed under arrest. In the barracks he should neither practice his beloved flute playing nor read French literature.
During the night, the king returns from the tobacco college earlier than usual and surprises the crown prince with his sister Wilhelmine while playing the flute in the music room. The also present Katte can hide just in time. In this situation the conflict between father and son escalates. The king throws Fritz's books, sheet music and also the flute into the fire and orders that the crown prince must accompany him on a trip to southern Germany. Fritz, more determined than ever to flee, can count on Katte's support after this incident.
But the flight fails: both the Crown Prince and Lieutenant Katte be the court martial Kuestrin to imprisonment convicted. However, the king arbitrarily changes the sentence against Katte to a death penalty . The Crown Prince submits to the King and is transferred to a domain chamber . When the king visits, however, it becomes apparent that the relationship between father and son is still very cool and distant. Fritz, who has meanwhile proven his character, receives the Rheinsberg rule in order to be able to run his own household and can pursue his artistic inclinations there again.
Shortly before the king's death, there is reconciliation between father and son. The last words of the old to the young king are: “Make Prussia great!”.
Awards
The film testing agency gave the film the ratings "politically and artistically particularly valuable" and "educating the people".
production
The old and the young king were produced by Deka-Film GmbH , a company that had not appeared before and was only responsible for around a dozen other, now little-known, films by 1945. The script for the film was written by the poet Rolf Lauckner and Thea von Harbou . The film was shot from October 22, 1934 to the beginning of January 1935 in the Tobis studio in Berlin-Grunewald . The film premiered on January 29, 1935 in Stuttgart and on February 5, 1935 in the Ufa-Palast am Zoo in Berlin .
reception
The film was well received in the year of release. The Völkischer Beobachter wrote on February 7, 1935: "This is a film. The German film. Finally. A tremendous work of creative creativity [...] Outstanding Emil Jannings [...] At the end there was tremendous applause. It was considered a great achievement".
In the attack it was said: "The Prussian spirit has given Germany a film that will sweep the former hurray-patriotic celluloid for good. In it you can see Prussia's heroic march through the centuries".
criticism
When it was re-performed at the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, there were sometimes strong negative reactions in the press:
“The film is full of Nazi ideology, and yet it does not arbitrarily use the Prussian legend of the disobedience and obedience of Crown Prince Friedrich. Even without the current embellishments of the Goebbels era, the film reveals a fatal affinity between decadent Prussianism and fascism "
“There is no question that the film The Old and Young King [...] , made in 1935, was a Nazi object lesson; The foreword of the Donau-Verleihe does not hide this, which believes to »show a film about an epoch of German history that is today beyond the pros and cons« "
The Catholic Film Service saw the re-performance rather uncritically :
"For the old generation an elegiac reunion, for the young an occasion of concerned-awesome astonishment"
The currently valid commentary is much more critical of the production:
“The historical father-son conflict between Friedrich Wilhelm I and his son, prepared as a 'politically valuable' contribution to the ideology of the Nazi regime. The acting achievements cannot hide the questionable tendency of the book and the direction either. "
Reclam 's film guide saw the film as a "typical example of how a historical theme is used for propaganda" in that the Crown Prince bowed to the will of the king and was the only way to become Frederick the Great:
"And this attitude, as the film makes abundantly clear, ultimately also serves the state and the people."
Herbert Holba speculated in 1979 in a brochure about Emil Jannings that the depiction of Crown Prince Friedrich was influenced by the official depiction of the Röhm putsch , especially since Friedrich, like Röhm, was considered homosexual:
"You were looking for an excuse, which should also be a threat."
Trivia
- In 1980 the material was filmed again as The Heir apparent - The Hard Years of Frederick the Great of Prussia with Günter Strack as the soldier king.
See also
literature
- Klaus Kanzog , "Particularly valuable in terms of state policy". A manual for 30 German feature films from 1934 to 1945 , Munich (Schaudig & Ledig) 1994, ISBN 3926372052
- Rolf Giesen, Hitler Youth Quex, Jud Süss and Kolberg. The propaganda films of the Third Reich. Documents and materials on Nazi films , Berlin 2005, ISBN 389602471X
- Francis Courtade, Pierre Cadars, History of Film in the Third Reich , Munich, 1975, ISBN 9783446120648
- Ulrich von der Osten, see Nazi films in context. 'Films of the years 1934-1938 , which are particularly valuable from a political point of view ' , Munich 1998, ISBN 9783926372635
- Axel Marquardt, Heinz Rathsack (eds.), Prussia in film. A retrospective of the Deutsche Kinemathek Foundation. Volume 5. Reinbek near Hamburg, 1981, ISBN 3499340054
- Linda Schulte-Sassen, Entertaining the Third Reich. Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema. Durham, NC, 1996. ISBN 9780822318248
Web links
- The old and the young king in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The old and the young king at filmportal.de
- Detailed article on the film at Telepolis
Individual evidence
- ↑ The old and the young king. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 17, 2016 .