The adventures of Werner Holt (film)

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Movie
Original title The adventures of Werner Holt
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1965
length 165 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Joachim Kunert
script Joachim Kunert,
Claus kitchen master
production DEFA , Artistic Working Group "Red Circle"
music Gerhard Wohlgemuth
camera Rolf Sohre
cut Christa Stritt
occupation

Werner Holt's adventures is a black and white film by the DEFA group Roter Kreis directed by Joachim Kunert from 1964/1965. Along with the DEFA film I was nineteen, which was released in 1968, it is considered the most famous anti-war film in the GDR. The first part of the novel of a youth of the two-volume novel Die Abenteuer des Werner Holt by Dieter Noll serves as a plot .

action

The end of the novel forms the framework of the film: In the spring of 1945 the war fronts arrived in Germany. Werner Holt, barely 18 years old, is deployed with his classmates Gilbert Wolzow and Christian Vetter in a regiment defending a small German town. After some of their superiors have fled, Wolzow takes over the command. Another superior who wanted to move his position to another position is arrested by Wolzow and is supposed to be handed over to the nearby SS as a deserter . The radio operator Holt sits in a provisional command center and looks back on the past two years.

The first flashback is also the beginning of the novel: Holt and Wolzow are opponents, Holt being the only one in the class who can stand up to Wolzow. The friendship between the two only comes about when Wolzow is supposed to be expelled from school after a prank, but Holt takes the blame on himself. Holt is clever, but has little enthusiasm for school and prefers to spend the summer in the local outdoor pool, especially since he is assuming that the conscription will be soon and long-awaited. There he meets the somewhat older Marie Krüger, whom he can persuade to kiss him. When he talks about love, she laughs at him and talks about her friend Ruth Wagner, who was first impregnated by the SS volunteer and Hitler Youth leader Meißner, but then intimidated. When she saw no way out of her situation, she committed suicide ; her father was no longer seen after he wanted to take action against Meißner.

The Wolzow family is in mourning, Colonel Phillip Wolzow has died. While this affects his wife very much, his son Gilbert gets over it quickly and introduces Holt to his uncle, a major general in the Air Force. While Holt and Wolzow rummage through the fallen officer's belongings and find several pistols, Werner is able to convince his friend to give Meissner a rub. While Gilbert doesn't really care about Ruth Wagner, he remembers that Meißner spoiled his career as Hitler Youth leader . Wolzow shows no mercy and is even ready to kill Meissner.

When Holt is guest of the class leader Peter Wiese, he plays the piano for Holt. He is aesthetic, but weak to the displeasure of his parents. They are extremely uncomfortable with their son's unsuitability for anti-aircraft guns. At Wieses, Holt also meets Uta von Barnim, a 20-year-old beauty who, however, does not show the usual enthusiasm for war in a personal conversation, but rather describes Holt's father, from whom Werner turned away, as a person with character.

When training anti-aircraft guns, Wolzow shows no respect for older trainees. The militarily enthusiastic Gilbert is mainly interested in his career as an officer and shows several times that he knows no scruples if he sees them endangered by someone.

Holt, on the other hand, has more and more doubts about the correctness of his ideology, especially through conversations with Marie Krüger, Uta von Barnim, Peter Wiese and Gertie Ziesche (a dancer who is married to an SS man and whose husband in the East deals with “ethnic inferior” people has to do). The latter seduces Holt after she is sure that he is not bragging about it in front of his roommates and thus her stepson. After his classmate Fritz Zemtzki met a senseless death in an attack on Holt's flak battery, Holt notices in a conversation with his friend Sepp Gomulka that he is not the only one with doubts.

During a visit to his father, Werner asks why his father has been relegated and why the professor is only a food inspector. He reveals to his son that he did not want to take part in research that is now ensuring that the SS is now killing hundreds of thousands of people in the concentration camps. Werner cannot - or does not want to - believe that.

Back in his anti-aircraft battery, he has to watch another classmate slipper die in another attack. During a night vacation with Gertie Ziesche, he witnessed an Anglo-American air raid. The protective cellar collapses and Holt is able to save himself, Gertie and a toddler through a breakthrough. The group reached a camp through burning streets. A doctor can only determine the death of the child.

In a longer part of the framework story, Russian tanks are announced. While Holt thinks critically about his war experiences, Wolzow has no doubt that victory is still possible. When a German soldier flees from an approaching Russian tank during the battle, Wolzow shoots him without showing mercy.

In another flashback, the boys are on home leave. There Werner met the withdrawn girl Gundula Thieß, known as Gundel. She is an orphan and is in compulsory year with a large family of an SS man. To help Gundel to get away from the unfriendly host family, he speaks to Sepp's father, the lawyer Gomulka, who, however, cannot help either. In the meantime the boys are called up to the RAD in the protectorate . Shortly before leaving for Slovakia, Holt gives Gundel a piece of paper with his father's address and a note that she can expect help from him.

In Slovakia, Holt meets the young and pretty Slovakian Milena, who, however, immediately refuses to come close. When she kills Obervormann Schulze in self-defense before being raped, she and her father are said to be shot after they have been interrogated. This is preceded by an attack on the German position, and Werner helps the prisoners to escape.

The SS brutally murder people in a Slovak sawmill. After the SS withdrew, the site was occupied by the company. On a tour, Sepp and Werner discuss what they saw, morality and martial law.

When the news arrives at the boys' training camp that “the Russian” has crossed the imperial borders in Silesia and is marching towards Wroclaw , volunteers for a tank hunting division are sought. Wolzow had already contacted him, and Sepp Gomulka immediately joined him. Christian Vetter, who is developing into Wolzow's handyman, is also there, and after some thought, Werner Holt too. Together with the alcoholic Sergeant Burgkert and Corporal Horbeck as the driver, the group set off eastwards. On the way they are met by refugee routes, and the army command in Wroclaw is also busy moving to the hinterland. After Burgkert did not return, the group drove on to an anti-tank trap under Wolzow's direction. There Sepp tells his friend Werner that he is being overrun and tries to convince him to come along. When Wolzow confronts the group with the white flag from the vehicle, Holt can barely prevent an exchange of fire. Sepp Gomulka and the private drive with the white flag towards the Russians, while Holt stays with Wolzow and Vetter at the anti-tank barrier.

Elsewhere in the German hinterland - in the novel Bautzen is given as the location - Werner and Peter Wiese are in conversation. Wiese tells Holt that after the war he would like to become a pianist and only this hope helped him to keep up his military service. A little later a group of concentration camp prisoners came through the position on a death march. A collapsed prisoner is mercilessly shot by an SS man, whereupon Peter Wiese awkwardly approaches this SS man and is also shot.

Return to the main story: Wolzow's company still has about 50 men, which Wolzow would like to lead in a final battle against the advancing Red Army. In the break between two attacks by the Red Army, Werner Holt finally comes to his senses and turns his life upside down. He looks back on his life (the flashbacks) and rearranges all thoughts and experiences. He finally understands that it is not fate that controls his life, but rather people like Wolzow who made him a criminal and now want to send him to his death. He realizes the futility of the fight and that only he can change his life.

In this situation, Holt takes up his weapon, points it at Wolzow and orders Sergeant Winkler to run away with the troops and, ideally, to go straight into captivity. Wolzow only replies: “That is treason! The troops are still good for 24 hours of house-to-house fighting! ” He has no doubt about the Fiihrer's order to fight down to the last man .

Holt runs through the rubble when Christian Vetter catches up with him and reports that the SS men nearby, under Meißner's leadership, have arrested Wolzow and are about to hang and that they are looking for Holt. In his mind's eye, Holt sees Gundel once more at the gate of the train station calling out to him “Come again Werner!”, Which prompts him to decide not to flee from the SS, but to oppose it. While Gilbert Wolzow is being tied to a lantern, Holt loads a machine gun from a hiding place and shoots the SS men, whereby Meißner is also killed.

background

The film premiered on February 4, 1965 in the Kosmos cinema in Berlin

The film premiered on February 4, 1965 at the Kosmos cinema in Berlin , the GDR premiere cinema . The film was released in Germany on September 6, 1966.

The fighting scenes of the framework plot were filmed in 1964 in the evacuated village of Tränke on the Nochten military training area. The buildings in the village were destroyed. Further scenes were created in the Harz Mountains , including at the Quedlinburg train station and in Altenbrak , which was used as a filming location for the Slovak sawmill. The scenes of the basic training after being drafted into the Wehrmacht with NCO Revetcki ( Rolf Römer ) as instructor on the machine gun 34 were recorded in the former barracks of the German People's Police " Hans Marchwitza " in Potsdam-Eiche , today the seat of the Presidium of the Brandenburg Police .

Despite the length of more than two and a half hours, various chapters of the novel that do not advance the plot are shortened, summarized or omitted. As a result, several important people in the novel do not appear in the film at all and others do not appear with names or, as in the case of Sergeant Gods servant, only with indirect names.

Also unlike in the novel, the group doesn't end up fighting against the approaching Americans, but against the Russians. As a result, Holt does not end up in American captivity at the end of the film.

criticism

"With long flashbacks and symbolic motifs, a film adaptation of a novel that provokes tremors and urgently warns of false ideals."

- Lexicon of International Films

“This is one of the few GDR films that was also a good success with the public in the Federal Republic. The reason for this may be that, despite opposing claims and intentions, the adventures evoked in the title are clearly in the foreground. Disgust for the war, insights into the mechanisms of the Nazi state are evoked; in effect, however, the action-packed, exciting depiction of the war predominates. "

- Reclam's film guide

"Although not all the characters and episodes of the film were successful, it is captivating with its unusual narrative structure, which puts a large amount of disparate material, various impressions and memories in the frame of a single major flashback ..."

- Ulrich Gregor : History of the film

Movie quotes

  • "If it hits you to pieces, I'll stand for two, and I'm going to die, I'll be there!" (Gilbert Wolzow)
  • “I wish I was a fanatic. Thinking and brooding, that wears me out. "(Werner Holt)
  • "Two old warriors like us, only death separates them." (Gilbert Wolzow)
  • "People, enjoy the war, the peace will be terrible." (Christian Vetter)
  • "If something senseless happens on principle, then the principle is wrong." (Sepp Gomulka)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Torsten Richter: The missing place appears again. In: Lausitzer Rundschau . February 18, 2012, accessed February 14, 2020 .
  2. ^ Christian Eger: Homecoming of Werner Holt. In: Mitteldeutsche Zeitung . June 10, 2008, accessed February 14, 2020 .
  3. ^ Rainer Lambrecht: From the barracks to the official seat - From the history of a military and police accommodation in Potsdam-Eiche . Potsdam 2010, ISBN 978-3-939090-07-6 , pp. 121 .
  4. ↑ The adventures of Werner Holt at zweiausendeins.de, accessed on October 22, 2011
  5. ^ Reclams Filmführer, 2.A. 1973, ISBN 3-15-010205-7
  6. ^ Ulrich Gregor: History of the film. 1968, page 334, ISBN 3-570-00816-9