The Alsatians

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Movie
German title The Alsatians
Original title Les Alsaciens ou les Deux Mathilde
Country of production France , Germany
original language French
Publishing year 1996
length 4 × 90 minutes
Rod
Director Michel Favart
production ARTE
music Jean-Marie Sénia
camera Michael Epp
cut Brigitte Gallot and Dominique Petitjean
occupation

The Elsässer is a French television series from 1996 with Irina Wanka and Sebastian Koch . The series consists of four episodes of 90 minutes each and tells the story of Alsace between 1870 and 1953 using the story of fictional families. Henri de Turenne and Michel Deutsch wrote the script.

action

First episode: 1870–1894

Mathilde is the only daughter of Baron Eugène-Victor Kempf, who is a wealthy industrialist from the vicinity of Haguenau in Alsace and who manufactures railway wagons, but often also armaments. In the summer of 1870 Mathilde married Count Charles de la Tour. The Franco-Prussian War brought the young fortune to an abrupt end, because Charles was drafted as a cavalryman . Liselotte Laugel, the daughter of the Alsheim landlord, who is engaged to Franzl Imhof, the count's orderly, is raped by German soldiers in the village inn. Then she disappeared.

While Alsace is being occupied by Germany, the Count de la Tour falls in Bazeilles. A captain of the Uhlans , the Prussian nobleman Edwin von Wismar-Marbach, quartered himself in the family castle of the count or the Baron Kempf family . Mathilde mourns for her husband and for her country. Even years later, she will not be able to come to terms with the loss. Despite everything, she gives birth to her son Louis. By chance she finds Liselotte who was hiding in a monastery. She takes them to her castle, where Franzl - the Count's former orderly - has meanwhile become a gamekeeper and can finally marry his fiancée.

Timeskip. 1894 - to Mathilde's great despair, Alsace still belongs to Germany over twenty years later. She now gives French lessons illegally and receives Maurice Barrès in the castle. Alsace becomes a rising “Reichsland”, and Strasbourg a radiant provincial capital. Bismarck social security is introduced for workers - 50 years earlier than in France. Mathilde's twenty-year-old son Louis de la Tour studies German law in Strasbourg and falls in love with Friederike, the daughter of the Prussian captain who stayed in the Count's castle 20 years ago and has since become General von Wismar-Marbach. It is a tragedy for Mathilde. It comes to a scandal ...

Second episode: 1904-1919

1904. Louis marries Friederike. They have two children, Karl and Edouard. Grandfather Kempf has meanwhile died.

Louis, who has since changed his name to Kempf de La Tour, runs the grandfather's factory and moves into the castle with his family, but his mother Mathilde still refuses to recognize Friederike as daughter-in-law. Born and raised as a German, Louis allows himself to be nominated as Minister of Economics in the regional committee of Alsace-Lorraine. One of his sons, Karl, is studying law in Heidelberg, while Edouard becomes a polytechnician and develops more into a French.

1914. Karl and Edouard are drafted, one for Germany and one for France. Mathilde, who wants revenge for the past forty years, sees her family's ordeal. While on vacation at home, Karl, shattered by the thought that he might face his brother Edouard at the front in Champagne, has a relationship with Alexandra.

1918. The French victory is here and the triumph of Mathilde. Marshal Foch puts together a Legion of Honor of the Fallen. In the middle of the party, she climbs to the room where the old General von Wismar and his daughter Friederike - the "vanquished" - are hiding. Outside it is announced loudly that Karl has died in the fight. Wismar and Mathilde feel their pain forgiving ...

Third episode: 1927–1940

In 1927 Edouard married Kempf de La Tour, who now also runs the factory, as his parents move to Switzerland. Edouard and his wife Alexandra have two children: Louis-Charles and Pauline. Albert, the grandson of the landlady of Alsheim, studied for Countess Mathilde's sake and became a doctor.

Albert had evaded the drafting of the Germans at the beginning of the World War and secretly made his way to France to fight the Germans in the French army. On his return he became mayor, a Catholic MP and married a young orphan.

The Alsatians were added to France after the war. The administration has forbidden to continue using the German language, to give religious instruction and has sent radical socialist teachers from the south-east of France to the schools. Due to the renewed dissatisfaction, a movement for autonomy emerges: the “ Heimatbund ”. It is composed of former Alsatian notables like Albert Laugel, but is interspersed with pro-German elements. On Christmas Day, the Prefect arrested Albert Laugel and other leaders of the Heimatbund ...

Jewish refugees arrive in Strasbourg in 1936. Among them is Rachel Bernstein, who studied medicine in Berlin. She joins Albert Laugel's practice as an assistant doctor. Eventually she becomes his lover.

During this time Louis-Charles Kempf de La Tour was fascinated by the “new Germany [of National Socialism]: its youth, its sport and its strength”.

Fourth episode: 1943–1953

After the defeat of France in 1940, Alsace was annexed by the German Reich. Albert Laugel becomes leader of the Resistance in Alsace in 1943 under the pseudonym Kellermann .

He has a meeting with "Mathilde", the person responsible for the Eastern Zone and a member of the De Gaulle parliament . He discovers to his dismay that this second "Mathilde" is none other than Katel, the woman he divorced. She and Rachel give him orders to march to France. But "Mathilde" is arrested by the Gestapo and commits suicide with a capsule of potassium cyanide .

The head of the Gestapo calls for the notary Wahl, who has become a collaborator and National Socialist party member, so that he can identify the corpse of his sister Katel in order to convince himself of his reliability. Young Charles Kempf de la Tour, who has been appointed clerk to the notary Wahl, is upset. In Strasbourg he met his cousin Manfred von Wismar, who has now become a fighter pilot in the Air Force , but has lost his enthusiasm for the war aims.

Hitler mobilizes 130,000 Alsatians. Louis-Charles Kempf de la Tour and Peter Imhof (the young brother of René, the Nazi) hide the count. But the Germans put pressure on the stubborn families. When the two men return, they are sent to Ukraine as punishment ...

Awards

Reviews

  • “Alsace is a plaything of powers. Everyone is a mirror of history, almost every sentence is politics: the artful, melodramatic four-part series was honored with the Adolf Grimme Prize in 1997. ”
    TV feature film
  • "This four-part series, which met with a very positive response, received the most prestigious television award in 1997 for the screenplay by Henri de Turenne, the Adolf Grimme Prize, which was awarded for the first time for a non-exclusively German production."
    ARTE

literature

Web links