The Rothschilds (1940)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The Rothschilds |
| Country of production | German Empire |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1940 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK none |
| Rod | |
| Director | Erich Waschneck |
| script |
CM Köhn Gerhard T. Buchholz |
| production | Ufa , Berlin - Manufacturing group CM Köhn |
| music | Johannes Muller |
| camera | Robert Baberske |
| cut | Walter Wischniewsky |
| occupation | |
| |
The Rothschilds is an anti-Semitic and anti-British German propaganda -Spielfilm of Erich Waschneck from 1940. The film is based on the idea of Mirko Jelusich and dealing in anti-Semitic manner with the rise of Jewish banker sfamilie Rothschild . Along with the feature film Jud Süß and the pseudo-documentary Der Ewige Jude, it is one of the films premiered in Germany in 1940, which were intended to prepare the German population for tougher measures against the Jews and no longer, as was customary until then according to National Socialist film policy , as funny characters, but as dangerous " subhumans ".
It is a reserved film from the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation . It is part of the foundation's portfolio, has not been released for distribution and may only be shown with the consent and under the conditions of the foundation.
action
Because Elector Wilhelm von Hessen-Kassel did not join the Rhine Confederation , he is on the run from Napoleon . In 1806, in Frankfurt, he gave Mayer Amschel Rothschild bonds from his soldier trade worth £ 600,000 so that Rothschild could bring them to safety in England.
However, Rothschild uses the entrusted money to make a fortune. His sons Nathan Rothschild in London and James Rothschild in Paris support him . With the money of the Elector you finance Wellington's army during the war against Napoleon in Spain .
Nathan's most skilful move finally succeeded in 1815 when he spread the rumor that Napoleon had triumphed in the Battle of Waterloo , causing stock prices to crash in London. By the time the truth emerges, he has already bought the shares at ridiculous prices.
After a decade, the Rothschilds have swindled a fortune of eleven million pounds with the money of the Hessian elector. Finally, Nathan teams up with the British Treasury Commissioner to bring the whole of Europe into its dependency. At the end, a Star of David appears over the map of Europe by connecting six financial centers as “branches of Jerusalem” with lines.
The film closes with the words: “When work on this film was finished, the last descendants of the Rothschilds left Europe as refugees. The struggle against their accomplices in England, the British plutocracy , continues. "
propaganda
Joseph Goebbels considered The Eternal Jude , Jud Suss and The Rothschilds to be so important that he issued special instructions for the press and on April 26, 1940 ordered that "in the preliminary propaganda for the films 'Jud Suss' and 'The Rothschilds' " in the press "anti-Semitic films should not be written". The audience must believe they see “Judaism as it is”. Goebbels' guidelines were consistent with his conviction that Nazi propaganda could only be effective if it was not viewed as propaganda; the intention must be imperceptible.
The Illustrierte Filmkurier stated that the film was not a representation of the overall problem of Judaism, but "a striking episode of Jewish power striving in the environment of capitalist England." The Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung wrote of the " cauldron of the Jewish hunt for gold", " fraud, malice, ambush, vengeance, smuggling and bribery are seething ”. In the film, one experiences “the eating and gnawing of this poison on the foundations of English big business until the old stratum of its owners collapses hollowed out and the ghetto triumphs over the city, Jerusalem usurps the rule of the Empire .” The film said, Nathan Rothschild wear "the traits of Ahasver : that's how the Jew was, that's how he carried his face through the centuries, without any particular deviations between the crooks of the eastern ghettos, the immigrant fraudsters of gigantic proportions and the international financial slide."
The film turned out to be unsuccessful. After the premiere on July 17, 1940, it was withheld by the Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and only on July 2, 1941 with the new title The Rothschilds. Reissued shares on Waterloo . In a report from the Reich of the SD on November 28, 1940, it was said about discussions of the film Jud Suss in Berlin that with regard to the “theatrical achievements” regarding the portrayals of Jews, “ Jud Suss was much stronger and more convincing than the film Die Rothschilds ".
The Rothschilds brought together various stereotypes of National Socialist anti-Semitism. It is assumed that Jews do not feel loyalty to the state towards the countries in which they live and that they would only benefit from the suffering of other people. " Remember my son, we can only make a lot of money with a lot of blood, " says Mayer Amschel Rothschild to his son James Rothschild in the film. The representation of Jewish people also corresponds to the National Socialist cliché of the "sleazy Jew". Mayer Amschel Rothschild is shown in a shabby caftan and sidelocks . His son lustfully chases after the wife of his “ Aryan ” competitor.
The film is also an example of anti-British propaganda in German film, which had become much more acute at the time of the air war over London . The English appear as victims or willing tools of the internationalist-materialist Jews; anti-Semitic tendencies are thus linked to anti-English ones. Wellington is portrayed as a corrupted bon vivant, a cowardly plutocrat who abandons the Prussians when it comes to Napoleon. Because the young English lieutenant George Crayton openly admits this on the street in England, he is put in prison. Ultimately, he emigrates. The idealistic patriot Crayton and his bride Phyllis Bearing, both of whom are also portrayed as innocent victims of the Rothschilds, are characters in the film who embody the new National Socialist type.
Historical background
The film builds on the slander about the rise of the Rothschild family that has been circulating since the early 19th century. The English bank branch of the Rothschild family was only founded in 1808. Nathan Mayer Rothschild actually took over the supply of gold coins to the British army on the European mainland on behalf of the British paymaster John Charles Herries from 1814. The British government benefited from the European network of the Rothschild family and was very satisfied with the performance of the Rothschild family.
When Napoleon returned to France from his exile on the island of Elba on March 1, 1815 and within a short period of time raised a well-equipped army with 125,000 experienced soldiers, the House of Rothschild began again to buy up large amounts of gold across Europe at their own risk to make this JC Herries available as a means of payment for Wellington . Nathan Mayer Rothschild misjudged that this war, like all Napoleonic wars, would last a very long time. In fact, this time the war ended very quickly. On June 18, 1815, Napoleon attacked the Allied army in Wellington near the Belgian town of Waterloo and was devastatingly defeated in this battle. In view of the large amounts of gold that the House of Rothschild had bought to finance the British Army, the house was threatened with considerable financial damage. To prevent this (very foreseeable) loss, Nathan Rothschild bought British government bonds. He suspected that with the victory of the British Army, the British government would reduce the number of bonds issued, thereby increasing the price of the bonds. Nathan Rothschild's guess this time proved correct, and by the time he sold the securities in November 1817, they had risen more than 40 percent in price. Niall Ferguson estimates that the Rothschilds made a profit on this deal equivalent to today's equivalent of just over £ 600 million.
Nathan Rothschild’s financial conduct is no different from that of his competitors. What was unusual was the size of the transaction and the length of time that Nathan Rothschild held the securities. With its high profit it created the basis for the great influence that the House of Rothschild had over the next few decades in the European financial world. The transaction aroused a great deal of admiration among knowledgeable contemporaries, but led to all kinds of rumors among less knowledgeable people. These rumors include, for example, that from 1830 it was rumored that Nathan Rothschild owned a miraculous Hebrew talisman on which his success was based.
Contrary to the simple realization that a (relatively banal) correct assessment of market behavior contributed to the company's early success, the story that Nathan Mayer Rothschild had deliberately spread the rumor of a defeat of the British army on the English stock exchange continued for a long time.
See also
- List of German feature films premiered in the German Reich during the Nazi era
- List of German films banned under Allied military censorship
literature
- The Rothschilds. Stocks on Waterloo. In: Illustrierter Filmkurier . No. 3120. Director Erich Waschneck. Berlin, Franke 1940. (4 sheets 4 ° , film program).
- Francis Courtade, Pierre Cadars: History of Film in the Third Reich. Heyne, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-453-00759-X .
- Dorothea Hollstein: Anti-Semitic Film Propaganda. The depiction of the Jew in the National Socialist feature film. Publishing house documentation, Pullach et al. 1971, ISBN 3-7940-4017-1 .
- Dorothea Hollstein: Anti-Semitic Film Propaganda. The depiction of the Jew in the National Socialist feature film. With a foreword: “Jud Süß” and the Germans. Anti-Semitic prejudices in the National Socialist feature film. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1983, ISBN 3-548-35169-7 .
Web links
- The Rothschilds in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Rothschilds at filmportal.de
- Nazi feature film: Antisemitic and anti-British propaganda plus video on the website of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (English; film in German)
- Biography Erich Waschneck
Individual evidence
- ↑ Erwin Leiser: "Germany, awake!" Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, p. 68.
- ↑ a b Quoted by Erwin Leiser: “Germany, awake!” Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, p. 70.
- ↑ Quoted by Leiser: “Germany, awake!” Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1968, p. 70f.
- ↑ Quoted by Leiser: “Germany, awake!” Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, p. 71.
- ^ Gerd Albrecht: National Socialist Film Policy. A sociological study of the feature films of the Third Reich . Enke, Stuttgart 1969, p. 43.
- ↑ http://resources.ushmm.org/film/display/detail.php?file_num=2584
- ↑ Quoted from Bundesarchiv Koblenz - R 58/156, pp. 6-7 by Erwin Leiser: “Germany, awake!” Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1968, p. 132 f.
- ↑ Erwin Leiser: "Germany, awake!" Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek near Hamburg 1968, p. 83 f.
- ^ Dorothea Hollstein: Anti-Semitic Film Propaganda. The depiction of the Jews in the National Socialist feature film . Verlag Documentation, Berlin 1971, p. 73.
- ^ Brain Cathcart: The Rothschild Libel. Why has it taken 200 years for an anti-Semitic slur that emerged from the Battle of Waterloo to be dismissed? , The Independent, May 2, 2015.
- ^ Niall Ferguson : The Ascent of Money - A Financial History of the World , Penguin Books Ltd, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-103548-2 , p. 86.
- ^ Niall Ferguson: The Ascent of Money - A Financial History of the World , Penguin Books Ltd, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-103548-2 , p. 87.
- ↑ For a detailed description of the historical background, see Niall Ferguson: The Ascent of Money - A Financial History of the World , Penguin Books Ltd, London 2009, ISBN 978-0-14-103548-2 , pp. 81-89.