Eichmann and the 3rd Reich
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Eichmann and the 3rd Reich |
| Country of production |
Germany Switzerland |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1961 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Erwin Leiser |
| script | Erwin Leiser (concept) |
| production |
Lazar Wechsler Artur Brauner |
| camera | Emil Berna |
| cut | Hans Heinrich Egger |
Eichmann und das 3. Reich is a German-Swiss documentary from 1961 by Erwin Leiser . At its center is the organizer of the Holocaust during the Second World War , Adolf Eichmann .
action
As a result of the great critical success of the 1959 documentary “Den blodiga tiden / Mein Kampf”, with which Leiser had given a documentary overview of the National Socialist dictatorship in Germany, the filmmaker, who fled Germany to Sweden in 1938, tried to decipher the central figure in terms of implementation the so-called “ final solution to the Jewish question ”, Adolf Eichmann. Not only thematically, but also stylistically, Leiser's Eichmann film is a further development of “Mein Kampf”, with which he tries to explain the scope of the crimes committed by the National Socialists against European Jews up to 1945 and the background to the Eichmann trial to moviegoers, which was taking place in Jerusalem at that time. For this purpose, Leiser compiled partly already known and partly unknown film material into a coherent unit.
In addition , the focus is on an interview with the Frankfurt attorney general Fritz Bauer , who played a central role in the capture of Eichmann in 1960, which was conducted especially for this film . Further interviews that can be seen and heard in the film were conducted with former resistance fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (April 1943) living in Israel and with Jakob Virnik, one of the few survivors of the Treblinka extermination camp . Virnik uses a wooden model he made to demonstrate the structure and structure of this warehouse in eastern Poland. Furthermore, Leiser added up-to-date recordings from the court hearing against Eichmann at the time. Deliberately silent recordings of deportations of Jewish people to concentration or extermination camps have a particularly strong effect.
Production notes and trivia
The film Eichmann und das 3. Reich, which was released on May 26, 1961 in Germany, was a project that the Jewish, Swedish-German filmmaker Leiser and the two most powerful film producers in Switzerland and Germany, Lazar Wechsler and Artur Brauner , both also of Jewish denomination, Established in 1960/61. The current occasion was the capture of Eichmann by Israeli Mossad agents in Argentina in May 1960. At the time of the premiere, the trial against the former SS-Obersturmbannführer (April 11 to December 15, 1961) had only just begun. Immediately before the start of the compilation of historical film material and the re-enactment of certain scenes by the Swiss star cameraman Emil Berna , Leiser had a great success with his film documentary treatise on National Socialism in Germany, Mein Kampf .
The film celebrated its world premiere in co-producing Switzerland on May 25, 1961 and was shown in Austria from June 2, 1961.
reception
“The Swedish journalist Erwin Leiser follows up his general documentation on the Nazi regime ('Mein Kampf') with this specific one on the massacres of Jews . He refrains from analyzing anti-Semitism and its roots. Nor does he attempt to give an interpretation of the “Eichmann phenomenon”; The figure of the man in the glass case, whom Erwin Leiser repeatedly confronts the panorama of horror, remains opaque. The film documents, of course - they range from footage of rampaging SA to pictures of concentration camps and ghettos - retain their provocative power. The film culminates in an appeal by the humanitarian educator Leiser to let the 'flames of memory become fires of hope'. "
“This time, Leiser concentrated on dealing with the National Socialist Jewish policy, primarily the extermination of the Jews, the central moment of Nazi ideology before and especially during World War II. With the portrait of a fanatical, ruthless and unscrupulous desk criminal, Leiser succeeded in shedding light on the 'Eichmann Principle' and that of the murder of Jews carried out on an industrial scale. In addition, he woven a series of highly topical recordings of the ongoing trial against Adolf Eichmann in Israel into this film. "
Paimann's film lists found: “The development of power of the totalitarian, National Socialist regime and the 'work' of one of its exponents: Adolf Eichmann, head of the Jewish department in the Reich Security Main Office , responsible for mass deportations, shootings, industrial mass murder ... This becomes strictly authentic through, not the usual newsreel style Archive recordings and internal party instruction films that bring new things to the familiar, with factual commentary and originally skilful editing, even if it was impaired by subsequent cuts ... presented in a very startling way for those interested in documentaries ”.
“Documentary film that gives a comprehensive overview of the activities of Adolf Eichmann in the extermination of European Jews. At the same time he examines the National Socialist ideology and its effects on henchmen of death like Eichman. "
“Encouraged by the success of his montage cinema milestone DEN BLODIGA TIDEN / MEIN KAMPF (1960), Erwin Leiser ventured into a time piece with EICHMANN UND DAS DRITTE REICH: A film that historically contextualized current events and took a position on a political process of historical importance - the trial of Adolf Eichmann. The cinema, you can feel it here to this day, was then (still) a place where the present was developed and history was made. Brauner was only involved in the film as a minority, which is why he is rarely recognized in the context of his work - although politically he is as important as MORITURI or YOU ARE FREE, DR. KORCZAK. "
literature
- Tobias Ebbrecht: Documentary as a court case. Erwin Leiser's “Eichmann and the Third Reich” (1961). In: Filmblatt, Vol. 18, No. 51, 2013, pp. 47–58.
- Erwin Leiser, God has no change. Memories, Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1993, pp. 160–166.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Eichmann and the 3rd Reich ( Memento of the original dated November 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in: Paimann's film lists
- ^ Eichmann and the 3rd Reich in the Lexicon of International Films
- ^ "Eichmann and the 3rd Reich" on filmfestival-goeast.de
Web links
- "Eichmann and the 3rd Reich" in the Federal Archives
- Eichmann and the 3rd Reich in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Eichmann and the 3rd Reich at filmportal.de