It's cold in Brandenburg (kill Hitler)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Movie
Original title It's cold in Brandenburg (kill Hitler)
Country of production Switzerland
original language German
Publishing year 1980
length 140 minutes
Rod
Director Villi Hermann , Niklaus Meienberg , Hans Stürm
script Villi Hermann, Niklaus Meienberg, Hans Stürm
music Frank Wolff
camera Hans Storm

It's cold in Brandenburg (Killing Hitler) is a documentary by Villi Hermann , Niklaus Meienberg and Hans Stürm about the Swiss Maurice Bavaud , who planned an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in 1938 . The film traces stations in Bavaud's life in Switzerland, France and Germany, in particular his trip to Munich and Berchtesgaden as well as his imprisonment and execution in Berlin. Individual scenes were re- enacted with actor Roger Jendly . The film was produced by the Zurich Film Collective , Second German Television and Swiss Television .

effect

It's cold in Brandenburg (Killing Hitler) was seen by critics less as a historical than as a political film. "The search for traces of Bavaud has expanded into a confrontation with a climate of cold that is not just a thing of the past," wrote the Basler Zeitung . "Nevertheless, the associations are precise and the political statements - without being explicitly formulated verbally - are just as precise."

Der Bund also judged in a similar way : «What appears to be absolutely necessary in view of such works that are intended to shed light on aspects of history is the position of the authors from their current point of view; the connection of the past with the present. " The fatherland identified potential for conflict here: "This is its explosive nature and for those who do not go left like the authors, it may also be a nuisance."

The film was only perceived as a nuisance by the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, however : «With pictures from the Federal Republic, the GDR and Switzerland - in partly suggestive montages - a mishmash of condemnation is touched, in which no sound structures, neither political nor social, neither historical nor legal, are made recognizable and distinguishable. "

In connection with the broadcast on the Swiss television DRS on September 1, 1982, the head of the Department of Culture and Society, Eduard Stäuble , objected to two passages: on the one hand, the statements of the former prisoner in Plötzensee about the Nazi past of the then German Federal President Karl Carstens , on the other hand the entire last quarter of an hour of the film, which mainly includes the changing of the guard in Berlin and the Zurich Wehrschau, but also the reparation. In a public statement, the filmmakers protested against the planned cuts, which were almost without exception criticized in the print media. In the end, Swiss television limited itself to suppressing the statements about Karl Carstens on the soundtrack, the central sentence of which is: “If I only see or hear Mr Carstens next to him, because of his voice and his charisma, then I have the feeling that I'm cracking a uniform on him, making him a little younger, and then he marches off again. " Program director Ulrich Kündig justified the measure as follows: «In the words of the person concerned [the former prisoner], today's President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Karl Carstens, is assumed to have a certain attitude towards National Socialism from today's point of view, an assertion made by the Film authors has in no way been correctly processed in a journalistically correct manner. "

In 1982 Villi Hermann, Niklaus Meienberg and Hans Stürm received an Adolf Grimme Bronze Prize for the film .

literature

  • Niklaus Meienberg. It's cold in Brandenburg: a Hitler attack. Limmat, Zurich 1980; Wagenbach, Berlin 1990. ISBN 3-8031-2186-8 .
  • Your brother. Der Spiegel 8/1981

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Verena Zimmermann. "My heart will burst". Basler Zeitung December 3, 1980.
  2. ↑ RRI. «Helpless images against the silence: 'It's cold in Brandenburg (kill Hitler)' - Swiss documentary in the cellar cinema”. The federal government February 4, 1981.
  3. ↑ Franz Ulrich. «The Hitler assassin Maurice Bavaud». Fatherland November 24, 1980.
  4. ↑ Martin Schlappner . «Filmspiegel:‹ It's cold in Brandenburg ›». Neue Zürcher Zeitung December 1, 1980.
  5. ↑ BG. “What the DRS cannot answer for: The documentary 'It's cold in Brandenburg' will be cut on the screen on September 1st”. The federal government August 28, 1982.
  6. ^ Adolf Grimme Prize 1982