Falk Harnack

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Falk Harnack (born March 2, 1913 in Stuttgart , † September 3, 1991 in Berlin ) was a German director , screenwriter and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

family

Falk Erich Walter Harnack was the youngest son of the painter Clara Harnack , b. Reichau, and the literary scholar Otto Harnack , a nephew of the theologian Adolf von Harnack and the professor of pharmacology and physiological chemistry Erich Harnack , grandson of the theologian Theodosius Harnack and the younger brother of the lawyer and resistance fighter Arvid Harnack and a cousin of Ernst von Harnack , the how his brother became a victim of the Nazi regime. He did not get to know his father, who committed suicide in 1914. His sister Inge (1904–1974) was married to Johannes Ilmari Auerbach from 1922 to 1930 and from 1931 to the violinist Gustav Havemann , a relative of Robert Havemann .

Life

Very early on, through his brother Arvid, Falk Harnack came into contact with humanism , through which he also came into contact with people who later belonged to the Rote Kapelle resistance group . These acquaintances made a great impression on him, so that the propaganda of the NSDAP bounced off him. After attending school in Weimar , during which he introduced his school friend and later fiancé Lilo Ramdohr to his family, who lived in nearby Jena , he graduated from high school in 1932. In 1933 he began his studies, first in Berlin, from April 1934 in Munich .

As a student, Harnack took part in a leaflet campaign against the NS student union at the University of Munich in May 1934 . In 1936 he did his doctorate under Artur Kutscher on the playwright Karl Bleibtreu and in the following year went to the National Theater Weimar and the Landestheater Altenburg , where he worked as a director until 1940. Then he was drafted into the Wehrmacht .

In 1942, when he was in Chemnitz , members of the Munich resistance group Weisse Rose , especially Hans Scholl and Alexander Schmorell , contacted him through mutual acquaintance Lilo Ramdohr. Through him they wanted to establish a connection to the Berlin resistance circles around his brother Arvid and Harro Schulze-Boysen as well as to Hans von Dohnanyi . He established the connection through his more distant relatives Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer . But the group was arrested that same year. Many of them were executed, including Arvid on December 22, 1942 and his wife Mildred , a native of the United States, on February 16, 1943 .

Falk Harnack was also in contact with Sophie and Hans Scholl in February 1943 . After the Scholl siblings and other members of the "White Rose" were arrested and executed, the same fate seemed to overtake him. But surprisingly he was acquitted by the Munich People's Court on April 19, 1943 for lack of evidence and because of "unique circumstances".

In August 1943 he was assigned to Greece by his previous Wehrmacht unit in Penal Battalion 999 . When he was about to be arrested in December and taken to a concentration camp, he managed to escape thanks to the help of his superior, Lieutenant Gerhard Fauth . He joined the Greek partisan movement ELAS . Together with Gerhard Reinhardt he founded the Anti-Fascist Committee Free Germany and became its leader.

When he returned to Germany after the end of the war, he learned that several members of his family, namely his cousin Ernst von Harnack , relatives Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer and brother-in-law Hans von Dohnanyi , had been murdered by the SS in the spring of 1945 . He first took up his professional activity as a director and dramaturge at the Bavarian State Theater in Munich. In 1947 he went to the Deutsches Theater Berlin .

From 1949 to 1952 he was artistic director at DEFA . During this time he shot the film Das Heil von Wandsbek based on a book by Arnold Zweig . The events that are portrayed in this film have gone down in history under the name " Altona Blood Sunday ". When it came to a dispute with the SED about this film, he left the GDR in 1952 and went to West Berlin . He was originally intended to direct the film The Subject , but that never happened.

Joint grave with Käthe Braun at the Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin-Zehlendorf

In the first few years he worked for the production company CCC-Film and, alongside Helmut Käutner and Wolfgang Staudte, was the most important director of post-war German films . From the end of the 1950s, he was almost exclusively active for television. He also wrote the scripts for many of his films. From 1962 to 1965 he was a senior director at the newly founded ZDF . In the following years he worked as a freelancer. In addition to entertainment films, he also made sophisticated films, some of which had the theme of National Socialism and the fight against it. In 1955, for example, he created the movie July 20 , which dealt with the failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler . This film was awarded the German Film Prize in 1956 in the category “Films that contribute to promoting democratic thought”. At the 1961 Berlin International Film Festival he was a member of the international jury. In 1962 he shot the film Everyone dies for himself for television based on the novel of the same name by Hans Fallada , which is about the resistance of small people, namely the couple Anna and Otto Quangel ( Edith Schultze-Westrum and Alfred Schieske ), who in the end fail and be executed.

Falk Harnack was married to the actress Käthe Braun , who was also often seen in his films. He died in September 1991 after a long and serious illness.

His written estate is in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

Awards (selection)

Filmography

  • 1951: The Wandsbek ax
  • 1954: novel by a gynecologist
  • 1955: July 20th
  • 1956: night of decision
  • 1956: Anastasia, the last daughter of the Tsar
  • 1957: like a storm wind
  • 1958: restless night
  • 1959: Doctor without a conscience
  • 1959: The Pinedus Case (TV movie)
  • 1960: The Trial (TV movie)
  • 1961: The Marquise of Arcis (TV movie)
  • 1962: Everyone dies for himself alone (TV movie)
  • 1963: The Wolves (TV movie)
  • 1964: Sometimes Heaven plays a part (TV movie)
  • 1964: Pamela (TV movie)
  • 1964: A gynecologist charges
  • 1965: And no longer Jessica (TV movie)
  • 1965: The gardener of Toulouse (TV movie)
  • 1966: White gives up (TV movie)
  • 1966: The First and the Last (TV Movie)
  • 1966: Who will save our farmhand (TV movie)
  • 1967: A Sleep Prisoner (TV Movie)
  • 1967: The fight for rubber (TV movie)
  • 1968: The Black Sun (TV movie)
  • 1968: Irrecoverable (TV movie)
  • 1970: Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin - The Hour of Decision (TV movie)
  • 1970: Peenemünde (two-part documentary, television film)
  • 1971: The thing in itself and how to shoot it (TV movie)
  • 1971: A case for Mr. Schmidt (TV movie)
  • 1973: The Astronaut (TV Movie)
  • 1973: The Dead from Pont Neuf (TV movie)
  • 1974: The Persecutor (TV movie)
  • 1974: Silverson (TV movie)
  • 1975: Here rests George Dillon (TV movie)
  • 1976: Erika (play based on Ursula Krechel , TV film)

Theater (direction)

Radio plays

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Falk Harnack estate in the German Resistance Memorial Center in Berlin; see also the short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center
  2. ^ ZEIT history 4/09 - German resistance
  3. ↑ books.google.de
  4. ↑ 11.55 p.m. ZDF . In: Berliner Zeitung , July 16, 1996
  5. ↑ filmreporter.de
  6. ↑ Falk Harnack Archive Inventory overview on the website of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.
personal data
SURNAME Harnack, Falk
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart
DATE OF DEATH 3rd September 1991
Place of death Berlin