Frisian distress

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Movie
Original title Frisian distress
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1935
length 96 minutes
Age rating FSK no approval, reserved film
Rod
Director Peter Hagen alias Willi Krause
script Werner Kortwich
production Hermann Schmidt
(Delta-Film Production and Distribution GmbH Berlin)
music Walter Gronostay
camera Sepp Allgeier
cut Wolfgang Becker
occupation

Friesennot (subtitle: A German fate on Russian soil ) is a German film by Willi Krause from 1935. Krause, then Reichsfilmdramaturg , worked under his pseudonym “Peter Hagen”.

action

A German village community whose founders had once left their Frisian homeland in order not to have to renounce their religion lives in remote Russian forests . After a long absence, Christian Kröger, who is ill and wants to see his daughter Mette again before his death, returns to this community. The news that he brings "from outside" is disturbing and is about war, hunger and a "new government". While the men of the village prepare for defense and combat, the faithful community leader Jürgen Wagner insists that every government is appointed by God. Kröger dies before an agreement can be reached in the village.

In the meantime, the Frisian village is discovered by the new communist rulers on one of their exploratory flights. Commissioner Tschernoff is sent to the village with a troop to urge the chief to give in kind for the hungry and at the same time to win over the cause of the revolution. Even after the taxes have been sent, the Russians make no move to leave the village. While Tschernoff's intentions are honest - as a former tsarist officer he secretly regards the revolution as an injustice; besides, he is in love with Mette, who apparently reciprocates his feelings - his men begin to plunder the village. Tschernoff succeeds in appeasing Wagner further, even a general festival of reconciliation is celebrated. Meanwhile, however, Klaus Niegebüll, Mette's foster father, is preparing to arm the villagers. When the Russians discover three pistols during a search of his house, the village blacksmith, Hauke ​​Peters, directs the farmers' suspicions of the “traitor” Mette, who is then driven into the moor and thus to her death by her foster father.

A new commissioner, Krappin, takes control of the Frisian village. He has the prayer house , which Tschernoff had spared so far, occupied and desecrated by his men. Only when Mette's friend Hilde Winkler was raped and murdered did Wagner join the armed resistance. A bloodbath ensues, in the course of which both Tschernoff and Wagner are shot. Since Wagner's last words are “Looking for a new home!”, Niegebüll lets the village burn down.

Historical background

The film is essentially based on the situation of the Russian-German Mennonites . This religious group, originally from Friesland, was characterized by its consistent non-violence and unconditional pacifism , especially in its colonies on Russian soil . Because of oppression or conscription at home, the Mennonites emigrated from Friesland to Poland and, after the third partition of Poland, to Russia. Because of renewed conflicts with the authorities and the expansion of conscription to Russian- Germans , some Mennonites settled in the wilderness of Siberia and the Ural region .

The "Frisians" in the film Friesennot are therefore correctly portrayed as being extremely isolated and solitary. In the film, however, it is also indicated that the unconditional pacifism of the village community can only be reached by other people from a distance.

Production and reception

The film "Friesennot" was shot in the Lüneburg Heath in mid-May 1935 (exterior shots); the interior shots followed at the beginning of September in the Tobis Studios Berlin-Grunewald. When it was submitted to the film inspection office for censorship , the film was banned from young people on November 11, 1935 and was given the highest rating of “State-politically and artistically particularly valuable”; the youth ban was converted - presumably after minor cuts - into a restricted youth approval (from 14 years). The distribution was taken over by the NSDAP's Reich Propaganda Management , Main Office for Film , and world sales by Tobis-Cinema. The film premiered on November 19, 1935 at the same time in Berlin's Ufa-Palast am Zoo and in Leipzig's Ufa-Palast. From Joseph Goebbels ' diaries it can be seen that he and Hitler were enthusiastic about "Friesennot". "Friesennot" was one of those films that were in Adolf Hitler's private film archive.

On March 6, 1939, the highest rating was withdrawn and replaced by the lower rating “State-political and artistically valuable”, which the film kept until December 31, 1942, although it was already on September 7, 1939, shortly after the German invasion of Poland , out of consideration for the Soviet ally ( German-Soviet non-aggression pact ). In 1941, after the beginning of the German-Soviet War , it was performed again under the title “Village in the Red Storm”.

After the end of the Second World War , all copies of the film were confiscated by the high command of the victorious Allied powers and its performance was prohibited. The film, which has no chance of being released, was never submitted to the FSK .

A copy may be found. a. in the holdings of the Federal Archives .

criticism

During the Second World War, in which the communist USSR had been chosen by the German government as the number 1 enemy of the world since 1941, Friesennot was praised as a prime example of a "nationalist" film.

In Otto Kriegk's Der deutsche Film im Spiegel der UFA you can read:

“We owe the work“ Friesennot ”, the portrayal of the fate of Frisian farmers in the Soviet Union, to some of the pioneers of National Socialist film. National Socialism had just defeated Bolshevism in Germany. The Reich Propaganda Leadership of the NSDAP set itself the goal of countering the “Potemkin” or “Storm over Asia” with a German film. The poet Werner Kortwich, Peter Hagen, the cameraman Sepp Allgeier, together with the actor Friedrich Kayßler and several other actors, created a work that achieved a far-reaching political and educational effect. Technical weaknesses in detail are irrelevant. There is no better indication of this film's impact than its re-release after years; At a time when the knowledge of Bolshevism had been clarified for us through the personal views of millions of German soldiers. The film was just as fresh and young as it was on the day of its premiere. "

- The German film in the mirror of Ufa, 1943

For Erwin Leiser , Friesennot is an example of anti-communist propaganda, transported by the conflict between the Volga German villagers and the Bolshevik Red Guards . Leiser considers the portrayal of the communist government as hostile to religion to be particularly cynical, since its arguments apply just as well to the Nazi regime.

The film's large lexicon of people called Friesennot a “flat, Nazi ethnic German problem film” in which Valéry Inkijinoff embodied “the caricature of a Slavic-Soviet Politruk who squeezed the Volga Germans to the extreme”.

The lexicon of international films describes the film as "a flatly naturalistic Nazi tendency piece whose polemics against" non-species "were praised as" particularly valuable in terms of state policy "."

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Bogusław Drewniak: The German Film 1938–1945. A complete overview. Droste, Düsseldorf 1987, p. 632.
  2. ↑ Otto Kriegk: The German film in the mirror of Ufa - 25 years of struggle and completion. Berlin 1943, p. 212 f.
  3. ↑ Erwin Leiser : "Germany, awake!" Propaganda in the film of the Third Reich . Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1968, p. 36 f.
  4. ↑ Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 4: H - L. Botho Höfer - Richard Lester. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 155.
  5. ↑ Klaus Brüne (Red.): Lexicon of International Films. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1987, Volume 2, p. 1140.