Secret tibet
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Secret Tibet (alternatively: Lhasa-Lo - The Forbidden City) |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1943 |
| length | 101 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director |
Ernst Schäfer , Hans-Albert Lettow |
| script | Ernst Schäfer, Hans-Albert Lettow |
| production | Ernst Schäfer |
| music | Alois Melichar |
| camera | Ernst Krause |
Secret Tibet is a German documentary film about the German Tibet Expedition Ernst Schäfer , which was sponsored by Heinrich Himmler and premiered in 1943. The premiere of the film took place on January 16, 1943 in Munich in the Ufa-Palast.
content
The film was compiled from footage shot by the participants in the expedition in Tibet in 1938/1939. The film included Tibetan war dances for the god of war Mahakala , presentations by the Tibetan military, cults for the dead and corpses of the Tibetans, and film sequences about the Tibetan state oracle. The racist measurements and molds of body parts of Tibetans by the Nazi scientists are also not missing.
background
One of the expedition's scientific staff, Bruno Beger , was responsible for measuring and classifying people in Auschwitz after 1939 . In 1970, he received a three-year prison sentence for the assignment to murder over 80 specially selected people.
rating
Ostensibly a cultural documentation of Tibet, the film conjures up desirable virtues in a propagandistic way: "Schäfer and his research colleagues were portrayed as 'types' that every 'normal' SS man and Hitler Youth could orientate themselves" . The distinction between ideology and documentation of Tibetan culture is difficult: “The film raises the question of what is Nazi propaganda about it and what are authentic representations. After all, the viewer perceives moving images that speak and that have been confirmed by numerous reports from western travelers to Tibet, even if they were not Nazis. "
Today, under the impression of other images about Tibet from films such as Seven Years in Tibet or Kundun , the Federal Agency for Civic Education states: “The archaic images of the films that were shot on this research trip collide with the gentle ideas of Tibet modern cinemas. "
literature
- Secret tibet. A film document of the German Tibet Expedition Ernst Schäfer 1938/39 (Hans Albert Lettow, Ernst Schäfer, Carl Junghans, Lothar Bühle, 1938–42)
Web links
- Secret Tibet in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The SS film “Mystery Tibet” , a lecture by Victor and Victoria Trimondi
- Science in the service of the Nazis: Professor Ernst Schäfer. News from ignorance , by Monika Köhler in: Die Zeit, issue 04, 1989