Krupp and Krause

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Television broadcast
Original title Krupp and Krause
Country of production GDR
original language German
year 1969
Production
company		 DEFA studio for feature films for German television broadcasting
length 458 minutes
Episodes 5
Director Horst E. Brandt ,
Heinz Thiel
script Gerhard Bengsch
music Helmut Nier
camera Horst E. Brandt ,
Peter Süring
cut Monika Schindler (episode 1–3)
Helga Emmrich (episode 4)
Helga Krause & Renate Müller (episode 5)
First broadcast 5th - 14th January 1969 on DFF
occupation

Krupp and Krause is a television film in five parts. The plot of the first part describes the industrialization up to 1933 and is partly based on the novel Krupp & Krause by Karl Heinrich Helms (Paulus Verlag, 1965). The film has a different focus than the novel by comparing the working world of the worker in the pre-war period with the (idealized) working conditions in socialism of the GDR and thus expanding the development of an industrial era to a period of around 60 years.

background

While the GDR in the first half of the 1960s mainly represented intellectual or bourgeois heroes, such as For example, in films like Conscience in Rebellion or Columbus 64 , which turn out to be allies for socialism, films are added towards the end of the 1960s whose protagonists offer themselves as identifying figures for everyone. They are "proletarian figureheads and sympathizers who correspond with the historical development of their class because they are building the new society as their own and for the first time are themselves representatives of power."

For the GDR, Krupp symbolizes capitalism and its order, its society, its strategy and tactics, which its representatives cannot openly and honestly explain so that the citizens follow it. There is no freedom for Krupp and Krause, only for Krupp or Krause. Capitalist information and lies are identical with each other. In contrast, socialism , peace and truth are identical with one another. The representation of the heavy machinery construction combine "Ernst Thälmann" in the fifth part, its economic orientation and its actions on an international scale is an example of the self-representation of the economic performance of the GDR, as it is in the eight-part documentation GDR - That's us (especially parts 1, 5 and 6) covered in more detail.

action

The film shows the career of the protagonist Fred Krause, whose life has been marked by contradicting processes of cognition and maturation over the course of 60 years of the labor movement. During the First World War, Krause grows up as a working class child of a Krupp employee in Essen and experiences capitalist exploitation. Nevertheless, he also started as an apprentice at Krupp in arms production, where as a young worker he did not question social conditions. When his girlfriend becomes pregnant, his father cleverly sends him to the front. When he returns, he is faced with inflation and unemployment. Through his uncle Jüll and the party newspaper Vorwärts , Fred came into contact with socialist ideas for the first time, questioned armed conflicts, and joined the communist class struggle. He realizes that the Krupp family earns billions through their business with death and war.

During the global economic crisis, Krause supported the class struggle of the workers in Essen as a non-party socialist, which is shown exaggerated in its importance, but is part of the history of the GDR. He experienced the Second World War in the concentration camp and worked there again for Krupp. He distances himself from his father and, as a Krupp worker in Magdeburg, subversively opposes his employer's plans to defraud the Soviet Union by delivering goods. He worked for a new socialist society and later rose to become plant manager of the Magdeburg heavy machinery combine, the successor company to Krupp in the GDR.

The credits of the first part indicate that the film used "motifs from the novel" by Heinrich Helms. The novel from Recklinghausen was subtitled "Novel of an Era". It ends in 1933. Krause's further career, the (in this form not historical) workers' uprisings in the plant during the economic crisis, imprisonment during the war, Krause's second marriage and the move to the plant in Magdeburg are the additions of Gerhard Bengsch.

Title of the individual episodes
  1. Why is it so beautiful on the Rhine?
  2. Masked ball
  3. Until the sharks stagger
  4. The rings are broken
  5. The time of the foundations and epilogue

The title of the first three episodes "Krupp and Krause", which depicts the company's development up to 1945, was changed to "Krause and Krupp" for the last two parts in order to illustrate the change in the situation in the GDR in the title. The changed title represents the victory of the working class . Until the end of the war, the main focus at Krupp was the production of war weapons, to which the workers had to subordinate themselves, then the plant in Magdeburg developed into a combine whose focus was on workers who contribute to building a socialist society with their work.

The fifth part contains the reorientation of the plant in terms of production and production methods such as automation processes, as well as an almost 30-minute epilogue introduced by fade-in, which outlines the economic policy of the GDR using the example of the Magdeburg Thälmann factory, on the role of the Leipzig trade fair for the international Economic dealings of the GDR and afterwards Krause's distant meeting with his predecessor in Magdeburg, the former plant manager Willibald Mengert, in the Gruson factory . The Thälmann-Kombinat can sell a complete production plant to India, and Mengert wants to negotiate about the planned supply by Krupp with a volume of one percent. Krause remains true to principle and can achieve that these parts are supplied from the friendly Soviet Union instead of the class enemy .

publication

The multi-part series was released on 35mm film in 1: 1.33 format as black and white film. It was broadcast for the first time on January 5, 1969 on German TV (DFF). There were repetitions in the program of DDR1 in 1973, 1974 (DDR2), 1975 and 1979 (both DDR1). In 2010, the films were shortened by approx. 30 minutes on DVD with an FSK rating from 12 years of age at Telepool (Edel). Excerpts from the film also appeared in the film Do you know the country ... A political review (DEFA, 1979), as well as in the documentary Im Land der Adler und Kreuze (DEFA, 1981), which shows the interdependencies between the power claims of politicians and the interests of the economy and industry between 1914 and 1945 from the perspective of the GDR.

reception

On the occasion of the first broadcast, the newsreel Der Augenzeuge reported on January 31, 1969 from the heavy machinery combine in Magdeburg , where some scenes from the film were shot. In addition to scenes from the 5th episode, those involved in the film met with workers from the heavy machinery construction combine "Ernst Thälmann" in the company to explain the relationship between the story and the history of the company in interviews. Dramaturg Ottomar Lang awarded the combine the DFF “Golden Laurel” award. Plant manager Paul Sgonina wrote for New Germany about the development of the plant and its portrayal in the film.

The Frankfurter Rundschau wrote in 1969: “While Helms was content with a partial dismantling of the Krupp legend (the fascination of which he succumbs to himself in the end), Bengsch aims at a more comprehensive historical explanation. Beyond the novel, which ended in 1933, he traces the fate of his heroes to the present day. "

The Munich song group took up this socio-political conflict between “Monopolherr” and “Prolet” on their album Wenn's Nach Dir Ging (1970) with the song Krupp Und Krause and called it in the refrain the “class contradiction that everyone understands”. The song was performed at the Xth World Festival of Youth and Students in Berlin in 1973 and published by the Festival Working Group . The text refers explicitly to the film plot: “In the other German state there are no longer the Krupps / The Krauses themselves are the masters of the GDR / So that Krupp can never establish himself there again / Krause is striving for recognition for the GDR ! "

For the German Broadcasting Archive , the film is one of the cinematic contemporary paintings devoted to the shifts in the political balance of power in Germany in this century. It writes literally: “The fate of the hero Fred Krause, played by Günther Simon, illustrates 60 years of the German labor movement. His life path from the worker at Krupp to the general director of the Magdeburg Ernst-Thälmann-Werk was a dramatic parable that was supposed to illustrate the social upheaval in Germany and ultimately the victory of the working class. "

The film service speaks of a "prestige production ... with which the superiority of the socialist GDR over the capitalist FRG in the fate of the Essen Krupp worker Fred Krause should be shown. At the same time, the film gives a (false) impression of the willingness of West German workers to engage in class struggle. "

Awards

The production collective of the film received the National Prize of the GDR 1st class for art and literature in 1969 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Beutelschmidt, Henning Wrage: "The book for the film, the film for the book": Approaching the literary canon on GDR television. Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2004 (excerpts online, p. 40)
  2. ↑ Karl-Eduard von Schnitzler for the program Der Schwarze Kanal (1977), script in the German Broadcasting Archive, p. 5
  3. ^ William Manchester: The arms of Krupp: rise and fall of the industrial dynasty that armed Germany in the war. Hachette, 2017. ISBN 031648394X , ISBN 9780316483940 . ( Reference online )
  4. ↑ DNB 451945239
  5. ↑ a b Frankfurter Rundschau of January 25, 1969, cited online at vallisblog.blogspot.com of March 26, 2009, accessed on July 12, 2019
  6. ↑ a b Brief description (takeover) at fernsehserien.de
  7. ↑ Broadcast dates at fernsehserien.de
  8. ↑ The witness 1969/06 (protocol information) at the DEFA Foundation
  9. ↑ a b Paul Sgonina: . Give us more works of this type short text from the discussion paper, New Germany, February 14, 1969
  10. ↑ Album data at discogs.com
  11. ↑ album data at discogs.com, cf. YouTube
  12. ^ Krupp and Krause / Krause and Krupp at filmdienst.de
  13. ^ "National Prize of the GDR" - Awarded to collectives and individuals (Class I - III) - Entry in the Federal Archives