My life for Ireland
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | My life for Ireland |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1941 |
| length | 97 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Max W. Kimmich |
| script | Toni Huppertz |
| production | Hans Lehmann for Tobis-Filmkunst GmbH (Berlin), Herbert Engelsing's production group |
| music | Alois Melichar |
| camera | Richard fear |
| cut | Willy Zeyn junior |
| occupation | |
| |
My Life for Ireland is an anti-British Nazi propaganda film by Max W. Kimmich from 1941.
content
Dublin in 1903: In an attack on British police officers, wanted leader of the Irish freedom fighters Michael O'Brien is captured and subsequently sentenced to death by hanging the following day. His pregnant fiancée Maeve Fleming visits him in prison and they both get married on site. Shortly afterwards Michael O'Brien presented Maeve with a silver cross with the inscription My Life for Ireland , which the best of the Irish freedom fighters should always wear.
In 1921, Maeve's son Michael O'Brien was about to complete his school career. As the son of a resistance fighter, he has to attend the British-run St. Edward's College, where Irish students are to be "transformed" into people who are loyal to England and are guarded around the clock. After years of calm, the British fear renewed attacks by the Irish , even if the leader of the Irish resistance movement Robert Devoy was wounded in a skirmish. He finds shelter at Maeve, through whom the Irish students are connected to the resistance group. New students like Patrick O'Connor are therefore first checked to see whether they are on the side of the Irish. After initial doubts, Michael O'Brien is convinced of Patrick's loyalty and invites him to his home. Patrick falls in love with Maeve, but also sees Robert Devoy in her house, who he thinks is Maeve's lover. In the following years, Patrick's school performance and his relationship with Michael deteriorate.
When Patrick sneaks out of the dormitory one night and goes to Maeve's house, the English student Henry Beverley, whose uncle is the head of the Secret Service , notices this . Set as a spy on the Irish students, he ambushes Patrick on his return, who tells him about his lovesickness. He believes Maeve kissed Robert Devoy when she actually hung Michael O'Brien's cross on him. Henry passes on the description of the alleged lover to the Secret Service, who arrests Maeve as a co-conspirator - Devoy managed to escape. Patrick blames himself for Maeve's arrest, especially since he has to inadvertently reveal her during an interrogation. He gets in touch with Devoy to prove his loyalty. It is useful that the English used the apparently on their side Patrick as a spy. Devoy provides the English with false information about the plans of the Irish resistance fighters through Patrick. Michael O'Brien sees such information transfer and thinks Patrick is a real spy. Despite being tortured by his classmates, Patrick does not give up his collaboration with Devoy and receives Michael O'Brien's cross from Devoy.
On the day of graduation, the Irish began to revolt against the English. Devoy, the only one who knows the real identity of Patrick, is killed. However, Patrick manages to convince Devoy's men of his loyalty and leads them through a secret passage into the Dublin prison, which means the victory of the Irish. Patrick is hit by a stray bullet and dies in Michael's arms. He recognizes from the cross around Patrick's neck that he has been on the side of the Irish all along.
production
Filming for Mein Leben für Irland began in August 1940 and ended in November 1940. Actor Will Quadflieg wrote in his autobiography We Always Play about an incident during filming about which cameraman Richard Angst reported. At the end of the film, the explosives specialist would have laid out functional mines for the battle scenes between the Irish and the English , which were supposed to explode precisely during the shoot. While the scenes were being prepared, the man was drafted into the military and left the shooting team with incomplete instructions.
“When hundreds of extras started to storm the film, some of them ran onto the explosive devices and were torn up or injured. At the editing table, however, it made no difference whether the people played their deaths or actually died, and so the film history was enriched with a bloody event. The incident was hushed up. The scenes came into the film. Apart from the eyewitnesses, nobody found out about it. "
The location was Maulbronn am Neckar . The working title of the film was Irish Tragedy . On February 12, 1941, the censors gave the film the rating of “14 years and over”. The premiere took place on February 17, 1941 in the Capitol in Berlin .
Temporal classification and criticism
My Life for Ireland was one of the anti-British films of National Socialist production that were made after Adolf Hitler's unsuccessful campaign for England from 1939 onwards. Britain has always been portrayed as an oppressor or traitor to minorities in these films: in 1940's The Queen's Heart , it was Queen Mary of Scots who was betrayed by England, and in Ohm Kruger the Boers were oppressed by Great Britain. However, a special focus was placed on Ireland and the Irish resistance struggle, which was discussed in Der Fuchs von Glenarvon (1940), also directed by Joseph Goebbels ' brother-in-law Max W. Kimmich, before Mein Leben für Irland . While in the Fuchs von Glenarvon “the fate of Ireland was only the background of an interesting private affair”, with Mein Leben für Irland Kimmich wanted to “create a film ... in which the totality of this unprecedented sacrificial liberation ring of the Irish was symbolically condensed.” This film was intended to be subjective and emotionally depict the history of Ireland in the early 20th century, the contemporary press wrote:
“Writing down Ireland's history with cool objectivity is impossible for a compassionate person. One would have to have a heart made of stone for that. One would have to be - English, in order not to get excited, in order not to passionately take sides in this struggle of a powerful people of civilization against a small nation of its own deep culture. "
The ostensible aim of the film was on the one hand to reveal the "contours of actual events" in Irish history, on the other hand these events "drawn together from a century to the period from 1904 to 1921, from a plurality of fates concentrated around a smaller group of people " showcase. Contemporary critics noted the focus on individual fates critically, but also stated that “the bold leap from the level of private conflict into the sphere of the dominant idea: the struggle between two fundamentally different worlds” had succeeded. The Irish were presented as "healthy" in the sense of National Socialist propaganda ("Here the people of the Irish, who ... from the eternal fountain of genuine and healthy folk constantly new forces flow ..."), while Great Britain was shown in this comparison as "sick" ("There, in its bulk, the seemingly solid, but in reality already rotten and brittle British colossus ...").
My Life for Ireland glorifies and romanticizes the Irish resistance struggle by portraying the youthful heroes as martyrs .
“In a similar fashion to the filmic depiction of National Socialist heroes, Irish nationalists are honored by sacrificial death, their spirit living on in the memory as martyrs, further emphasizing the contemporary connection between the struggle of minority groupings against British ambitions and the proclaimed purpose of World War II and Nazi propaganda. "
“Similar to the contemporary portrayal of Nazi heroes, the Irish patriots are honored by the sacrificial death and their spirit lives on in the public consciousness as martyrs, which shows the connection between the struggle of a minority against British claims and the proclaimed reason for the Second World War in the sense of the National Socialist propaganda underlines. "
While the Irish in the film are invariably idealistic patriots, “the English, especially the teaching staff, appear either to be very dumb, or, like the local British rulers, they are extremely vicious.” The stereotype negative and representative of the UK's approach is the leader of the Secret Service George Beverly. “This devious schemer was a major in World War I and just left his Irish sergeant [Duffy] on the battlefield with one shot in the thigh. He even took away the last bottle of water from him to keep his own precious life safe and in return received the Victoria Cross for bravery in the face of the enemy. "
My Life for Ireland also presents Maeve O'Brien, a suffering, fate-tested woman and thus the ideal image of women in the sense of National Socialist propaganda. Maeve loses her husband in the war and at the same time sacrifices herself as a mother. "From the start, this woman is in the deep shadow of a great fate; in her private life she symbolically suffers the suffering of all of her people."
Awards
The film was recognized by the National Socialist Film Inspectorate with the ratings "State-politically valuable", "Artistically valuable" and "Youthful value".
See also
Web links
- My life for Ireland in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- My life for Ireland at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ↑ Will Quadflieg: We always play. Memories . S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1976, p. 116.
- ↑ Dr. Günther Sawatzki: Bonded through generations . In: Filmwelt , No. 39, September 27, 1940, p. 5. The fox of Glenarvon is based on the novel of the same name by Nicola Rohn .
- ↑ a b Bonded through Generations , p. 5.
- ↑ See also Joseph Goebbels' criticism of an early version of the film: “Rough cut from Axel's film Irische Tragödie . Looks a bit empty and cold. Not a great achievement. Axel still has to work a lot on it. " based on: Elke Fröhlich, Angela Hermann, Jana Richter (eds.): The diaries of Joseph Goebbels . Institute for Contemporary History. Saur, Munich 1998, p. 44.
- ↑ Bonded by Generations , p. 6.
- ↑ a b Wilhelm Hackbarth: Films that we saw: My life for Ireland . In: Filmwelt , No. 10, March 7, 1941, p. 261.
- ↑ Hackbarth, p. 262.
- ^ Jo Fox: Film propaganda in Britain and Nazi Germany. World War II cinema . Berg, Oxford 2007, p. 171.
- ^ Rolf Giesen, Manfred Hobsch: Hitler Youth Quex, Jud Süss and Kolberg. The propaganda films of the Third Reich. Documents and materials on Nazi films . Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2005, p. 300.
- ↑ Erwin Leiser: Germany, awake! Propaganda in Third Reich film . Rowohlt, Berlin 1978, p. 90.
- ↑ Anna Dammann: "Irish Tragedy", Ballad of a Faith . In: Filmwelt , No. 50, December 13, 1940, p. 12.
- ^ Francis Courtade, Pierre Cadars: History of the film in the Third Reich . C. Hanser, Munich 1975, p. 167.