Penn'a you

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Movie
Original title Penn'a you
Country of production Germany
original language German , Pennsylvania Dutch , English ,
Publishing year 1982
length 60 minutes
Rod
Director Georg Brintrup
script Georg Brintrup
production WDR
Georg Brintrup, Rome
Phoenix Film, Rome
music Pennsylvania German folk songs
camera Ali Reza Movahed
cut Carlo Carlotto
occupation
  • William T. Parson
  • Isaac Clarence Kulp Jr.
  • Rev. Richard Druckerbrod
  • Earl C. Hague
  • Robert Mays
  • Georg Brintrup
  • Paul Wieand
  • Roberta Kramer

Penn'a You is a German film essay filmmaker Georg Brintrup from 1982. The title refers to a standard in the US abbreviation for Pennsylvania Dutch (also Pennsilfaanisch Deitsch called).

action

The film is about an endangered language, the Pennsylvania Dutch. The writer and director of the film stages "Conversations" with five Pennsylvania Germans:

  1. First, a university professor, William T. Parson, told of the arrival of the first Germans in Pennsylvania in 1683. They followed a call from the Englishman William Penn , who was developing the model for a new settlement in North America, Pennsylvania . He called it his "Holy Experiment", a system of government based on brotherhood and personal freedom of all residents. The state became a refuge for members of religious minorities who were persecuted or discriminated against in Europe. The immigrants brought their language with them and kept it, a mixture of Bible High German and Middle Franconian, Swabian and Alemannic dialects. They soon opened a German-language printing company. There were newspapers and books, even a Bible in German (Sauer Bible) was printed long before the first English-language Bible appeared in the USA.
  2. A member of the Mennonite Brethren (Mennonite Brethren), Isaac Clarence Kulp, gave an overview of the various religious communities and sects that came to Pennsylvania from German areas. He differentiates between the “gay dutch” and the “plain dutch”. Unlike the latter, the gay Dutch live “in the world”, so to speak, and do not reject the ideals of American society. What they all have in common is that they attach great importance to education. They built school houses from the beginning.
  3. Richard Druckerbrod, a pastor of the United Church of Christ , recorded the development of the language, which has been in constant battle with English for 300 years, but is still spoken by 300,000 people every day and understood by another 400,000. It gives an insight into their peculiarities: Not only the words, but even the syntax of Pennsylvania Dutch was influenced by English , the dominant language of America. The various dialects have harmonized with each other and have become a fairly homogeneous Pennsylvania German. So they were not only preserved, but also developed further.
  4. A linguist and Pennsylvanian German author, Earl C. Haag, explains that the United States has a different relationship to history than Europe. The present is much stronger in America. That also influenced the Pennsylvania-German language and its literature. Examples of Pennsylvania-German poetry are presented by the writer Paul Wieand. While the language is German in origin, its literature is American in feeling, thought and form. Until the introduction of English as the language of instruction in 1911, German was taught in schools.
  5. The Amish school teacher Robert Mays declares that he is legally obliged to teach the one-room school in English, but that he continues to teach German as a foreign language. The children learn to write and read in the old Gothic script , in which the Bible is also printed. Amish children speak and hear only Pennsylvania Dutch in their families. They leave school after compulsory schooling on their 15th birthday; because the Amish do not believe in higher education. Robert Mays gives an insight into the Amish way of life, which is based solely on the principle of simplicity of mind. You have to constantly defend this attitude against an “unnecessarily complicated” world.

At the end of the film, the school teacher leads the director into a museum, where tourists can get to know the way of life of the Amish sect through wax figures. He says: "Even if we are exhibited in the wax museum, that does not mean that we are no more." In the past twenty years, the Amish population in Lancaster County has more than doubled.

background

The film was shot in two languages ​​in the original language, German and English. It was the first time in 1981 that an Amish school teacher stepped in front of a film camera. According to the order of the sect, this is strictly forbidden, unless the person concerned tacitly allows the photographing. The public appearance of an individual is known as “posing” and is strictly rejected.

The premiere of the film in the USA was announced in the newspapers in the Pennsylvania Deitsch:

"IN THE SCHPIGGEL GUCKE - When I arrive here, I want to eat it, the gude Gleeder pulls aa, and I don't see it all in the sheet. What do you see? Mer longs what mer meent ass mer sehne dutt. Oftmols bun the pit ebbes aa ass he meent ass in Addning waer, awwer the Fraa meent annerschders. Let it be Hemm sett en anneri Farreb; the Schlupp basst net to the rock; or the ebbes schunscht. So don't eat anything as it happens, awwer aa like annere um eem around us dreadful.
This is how it was in Friehyaahr, Georg Brintrup and he was leader from Rome to shoot a film for “TV” driwwe in Germany. Many of us do in that area when we have help and appearances in the film. The filmmaker looks at the matter woll annerschder aa ass like me selwert us aa-peep. (...)
You have a blast to see if you have kumme and Georg was watching films (he said the film was all made in English and not in high Deitsch) The films were rolled on the kummende Sunndaagowed on November 6th at St. John's United Church of Christ in Mickleys oweds at 7 p.m. It makes sense blendi Blets fer the machine aa. I henn aa then the opportunity to iwwerschwetze.Es watt en freewwiches Upfer eigsammelt fer the Umkoschde to pay. Can you bring some kitchen or something like that with you as long as you long for us! "

- Pit Scheffelbrenner ES DEITSCH SCHTICK, in The Morning Call of November 1, 1982, B8

distribution

The first broadcast of “Penn'a Du” took place on October 1st, 1982 on WDR . The American premiere of the German and English versions was on November 6, 1982 in the Wismer Auditorium at Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Further television broadcasts followed on German television stations until 1983. In the USA, the English version was broadcast by independent, local television stations, such as the WFMZ, in southeastern Pennsylvania.

Reviews

“The film is a staged documentary. All conversations have been worked out over weeks with the Pennsylvania Germans and the Amish. This brings the German director / producer / writer closer to reality. The image that emerges in this way is, so to speak, created by this minority themselves. It is fascinating to see how an Amish school teacher reflects on himself and his group of people who think differently. You have never seen that in a film here. "

- The Independent of October 13, 1982

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Film on Penna. German premieres at Ursinus , Spring City Reporter, Wednesday, October 13, 1982
  2. Penna. German Topic of Film Set at Ursinus , The Times Herald, Tuesday, October 19, 1982