Serengeti must not die

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Movie
Original title Serengeti must not die
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1959
length 85 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Bernhard Grzimek
Michael Grzimek
script Bernhard Grzimek
Michael Grzimek
production Okapia
music Wolfgang Zeller
camera Bernhard Grzimek
Michael Grzimek
Alan Root
Richard Count
Hermann Gimbel
cut Klaus Dudenhöfer
occupation

Serengeti mustn't die is a German film documentary by Michael Grzimek and his father Bernhard from 1959.

action

The film tells of the beginnings of the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania . At the end of the 1950s, the Tanzanian national park administration wanted to fence in the protected area around the Ngorongoro crater. Bernhard and Michael Grzimek were invited by the national park administration in 1957 to get a precise picture of the animal migrations and to provide the national park administration with the values ​​it needed for their project. Using a new counting method with two planes, the Grzimeks found out that the herds migrated differently than expected.

background

The conflict simmered since the mid-1940s when the Maasai began to graze their herds on the central plains and in the Ngorongoro Crater due to population growth. Tanganyika's government ordered people to leave, but the Maasai ignored it. Therefore, in 1956, due to pressure from the independence movement, Tanganyika decided to assign wild animals and each population group of the Serengeti a separate area. The park should be divided on the basis of the research work of W. Pearsal , with the eastern part of the Serengeti steppe should be separated and left to the Maasai. This would have reduced the park size from 4500 to 2000 square miles. The Grzimeks offered to buy up parts of the Serengeti with the proceeds from the book and film “No place for wild animals” . The British administration refused this. In return, the director of the national park, Peter Molloy, invited the Grzimeks to investigate the Serengeti.

While counting, they overlooked the large herds in the north of the Serengeti and their important dry season grazing land, but due to the herd movements they came to the conclusion that the park would be too small and the migration would be destroyed. Michael Grzimek was killed in a plane crash while filming when a vulture hit the wing of his plane and it crashed. The colonial administration no longer wanted to wait for the results of the Grzimeks and decided shortly before Michael Grzimek's death that the northern plains should be added to the Serengeti National Park as planned. The Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA) should be offered to the Maasai by the government as compensation and at the same time declared a wildlife sanctuary, in which they are also allowed to graze their cattle.

Grzimek's subsequent campaigns to save the wild animals in “his” national park are said to have been based on manipulating the feelings and expectations of the public in Europe and politicians in Africa. The Serengeti has provided space for wildlife and agriculture for more than 2500 years. In 1975, however, Tanzania finally banned all agriculture from the Ngorongoro.

The film was the international highlight for Bernhard Grzimek among scholars and film critics. As a reward there was an Oscar for best documentary film in 1960 .

Filming and research

Michael Grzimek spent from December 1957 until his death on January 10, 1959 (except February, June and November 1958) in the Serengeti with his research work, which was to become the basis for his doctoral thesis. His work was largely completed by his death. His father, who had accompanied him most of the time, made the film from the recordings of his son and summarized the scientific work.

Conflict with the film rating agency

In order for Serengeti Must Not Die to have a chance at all to be shown in cinemas with economic success, the documentary needed the rating valuable or particularly valuable for the corresponding discount on the entertainment tax . Dr. Bernhard Grzimek therefore submitted the cut work to the responsible Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden (FBW). After her examination, she did not have concerns about the fact that in a scene undressed young women were shown quite freely bathing, but wanted to award the predicate valuable only if Grzimek would delete two passages in his film. One related to the sentence "Lions do not kill their own conspecifics, so it would be better off humans if they behaved like lions" and the second following - famous - passage at the end of the film:

“These last remnants of African animal life are a cultural common property of all humanity, just like our cathedrals, like the ancient buildings like the Acropolis , St. Peter's Basilica and the Louvre in Paris. A few centuries ago, the Roman temples were demolished in order to build town houses from the blocks. If a government, whatever its system, dared to demolish the Acropolis in Athens in order to build apartments, then an outcry of indignation would go through all civilized humanity. Neither are black or white people allowed to touch these last living cultural treasures of Africa. God made his earth subject to man, but not so that he could destroy his work completely. "

With such comparisons, "an unauthorized equation" is created , albeit with the best of intentions , so the reasoning of the FBW. Grzimek was outraged and refused to edit his film accordingly. In a letter to the authority, he explained the reasons, among other things:

“Human works of art can be created over and over again, while an animal species can never arise again once it has been exterminated. The makers of the film see it as a moral and cultural obligation to work for the protection of the last and great remnants of African nature as well as for the preservation of European cultural buildings. This sentence actually represents the meaning and the work of this film. "

Grzimek saw the FBW's procedure violating the fundamental right to freedom of expression , and even considered the non-public and opaque evaluation procedure to be unconstitutional. Even after the FBW gave in and gave the rating “valuable” without any conditions, the matter was not over for Grzimek. According to his autobiography Auf den Menschkommen, he said in a public statement that he would never make a movie again in Germany "as long as I have to submit to the censorship of a group of people kept secret" . Grzimek's statement subsequently caused an extensive debate in the press, which sharpened the public's view of the Wiesbaden authority's assessment practice. [all quotations from the autobiography and the film cited here]

The book

While filming, Michael Grzimek wrote the manuscript for the book Serengeti Must Not Die. 367,000 animals are looking for a state . After his death, his father Bernhard Grzimek continued the work and completed the book. It was first published by Ullstein Verlag in 1959 and quickly developed into a bestseller that has been reissued over the years (most recently in 2009). By 1978 the total German circulation alone had reached 835,000 copies. There were also translations in more than 20 languages, so that the non-fiction book was also widely distributed internationally.

Awards

Reviews

  • The second full-length African film [...] serves the purpose of creating a home in a large Serengeti nature park for the wildlife threatened by the industrialization of Africa. [...] The somewhat confused cultural film is not only dedicated to the endangered animal world, but also to Michael Grzimek, who died in an accident during the shooting. - Der Spiegel , July 15, 1959
  • [...] The story is told with as much warmth as it is with expertise, and the Grzimeks' deeply felt passion for the fate not only of animals, but of the country and the people living in it is communicated in every picture. In the meantime, the film, which is commonly called “cult”, is already a hit today because it looks so pretty dusty. The title is emblazoned in the lurid letters of a horror film from the 50s, the music by Wolfgang Zeller moves you to tears with heartbreaking strings. But it fits together and works today as it did then. - Catherine Kleppe in a meeting of the DVD edition on 7 September 2005 in 3sat .com

DVD release

  • Serengeti must not die and no place for wild animals . Universal Family Entertainment 2004

literature

  • Bernhard Grzimek, Michael Grzimek: Serengeti must not die. 367,000 animals are looking for a state. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main / Berlin / Vienna 1959, ISBN 3-550-06070-X .
  • Franziska Torma: A nature conservation campaign in the Adenauer era. Bernhard Grzimek's African films in the media in the 1950s. Meidenbauer, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-89975-034-9 .
  • Vinzenz Hediger : The animal on our side. On the politics of the film animal, using the example of Serengeti, must not die. In: Anne von Heiden, Joseph Vogl (Ed.): Political Zoology. Diaphanes, Zurich / Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3935300940 , pp. 287-301.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c A nature conservation campaign in the Adenauer era. Bernhard Grzimek's African films. By Franziska Torma
  2. ↑ a b c d e The myth of wild Africa: Conservation without illusion, by Jonathan S. Adams and Thomas O. McShane
  3. ↑ The 32nd Academy Awards | 1960 . In: Oscars.org | Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences . ( oscars.org [accessed June 2, 2018]).