As long as there is life in me

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Movie
Original title As long as there is life in me
Country of production GDR
original language German
Publishing year 1965
length 114 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Günter Reisch
script Michael Tschesno-Hell
production DEFA , KAG "Red Circle"
music Ernst Hermann Meyer
camera Horst E. Brandt
cut Bärbel Weigel
occupation
synchronization

As long as life is in me is a German film biography by DEFA by Günter Reisch from 1965. The fictional film deals with the life of Karl Liebknecht from 1914 to 1916. The prestige project took place in 1972 in the film Despite everything! its continuation.

action

Berlin in 1914. Karl Liebknecht finally receives the papers from a comrade proving that Germany is secretly working towards the war. False statements in French newspapers about the strength of the French army are launched and Gustav Krupp von Bohlen and Halbach courted. Just recently attacked by Liebknecht, Krupp is immediately honored by the Kaiser. A little later, Liebknecht is at the wedding of the workers Käthe and Paul Schreiner, he learns that the Austrian heir to the throne was shot in Sarajevo . He suspects that Germany will take the chance to start a war. However, the necessary funds still have to be approved. At a first plenary session, Liebknecht still votes in favor of the funds due to the fact that the parliamentary group is compulsory. At the later session of the Reichstag, he is the only one who votes against. From then on he is considered an “un-German” and traitor to the fatherland. He was ordered to the front as a shipper, where he wrote his manifesto The main enemy in his own country in 1915 ! writes down, which reaches Käthe Schreiner through his front-mate Waldemar Lehmann, who makes it public. Paul Schreiner was drafted and died in the war, so that Käthe now has to raise her newborn child alone.

On leave from the front back home, Liebknecht met Rosa Luxemburg , who had been released from prison in 1916 . Both plan to break away from the SPD. You found the Spartacus League . In Jena, Liebknecht illegally leads a group of young people to prepare for the large demonstration on May 1st. This takes place in Berlin. Workers from all over Germany gather in the big city and although Liebknecht knows that if he appears as a speaker at the demonstration he will be arrested, he speaks to the crowd. He is being led away. Even in court - the hearing takes place after a short time behind closed doors - Liebknecht remains true to his position. While the masses are demonstrating for Liebknecht outside, he is led away.

production

Although required by the state, there had been no major film projects on personalities of the labor movement since the two films about Ernst Thälmann - Ernst Thälmann - son of his class (1954) and Ernst Thälmann - leader of his class (1955). It was not until the 1960s that the film project developed into Karl Liebknecht. Slatan Dudow was originally intended to direct the films, but Günter Reisch took over the project after Dudow's death in 1963. The scriptwriter was Michael Tschesno-Hell, who had already worked on the script for the Thälmann films.

6 million marks were available for the prestige project, an exorbitantly high sum by DEFA standards. Filming took over a year. The film locations were among others Berlin, Potsdam, Leipzig and Jena. As long as there is life in me was released on September 10, 1965. The film became the second most successful film of 1965 in the GDR after The Adventures of Werner Holt and before King Drosselbart .

Reviews

The GDR's contemporary critics praised the film as “a great and admirable collective achievement […]. Horst Schulze works the miracle of uniting this whole, enormous human truth of the national hero Karl Liebknecht, which has an impact deep in our present and future, in a sensitive, imaginative and historically concrete representation. ”Other critics noted that the film“ is not free from Scenes [is] that drown in the historical picture arc, which are purely illustrative. "

In 2000, Frank-Burkhard Habel wrote that the film "suffered from the claim to form Liebknecht's official image in an all-encompassing manner, but [had] interesting studies and [...] [impressed] with well-arranged crowd scenes."

For the lexicon of international film , Solange Life is in me was a "large-scale attempt to successfully suppress the pathos of other historical-biographical DEFA films of a time image with optically effective mass scenes and a remarkable performance by the main actor."

Awards

Günter Reich, Michael Tschesno-Hell, Horst E. Brandt and Horst Schulze were awarded the National Prize, Second Class, in 1966 . The film received the state rating "valuable".

literature

  • F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , pp. 556–557.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Ralf Schenk (Red.): Program supplement to the DVD edition So long live in me is / Despite all of it! . Issue 8. Icestorm / DEFA Foundation, Berlin 2005.
  2. ^ Ralf Schenk (Red.), Filmmuseum Potsdam (Hrsg.): The second life of the film city Babelsberg. DEFA feature films 1946–1992 . Henschel, Berlin 1994, p. 223.
  3. Heinz Hofmann: Liebknecht in the beauty of his courage . In: Märkische Volksstimme , September 15, 1965.
  4. Fred Gehler: ... in the beauty of courage . In: Sunday , October 10, 1965.
  5. F.-B. Habel : The great lexicon of DEFA feature films. The complete documentation of all DEFA feature films from 1946 to 1993. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89602-349-7 , p. 557.
  6. As long as there is life in me. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used