Reprehensible & Wolff (film)
Tadellöser & Wolff is a two-part television series from 1975 that was produced in sepia by Polyphon Film- und Fernsehgesellschaft for ZDF . It is based on the novel of the same name by Walter Kempowski . The first broadcast took place on May 1st and 3rd, 1975. The film was a great success, both for Eberhard Fechner as a director and for Walter Kempowski as the author of the novel. In 1976, Fechner received the special award from the Minister of Culture of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of the Adolf Grimme Prize .
action
The film begins like a documentary : Ernst Jacobi in the role of Walter Kempowski introduces the viewer to the action with family photos and recordings from Rostock . As a result, Jacobi occasionally comments on the plot from the off .
The film depicts the life of the middle-class Kempowski family in Rostock from 1939 to 1945 , true to detail and close to the original . In addition to the description of the special events in Walter's life and in the family, there are also depictions of everyday life, such as walks with his father through Rostock, in school and youth groups, with friends and swing music, at meals and Christmas parties with the family, going to church or going to the cinema. Father Karl loves cigars from the company “ Loeser & Wolff ”, which always leads him to say “faultless, faultless, faultless and Wolff” when praised.
The plot begins with the Kempowski family moving into a new apartment in Rostock on April 16, 1939. This is followed by a description of the situation in the new apartment and the events in the family, during a meal together, when visiting grandfather and at home a scene with the neighbor's daughter.
During dinner, Father Karl announces a vacation trip. The family went to the Harz on August 10, 1939 . You live in an officer's home. There they received news of the impending start of war, whereupon they left prematurely.
The paternal grandfather dies soon after the family returns. During the inspection of the estate, considerable debts are discovered that now have to be paid back, so the family cannot move into the grandfather's villa, but rents it out. Walter falls ill on Christmas Day. The doctor diagnoses scarlet fever and talks about a six week recovery period.
Walter later took piano lessons. The piano teacher is strict and Walter doesn't seem to have practiced enough. Nevertheless, in 1941 he played the piano at a Christmas party of the Hitler Youth in the Rostock City Theater .
Then there is a heavy bombing raid on Rostock. Mother Grete is assigned as an air raid warden, she sends the residents to the basement. The house is only slightly damaged, but the street has been bombed several times. Brother Robert, who was in the city as a reporter, reports on the considerable destruction in Rostock. Dr. Krause's seltzer water factory in the neighborhood burns down.
The Dane Sven Sörensen, an employee in the office of his father, was from the Gestapo arrested because he had plotted bombing in a city map. Mother Grete goes to the Gestapo to get him free. He is also released shortly afterwards and moves into the apartment of the Kempowski family because his own apartment was destroyed by bomb hits.
Father Karl comes home as a first lieutenant on leave from the front , and there are initially tensions in the family, which later calm down. Since Walter's performance at school has deteriorated considerably, it is decided that he has to go to the very strict Anna Kröger, known as Aunt Anna, for tutoring .
Walter's sister Ulla and Sven Sörensen married in May 1943. The young couple did not have any problems with the racial laws , as Sven was a “northern national”. The wedding celebration takes place in the apartment of the Kempowski family, because food had to be bought “black” because of the war economy, and many relatives travel to attend. Ulla and Sven then move to Denmark. The family said goodbye to them at the train station on the train to Copenhagen. The family members who remain in Rostock are on the one hand sad about the departure, but on the other hand they are also happy that Ulla is now safe.
During the 1944 school holidays, Walter spent three weeks at Gut Germitz. The Gutshof am Plauer See belongs to the family of Ferdinand von Germitz, whom he knew from tutoring Anna Kröger. During his stay, he got to know Greta, Ferdinand's sister, better.
Father Karl returned home on vacation in October 1944. Due to the current war situation, the mood during his stay is already very sad. At the end of his vacation, Walter and his mother say goodbye to their father at the train station. From there he will return to his post in an uncertain future.
Since mother Grete's father's house in Hamburg was destroyed by bombs, he came to Rostock. The grandfather is taken into the family home. Meanwhile, a refugee , Mrs. Stoffel, has also been quartered.
On February 17, 1945, Walter was also drafted. He is employed as a courier, and in mid-April 1945 when he was assigned to Berlin, he realized that the Red Army must have come very close to the city. He looks for a way out of the city and then manages to find another train in Nauen to Rostock, with which he arrives again on April 25, 1945 in Rostock.
The film ends with the scene on May 1, 1945 in which Walter sits on the balcony with his mother and grandfather and then Soviet soldiers occupy Rostock.
Filming
The entire film is not shot in color , but Fechner consciously decided on sepia as a stylistic device in order to give the film more authenticity. The shooting took place in October 1974 in part in Börßum in Lower Saxony in the Wolfenbüttel district. Platform 1 in Börßum was relocated to Rostock in the film store. Also Lüneburg in Lower Saxony, Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg-Harburg (sermons in Heimfelder Paul Church and school scenes) were filmed at the TV two-parter. The photos were taken at the Kempowski family's home on Wattenbergstrasse in Hamburg-Heimfeld . Gut Damp in the district of Rendsburg-Eckernförde in Schleswig-Holstein served as the filming location for Gut Germitz .
Film music
The main musical theme of the film with the text “Years of Life; all in vain. When will we see each other again? ” Delivered the 1st movement of the 6th Symphony in B minor , op. 74, “ Pathétique ” , by Peter Tchaikovsky .
During the course of the film, the jazz classic Georgia on My Mind by Hoagy Carmichael is played in several scenes .
Reviews
- The cast also appears to be ideal: How Edda Seippel plays mother Kempowski's oppressively unsuspecting indestructibility, how she nöls her notorious "No, how it is now possible": how Martin Semmelrogge puts down son Robert's throwback; how Karl Lieffen, here a disciplined comedian, lets the “birdy” father swagger his puns and in the end even brings him a trace of tragedy through his chatter, which has become listless during the war experience - “primig”!
- A film is being shown - the director: better unthinkable; the actors: accomplishing the feat of showing individuals who are exemplary - people who, unmistakable in their independence, nevertheless function as character masks - a film that, set in the past, also signifies the present. The perfect tense, Kempowski and Fechner show, is an imperfect tense. The action is still ongoing. The structure of the K. family has not changed. The leitmotifs of the film point beyond the piece and show that repetition is possible at any time. The social-Darwinian thought pattern of this family remains dominant.
continuation
1979 appeared, also under Fechner's direction, the three-part continuation of the Kempowskische Familiengeschichte under the title A chapter for yourself .
DVD
The film has been available on DVD since 2005.
literature
- Walter Kempowski : Blameworthy & Wolff. A bourgeois novel . World Edition - 25 authors from 60 years (Volume 12). A. Springer, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-941711-11-2 , 464 pp.
- Walter Kempowski, Eberhard Fechner: Censure Remover & Wolff - A chapter of its own . Series of materials on ZDF television programs . 2nd edition, 16. – 23. Thousand. Goldmann, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-442-03902-9 , 207 pp.
- Rolf Becker: Flawless, primitive . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1975, p. 151 ( online - film advance notice).
Web links
- Tadellöser & Wolff in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rolf Becker: Flawless, primig . In: Der Spiegel . No. 18 , 1975, p. 151 ( online - film advance notice).
- ↑ There is no question of torture and burning . In: Die Zeit , No. 20/1975