About throne and love
Sarajevo - Um Throne und Liebe is a film biography from 1955 and the subject of the assassination attempt in Sarajevo on the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este .
action
Austria-Hungary is preparing for the visit of the heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este, and his wife, Duchess Sophie Chotek von Chotkowa , to Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, the 525th anniversary of the Battle of the Blackbird Field . Meanwhile, Gavrilo Princip and Nedeljko Čabrinović , members of the Mlada Bosna underground movement , which is striving for a self-sufficient Serbian state, are planning an assassination attempt on the heir to the throne. At a banquet in the spa town of Ilidža near Sarajevo, he emphasized his plans to integrate a Serbian state into Austria-Hungary.
There are postponements in the schedule of the visit because, officially due to troop exercises on the occasion of the anniversary, not enough soldiers are available to stand in line. Franz Ferdinand himself would prefer not to make the visit because his wife is not seen as befitting his class, but he bows to the wishes of his uncle, the Emperor Franz Joseph I. Duchess Sophie becomes restless on the eve of the planned visit after having seen her Drawer finds a note with the Serbian inscription "Ujedinjenje ili Smrt" ("union or death") and learns from her husband that no troops will be present.
Meanwhile, Čabrinović, Princip and their like-minded comrades, with Danilo Ilić as the head of the group, plan the course of the attack. They want to line up along the Archduke's planned route in Belgrade; whoever manages to kill Franz Ferdinand should swallow a poison ampoule so that they cannot reveal anything later.
Meanwhile, the Archduke does not take seriously the warnings of the Serbian envoy, who advised against visiting Sarajevo due to the tense situation. In his opinion, a cancellation of the visit would be interpreted as a weakness. He does not allow himself to be dissuaded from the planned visit when his General Merizzi finds the security precautions in Sarajevo inadequate and Duchess Sophie thinks that Franz Ferdinand should after all the tortures to date - his health problems after taking office after the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria -Hungary in Mayerling and the resistance to the wedding of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie - do not put your life at risk.
While the people of Sarajevo are waiting for the Archduke, Ilić and Grabež are arrested and Čabrinović is almost unintentionally exposed by his lover Nadja. Čabrinović finally manages to drop a bomb on the vehicle in which the Archduke is sitting with his wife. Both survived the attack. Čabrinović tries in vain to swallow the poison capsule and jump into the Miljacka , and is arrested.
Arrived at the town hall, Archduke Franz Ferdinand expressed his displeasure with the attack and announced possible steps by the Austrian emperor. The arrested assassins did not reveal their accomplices during police interrogation, not even when Duchess Sophie tried to talk to them.
Meanwhile, Archduke Ferdinand wants to visit Count Merizzi, who was injured in the attack, in the hospital; Sophie is to be taken to the train station. However, she insists on staying with him; both continue their visit. However, the driver of your car gets lost because of confusion about the route. When attempting to turn, the present Gavrilo Princip fires shots at the duke couple; both are mortally wounded. The doctor called no longer comes on time.
background
Originally, the Vienna Mundus production company planned to shoot the film in co-production with the Yugoslav Bosna film company at the original locations. But this failed because of the different views on how the historical processes were presented. While the Viennese production company wanted to present the processes objectively, Dr. Vintschi, head of Bosna-Film, on a praise for the assassins around Gavrilo Princip, whom he described as "our [s] Wilhelm Tell ". An attempt at a co-production with the Belgrade Ufus film company also failed, this time due to objections from the state authorities.
For this reason the film was shot on the outskirts of Vienna. Franz Ferdinand's last, at the Hotel Bosna in the spa town Ilidze barred banquet before the assassination was in a villa in a suburb of Vienna Hietzing turned the scenes by Franz Ferdinand visit to the Town Hall after the first assassination attempt with a bomb originated in Vienna North Station , the Vienna suburb Atzgersdorf presented represents the Turkish quarter of Sarajevo.
According to the wishes of director Fritz Kortner and the Mundus film company, the film was originally to be called "Sarajevo" due to the symbolic character of the place where the attack took place. However, the film was renamed “Um Thron und Liebe” by Hamburg's Europa-Filmverleih, since, in the opinion of its chief dramaturge, the film title “Sarajevo” is too meaningless for the German film audience; Instead, the title should focus on the love story between Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie Countess Chotek von Chotkawa.
The otherwise factual film deviates from the historical events in two places: On the one hand, Sophie's visit to the Serbian Orthodox Metropolitan - where she asks him to warn Franz Ferdinand of a possible assassination attempt - did not take place. On the other hand, there was no meeting between the Serbian ambassador in Vienna and the "Highness" (who is possibly supposed to represent Franz Ferdinand's adversary, Obersthofmeister Alfred von Montenuovo ).
Reviews
“The film has its strengths in capturing the atmospheric and political climate in Europe at that time and is seriously deepened by psychological deepening. Of course, it requires a great deal of knowledge about the political context, so that it does not appear conclusive on its own. "
literature
- Sarajevo - The Deed of the Black Hand . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1955 ( online ).
Web links
- To throne and love in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- A love drama behind the Sarajevo attack . Welt Online , June 27, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ Sarajevo - The act of the black hand . In: Der Spiegel . No. 28 , 1955 ( online ).
- ↑ About throne and love. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .