Fathers and Sons (1986)

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Movie
Original title Fathers and sons
Country of production Germany , Italy
original language German
Publishing year 1986
length 520 minutes
Rod
Director Bernhard Sinkel
script Bernhard Sinkel
production Dieter Minx
music Peer ravens
camera Dietrich Lohmann
cut Jean-Claude Piroué
occupation

Fathers and Sons is a four-part television series from 1986 based on the script by Bernhard Sinkel , who also directed. The multi-part series is about the rise and fall of the influential industrialist family Deutz against the backdrop of the dramatic history of the German Empire in the first half of the 20th century. The protagonists of the plot are entirely fictitious, but reveal some aspects of real historical people in the chemical company IG Farben .

action

Part 1: Dear Fatherland - 1911 to 1916

In 1911, the Deutz paint and tar factory can already look back on 25 years of company history under Privy Councilor Deutz. His eldest son Ulrich is supposed to take over the company one day, but is killed near Verdun during the First World War . So the younger son Friedrich comes into play. Against the resistance of his father, he founded the interest group (IG) for the German tar paint industry in order to raise the necessary capital for the large-scale production of poison gas and saltpetre. (128 minutes)

Part 2: The Group - 1923 to 1929

The action takes place against the background of the inflation year 1923 and the subsequent Roaring Twenties . As a member of the IG, CFO Körner was able to save the Carl Julius Deutz chemical plant through the difficult post-war years. However, the Deutz company finally loses its independence against the will of the founder, since all members of the IG merge to form an overall group. Privy Councilor Deutz becomes a member of various supervisory boards. In an argument with his grandson Georg Deutz, who wants to become an actor, the uncomprehending privy councilor suffers a fatal heart attack. (124 minutes)

Part 3: Power and Powerlessness - 1932 to 1938

The plot begins in the third year of the global economic crisis and extends over the subsequent period of National Socialism to the pogroms against fellow Jewish citizens. With the help of the liaison man Sokolowski, Finance Director Körner establishes contacts between the IG group and Nazi politicians in Berlin. The National Socialists assure the group that they will politically support the synthesis of gasoline from coal. The ingenious chemist Heinrich Beck, son-in-law of the late privy councilor Carl Julius Deutz, organized the production of materials essential to the war effort. In the course of the persecution of the Jews, the banker Bernheim, the group's previous financier, is also expropriated, and Körner joins the bank as the new managing director. (129 minutes)

Part 4: On Honor and Conscience - 1941 to 1947

The action begins when World War II is already in full swing. The chemist Heinrich Beck built a large factory for the production of aviation fuel near Auschwitz. Concentration camp prisoners are used to work as cheap convicts. Georg Deutz makes regime-compliant feature films as a UFA director. After the military collapse of the Third Reich , the IG directors were arrested, but denied their own guilt for the crimes of the Nazi era. After a brief internment, you are either released immediately or sentenced to short prison terms. (139 minutes)

background

Director Sinkel, who researched the topic for four years and wrote the screenplay, relies on the monograph Die unheilige Allianz der IG Farben by the US lawyer and private historian Joseph Borkin and documents from the IG Farben Trial . Die Zeit notes that the film author also picks up a piece of his own family history when dealing with the father generation: Sinkel's great-grandfather was one of the founders of the company, his father was an authorized signatory in the company and later chemical officer under Hermann Göring . His great-uncle Fritz ter Meer was one of the indicted directors in the IG Farben trial and shortly afterwards was again involved in building up one of the successor companies to the West German chemical industry.

The four-part series was produced on behalf of WDR by Bavaria Atelier GmbH with the participation of Taurus-Film, FR3, ORF and RAI / RETE1 and shot in English. The budget was 18 million marks. The shooting lasted nine months from November 1984 to July 1985 and took place in Munich, Heidelberg and Salzburg as well as in Karlsbad and Prague. The Faber-Castell Castle in Stein an der Rednitz and the Leunawerke site in the former GDR also served as the setting . Fathers and Sons aired on November 12, 16, 19 and 23, 1986 on Erste .

criticism

Siegfried Schober sees in Fathers and Sons an "in spite of the serious subject [...] a refined entertainment film" , which "often blatantly settles the dark German past up to the colportage." How Sinkel stages this farewell to a German bourgeoisie, is not free from fascination, so Schober. On the occasion of the screening at the Munich Film Festival , Claudius Seidl was not very enthusiastic about "eight hours of history lessons" and describes father and sons as "sloppily staged, awkwardly structured, a series of half-hearted things."

The reviewer of the time, on the other hand, judges more differentiated and calls fathers and sons a “man's film” in which men make history, fathers run a strict regime, sons rebel or submit. And yet it is the women who, like a "spawn of Schiller's passion" , grab almost every one of their scenes, they stand for "the other principle, the opposite world of unconditional feelings and pure humanity." They act consistently, they show themselves Self-determined and demanding, only Charlotte Deutz submitted to "mute and tolerant the whims and unreasonable demands of men." Director Sinkel tells the rise and fall of IG Farben based on the fate of two men, that of founding father Carl Deutz - with Burt Lancaster as the strict one, but just, dutiful family patriarch ideally cast - and his son-in-law, the engineer and Nobel Prize winner Heinrich Beck, who as a representative of the new generation of entrepreneurs "drunk with the intoxication of world power and big money, deviated from the path of honesty and without hesitation made a deal with the devil." Bruno Ganz embody the ambivalence of that figure between bizarre genius, honest man and ice-cold acting Business man credible as “man in pain and world mover in one.” Striving to ensure historical accuracy in both furnishings and quotations, Sinkel renounces the moral index finger. Without judging, he placed IG Farben “in the continuity of history and the sexes.” Victims and perpetrators could hardly be distinguished from one another, and so “this highly political family drama” dismissed the audience “with vague feelings of powerlessness and resignation . ” , Which the reviewer finds that there is not enough historical clarification in a film with this claim.

literature

  • Bernhard Sinkel: Fathers and Sons. A German tragedy. Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7610-8416-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Siegfried Schober: History in Stories , Die Zeit No. 37, September 6, 1985
  2. ↑ a b c d e f Farbwerke Friedrich Schiller AG , Die Zeit No. 46, November 7, 1986
  3. ↑ a b Harald Wieser : A beating punctually at six , Der Spiegel No. 23, June 3, 1985
  4. ↑ Claudius Seidl: I see what you do not see , Die Zeit No. 28, July 4th 1986