Weimar Pitaval: The Harry Domela Case

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Episode in the Weimar Pitaval series
Original title The Harry Domela case
Country of production GDR
original language German
Production
company		 German television broadcasting
length 86 minutes
classification Episode 6
First broadcast June 4th 1959 on DFF
Rod
Director Wolfgang Luderer
camera Adam Pöpperl
cut Rolf Bramann
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
The Jakubowski case

The Harry Domela case is a crime film in the TV epitaval series of the German television station by Wolfgang Luderer from 1959.

action

Harry Domela works for the farmer Schobrack in the cowshed, but instead of doing his job, he keeps the other workers from their activities with his stories (sometimes he is a baron, sometimes he was an officer in the Reichswehr), so that the farmer chases him from the farm. He lands in Berlin and is arrested in a waiting room at the Anhalter Bahnhof because he cannot show a ticket. In order to protect himself from prison, he claims that he is a Baltic and will ask for support from the Baltic Aid Committee. The very next day he visits this facility and would like to speak to Prof. Stellerbeck-Germor. The hard of hearing secretary Miss von Pressen mistook him for another expected visitor and gave him a letter of recommendation to Count Hardenberg. The professor, who comes after all, recognizes him as the poor unemployed person and gives him 50 pfennigs to support him so that Harry can immediately go back to the waiting room of the train station.

A cattle dealer and three of his drinking buddies are at the next table in the restaurant. When they are completely drunk and have lost the overview, Harry Domela takes his wallet lying on the table and disappears in an unobserved moment. Using the stolen money, he first changed his clothes and took the train to Heidelberg . Arrived here, he reports to the station master that his wallet has been lost. The officer is very unwilling and impolite until Harry signs the loss report with "Wilhelm, Prince of Prussia". Now the officer jerks, he jumps up, bows to Domela, addresses him with "Your Royal Highness" and develops a lot of activity to solve the problem, so that his boss, Oberamtmann Haeberlein, comes from the next room and joins the adulation . So that "His Royal Highness" has a little free hand until his wallet appears, Haeberlein gives him a banknote. He then phoned the Hotel Europäische Hof and advised the alleged prince. He met the von Blücher family in the hotel, who gave him a few carefree days. However, when he happened to read a telegram announcing the arrival of the real prince, the reason for his departure came about.

His next destination is Erfurt , which he knows from a previous job and stays there in the elegant Hotel Erfurter Hof , although he doesn't have a penny in his pocket. Here he introduces himself as Baron Korf, but lets it be seen that he is actually Wilhelm Prince of Prussia , which means that the world is at his feet there too. Generous gifts and homages ensure wonderful times that Domela enjoys extensively. Since such a high-profile visit does not remain a secret for long, the newspapers also write about it, which in turn makes the officers of the criminal police in Berlin pensive, because a request to the Royal Casket Administration shows that no member of the Royal Family is in this area. In order to clarify the problem of Korf, a Berlin detective is sent to Erfurt. At the same time, Domela receives the hotel's weekly bill and manages to distract from his insolvency by making a fake call to the Royal Casket Management in Berlin. But now Domela's freedom is running out, as an employee of the Imperial Authority has also registered in Erfurt, as he learns from the hotel director. At the last minute he was able to escape again, but the end of his noble career was approaching and he deservedly ended up in prison.

Production and publication

The television film was released as the 6th episode of the Weimar Pitaval film series and was broadcast for the first time on June 4, 1959.

The book was written by Friedrich Karl Kaul , who also speaks the connecting texts, and Walter Jupé based on authentic court records. Aenne Keller was responsible for the dramaturgy .

criticism

Erwin Reiche said in the Berliner Zeitung as follows:

“This game of 'Pitaval', as always commented by Kaul, is a piece of critical realism, seen with socialist eyes, albeit less strictly documentary than the earlier ones, dramaturgically less tight and less continuous. And the selection of the actors and their leadership did not show the same extreme distinctive precision of social and personal characterization in tone and drawing in each. And yet this episode of the 'Weimar Pitaval', which indeed created its own standards, was again a special treat, entertaining political and artistic object lesson. "

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Berliner Zeitung of June 9, 1959, p. 3