Vienna 1910

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Movie
Original title Vienna 1910
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1943
length 85 minutes
Rod
Director EW Emo
script Gerhard Menzel
production Karl Künzel for Wien-Film GmbH
music Willy Schmidt-Gentner
camera Hans Schneeberger
cut Arnfried Heyne
occupation

Vienna 1910 is a German movie from 1943 . The film biography with strong Nazi propagandistic elements about the last three days in the life of the Viennese mayor and anti-Semite Dr. Karl Lueger was staged by EW Emo with Rudolf Forster in the leading role.

action

Vienna on March 7, 1910. A news spreads like wildfire through the kuk -Kapitale: "The Lueger is dying" The equally popular as controversial 65-year-old mayor has made in the course of his political life with his decisions not only friends . High officers in full regalia have gathered in the Hofburg and, as Austrians loyal to the emperor, utter mocking comments. One of them says frankly what he thinks of Karl Lueger: “The Lord Mayor, who stole the love and affection of the Viennese from our emperor.” Another finds that the suspected cause of death, blood poisoning, “is a very stylish, very appropriate way of death for a demagogue ”as Lueger was.

But not only those who are loyal to the emperor do not cry after the moribund local politician. Even the Jews of the city can hardly hide their secret joy over the hoped-for imminent death of Lueger. "The Lueger is dying," proclaims one, to which the other replies: "Your word in God's ear." One of Karl Lueger's bitterest political opponents is Kommerzialrat Lechner from the liberal opposition. When he heard of Lueger's death (“A good news”), he immediately took care of his business and tried to profit from the current weakness of the Lueger party. By speculating about Lueger's imminent death, he absolutely wants to make a profit: "There will be building sites, finally free economy."

There is dispute and happiness among Vienna's politicians over the news of the mayor's dramatic state of health. In parliament, heated discussions flare up about several Lueger projects, which are intended exclusively to serve the common good and the Viennese citizens, which meets with little approval from the lucky knights and liberal profiteers of misery. Then the terminally ill Lueger steps into the hall. He speaks out with much verve against the hyenas of commerce and unscrupulous profiteering. Above all, his commitment to a municipal insurance company for all Viennese distinguishes Dr. Lueger as a social reformer who is committed to justice towards the individual citizen. Lueger formulates criticism of capitalism , he wants Vienna's gas station and tram to be owned by the city so that every Viennese can also afford these everyday things. Parliament is raging with enthusiasm, Commerce Councilor Lechner, who sees his skins swimming away, wipes the sweat from his forehead. The speaker Lueger proves to be a fighter against social democrats like the imperial court, against irresponsible capitalists like against Jews .

In the meantime, the implacable camps of Lueger supporters and the representatives of the Pan-German Association , both mostly students, have met in front of the university, and a great fight begins. Two Jews, who are a bit out of the way and talking to each other, are happy about it - the quarrel between the warring camps can only benefit them, they believe. After the experiences with the apparently healthy mayor and his rousing parliamentary speech on the Lueger affair, Kommerzialrat Lechner no longer wants to hope for fate. So that his business is not completely ruined, the Commercial Council decides on Lueger: “We have to help” and means that everything must be done to accelerate Lueger's death. As an ally for his sinister intentions, he seeks Dr. Adler, a Jewish newspaper maker and political opponent of the mayor.

Meanwhile, Lueger's childhood sweetheart, the married Maria Anschütz, has traveled from Brno to say goodbye to the dying and blind mayor. A sleazy informant sees Maria leaving Lueger's house and passes this news to the journalist Adler so that he has enough compromising material to continue to incite against Lueger in his paper. The mayor is happy to have seen Maria again, but asks her to go home to her husband now. But Maria stays in Vienna, close to him, she doesn't want to leave him alone at the moment of approaching death.

When Lechner meets with Adler to think about how to accelerate Lueger's demise, he only tells him that Lechner should wait for tomorrow's newspaper article about the mayor. That would finish off the unloved politician. In view of Lueger's vigorous appearance in parliament, the senior officers are also extremely disgruntled. One of them is summoned to the emperor and says that he "doesn't know how to gently teach his majesty that."

Lueger is furious when he hears Adler's headlines in the newspaper the following day. The “people's anger” destroys the editorial staff of the Jewish journalist, who sees the devastated editorial room as if petrified and swears vengeance. Kommerzialrat Lechner throws huge amounts of government bonds on the market to ruin the city of Vienna and the Viennese. "This Kommerzialrat, hand in hand with the Jews" then poisoned Lueger. But he can't be broken down. With all his remaining strength, he is pushing his last social building project forward, as he realizes that he doesn't have much time left.

A new message hits Vienna like a bomb: Georg von Schönerer is in town! Lueger and Schönerer are both fighters for fundamental upheavals, and their anti-Semitism also unites them. But what separates them even more is fundamental. Even if both see themselves as anti- Habsburgs and German-Nationals , Dr. Lueger was more in favor of the rational policy of small steps, the gradual change in conditions through compromises, while the impetuous and incapable of compromise Schönerer is inspired by the destruction of the Habsburg state and forcing all Germans under one state roof. He is a “fanatic of the future”, as one man says in a conversation with another in a pub. "He wants Greater Germany and away with the Habsburgs."

At Lueger's request, Schönerer came to Vienna, because shortly before his death he wanted the discussion again, in the hope of reconciliation, since ultimately both men had very similar goals. Finally, Lueger and Schönerer meet on March 9, 1910, one day before Lueger's death. In this very open dispute, it becomes clear to both of them that there are a few things that separate them - Lueger sees himself as an ethnic German loyal to Austria-Hungary, while the massive Schönerer speaks of himself as a German national, as a Greater German. In view of the fact that two supporters from both camps were killed in the recent clashes in front of the university, Lueger appealed to his counterpart: “Two Germans have smashed each other's skulls, and all around our enemies are raging with pleasure, our common enemies, Herr von Schönerer . "Schönerer replies: Lueger was far too considerate, too willing to compromise and too little straightforward, namely" for the sake of dear, lazy peace "and feels Austria-Hungary, this" rotten structure "as he calls it, for reasons of false sentimentality instead of making space for a great empire of all Germans. Lueger was once “destined to greatness by providence”, believes the disappointed Schönerer (and thus takes up a term that Adolf Hitler later frequently used - to make the analogy to Hitler's Pan- Germanism ideology perfect, let the film-Schönerer in This dispute with Lueger even say: "There will be a kingdom of all Germans one day", not a "piecemeal" as he felt it in the film in 1910, but "a great German Reich", and everyone who gave birth to this state seek to delay, commit “a crime against history that cannot be rape”). Both men, Schönerer said, once had the same ideals, but he, the mayor, had betrayed them for a long time.

Then Schönerer leaves the hall. The blind Lueger does not notice Schöneer's departure and begins to defend the path he has chosen in the counter-speech. In the evening, Lueger attended the festive ball of the city of Vienna, bent overhead. He is told that the emperor cannot come because he is indisposed, whereupon Lueger makes a mocking remark. In the meantime, Kommerzialrat Lechner takes his own life, as his speculations on Lueger's death did not come up and he was driven into financial ruin by the political decisions made by Lueger immediately before.

During the ball, Dr. Karl Lueger has a fit of weakness and is taken to a room by his family. There he fell asleep forever in the morning hours of the following day, March 10, 1910, while Maria Anschütz and the young Lueger supporter Karl Lechner were waiting outside the door. In the morning, the Viennese gather in droves in front of the town hall to commemorate their dead mayor. Among them is Schönerer, who takes off his hat out of respect for the great opponent and fellow campaigner. A black flag is waving on the town hall tower.

Political background and production notes

Vienna 1910 had a long and complex to complicated history. The film planned as early as 1940 under the title Lueger was shot from September 23, 1941 (outdoor shots) and November 10, 1941 (studio shots) and was censored on August 21, 1942. The premiere took place on April 16, 1943 in Vienna. Vienna was shown for the first time in Berlin on August 26, 1943 .

It was logical and only a matter of time that the cinema of the Nazi state would one day take on this central figure from the phase of Adolf Hitler's early political-ideological decision-making. In Mein Kampf , Hitler wrote about Lueger as early as the mid-1920s: “The last great German whom the colonists of the Ostmark gave birth to from their ranks was not officially one of the so-called 'statesmen'; but as this Dr. Lueger, as mayor of the 'imperial capital and residence city' of Vienna, performed one unheard of achievement after another, one may say that conjured up all areas of communal economic and cultural policy, he strengthened the heart of the entire empire and, via this detour, became a greater statesman than the So-called 'diplomats' were all together back then. ”Ideologically, however, Hitler felt an even greater closeness to Lueger's adversary Georg Ritter von Schönerer , his fanaticism and radicalism in questions of Pan-Germanism and the deep rejection of the multi-ethnic state Austria-Hungary and the house before him Habsburg he shared indefinitely. In Mein Kampf the following can be read about this: “Compared in their abilities, it seemed to me even then to be more beautiful than the better and more thorough thinker in matters of principle. He recognized the inevitable end of the Austrian state more correctly and more clearly than anyone else. If one had heard his warnings about the Habsburg monarchy better, especially in the Reich, the misfortune of Germany's world war against all of Europe would never have come. "

Obviously, there were numerous disruptions in interested circles in Vienna in the run-up to the film. In a diary entry by Joseph Goebbels on March 15, 1942, it says: “There is a radical political clique in Vienna that wants to bring this film down. I won't let that happen. The film should first be shot, and then you can say whether it still needs to be corrected or whether it needs to be changed entirely. "

The leading role of the mayor Karl Lueger went to the Austrian actor Rudolf Forster in 1941 as a reward for his return from American exile (summer 1940). His return to the Reich of Adolf Hitler had "caused unusually high waves of indignation in exile circles."

The film is peppered with propagandistic elements that emphatically concern the most important points of the Nazi ideology: Vienna 1910 intensively propagates the idea of Pan-Germanism , caricatures parliamentarism and attacks an unrestrained capitalism, which is scourged as "anti-folk" and anti-social . In addition, the work spreads all conceivable prejudices against Jews and thereby conveys the National Socialist state principle of hostility to Jews . The roles of the two central protagonists are clearly assigned. While in the film Lueger stands for the old, the outdated, the compromise and the politics of small steps, Schönerer is characterized as a great innovator, as a pan-German revolutionary and a despiser of compromises in the spirit of Hitler. Although the film pays great respect to both personalities, the sympathy for Vienna in 1910 tends towards Schönerer, who, in his radicalism, is portrayed as a pioneer of National Socialist ideology and sometimes uses literal Nazi terms.

Again and again, individual scenes stand out in the film that seek to manifest the hatred of Jews as a supposed necessity. In a particularly infamous scene, Rudolf Forster, in the role of Lueger, explains to Viennese children the importance of his chain of office. Each sign on this chain stands for a city district, he says. The first district stands for the inner city, according to Lueger, where the nobility and the church, the House of Habsburg, i.e. the power of Austria, live, while the second district, Leopoldstadt, stands for the Jews with their money, envy, greed and hatred, in short: “the seven deadly sins, ”as Lueger explains. When he reached the tenth district with his declaration, the chain of office falls down and tears between the first and second shield (i.e. district). A dissolution of the ties between the state and the Jews, which is regarded as imperative, is symbolically propagated.

In another perfidious scene, the young OW Fischer appears particularly anti-Semitic in the role of the hot-headed son of the Commercial Council. During a speech battle in parliament, he and the Jewish newspaper maker Dr. Adler to a loud argument. After Fischer tried to defame him coram publico and cut him off - “The Jews have nothing to say!” - he beats Dr. Eagle several times in the face.

In a third scene, while the student supporters of Lueger and Schönerer are banging their heads in front of the university building, two Jews who are strongly recorded about the benefits that can be drawn from the discord between their opponents and are happy: “God preserve the emperor and idiocy for us the Goi . "

Although Heinrich George officially played the second leading role in Vienna in 1910 and ranks right behind Rudolf Forster on the cast, he only appears after 57 minutes of playing time. His dialogue with Forster lasts a good eleven minutes, after which he can only be seen briefly in very few sequences.

As in ... riding for Germany , Herbert Hübner embodies with Dr. Adler is the anti-Semitic distorted caricature of a Jew.

The filming of Vienna in 1910 took place in 1941/42 in both Babelsberg and Vienna.

The film received the Nazi rating “politically and artistically valuable” and was released from the age of 14.

Karl Weber designed the buildings, Sepp Ketterer assisted Hans Schneeberger with the camera work.

Vienna in 1910 was a huge cash flop. In an unpublished list from January 12, 1945 of the films with the worst box office results, the lavishly designed production came in first place with 2.1 million RM . The film had cost about 2,497 million Reichsmarks.

Due to its political tendencies, the showing of the film was banned by the Allied military authorities from 1945.

Reviews

Bogusław Drewniak's 'Der deutsche Film 1938–1945' wrote: “The Nazi film set a monument to the deserted liberal, the anti-Semitic, Christian-social mayor”.

Kay Weniger's "In life more is taken from you than given ..." called the film a "strongly tendentious strip."

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bogusław Drewniak: The German Film 1938–1945. A complete overview . Düsseldorf 1987, p. 302.
  2. ↑ Adolf Hitler: Mein Kampf , III. Edition, Munich 1930, p. 74.
  3. ↑ Mein Kampf , p. 107.
  4. ↑ Quoted from Der deutsche Film 1938–1945 . P. 302.
  5. ↑ Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 57.
  6. ↑ See: Der deutsche Film 1938–1945 , p. 631.
  7. ↑ See: Ulrich J. Klaus: Deutsche Tonfilme , Volume 12, Filmjahre 1942/43, Berlin 2001, p. 240.
  8. ↑ Der deutsche Film 1938–1945 , p. 302.
  9. ↑ Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 629.

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