We, hostages of the SS

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Movie
Original title We, hostages of the SS
Country of production Germany
original language German , French , English
Publishing year 2015
length 2 × 52, 1 × 45, 1 × 90 minutes
Age rating FSK without age
limit JMK unrestricted
Rod
Director Christian Frey,
Carsten Gutschmidt (scene)
script Christian Frey
production Reinhardt Beetz
camera Frank van Vught,
Marc Reimer,
Peter Klotz,
Dirk Heuer
cut Christoph Senn
occupation

Wir, Geiseln der SS is a two-part series of German documentaries , shot between 2014 and 2015. The documentary series was produced by the Beetz Brothers Filmproduktion in cooperation with the broadcasters ZDF , ARTE , ORF and RAI . Christian Frey was responsible for the implementation as author and director, and Carsten Gutschmidt was the stage director. The series had its world premiere on April 7, 2015 on ARTE as part of a theme evening for the 70th anniversary of the historical events.

action

The two-part docu-drama is about Fey von Hassell, played by Henriette Schmidt, as the first-person narrator of the odyssey of the special prisoners and clan prisoners who were to be held in the so-called " Alpine fortress " in the last resistance plans of the SS , as well of their liberation in South Tyrol by the German Wehrmacht shortly before the end of the war. Among the prisoners were also many prominent people such as the Austrian Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg (played by Martin Thaler) with his wife and little daughter and the French Prime Minister Léon Blum with his wife. The events are mainly depicted from the perspective of children and mothers, who at that time were caught in the family liability of National Socialism . These were, for example, the cousins ​​Goerdeler (Caroline Heberling and Xenia Benevolenskaya), as well as Ingeborg Schröder ( Isabelle Barth ) the wife of the resistance fighter Johannes Schröder and their children Sibylle-Maria ( Anastasia C. Zander ), Hans-Dietrich (Philipp Franck) and Harring Schröder (Camillo Schlagintweit).

The SS hostages were collected from various camps in Dachau concentration camp in April 1945 and placed under the orders of SS-Obersturmführer Edgar Stiller (Gerhard Wittmann). Soon afterwards, the transport began in buses alongside the death marches of the other concentration camp prisoners to Austria to the Innsbruck camp , where SS-Untersturmführer Bader ( Uwe Bohm ) was assigned to the special command. From there the terrifying journey continued to Hochpustertal (South Tyrol), where the two SS soldiers waited for further orders and left the troop for a short time. The imprisoned Wehrmacht officer Colonel von Bonin ( Tim Bergmann ) used this to temporarily free the women and children, including cousins ​​Goerdeler and Ingeborg Schröder and their three children, from captivity and to reach the nearby Niederdorf with them. But they were intercepted again soon afterwards. Colonel von Bonin managed to escape a second time and was able to inform the Wehrmacht in the person of Wichard von Alvensleben (Rainer Frank) about the life-threatening situation of the hostages, whereupon he immediately set off with a unit on the way to Niederdorf.

The documentation is continually supplemented by historical recordings and documents as well as interviews with some surviving SS hostages (Jutta and Benigna Goerdeler, Hans-Dietrich and Sibylle-Maria Schröder), the historians David Stafford and Timothy Naftali and the non-fiction author Ian Sayer.

Press reviews

“In terms of narrative, the documentary begins a bit fake and cumbersome, but soon falls under its spell because no fictional story is called up here and because the actors in the play scenes supervised by the director Carsten Gutschmidt take on the dramatic plot. That is - starting with Henriette Schmidt as Fey von Hassell and Tim Bergmann as Colonel von Bonin to Uwe Bohm as the sadistic SS-Untersturmführer Bader - not the extras that are otherwise often found in fictional documentary pieces. And that's only appropriate to this incredible story and makes Frey's film absolutely worth seeing. "

- Michael Hanfeld : Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

The news magazine Focus speaks of: “… apocalyptic Nazi world empire gloom. It could have been something like that, the ZDF actors play us. Annoying when television uses history for storytelling. "

The online portal Funke Mediengruppe criticized the shortened version of the film shown on ZDF: “A dramatic and important chapter of the Second World War, rarely shown on TV. Unfortunately shortened. "

Awards and nominations

  • Nomination for the Gold Panda Award 2015, Sichuan TV Festival, Chengdu (China)

Others

  • The elaborate filming took place in part at original historical locations for better authenticity; These include the market square and buildings of Niederdorf and the Hotel Pragser Wildsee in South Tyrol (Italy).
  • A total of three German versions of the series were produced and published. The 52-minute sections “Journey into the Unknown” and “Auf Messers Schneide” were broadcast on ARTE . A 45-minute summary was created for ZDF , entitled “Odyssey before the end of the war” and had its world premiere on April 14, 2015 at 8:15 pm. Another version was shown on April 10, 2015 on ORF and represents a 90-minute complete version of the series.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gebrüder Beetz Filmproduktion
  2. ↑ "ZDFzeit: Wir Geiseln der SS" - Documentation about the dramatic odyssey ... In: presseportal.de , accessed on January 16, 2019.
  3. ↑ Michael Hanfeld: SS documentary game on Arte - 139 prisoners on the journey into the unknown . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . April 7, 2015, accessed March 24, 2016.
  4. ^ Gregor Dolak: TV column "We, hostages of the SS": The Second and the World War. In: Focus Online . April 15, 2015, accessed October 14, 2018 .
  5. ↑ Jonas Erlenkämper: "We hostages of the SS". In: derwesten.de. April 13, 2015, accessed January 16, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Nordmedia.de production mirror
  7. ↑ Hotel Pragser Wildsee News ( Memento from March 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Broadcast dates and versions Fernsehserien.de