Heimkehr
Encyclopedia
Heimkehr is a 1941 German
anti-Polish propaganda film
directed by Gustav Ucicky
.
It received the rare honor "Film of the Nation," bestowed on films considered to have made an outstanding contribution to the national cause. Filled with heavy-handed caricture, it justifies extermination of Poles with a depiction of relentless persecution of ethnic Germans, who escape death only because of the German invasion.
, the German minority is oppressed by the Polish majority. The physician Dr. Thomas does not have any hospital available and his daughter Marie, who teaches at a German school, and needs an important operation, watches when her school is disseized by Polish authorities and demolished by an angry mob. Dr. Thomas protests to the mayor, noting the constitutionally
guaranteed minority rights
; however his protest falls on deaf ears. Marie and her fiancé, Dr. Fritz Mutius, drive to the provincial capital, in order to put their protest to the Voivode (governor), but they are not even received there either. Deciding to stay in the capital in order to call on the court the next day, that evening they go to the cinema. They are accompanied there by her friend Karl Michalek, who has been pressed into service by the Polish Armed Forces
. When they refuse to sing the Polish national anthem Mazurek Dąbrowskiego with the rest of the audience, Fritz gets grievously hurt by the furious Polish crowd. Marie tries to take her betrothed to a hospital, but he is refused admission and succumbs to his injuries.
Back home, the acts of violence against the German minority continue to increase: Marie's father too becomes the victim of a Polish attack and is blinded as a result; the wife of innkeeper Ludwig Launhardt, Martha, dies after being struck by stones thrown by Poles. When during the Invasion of Poland the German villagers meet secretly in a barn, in order to hear Hitler
's speech of 1 September 1939 before the Reichstag
, they are discovered, arrested and imprisoned. Marie keeps up their spirits with the promise that they will escape, that Germans are deeply concerned about them, and that they will be able to return home and hear neither Yiddish
nor Polish, but only German. They are abused by the prison guards, but escape through an underground cellar and, scarcely avoiding a massacre, are saved by invading Wehrmacht
soldiers. The German escapees ready for their resettlement into the "homeland", while widowed Ludwig Launhardt asks for Marie's hand. At the end of the film the German trek crosses the border into the Reich. The conclusion shows an enormous picture of Hitler set up at the checkpoint.
, Maria Thomas; Peter Petersen, Dr. Thomas; Attila Hörbiger
, Ludwig Launhardt; Carl Raddatz, Dr. Fritz Mutius; and Hermann Erhardt
, Karl Michalek.
Other parts were played by Otto Wernicke
, Old Manz; Ruth Hellberg, Martha Launhardt; Elsa Wagner
, Frau Schmid; Eduard Köck, Herr Schmid; Franz Pfaudler, Balthasar Manz; Gerhild Weber, Josepha Manz; Werner Fuetterer, Oskar Friml; Berta Drews, Elfriede; Eugen Preiß, Salomonson; and Bogusław Samborski as the mayor.
Casting for the minor parts played by Jewish and Polish actors was done by Igo Sym
, who during the filming was shot in his Warsaw
apartment by members of the Polish Union of Armed Struggle resistance movement. After the war, the Polish performers were punished (ranging from official reprimand to prison sentence) for collaboration
in an anti-Polish propaganda undertaking.
for the German people, and declared that only the soil, not the people, could be Germanized. This did not mean a total extermination of all people there, as Eastern Europe was regarded as having people of Aryan/Nordic descent, particularly among their leaders. Germanisation began with the classification of people
suitable as defined on the Nazi Volksliste
, and treated according to their categorisation. Those unfit for Germanisation were to be expelled from the areas marked out for German settlement; those who resisted Germanization were to be sent to concentration camps or executed.
To foment support, Nazi propaganda
presented the annexation as necessary to protect the German minorities there. Alleged massacres of Germans, such as Bloody Sunday were used in such propaganda, and Heimkehr drew on such attempts although allowing the Volksdeutsche
characters depicted to survive. The introduction explicitly states that hundreds of thousands of Germans in Poland suffered likewise. Many terror tactics depicted were those used by the Nazis themselves against minorities.
Similar treatment was given to anti-Serbian propagand, in Menschen im Sturm
.
Baltic Germans were also to be settled into this land. The secret supplementary protocol to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact included a resettlement plan by which approximately 60,000 ethnic Germans were resettled into the Reich. Nazi propaganda included using scare tactics about the Soviet Union, and led to tens of thousands leaving
. After racial evaluation, they were divided into groups: A, Altreich
, who were to be settled in Germany and allowed neither farms nor business (to allow for closer watch), S Sonderfall, who were used as forced labor, and O Ost-Falle, the best classification, to be settled in the Eastern Wall—the occupied regions
, to protect German from the East—and allowed independence. Similar support therefore was fomented with the use of film to depict Baltic and Volga Germans as persecuted by the Bolshevists, such as the films Friesennot
, Flüchtlinge
, and GPU.
's orders, took numerous sketches when he accompanied a trek of resettlers from Volhynia. The indoor shots ran from 2 January to the middle of July 1941 in the Wien-Film
studios at the Rosenhügel in Liesing
, at Sievering
and the Schönbrunn Palace
gardens in Vienna
. The external shots took place between February and June 1941 in Polish Chorzele
and Ortelsburg
(Szczytno) in East Prussia
. The picture was submitted to censorship at the Film Review Office on 26 August 1941, it was G-rated and received a top attribute as "political and artistical particularly valuable".
The first public performance took place on 31 August 1941 at the Venice Film Festival
in the Cinema San Marco, winning an award from the Italian Ministry for Culture. The festive Austrian premiere followed on 10 October 1941 at the Viennese Scala-Kino in the presence of Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach
, the premiere in Berlin
on 23 October 1941 simultaneously at the UFA-Palast am Zoo and the UFA-Theater Wagnitzstraße. The film grossed 4.9 million Reichsmark, thereby below expectation. Nevertheless Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
in his diary referred to Wessely's performance in the prison scene as "the best ever filmed".
After the end of World War II
the Allies
banned any showing of the film. Director Ucicky was also banned from working, although this ban was waived by Austria in July 1947, whereafter he resorted to the Heimatfilm
genre. Paula Wessely and her husband Attila Hörbiger became the acclaimed dream couple of the Vienna Burgtheater
ensemble. The Austrian author and Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek
stated that Heimkehr is “the worst propaganda feature of the Nazis ever”. She utilized some text fragments in her 1985 play Burgtheater. Posse mit Gesang
, causing a major public scandal. The film's rights are held by Taurus Film GmbH.
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
anti-Polish propaganda film
Propaganda film
The term propaganda can be defined as the ability to produce and spread fertile messages that, once sown, will germinate in large human cultures.” However, in the 20th century, a “new” propaganda emerged, which revolved around political organizations and their need to communicate messages that...
directed by Gustav Ucicky
Gustav Ucicky
Gustav Ucicky was an acclaimed Austrian film director, screenwriter and cinematographer. He was one of the more successful and acclaimed directors in Austria and Germany from the 1930s through to the early 1960s...
.
It received the rare honor "Film of the Nation," bestowed on films considered to have made an outstanding contribution to the national cause. Filled with heavy-handed caricture, it justifies extermination of Poles with a depiction of relentless persecution of ethnic Germans, who escape death only because of the German invasion.
Plot
In the Wołyń Voivodeship in eastern PolandSecond Polish Republic
The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...
, the German minority is oppressed by the Polish majority. The physician Dr. Thomas does not have any hospital available and his daughter Marie, who teaches at a German school, and needs an important operation, watches when her school is disseized by Polish authorities and demolished by an angry mob. Dr. Thomas protests to the mayor, noting the constitutionally
March Constitution of Poland
The Second Polish Republic adopted the March Constitution on 17 March 1921, after ousting the occupation of the German/Prussian forces in the 1918 Greater Poland Uprising, and avoiding conquest by the Soviets in the 1920 Polish-Soviet War. The Constitution, based on the French one, was regarded as...
guaranteed minority rights
Minority rights
The term Minority Rights embodies two separate concepts: first, normal individual rights as applied to members of racial, ethnic, class, religious, linguistic or sexual minorities, and second, collective rights accorded to minority groups...
; however his protest falls on deaf ears. Marie and her fiancé, Dr. Fritz Mutius, drive to the provincial capital, in order to put their protest to the Voivode (governor), but they are not even received there either. Deciding to stay in the capital in order to call on the court the next day, that evening they go to the cinema. They are accompanied there by her friend Karl Michalek, who has been pressed into service by the Polish Armed Forces
Polish Armed Forces
Siły Zbrojne Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej are the national defense forces of Poland...
. When they refuse to sing the Polish national anthem Mazurek Dąbrowskiego with the rest of the audience, Fritz gets grievously hurt by the furious Polish crowd. Marie tries to take her betrothed to a hospital, but he is refused admission and succumbs to his injuries.
Back home, the acts of violence against the German minority continue to increase: Marie's father too becomes the victim of a Polish attack and is blinded as a result; the wife of innkeeper Ludwig Launhardt, Martha, dies after being struck by stones thrown by Poles. When during the Invasion of Poland the German villagers meet secretly in a barn, in order to hear Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's speech of 1 September 1939 before the Reichstag
Reichstag (Weimar Republic)
The Reichstag was the parliament of Weimar Republic .German constitution commentators consider only the Reichstag and now the Bundestag the German parliament. Another organ deals with legislation too: in 1867-1918 the Bundesrat, in 1919–1933 the Reichsrat and from 1949 on the Bundesrat...
, they are discovered, arrested and imprisoned. Marie keeps up their spirits with the promise that they will escape, that Germans are deeply concerned about them, and that they will be able to return home and hear neither Yiddish
Yiddish language
Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
nor Polish, but only German. They are abused by the prison guards, but escape through an underground cellar and, scarcely avoiding a massacre, are saved by invading Wehrmacht
Wehrmacht
The Wehrmacht – from , to defend and , the might/power) were the unified armed forces of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1945. It consisted of the Heer , the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe .-Origin and use of the term:...
soldiers. The German escapees ready for their resettlement into the "homeland", while widowed Ludwig Launhardt asks for Marie's hand. At the end of the film the German trek crosses the border into the Reich. The conclusion shows an enormous picture of Hitler set up at the checkpoint.
Cast
The main roles were as follows: Paula WesselyPaula Wessely
Paula Anna Maria Wessely was an Austrian theatre and film actress. Die Wessely , as she was affectionately called by her admirers and fans, was Austria's foremost popular postwar actress....
, Maria Thomas; Peter Petersen, Dr. Thomas; Attila Hörbiger
Attila Hörbiger
Attila Hörbiger was an Austrian stage and movie actor.Hörbiger was born in Budapest, then Austria–Hungary, the son of engineer Hanns Hörbiger and younger brother of actor Paul Hörbiger...
, Ludwig Launhardt; Carl Raddatz, Dr. Fritz Mutius; and Hermann Erhardt
Hermann Erhardt
Hermann Erhardt was a German actor who played in more than 50 movies, among them Heimkehr and A Devil of a Woman.-External references:...
, Karl Michalek.
Other parts were played by Otto Wernicke
Otto Wernicke
Otto Karl Robert Wernicke was a German actor. He was best known for his role as police inspector Karl Lohmann in the two Fritz Lang films M and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. He was the first one to portray Captain Smith in the first "official" Titanic film.Wernicke was married to a Jewish woman...
, Old Manz; Ruth Hellberg, Martha Launhardt; Elsa Wagner
Elsa Wagner
-Selected filmography:* The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari * Satanas * Daphne and the Diplomat * The Private's Job * Fracht von Baltimore * Heimkehr * Our Willi Is the Best...
, Frau Schmid; Eduard Köck, Herr Schmid; Franz Pfaudler, Balthasar Manz; Gerhild Weber, Josepha Manz; Werner Fuetterer, Oskar Friml; Berta Drews, Elfriede; Eugen Preiß, Salomonson; and Bogusław Samborski as the mayor.
Casting for the minor parts played by Jewish and Polish actors was done by Igo Sym
Igo Sym
Karol Juliusz "Igo" Sym was an Austrian-born Polish actor and collaborator with Nazi Germany. He was killed in Warsaw by members of the Polish resistance movement.-Early career:...
, who during the filming was shot in his Warsaw
Warsaw
Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...
apartment by members of the Polish Union of Armed Struggle resistance movement. After the war, the Polish performers were punished (ranging from official reprimand to prison sentence) for collaboration
Collaboration
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal. It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to realize shared goals, — for example, an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing...
in an anti-Polish propaganda undertaking.
Historical context
Hitler intended Poland to serve as the LebensraumLebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
for the German people, and declared that only the soil, not the people, could be Germanized. This did not mean a total extermination of all people there, as Eastern Europe was regarded as having people of Aryan/Nordic descent, particularly among their leaders. Germanisation began with the classification of people
Racial policy of Nazi Germany
The racial policy of Nazi Germany was a set of policies and laws implemented by Nazi Germany, asserting the superiority of the "Aryan race", and based on a specific racist doctrine which claimed scientific legitimacy...
suitable as defined on the Nazi Volksliste
Volksliste
The Deutsche Volksliste was a Nazi institution whose purpose was the classification of inhabitants of German occupied territories into categories of desirability according to criteria systematized by Heinrich Himmler. The institution was first established in occupied western Poland...
, and treated according to their categorisation. Those unfit for Germanisation were to be expelled from the areas marked out for German settlement; those who resisted Germanization were to be sent to concentration camps or executed.
To foment support, Nazi propaganda
Nazi propaganda
Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...
presented the annexation as necessary to protect the German minorities there. Alleged massacres of Germans, such as Bloody Sunday were used in such propaganda, and Heimkehr drew on such attempts although allowing the Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche
Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...
characters depicted to survive. The introduction explicitly states that hundreds of thousands of Germans in Poland suffered likewise. Many terror tactics depicted were those used by the Nazis themselves against minorities.
Similar treatment was given to anti-Serbian propagand, in Menschen im Sturm
Menschen im Sturm
Menschen im Sturm is a 1941 German film. It was anti-Serbian propaganda and part of a concerted propaganda push against Serbs, attempting to split them from the Croats.-Synopsis:...
.
Baltic Germans were also to be settled into this land. The secret supplementary protocol to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact included a resettlement plan by which approximately 60,000 ethnic Germans were resettled into the Reich. Nazi propaganda included using scare tactics about the Soviet Union, and led to tens of thousands leaving
Nazi-Soviet population transfers
The Nazi–Soviet population transfers were a series of population transfers between 1939 and 1941 of tens of thousands of ethnic Germans and ethnic Russians in an agreement according to the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Demarcation between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.-...
. After racial evaluation, they were divided into groups: A, Altreich
Altreich
Altreich or Altes Reich is a German term that may refer to:* A synonym for the medieval Kingdom of Germany in prior German historiography, i.e. the territory of the German stem duchies excluding the Saxon and Bavarian eastern marches....
, who were to be settled in Germany and allowed neither farms nor business (to allow for closer watch), S Sonderfall, who were used as forced labor, and O Ost-Falle, the best classification, to be settled in the Eastern Wall—the occupied regions
Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
At the beginning of World War II, nearly a quarter of the pre-war Polish areas were annexed by Nazi Germany and placed directly under German civil administration, while the rest of Nazi occupied Poland was named as General Government...
, to protect German from the East—and allowed independence. Similar support therefore was fomented with the use of film to depict Baltic and Volga Germans as persecuted by the Bolshevists, such as the films Friesennot
Friesennot
Friesennot is a 1935 German film directed by Peter Hagen.The film is also known as Dorf im roten Sturm and Frisions in Distress .- Plot :...
, Flüchtlinge
Flüchtlinge
Flüchtlinge is a 1933 German film depicting Volga German refugees persecuted by the Bolsheviks on the Sino-Russian border in Manchuria in 1928.The film was directed by Gustav Ucicky and starred Hans Albers, Käthe von Nagy and Eugen Klopfer...
, and GPU.
Production and reception
The creation of the film was based on pictures by the artist Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser, who in January 1940, on Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
's orders, took numerous sketches when he accompanied a trek of resettlers from Volhynia. The indoor shots ran from 2 January to the middle of July 1941 in the Wien-Film
Wien-Film
Wien-Film GmbH was a large Austrian film company, which in 1938 succeeded the Tobis-Sascha-Filmindustrie AG and lasted until 1985...
studios at the Rosenhügel in Liesing
Liesing
Liesing is the 23rd district of Vienna . It is on the southwest edge of Vienna, Austria.It was formed after Austria's Anschluss with Germany, when Vienna expanded from 21 districts to 26...
, at Sievering
Sievering
Sievering is a suburb of Vienna and part of Döbling, the 19th district of Vienna. Sievering was created in 1892 out of the two erstwhile independent suburbs Untersievering and Obersievering. These still exist as Katastralgemeinden.- Geography :...
and the Schönbrunn Palace
Schönbrunn Palace
Schönbrunn Palace is a former imperial 1,441-room Rococo summer residence in Vienna, Austria. One of the most important cultural monuments in the country, since the 1960s it has been one of the major tourist attractions in Vienna...
gardens in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
. The external shots took place between February and June 1941 in Polish Chorzele
Chorzele
Chorzele is a town in Przasnysz County, Masovian Voivodeship, Poland, with 2,799 inhabitants .-External links:*...
and Ortelsburg
Szczytno
Szczytno is a town in north-eastern Poland with 27,970 inhabitants . Previously part of the Olsztyn Voivodeship, Szczytno was assigned to the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship in 1999. It is the seat of Szczytno County....
(Szczytno) in East Prussia
East Prussia
East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...
. The picture was submitted to censorship at the Film Review Office on 26 August 1941, it was G-rated and received a top attribute as "political and artistical particularly valuable".
The first public performance took place on 31 August 1941 at the Venice Film Festival
Venice Film Festival
The Venice International Film Festival is the oldest international film festival in the world. Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi in 1932 as the "Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica", the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the...
in the Cinema San Marco, winning an award from the Italian Ministry for Culture. The festive Austrian premiere followed on 10 October 1941 at the Viennese Scala-Kino in the presence of Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach
Baldur von Schirach
Baldur Benedikt von Schirach was a Nazi youth leader later convicted of being a war criminal. Schirach was the head of the Hitler-Jugend and Gauleiter and Reichsstatthalter of Vienna....
, the premiere in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
on 23 October 1941 simultaneously at the UFA-Palast am Zoo and the UFA-Theater Wagnitzstraße. The film grossed 4.9 million Reichsmark, thereby below expectation. Nevertheless Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
in his diary referred to Wessely's performance in the prison scene as "the best ever filmed".
After the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
the Allies
Allies
In everyday English usage, allies are people, groups, or nations that have joined together in an association for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out between them...
banned any showing of the film. Director Ucicky was also banned from working, although this ban was waived by Austria in July 1947, whereafter he resorted to the Heimatfilm
Heimatfilm
Heimatfilm is the name given to a film genre that was popular in Germany, Switzerland and Austria from the late 40s to the early 70s. They were usually shot in the Alps, the Black Forest or the Lüneburg Heath and always involved the outdoors...
genre. Paula Wessely and her husband Attila Hörbiger became the acclaimed dream couple of the Vienna Burgtheater
Burgtheater
The Burgtheater , originally known as K.K. Theater an der Burg, then until 1918 as the K.K. Hofburgtheater, is the Austrian National Theatre in Vienna and one of the most important German language theatres in the world.The Burgtheater was created in 1741 and has become known as "die Burg" by the...
ensemble. The Austrian author and Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek
Elfriede Jelinek is an Austrian playwright and novelist. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004 for her "musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that, with extraordinary linguistic zeal, reveal the absurdity of society's clichés and their subjugating power."-...
stated that Heimkehr is “the worst propaganda feature of the Nazis ever”. She utilized some text fragments in her 1985 play Burgtheater. Posse mit Gesang
Burgtheater. Posse mit Gesang
Burgtheater. Posse mit Gesang is a play by Elfriede Jelinek. It was first published in 1985....
, causing a major public scandal. The film's rights are held by Taurus Film GmbH.