Hitler: A Film from Germany
Encyclopedia
Hitler: A Film from Germany (German
title: Hitler - ein Film aus Deutschland; U.S.
title: Our Hitler) is a 1978 Franco-British-German experimental
biopic
directed by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
, produced by Bernd Eichinger
, and co-produced by the BBC
. It starred Heinz Schubert
, who played both Adolf Hitler
and Heinrich Himmler
. Along with Syberberg's characteristic and unusual motifs and style, the film is also notable for its 442 minute running time.
(played by Hellmut Lange) and his adjutant Otto Günsche
(played by Peter Kern), talking to the camera as if the spectator would be a young person that intends to learn about Hitler, while these seemingly endless passages end with original radio broadcasts on German war casualties and lost battles. This plot device thus mocks both Hitler's affiliation with his own personality and his increasingly delusional state that made him more and more unable to accurately lead a war the longer it lasted, as well as it mocks post-war German fascination with every little detail about historical Nazism and its personage, indicating that this post-war fascination might be nothing but subconscious admiration that will once more lead Germany to repeat the same downfall as apparent in the radio broadcasts.
Himmler's personality is sometimes explored in a similar way by reciting the memories of such people as Himmler's personal astrologist (played by Peter Moland), or his masseur Felix Kersten
(played by Martin Sperr), though not as extensively as in Hitler's case and not ending in such dramatic radio broadcasts.
Especially unusual is the portrayal of Himmler's personality. While Hitler is always impersonated by Heinz Schubert
, Himmler's role is split into several actors, including Schubert among others, each indicating a different purported aspect about Himmler's personality, such as "the esoterical ideologue" (played by Rainer von Artenfels), dressed as an SS member, "the military leader" (leading a war for Nazism and Germany, against the Jews and other degenerated, "un-German" influences; played by Helmut Lange as well), dressed like an ordinary Wehrmacht
officer, or "Hitler's ideological adherent and loyal servant" (dressed in an SS uniform, played by Peter Kern as well).
and its downfall giving rise to the Third Reich. Later, the narration focuses on comparing Nazism to basically "inhumane" pornography, Stalinism
and socialist East Germany. In order to draw parallels between Nazism and pornography, Syberberg also arranges quite graphic scenes, involving a realistic, life-sized reproduction of Joseph Goebbels
's carbonized, dead body covered in his burned and melted flesh (as found and photographed by the Red Army
, inflatable sex dolls, and dildos (as the credits indicate that "some" scenes were shot in 1977 while most of the film was shot in 1980, it is noteworthy that 1977 was the last year before Goebbels's body, being in the possession of the Red Army and remaining in an East-German Soviet military basis along with the bodies of Hitler, Goebbels's wife and Goebbels's children, was actually burned to ashes by KGB
officers as ordered by Brezhnev
).
A mythologized portrayal of Democracy and Germany is impersonated by Syberberg's young daughter, Amelie Syberberg, holding a puppet and walking around in mystical sets to Syberberg's narration, also appearing later in the film. It is not clear which of the two—Syberberg's daughter and her puppet—is Democracy and which of them is Germany.
The film's first part 30-minute intro is separated into two 15-minute acts, the first being Syberberg's mythologized narration of the end of the Weimar Republic, the second half being Schubert impersonating a circus announcer within an actual circus set announcing "the great, magnificent" Hitler ("the German Napoleon") in ad-speech and show-biz jargon, while also outlining that the purpose of the film is not only being "the Big Hitler Show" but also a film on Germany and German mentality in general, about "the Hitler within us all" and "Auschwitz as an ideological battle of racial warfare."
A similar role as the circus announcer is later introduced when a freak show compere (played by Rainer von Artenfels as well) enters the film within a prop set of a cabinet of curiosities
, demonstrating various oddity objects and Nazi relics, such as the Spear of Destiny ("as owned by Thomas the Apostle
, Saint Maurice
, Constantine the Great, Charlemagne
, Otto I
, Henry IV
, Frederick I Barbarossa, the Habsburg dynasty...and then Hitler!") and the philosopher's stone
both found by Himmler's SS, Himmler's Germanic Urpferd (purported evolutionary ancestor to the modern horse), and Hitler's semen in a phial. This compere then also introduces the various supporting characters, each introducing themselves in third person after he has announced them.
Among them is also Ellerkamp (played by Harry Baer), a fictitious SS-member, later a post-war projectionist and film producer, and The Cosmologist (played by Peter Lühr). The Cosmologist is partly based on Hans Hörbiger
, creator of the Welteislehre
, but the Cosmologist is portrayed as still being alive during Hitler's reign and after WWII, and looks more like Leonardo da Vinci
or Socrates
than Hörbiger.
, using props and set designs from the Cinémathèque Française
that had originally been used for a film called Der Film - Die Musik der Zukunft ("Film: Music of the future").
section at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival
.
and the philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
. It provided the underlying metaphor for James Chapman
's 1993 novel about AIDS
, Our Plague: A Film from New York.
Sequences from Hitler: A Film from Germany feature in the film The Ister (2004), which includes extensive interview of Syberberg.
, it was also released in an English version. While all of the monologues spoken by the actors are subtitled in the English version, Heller's translated offstage narration is spoken by a native BBC narrator. Due to the BBC's co-production, the German language used in the film, including the original WWII radio broadcasts and authentic speeches, receives a more sophisticated translation than in many Anglo-American documentaries on Nazi Germany. One advantage of the English version is that every time a new character is introduced or an original recording is heard, it is initiated in the subtitles by the character's name or the speaker's name, while the German version lacks such identifications.
In 2007, the film was released on DVD
in the United States as Our Hitler.
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
title: Hitler - ein Film aus Deutschland; U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
title: Our Hitler) is a 1978 Franco-British-German experimental
Experimental film
Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...
biopic
Biographical film
A biographical film, or biopic , is a film that dramatizes the life of an actual person or people. They differ from films “based on a true story” or “historical films” in that they attempt to comprehensively tell a person’s life story or at least the most historically important years of their...
directed by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg
Hans-Jürgen Syberberg is a German film director, whose best known film is his lengthy feature, Hitler: A Film from Germany.- Early life :...
, produced by Bernd Eichinger
Bernd Eichinger
Bernd Eichinger was a German film producer and director.- Life and career :Eichinger was born in Neuburg an der Donau. He attended the University of Television and Film Munich in the 1970s, and bought a stake in the fledgling studio company Neue Constantin Film in 1979, becoming its executive...
, and co-produced by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
. It starred Heinz Schubert
Heinz Schubert (actor)
Heinz Schubert was a German actor, drama teacher and photographer, best known for playing the role of Alfred Tetzlaff in the German television comedy sitcom Ein Herz und eine Seele.- Life :...
, who played both Adolf 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...
and Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich 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...
. Along with Syberberg's characteristic and unusual motifs and style, the film is also notable for its 442 minute running time.
Structure
Hitler: A Film from Germany has no clear plot or chronology. Instead, each part explores one particular topic.- Part 1: Der Gral (The Grail) deals with Hitler's cult of personality in Nazi propaganda.
- Part 2: Ein deutscher Traum (A German Dream) focuses on the pre-Nazi German cultural, spiritual, and national heritage that Nazi propaganda related to.
- Part 3: Das Ende eines Wintermärchens (The End of a Winter's Tale) tells about the Holocaust and the ideology behind it, particularly from Himmler's point of view.
- Part 4: Wir Kinder der Hölle (We Children of Hell) consists mostly of André Heller reading out scenes from the script that were not shot, climaxing in Heller talking to a Hitler puppet on how he completely destroyed Germany spiritually, combined with a satire on former Nazis who after the war made profits from the Nazi era by running a Nazi tourism and entertainment industry for foreigners.
Recurring plot devices
One particular plot device, especially for mocking post-war fascination and cliches about Hitler and Nazism, is endless recitals from the non-fictitious autobiographies of people in direct contact with Hitler on his lifestyle, such as by Hitler's personal valet Heinz LingeHeinz Linge
Heinz Linge was an SS officer who served as a valet for German dictator Adolf Hitler.- Early life :Linge was born in Bremen, Germany. Before joining the SS in 1933 he was employed as a bricklayer and was selected by Sepp Dietrich to be one of 117 original bodyguards for Adolf Hitler...
(played by Hellmut Lange) and his adjutant Otto Günsche
Otto Günsche
Otto Günsche was a Sturmbannführer in the Waffen-SS and a member of 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler before he became Adolf Hitler's personal adjutant. He was captured by soldiers of the Red Army on 2 May 1945...
(played by Peter Kern), talking to the camera as if the spectator would be a young person that intends to learn about Hitler, while these seemingly endless passages end with original radio broadcasts on German war casualties and lost battles. This plot device thus mocks both Hitler's affiliation with his own personality and his increasingly delusional state that made him more and more unable to accurately lead a war the longer it lasted, as well as it mocks post-war German fascination with every little detail about historical Nazism and its personage, indicating that this post-war fascination might be nothing but subconscious admiration that will once more lead Germany to repeat the same downfall as apparent in the radio broadcasts.
Himmler's personality is sometimes explored in a similar way by reciting the memories of such people as Himmler's personal astrologist (played by Peter Moland), or his masseur Felix Kersten
Felix Kersten
Felix Kersten was before and during World War II the personal masseur of Heinrich Himmler...
(played by Martin Sperr), though not as extensively as in Hitler's case and not ending in such dramatic radio broadcasts.
Especially unusual is the portrayal of Himmler's personality. While Hitler is always impersonated by Heinz Schubert
Heinz Schubert (actor)
Heinz Schubert was a German actor, drama teacher and photographer, best known for playing the role of Alfred Tetzlaff in the German television comedy sitcom Ein Herz und eine Seele.- Life :...
, Himmler's role is split into several actors, including Schubert among others, each indicating a different purported aspect about Himmler's personality, such as "the esoterical ideologue" (played by Rainer von Artenfels), dressed as an SS member, "the military leader" (leading a war for Nazism and Germany, against the Jews and other degenerated, "un-German" influences; played by Helmut Lange as well), dressed like an ordinary 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:...
officer, or "Hitler's ideological adherent and loyal servant" (dressed in an SS uniform, played by Peter Kern as well).
Narration and fictitious characters
Some continuity is given to the film by Syberberg's narration and fictitious characters. Syberberg's offstage narration partly philosophizes on pre-war and post-war German fascination with Hitler and Nazism, while in the beginning he tells a mythologized tale about the shortcomings of the Weimar RepublicWeimar Republic
The Weimar Republic is the name given by historians to the parliamentary republic established in 1919 in Germany to replace the imperial form of government...
and its downfall giving rise to the Third Reich. Later, the narration focuses on comparing Nazism to basically "inhumane" pornography, Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
and socialist East Germany. In order to draw parallels between Nazism and pornography, Syberberg also arranges quite graphic scenes, involving a realistic, life-sized reproduction of 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...
's carbonized, dead body covered in his burned and melted flesh (as found and photographed by the Red Army
Red Army
The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army started out as the Soviet Union's revolutionary communist combat groups during the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the Soviet Union. By the 1930s the Red Army was among the largest armies in history.The "Red Army" name refers to...
, inflatable sex dolls, and dildos (as the credits indicate that "some" scenes were shot in 1977 while most of the film was shot in 1980, it is noteworthy that 1977 was the last year before Goebbels's body, being in the possession of the Red Army and remaining in an East-German Soviet military basis along with the bodies of Hitler, Goebbels's wife and Goebbels's children, was actually burned to ashes by KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
officers as ordered by Brezhnev
Leonid Brezhnev
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev – 10 November 1982) was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , presiding over the country from 1964 until his death in 1982. His eighteen-year term as General Secretary was second only to that of Joseph Stalin in...
).
A mythologized portrayal of Democracy and Germany is impersonated by Syberberg's young daughter, Amelie Syberberg, holding a puppet and walking around in mystical sets to Syberberg's narration, also appearing later in the film. It is not clear which of the two—Syberberg's daughter and her puppet—is Democracy and which of them is Germany.
The film's first part 30-minute intro is separated into two 15-minute acts, the first being Syberberg's mythologized narration of the end of the Weimar Republic, the second half being Schubert impersonating a circus announcer within an actual circus set announcing "the great, magnificent" Hitler ("the German Napoleon") in ad-speech and show-biz jargon, while also outlining that the purpose of the film is not only being "the Big Hitler Show" but also a film on Germany and German mentality in general, about "the Hitler within us all" and "Auschwitz as an ideological battle of racial warfare."
A similar role as the circus announcer is later introduced when a freak show compere (played by Rainer von Artenfels as well) enters the film within a prop set of a cabinet of curiosities
Cabinet of curiosities
A cabinet of curiosities was an encyclopedic collection in Renaissance Europe of types of objects whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. They were also known by various names such as Cabinet of Wonder, and in German Kunstkammer or Wunderkammer...
, demonstrating various oddity objects and Nazi relics, such as the Spear of Destiny ("as owned by Thomas the Apostle
Thomas the Apostle
Thomas the Apostle, also called Doubting Thomas or Didymus was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He is best known for questioning Jesus' resurrection when first told of it, then proclaiming "My Lord and my God" on seeing Jesus in . He was perhaps the only Apostle who went outside the Roman...
, Saint Maurice
Saint Maurice
Saint Maurice was the leader of the legendary Roman Theban Legion in the 3rd century, and one of the favorite and most widely venerated saints of that group. He was the patron saint of several professions, locales, and kingdoms...
, Constantine the Great, Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
, Otto I
Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor
Otto I the Great , son of Henry I the Fowler and Matilda of Ringelheim, was Duke of Saxony, King of Germany, King of Italy, and "the first of the Germans to be called the emperor of Italy" according to Arnulf of Milan...
, Henry IV
Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor
Henry IV was King of the Romans from 1056 and Holy Roman Emperor from 1084 until his forced abdication in 1105. He was the third emperor of the Salian dynasty and one of the most powerful and important figures of the 11th century...
, Frederick I Barbarossa, the Habsburg dynasty...and then Hitler!") and the philosopher's stone
Philosopher's stone
The philosopher's stone is a legendary alchemical substance said to be capable of turning base metals into gold or silver. It was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For many centuries, it was the most sought-after goal...
both found by Himmler's SS, Himmler's Germanic Urpferd (purported evolutionary ancestor to the modern horse), and Hitler's semen in a phial. This compere then also introduces the various supporting characters, each introducing themselves in third person after he has announced them.
Among them is also Ellerkamp (played by Harry Baer), a fictitious SS-member, later a post-war projectionist and film producer, and The Cosmologist (played by Peter Lühr). The Cosmologist is partly based on Hans Hörbiger
Hans Hörbiger
Hanns Hörbiger was an Austrian engineer from Vienna with roots in Tyrol. He took part in the construction of the Budapest subway and in 1894 invented a new type of valve essential for compressors still in widespread use today.He is also remembered today for his pseudoscientific Welteislehre ...
, creator of the Welteislehre
Welteislehre
Welteislehre , also known as Glazial-Kosmogonie is a pseudoscientific cosmological theory proposed by Hans Hörbiger, an Austrian engineer and inventor and respected steam engine designer, whose invention of the Hörbiger valve made him a wealthy man.Hörbiger did not arrive at his theory through...
, but the Cosmologist is portrayed as still being alive during Hitler's reign and after WWII, and looks more like Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
or Socrates
Socrates
Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...
than Hörbiger.
Props, set design, and visual style
The film's surreal visual style was developed by Henri LangloisHenri Langlois
Henri Langlois was a French film archivist and cinephile. A pioneer of film preservation, Langlois was an influential figure in the history of cinema...
, using props and set designs from the Cinémathèque Française
Cinémathèque Française
The Cinémathèque Française holds one of the largest archives of films, movie documents and film-related objects in the world. Located in Paris, the Cinémathèque holds daily screenings of films from around the world.-History:...
that had originally been used for a film called Der Film - Die Musik der Zukunft ("Film: Music of the future").
Release
The film was screened in the Un Certain RegardUn Certain Regard
Un Certain Regard is a section of the Cannes Film Festival's Official Selection. It is run at the Salle Debussy, parallel to the competition for the Palme d'Or.This section was introduced in 1978 by Gilles Jacob...
section at the 1978 Cannes Film Festival
1978 Cannes Film Festival
The 31st Cannes Film Festival was held on May 16-30. This festival saw the introduction of a new non-competitive section, 'Un Certain Regard', which replaces 'Les Yeux Fertiles' , 'L'Air du temps' and 'Le Passé composé'.- Jury :*Alan J...
.
Influence
The film was a considerable influence on, among others, the critic Susan SontagSusan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
and the philosopher Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe was a French philosopher. He was also a literary critic and translator....
. It provided the underlying metaphor for James Chapman
James Chapman (author)
James Chapman is an American novelist and publisher. He was raised in Bakersfield, California, has lived in New York City since 1978, and is the author of nine novels to date....
's 1993 novel about AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...
, Our Plague: A Film from New York.
Sequences from Hitler: A Film from Germany feature in the film The Ister (2004), which includes extensive interview of Syberberg.
English version
As the film was co-produced by the BBCBBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, it was also released in an English version. While all of the monologues spoken by the actors are subtitled in the English version, Heller's translated offstage narration is spoken by a native BBC narrator. Due to the BBC's co-production, the German language used in the film, including the original WWII radio broadcasts and authentic speeches, receives a more sophisticated translation than in many Anglo-American documentaries on Nazi Germany. One advantage of the English version is that every time a new character is introduced or an original recording is heard, it is initiated in the subtitles by the character's name or the speaker's name, while the German version lacks such identifications.
Available copies
In 2003, Syberberg made full-length copies of both the German and the English version of the film available online on his website (see external links below).In 2007, the film was released on DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
in the United States as Our Hitler.