Heimkehr

Infobox Film
name = Heimkehr
director = Gustav Ucicky
producer = Karl Hartl
writer = Gerhard Menzel
starring = Attila Hörbiger
Paula Wessely
Carl Raddatz
music = Willy Schmidt-Gentner
cinematography = Günther Anders
editing =
distributor = Wien-Film GmbH
released = 10 October 1941 (in Austria);
23 October 1941 (in Germany)
runtime = 96 minutes
country = Germany
language = German
budget =
amg_id = 1:139915
imdb_id = 0033702

Heimkehr (English: "Homecoming") is a 1941 German anti-Polish propaganda film directed by Gustav Ucicky.

Plot

In the Wołyń Voivodeship in eastern Poland, the German minority is oppressed by the Polish majority. The physician Dr. Thomas does not have a hospital and his daughter Marie, who attends a German school, and needs an important operation, watches when her school is demolished by Polish authorities. Dr. Thomas protests to the mayor, noting the constitutionally guaranteed protection of minorities; however his protest falls on deaf ears. Together with his daughter's fiancée, Dr. Fritz Mutius, they drive her into the capital, in order to put their protest to the central government, but they are not 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 was conscripted by the Polish army. When they refuse to let him sing the Polish national anthem with the rest of the audience in the theatre, Fritz is deeply hurt. Afterwards Marie is refused treatment at the city hospital, and she dies.

The acts of violence against the German minority continue to increase; Marie's father becomes the victim of an attack, and is blinded as a result. When the Germans 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. They are abused by the prison guards, but escape through an underground cellar, scarcely avoiding a massacre, they are saved by German soldiers. The German escapees ready for their resettlement into the homeland. At the end of the film a car column enters into the Reich. The conclusion shows an enormous picture of Hitler set up at the border station.

Cast

The main roles were as follows: Paula Wessely, "Maria Thomas"; Peter Petersen, "Dr. Thomas"; Attila Hörbiger, "Ludwig Launhardt"; Ruth Hellberg, "Martha 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 Boguslaw Samborski, "Bürgermeister".

Historical Context

In the secret supplementary protocol to the Hitler Stalin pact, which stated the planned division of Poland, there was also a resettlement plan by which approximately 60,000 ethnic Germans were resettled into the Reich; these were ethnic Germans whose settlement area would have otherwise been given to the USSR. This resettlement took place shortly before Christmas 1939. Despite the slogan "Home in the Reich" ("Heim ins Reich") the ethnic Germans were not resettled into the "Old Reich", but into the conquered Polish areas (Reichsgau), and they not granted full German citizenship instead they were classified as Germans living abroad but "without" German citizenship (Volksdeutsche).

Production and Reception

The pictures of the artist Otto Engelhardt Kyffhäuser, who in January 1940, on Heinrich Himmler's orders, took numerous sketches of the trek of resettlers from Volhynia, served as the main source for the film. Shooting of the interior shots ran from 2 January to the middle of July 1941 in the Wien-Film studios at Rosenhügel, Sievering and Schönbrunn in Vienna. The field recordings took place between February and June 1941 in Chorzele and Ortelsburg (East Prussia). The picture was submitted to the "Zensurvorlage" on 26 August 1941 and was classified as politically and artistically particularly valuable.

The premiere took place on 31 August 1941 in the Cinema San Marco in Venice, winning an award from the Italian Ministry for Culture. The Austrian premiere followed on 10 October 1941 in the Viennese Scala, the German premiere on 23 October 1941 simultaneously at the Berlin UFA cinema by the zoo and the UFA theatre on Wagnitzstrasse.

After the end of World War II the Allies banned any showing of the film. The director Ucicky was also banned from working, although this ban was waived by Austria in July 1947. The author Elfriede Jelinek states that "Heimkehr" is “the worst propaganda feature of the Nazis at all”.

The film's rights are held by Taurus Film GmbH.

References

* Kanzog, Klaus, 1994. "Staatspolitisch besonders wertvoll: ein Handbuch zu 30 deutschen Spielfilmen der Jahre 1934 bis 1945". Munich: Schaudig & Ledig. ISBN 3-926372-05-2
* Trimmel, Gerald, 1998. "Heimkehr: Strategien eines nationalsozialistischen Films". Vienna: W. Eichbauer Verlag. ISBN 3-901699-06-6

External links

* [http://www.filmportal.de/df/35/Uebersicht,,,,,,,,A71654B0E0A8462892CE8E6E9D81D5C7,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.html www.filmportal.de]
* [http://www.film.at/heimkehr/ www.film.at]