Netflix has released its first German documentary on the assassination of Detlev Rohwedder and it is definitely worthwhile viewing. American subscribers can find it under the English title A Perfect Crime. And the murder of Detlev Rohwedder was indeed a perfect crime, for it remains unsolved 30 years later. Most Americans and many Germans probably don't recall Rohwedder and the sensational assassination, but in the early days of die Wende - the collapse of the DDR German Democratic Republic and its reunification with West Germany - Rohwedder played a pivotal role in restructuring the East German economy as the head of the Treuhandanstalt, the agency established to privatize industry of the former communist state. Rohwedder had been CEO of the the steel and mining group Hoesch, and had successfully brought it out of bankruptcy by ruthless cost-cutting measures resulting in thousands of employees losing their jobs. But bringing an entire country with thousands of enterprises out of bankruptcy was mission impossible - even for a skilled manager like Rohwedder.
The Netflix series includes interviews conducted with Rohwedder, as well as footage of him "on the job" in East Berlin meeting with politicians, labor unions, and journalists. There are also interviews with key players at the time who are still alive today - the former finance minister Theo Waigel, the former DDR eonomic minister Christina Luft, even Thilo Sarazzin who came up with the currency reform plan. Lurking in the background is Helmut Kohl, who -for better or for worse - fast-tracked the political and economic unification with a single-mindedness.
The series follows a True Crime format in four episodes. The first sets the scene of the crime, and each of the remaining three examine different theories concerning the perpetrators: was it the left-wing terrorist group RAF (Red Army Faction)? Was it carried out by former highly-trained agents of the Stasi - seeking revenge for their disenfranchisement from the west? Or was this part of a Deep State conspiracy using Rohrwedder as a sacrificial lamb to quell the unrest among the population of the DDR? Each of the episodes is well-done, presenting interviews with security experts and dramatic reenactments of the murder.
What is clear is that there was a total failure of the security precautions with respect to Rohwedder and his family. As the face of the "capitalist takeover" of the DDR he was a huge target, yet he and his family had virtually no security resources other than a city police car that drove by his home every hour or so. The risk must have been clear after the spectacular assassination of Deutsche Bank chief Alfred Herrhausen the previous year. And Herrhausen had an extensive security detail. The Netflix series has audio of Hergard Rohwedder, Detlev's wife who was also shot but survived during the assassination, complaining bitterly about the failure of the state to provide security. Hergard Rohwedder died last year.
The series does a good job of showing the anxiety and fear of the population in the east concerning the work of the Treuhand. Hundreds of thousands lost their jobs as they watched waves of investors from the west acquire the enterprises they built at fire-sale prices. For them it was a hostile takeover, and the resentment lives on today with many.
If you haven't seen it already, this new Netflix series Skylines is worth checking out. Unfortunately, Netflix has done little to promote the series to its US audience. I only became aware of Skylines after reading a review in the FAZ. Skylines takes place in the corrupt underworld of Frankfurt. I've spent a lot of time in Frankfurt, but mostly in the gleaming bank towers that dot the skyline, so this was something new. Also, the drama revolves around the highly successful rap music company Skyline Records. I never thought of Frankfurt as a center for entertainment - compared to Berlin or Cologne. Skyline Records is at the center of the drama. Founded by the rap star Kalifa - in part with drug money from his brother Arden - Skyline Records has grown into a hip-hop empire in the German music scene. Kalifa is on top of the world, but trouble surfaces when his brother Arden shows up after a long absence and threatens to destroy everything with his criminal activity. Another principal character is a talented young producer and beat artist named Jinn who is recruited by Kalifa's organization and sees that Skyline Records can turbo-charge his career. But Arden's team of gangsters threaten to derail Jinn's aspirations.
Unfortunately, the first couple of episodes of Skyline are pretty confusing; the writers try to weave too many characters and plot strands into the drama. If you can stay with Skylines, things begin to make sense by the third episode. And just as we begin to care deeply about the fates of Kalifa and Jinn season one ends with the sixth episode (most Netflix series have at least eight episodes?).
Despite the sometimes convoluted writing, I enjoyed Skyline. The street dialect (with a heavy does of Denglish) sounded authentic to my ears. The acting is outstanding - I was familiar with a couple of the actors from Tatort but otherwise they were new to me. Especially the Austrian actor Murathan Muslu as Kalifa (or is it Kadir?) is very charismatic. I'm not a fan of rap music, but I enjoyed the music as well as the behind-the-scenes showing how it's made.
Most of the plot lines are left hanging at the end of season one. Here's hoping that Netflix greenlights season two.
Last week a court in Munich found the Reichsbürger siblings Alfred and Monika Schaefer guilty of incitement and sentenced both to prison, although Monika was released for time served.
Der 63-jährige Antisemit aus Tutzing am Starnberger See verbreitete Ende vergangener Woche vor dem Münchner Landgericht eineinhalb Tage lang sein krudes und menschenverachtendes Weltbild. Er bestritt nicht, zahlreiche rechtsextreme Videos produziert zu haben, in denen er gegen Flüchtlinge und Juden hetzt und den Holocaust leugnet - er ist sogar stolz darauf. Der "Reichsbürger" nannte die Ermordung von sechs Millionen Juden durch die Nazis die "größte Lüge der Geschichte".
Holocaust denial is a crime in Germany - something the many fans of Alfred and Monika decry as a infringement of free speech. The Web site wir-sind-Monika.com denounced the court proceedings as a yet "another one of the machinations and plans of the Jews." The brother and sister will join the "Nazi Grandmother" Ursula Haverbeck as martyrs for "the cause".
Does the threat of imprisonment curtail Holocaust denial? Or does it inflame anti-Semitism and embolden the Reichsbürger and neo-Nazis?
If anyone should have a view on this subject it would be the American historian Deborah Lipstadt, who spent years of her life defending herself against libel charges brought by the notorious revisionist historian and Holocaust denier David Iriving. In an interview this week in Der Spiegel Professor Lipstadt was asked how does one defeat the deniers without giving them more importance?
Lipstadt: It may surprise you, but I am against laws prohibiting the denial of the Holocaust. I understand very well why there is such a law in Germany and in Austria and in Poland. But I believe in freedom of expression. If anyone doubts the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, he should be able to say that.
DER SPIEGEL: You think it's OK to just let people claim that 9/11 never happened, or that it was some Jewish-controlled conspiracy?
Lipstadt: That's the price of freedom of speech. I find it more dangerous to let politicians choose what can and cannot be said. Just think of the U.S. at the moment and imagine President Trump and the new Supreme Court defining what you still can say! The media does have a special responsibility here.
And they do not have to spread such conspiracy lies. They can show that such claims are nonsense and entirely made up.
I recommend the 2016 feature film Denial about the Lipstadt-Irving libel trial in London (available in German as Verleugnung).
We went to see the feature film Spotlight, in my opinion the best American movie of 2015. Spotlight is about the team of investigative reporters at the Boston Globe who wrote a series of articles that exposed the role of Catholic Church in covering up a massive scandal of priests sexually abusing children. What I especially appreciated was the way the movie showed the reporters doing their jobs - no heroics, no melodrama - just the hard work of reporting: doggedly interviewing victims and perpetrators, poring over phone directories, hanging around courthouses and lawyers' offices. And also noteworthy is the role of the managing editor, who, instead of publishing sensational articles about individual pedophile priests, waited until there was enough evidence to reveal the systemic criminal cover-up of crimes that could be traced to the Vatican. The movie is not fiction; read the story behind the Spotlight movie.
Spotlight also raises the uncomfortable question: why the epidemic of child rape among Roman Catholic priests? Not just in Boston, but everywhere the Church has a presence - even Germany. One of the characters in Spotlight - a psychologist who works with pedophile priests - states bluntly that Church doctrine, namely the celibacy requirements for priests, is a root cause of sexual abuse of children.
Church officials and their apologists always deny a connection between celibacy and child rape by priest, but two highly respected German theologians - Hans Küng and Eugen Drewermann - have been consistent in their criticism of the celibacy requirement. Küng sees celibacy as a contributing factor; it reflects the Church's distorted view of human sexuality:
Nicht zu bestreiten ist zwar, dass solcher Missbrauch auch in Familien, Schulen, Vereinen und auch in Kirchen ohne Zölibatsgesetz vorkommt. Aber warum massenhaft gerade in der von Zölibatären geleiteten katholischen Kirche. Selbstverständlich ist nicht allein der Zölibat schuld an diesen Verfehlungen. Aber er ist der strukturell wichtigste Ausdruck einer verkrampften Einstellung der katholischen Kirchenleitung zur Sexualität, wie dies auch in der Frage der Empfängnisverhütung und anderem zum Ausdruck kommt.
And Küng had harsh criticism for his former classmate and friend Josef Ratzinger for his pivotal role in covering up the worldwide sexual abuse scandal, essentially allowing these priests to move from Diocese to Diocese where they raped other children:
"There is no denying the fact that the worldwide system of covering up cases of sexual crimes committed by clerics was engineered by the Roman Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Cardinal Ratzinger (1981-2005). During the reign of Pope John Paul II, that congregation had already taken charge of all such cases under oath of strictest silence. Ratzinger himself, on May 18th, 2001, sent a solemn document to all the bishops dealing with severe crimes ( “epistula de delictis gravioribus” ), in which cases of abuse were sealed under the “secretum pontificium” , the violation of which could entail grave ecclesiastical penalties"
Eugen Drewermann is a former priest and trained psychotherapist who is not as well known in the US as Hans Küng. Drewermann has psychoanalyzed the priesthood and written extensively on what he considers the dehumanizing aspects of Catholic Church doctrine. His seminal work Kleriker: Psychogramm eines Ideals (1991) has unfortunately not been translated into English, but many of his key ideas can be found in A Violent God-Image: An Introduction to the Work of Eugen Drewermann by Matthias Beier (2004). Drewermann sees the celibacy requirement as one component of a cruel system of psychological oppression which, in some priests, will manifest itself in deviant sexual behavior:
"A system which (for centuries!) has forced people again and again to choose between God and the love of a human being - what is this system but a really inhuman and ungodly system, because it is literally loveless and caught up in the purely external structures of power and administration! It is not disloyal priests who were courageous enough to 'lose' themselves to a woman against all the censorship of the superego who need to confess and repent before the system of the Catholic Church, but the Catholic CHurch itself is accused and has to confess before humans (and then also before God) its intentional inhumanity and mental cruelty."
Pope Francis has shown some refreshing willingness to discuss openly the need for fundamental reforms in the Church. It is unlikely, however, that priests will be allowed to marry anytime soon. Until the celibacy requirement is abolished, children will continue to be at risk and lives will be damaged.
I was able to watch the terrific remake of Nackt unter Wölfen ("Naked Among Wolves") on the ARD Mediathek Portal. This was a remake of the 1963 GDR film Nackt unter Wölfen directed by Frank Beyer which achieved international acclaim. That film, in turn, was based on the 1958 novel of the same title by Bruno Apitz, based on his experience as a prisoner on the Buchenwald concentration camp. Aptiz's novel was required reading by all high school students in the GDR. The film (and novel) cover the final days and liberation of the camp in April 1945. The American forces are quickly advancing from the west and the SS officers in charge of the camp of roughly 25,000 prisoners - mostly Jews, but also communist party members - are weighing their options. Do they evacuate the camp? Or simply murder all the prisoners and try to hide the evidence of their crime? Meanwhile, a 3-year old Jewish boy from Poland has been smuggled into the camp, and the inmates deliberate on what to do with the child. The boy becomes a symbol of hope and resistance - he must be protected, kept alive and hidden from the SS at all cost.
In the 1963 version of Nackt unter Wölfen (which I haven't seen) the communist inmates organize a prisoner revolt with smuggled weapons and liberate the camp themselves. In the final scene the communist leader exhorts the inmate to storm the camp gate, which they do, joyfully singing the Internationale. In the 2015 version - which is more accurate historically - the SS abandoned the camp ahead of the advancing Americans. The head Kapo - in an almost hushed, reticent tone - informs the prisoners over the loudspeaker that they are free. One by one- zombie-like - the traumatized inmates stagger into the daylight. The newer ARD version also doesn't hold back on scenes of human degradation, inhuman brutality and torture (parental guidance strongly suggested for younger viewers).
I do hope that a version with English subtitles will soon be available in the US on Netflix, just as we now can watch the made for German television series Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter.
For those of you who have already binged on the complete episodes of Breaking Bad and are looking for something to fill the void, I can recommend Generation War - which is the English title of the German mini-series Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter("Our Mothers, Our Fathers"). Generation War,comprised of three episodes of 90 minutes each, just became available on Netflix Instant Play. The series was a huge hit on German television, attracting more than 7 million viewers each night - phenomenal numbers for the German market.
Generation War is the saga of five friends in Berlin who meet for one last farewell celebration on the eve of the outbreak of war in 1941. We follow their respective journeys over the next five years, as their youthful idealism and optimism turns into despair and desolation. From the title, it is apparent that these five are meant to represent the fate of an entire generation. None of the characters is a member of the Nazi party, although they all naively believe (at first) in the propaganda put out by the party. One of the five is a Jew who narrowly escapes the Auschwitz death camp. There are some unbelievable and absurd plot twists as Generation War struggles to keep all five of the principal characters in view.
The series has been roundly criticized for being bad history, but I have to say that Generation War is never dull and for the most part is highly entertaining. The acting is superb, and we grow to care deeply about each of the five, even as they become morally compromised in their efforts to survive a terrible war. The production is also of very high quality.
American critics have sometimes called Generation War Germany's Band of Brothers, the 2001 HBO series that follow one American combat unit in World War II. But Band of Brothers often focused on combat heroics. There is nothing heroic in the war scenes in Generation War - all superbly done. They are visions of unmitigated- and, ultimately, meaningless - horror.
How often do we get to see a film about ideas? And not just the ideas, but the origin of ideas? Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt in Margaretha von Trotta's 2012 biopic spends a great deal of time on camera thinking - usually deep in thought smoking a cigarette. Denken is her first love, although her marriage to Heinrich Blücher is lovingly portrayed. It was her love of thinking that led to her maddening affair with Martin Heidegger, played by Klaus Pohl in the film. To seduce the young student he only has to say "Sie wollen bei mir das Denken lernen, Fräulein Arendt" ("You want to learn how to think from me,.") And then "Denken ist ein einsames Geschäft", ("Thinking is a lonely business"). Just how true that is becomes apparent later in the film, as Arendts love of Denken destroys her relationships with cherished friends and colleagues.
In the film we catch Arendt in 1961 as she leaves New York to cover the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, and von Trotta does a masterful job of weaving into her film the black and white footage from the actual trial. We hear and see Eichmann using the universal language of bureaucratese to justify his deeds and deny all culpability. We watch and listen to the anguished testimony of the witnesses and the eloquence of the prosecutor Gideon Hausner. We see Sukowa as Arendt focused intently on the man in the glass cage as her new idea of "the banality of evil" takes shape.
Later, when her piece is published in The New Yorker, she is falsely accused ot sympathizing with Eichmann. Arendt is vilified by her critics and abandoned by her colleagues at the New School. Only her husband and her friend Mary McCarthy (Janet McTeer) stand with her. In the climatic courtroom-like scene, she confronts her critics with an emotional defense of Denken in the pursuit of truth.
But Denken, removed from its context in place and time - das Denken an sich - leads to Denkfehler. It led to her lover and mentor Heidegger embracing the Nazis. And it led to Arendt seeing only the man in the glass cage and not the virulent anti-Semite who - like all participants in the Holocaust, from the SS who did the actual killing to the bureaucrats who murdered with their Unterschriften and Stempel, all of whom bought into the notion of the notion of the Judenfrage and ultimately the neccessity of the FInal Solution. In Hannah Arendt the critics of the heroine are depicted as aggrieved Zionists, opportunists, and even intellectual cowards. History has proved Arendt's critics correct. Still, ideas - even ideas that prove to be wrong - need to be debated, and any attempt at censorship must be deplored.
I can think of no other film in the past few years that shows so clearly the power of ideas.
Netflix doesn't have a great selection of German films, but it now offers the entire Heimat Trilogy - Edgar Reitz's epic saga that covers Germany's tumultuous history from 1918 to 2000. This is more than 53 hours of film on 20 DVD's (streaming format not available). And, based on what I've seen, it is a riveting story. I finished the first Heimat - 15 hours of viewing - and found that I had grown a beard and my lawn was in desperate need of mowing.
The first Heimat focuses almost exclusively on the Simon family in the tiny rural village of Schabbach in western Germany. We experience the Weimar inflation, the Nazi era, the war, the American occupation and the Wirtschaftswunder in Schabbach, where change comes very slowly - if at all. The family (and the village) are held together by the beautiful and long-suffering Maria Simon (wonderfully acted by Marita Breuer). The acting is superb, and the script is excellent - except for the Felliniesque final episode. I loved the cinematography, but I don't quite get why Edgar Reitz keeps switching from black and white to color.
Reitz has been criticized for its realtively benign depiction of the Nazi period. But I think it is accurate that the 1930's were perceived by many as a time of relative prosperity (see Götz Aly's 2005 book Hitlers Volkstaat) until the war led tp widespread shortages and misery. And one of the central characters - Wilfried Wiegand - joins the SS and is heard bragging about the Final Solution at a Christmas party.
Reitz has made some allowances for the American audience. Each episode begins with a recap of the story in English, narrated by one of the characters in the drama.
I've started Die zweite Heimat - Chronik einer Jugend, which follows Maria's youngest son Hermann as he leaves the provincial Schabbach for the bright lights and Bohemian life in the Schwabing section of Munich.
What is it about Austrians and their cellars? First we were shocked by the case of Natascha Kampusch, who was abducted off the street at age 10 and kept in a cellar for eight years before finally escaping. But that was just a foretast of the horror to come. In 2008 the world learned about Josef Fritzl, who kept his own daughter captive in the cellar of his house and fathered seven children with her. Referring to the Fritzl case, Elfriede Jelinek wrote:
Österreich ist eine kleine Welt, in der die große ihre Probe hält. Im noch viel kleineren Kellerverlies von Amstetten findet die Aufführung statt, täglich, nächtlich. Es fällt keine Aufführung wegen irgendetwas aus. (aus "Im Verlassenen")
(‘Austria is a small world in which the big world holds its rehearsal. The performance takes place in the very much smaller cellar dungeon in Amstetten – daily, nightly. No performance is ever missed … Performances are all there can ever be.’)
In his 2011 filmMichael, (available now in the US on DVD) director Markus Schleinzer takes us down into the cellar of one perfectly average Austrian house to watch the daily and nightly horror performance. Hollywood spends up to $100 million to produce the average blockbuster horror movie, but Michael is ten times more bone chilling than anything from Hollywood - at a budget of under $1 million.
What is so horrifying is that everything on the surface seems perfectly normal. Michael, the main character ( brilliantly played by Michael Fuith) is seen coming home from his hum-drum job at an insurance company with his sack of groceries. He casually cooks dinner while watching television and then opens the locked cellar door to let in a boy of about ten years - Wolfgang - who is told to set the table. The two eat dinner together, the boy is allowed to watch a bit of television, and then is sent back down into the cellar. The next morning Michael rapes the boy before heading off to work. That is the routine - daily, nightly. No performance is ever missed (Jelinek). We don't know how long this routine has been going on, but it must be for years. Wolfgang writes letters to his lost family which are intercepted by Michael and neatly filed. We see a large stack of them.
Michael is able to function normally at his office job, and even receives a promotion. It seems like the routine will go on forever with Wolfgang in the cellar, but things began to unravel when the boy becomes ill. Michael diecides Wolfgang needs a companion - or perhaps he's getting too old for Michael's taste? In a terrifying scene he nearly succeeds in abducting a young boy at a video arcade, It all seems so easy and perfectly normal.
Schleinzer does a masterful job of building suspense, so by the final, incredibly chilling, scene I nearly yelling at the screen. I can't think of another film that so perfectly captures the banality of evil.
Michael is just one of several terrific recent films from Austrian directors. Both Benjamin Heisenberg's 2010 film Der Räuber and especially Götz Spielmann's 2008 film Revanche are must-see's for anyone interested in current film. Sadly, these films received little or no notice when they were finally shown on American screens.
Sueddeutsche Zeitung is the only German media outlet I could find that picked up on Lawrence Wright's stunning exposé of Scientology in this week's New Yorker. Wright was able to interview Hollywood screenwriter Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby), who rose to the highest levels in the "church" before leaving the cult in disgust in 2008. The SZ reports:
Wright hat mit Der Tod wird euch finden das wahrscheinlich beste Buch über 9/11 geschrieben und ist einer der wichtigsten Vertreter des sogenannten "New New Journalism". Damit bezeichnet man in den USA Journalisten wie Wright, William Langewiesche oder Jon Krakauer, die mit monatelang recherchierten, fast buchlangen Texten gegen die Infokultur der Medienbranche angetreten sind. "Der Apostat" ist nun nicht nur eine der am besten recherchierten und erzählten Geschichten über die Church of Scientology. Weil Paul Haggis die zweithöchste Erkenntnisstufe eines Thetan VII erreicht hatte und als Hollywoodgröße Teil eines umhegten inneren Zirkels der Sekte war, bekommt man ungleich tiefere Einblicke in die inneren Verhältnisse als aus allen bisherigen Berichte von Aussteigern.
(With "The Looming Tower" Wrtight wrote what is probably the best book about 9/11 and is one of the most important representatives of the so-called "New New Journalism". This refers to journalists in the US like Wright, Willaim Langewiesche or Jon Krakauer, who conduct months-long research and with practically book-length texts that challenge the info-culture of the media sector. "The Apostate" is not just one of the best researched and written stories about the Church of Scientology. Since Paul Haggis had attained the second-highest level of at Thetan VII and has a Hollywood celebrity was part of the closed-off inner circle of the cult, we get a deeper look into the inner workings than in all the reports up to now from others who escaped from the cult. )
Wright's long piece The Apostate can be found here.
Scientology is far more controversial in Germany - where it does not have the status of a religion. It is viewed - rightfully - as a dangerous mind-control cult which has a hundred ways of parting converts with their money - leaving many destitute. Last year the German public television network ARD produced a feature film about a Scientology dropout - Bis nichts mehr bleibt- which attracted a record audience. (You can watch the very suspenseful film on YouTube.)
What is clear from Wright's piece - and what is also apparent in Bis nichts mehr bleibt - is that every aspect of Scientology - from the biography of its founder to the purported "benefits" of "auditing" - is fraudulent.
Recent Comments