"Veit Harlan was the Third Reich's most successful film director." "His films were seen by more than 1 00 million viewers throughout Europe." "After World War ll he was tried twice for crimes against humanity because ofhis anti-Semitic film jew Süss." "He was acquitted both times." "He is a jew!" "I recommend you do not miss the next mail coach." "Why?" "I have business in Stuttgart." "Indeed, I wanted a recommendation for a hostel here." "There are none that take in jews." "In my history book, when I was at college, there was a small photo from jew Süss underneath which was written:" "jew Süss by Veit Harlan." "And it was then I realized that this was my name." "That was difficult for me." ""Reichsführer-SS:" "I wish that measures be taken to ensure that all SS men and policemen see jew Süss during the winter." "Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler."" "It became a murder weapon." "And once you've seen that the fruit of your work turns into a murder weapon, it is difficult to just say," ""I am a filmmaker and will carry on making films."" "That was the end for me." "That's where my, let's say, extreme prejudice towards him comes from." "The image I have of my father is mine." "And it's nobody's business what I think of my father or of my mother." "It's true to say that my father was really a rather apolitical person." "He was an artist and just got carried away." "What took place is not really forgivable." "Only his work counted, nothing else." "Only the realization of his plans counted." "Rrofessor Veit Harlan at the UFA premises." "He is the director of such epic films as" "The Great King and the color film The Golden City." "I think he was a fellow traveler, an ambitious man who got himself the career he wanted." "Stanley of course asked himself the same questions:" "If I had been in his position, what would I have done?" "If I had recognized it in time, would I have been afraid?" "The people are rising upl" "The people are rising upl" "The storm is breaking loosel" "So, my grandfather..." "Veit Harlan." "My grandmother," "Hilde Körber." "And then a second wife," "Kristina Söderbaum, an actress from his films." "And then Hilde Körber and Veit Harlan had three children:" "Thomas Harlan, my father, then Maria," "and then the third sibling, Susanne." "Susanne had one daughter, jessica." "Thomas married Luisa." "They had a son," "Chester." "Then... he met my mother," "and here I am." "Veit Harlan got married again, this time to Kristina Söderbaum." "They had two sons:" "Kristian, and Caspar." "And I know that Caspar has three daughters:" "Lotte," "Lena and Nele." "Ladies and Gentlemen, we are glad to welcome you to this... exhibition:" "jew Süss an NS propaganda film here at the Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg." "I appreciate your interest in this exhibition focusing on a film." "In 1 948/ 49, Veit Harlan was one of very few artists to be prosecuted for crimes against humanity for having made this very film." "Let us start in the first exhibition room." "Veit Harlan was born in 1 899, the son of playwright Walter Harlan." "He is one of six children." "Veit Harlan was a volunteer during the First World War, then became a stage actor and married his jewish colleague, Dora Gershon." "It was a brief marriage." "He married his second wife, Hilde Körber, in 1 929." "He always maintained that he was an actor." "It was very important to him." "It was where he came from, his basis for directing." "It made him very capable of dealing with actors." "His method of directing was very much that of guiding his actors." "I think he considered acting as his roots." "Veit Harlan and Hilde Körber worked together on several films." "Harlan was an upcoming director," "Hilde Körber one of the most popular actresses of the '30s." "We children were aware of the fact that our parents didn't fit together," "and that they couldn't live together in peace." "They were too different." "My father was often loud and crude, and she was of a very tender nature." "My mother was like a harp to my father's kettledrum." "But I did love my father too, and his rowdiness, his laughter and his craziness." "He'd climb the stairs on all fours, throw and catch me." "I loved it." "Father, Veit Harlan, mother, Hilde Körber." " How old were you when they divorced?" " Ten!" " Was this hard for you?" " Yes." "This was simply because my mother no longer wanted us to see our father, but I very much wanted to." "Voilá." " Did you like him?" " Very much." "As he did you, his only son at that time." "The only son and his favorite, the most important one of all." "Thomas, Susanne and Maria Harlan." "Three very different siblings." "They enjoy a privileged childhood in the Third Reich, though their parents'divorce casts its shadow." "Goebbels?" "I only met him when he came to Tannenberg Allee." "He had come there for a meeting with our father." "I was four or five, I guess." "We were told the minister was coming, were put in dresses." "Then he came, we gave a curtsy, he patted our heads, and we went off to play." "And the two of them withdrew to my father's study and discussed what they should do." "ln the Gerhardt Hauptmann adaptation The Ruler," "Harlan employed NSDARslogans and propagated the Nazi cult of the genius." "The film, starring Germany's most famous actor, Emil jannings, received prestigious awards." "It was Harlan's breakthrough." "Not only Goebbels, but Hitler too noticed the talented director who was so capable in lacing artistic drama with ideological content." "On my death I shall leave the works I created to the State." "That is to say, our national community." "I am convinced that from amongst the workforce that helped me to create these works, the man will come forth who has a calling to further my endeavors, be he from the furnace or from the desk, the laboratory or the work lathe." "I wish to teach him only that which a parting man may teach one who is newly arrived." "He who is born to lead needs no other teacher than his own genius." "I've never seen an artist more loved than my father was after the war." "On the streets, whenever I gave my name." "Incredible!" "Everyone would fall silent, would say..." ""Those were great moments."" "Their souls had been touched." "He could have played on that much more." "But anyway, it's unique that someone should so perfectly touch a nerve throughout his public." "It must have been in the 50s or the 60s, one of the people at the studio had a copy of it and said," ""It may be forbidden, but watch this."" "And on a monitor this size he showed me scenes from jew Süss." "It was terribly difficult, we had to keep a lookout." "There were these little figures..." "I didn't comprehend that it is malignant or how well or badly the actors play." "It meant nothing to me." "And I thought, "It was for this that he was prosecuted?" "I don't get it."" "And as an old soldier I say:" "If thejew means to do abhorrent deeds with our womenfolk, it is up to you, your Grace, to stop him short." "Do you dare reproach me?" "I'll have you imprisoned!" "You cannot imprison all Württembergers, your Grace." "That I can, rebels!" "Then,just after I had turned 7 0," "I was invited to a closed showing of the film in the Urania Cinema." "And it left me speechless." "I just wept and was in despair." "And I couldn't even imagine that my father had really done this." "And this film that everyone found so good," "I didn't even find good." "I thought that Krauss really overacted, and intentionally made it as sleazy as possible." "I found it horrific." "I felt like going outside and puking." "jew!" "jew!" "Mr. Trenk, this is thejew's doing." "Leave her be." " Kill him!" " Kill the villain!" "Thejew has to go!" "Thejew has to go!" "I found the film particularly repulsive." "I found Kristina's role... repulsive." "And my father was very sad about it." "My mother, who had two half-jewish sisters was horrified." "It got to me really badly, the mentality that it represented." "I could say the same of The Golden City." "The quality of the acting and directing was irrelevant to me." "It was the mentality behind it that got to me." "People obviously didn't catch that anymore in Germany in 1 940." "Can't have been, given the success the film had." "My daughter will bear nojewish children." " I see." " We understand each other then." "It might prove dangerous to reject the suit of a man in my position." "I found the film shocking." "For sure." "And why?" "Because of the scenes, the way it was filmed, and the reaction it caused." "The echo..." "The film remains his trademark, his black flag." "I could have seen it last year, but I didn't want to hear people criticizing, discussing, or berating it." "I would have felt attacked." "Now I think it would be okay." "And now I've seen the film." "It's full of caricatures, Ifind it grotesque." "And I can't understand its success." "Because this is no great film." "I'd imagined it as starker and more brutal." "Because this film was for so long such a talking point." "So that finally, when you do see it, you think," ""Is that it?"" "That was my first reaction, I thought it's, like, so cheesy and really banal, too..." "I thought it wasn't even very well told." "And so my first reaction was:" "Why was this film censored for years?" "And what's so terrible about it?" "I'd imagined it much worse." "Because there'd been so much talk about it, and, because it was censored for so long." "So I had thought it was really extremist." "And it was only in the context of propaganda that I saw what effects it had." "It was good to see it in a school context." "So as not to be abandoned with it, but that an explanation is furnished of how... and with which means..." "And I have to say, none of my fellow pupils said to me," ""My God!" "Your grandfather made this!"" "ln November 1 939," "Veit Harlan was commissioned to make jew Süss." "Goebbels, Minister for Rropaganda, summoned the best German actors." "The film is pseudo-historical, relates to thejew joseph Süss Oppenheimer, a financial adviser in early 1 8th Century Württemberg." "The film opened in German cinemas in September 1 940." "The female lead was played by Harlan's wife, Kristina Söderbaum." "Her popularity meant that jew Süss could be sold to the public as both drama and entertainment." "Whilst filming crowd scenes in Rrague, Harlan used jewish extras from Rrague and Lublin's ghettos." "This scene had the effect of prompting the audience to shout out things like "Kick thejews outl"" "Hundreds ofjews come here." "The people are outraged." "They fall on us like locusts." "Mr. Oppenheimer sets taxes..." "That Oppenheimer managed to introducejews into Stuttgart was what the audience found threatening, and generally unacceptable." "Some 20 million Germans saw it, as did another 20 million Europeans." "Heinrich Himmler officially requested, one week after the German premiere, that measures be taken to ensure that all SS and policemen be shown this film." "The dimensions are unimaginable." "What did such films lead to, what was their direct effect?" "To what extent did they influence any given SS man?" "One can't say." "If the question is, who in Germany was guilty, many things need to be considered." "The fact is many millions were slain by us." "Back then I got a postcard from Lublin." "I still have it somewhere." "On it he wrote, "You can't imagine, how glad thejews are to work with me."" "An enthusiastic postcard." "From Lublin." "I remember it well." "I remember that" "I wasn't surprised at the time." "It wasn't till later that I reconsidered it, asked myself, what on earth was that card?" "Did he believe that these people, so soon to be killed, should be allowed to celebrate their religion in peace one last time?" "It's monstrous!" "Or is this just more projection?" "What did they know of their end?" "What did my father know of it?" "I don't know." "The hardest problem for our civil administration in occupied territory is thejewish question." "German soldiers have been shot at in this ghetto." "Reprisals have been swift in coming." "This eastern jewish sub-humanity is the source of the international criminals that plague the West." "It has supplied Western democracies with pickpockets, procurers, dealers of girls and narcotics, and manipulators of international finance and the press." "These are the samejews whose brothers, sons and cousins in London and Raris make such fine speeches about humanity and civilization." "lnsubordinate elements are being contained in camps." "It's plain to me that such a film at such a time, and in the context of the propaganda that this film typifies..." "That given this context the film was the cause of massive and malign results." "I'm sure of it." "Film has always been subverted into propaganda." "These days all the war games and films are sponsored by the American military." "They finance and produce war games so as to requisition people." "Little has changed." "He was certainly not anti-Semitic." "And certainly not a Nazi." "Not at all." "He spoke so derogatively about Nazis." "He can't have been one." "He had loads ofjewish friends." "They loved him." "Our doctor was jewish, we had jews all around us." "I believe that he really had a huge problem with jewish culture and with thejewish religion." "It's true he'd had a jewish wife, but she later left him and married a jew." "This hurt his ego." "Furthermore, he draws on all of the anti-jewish imagery and depictions throughout the centuries." "Thus all his resentment and rejection of this culture finds expression this way." "No, I don't believe that his first wife," "Dora Gershon, nor his anti-Semitism are relevant themes." "That's too superficial." "The truth is the non-anti-Semite was the best man to sharpen the knives." "What makes this particularly dreadful is that the person who did this didn't comprehend what he'd been complicit in." "And by the time he might be expected to have understood it, he still hadn't realized that he should no longer practice this profession." "You never discussed jew Süss with him?" "Directly, no." "I saw the film." "But directly, no." " You never discussed jew Süss?" " Never." "No." "I had no chance till he was on his death bed." "He didn't let me ask." "He spoke to me, not with me." "These are very different things." "I couldn't talk to him about it." "He told me about his worries about having made this film." "But I couldn't say to him," "I saw the film and didn't like this or that aspect." "I hadn't seen the film." "Even if you're apolitical, to make such a film which..." "And I do accept that he didn't want to make it." "But why did he have to make it so well?" "Why make such a good film?" "I can't comprehend it." "This is the reproach that..." "to my mind, won't go away." "Someone who is so..." "possessed by his work can't intentionally make a crap film." "It's impossible." "He has to make it as well as he is able." "And he presumably thought his way of going about it was more humane and less venomous than that of Goebbels or... the rest of them... who had been supposed to make the film." "Even if it were to cost him his life, he would never deliver a bad piece of work." "Some musicians simply can't play badly." "Yes, but a good director will know how to direct badly." "He thought only of the moment, the good scenes, the good light, getting a fine shot, and of a satisfied Goebbels." "I don't think he really imagined what it would lead to." "He didn't tell me at once, he..." "He came home, pale in the face, said, "I'll tell you about it later."" "And then he told me that night, after lights-out." "He said, "Yes..." "I have to make the film."" "And I sat up straight and said, "You simply cannot do this!"" "There must have been coercion for him to have made jew Süss." "But how this situation is to be judged..." "I only know the story in his version." "And it, of course, has a subjective facet." "That it was a question of a situation which he himself did not welcome..." "I absolutely accept his word on this." "I believed him then and I believe it now." "He wanted to carry on making films." "That was paramount." "And the extent to which this was problematic for him is, to my mind," "ridiculously exaggerated in his memoirs." "There he claims to have been forced." "This is the most absurd thing he says." "It wasn't fear that drove him." "He was working with material that meant something to him, and he molded it to perfection because of this." "And the other thing was, he'd seen that if he was to fulfill this commission," "he'd have no trouble with the financing of future projects." "Scruples?" "No, he certainly had... none." "I'll put it this way:" "His claims that he was forced to make the film are to be believed." "There are plenty of reasons to do so, witnesses, too who corroborate this." "So the question is, if it is only due to coercion that I do something I find reprehensible," "why then would I coerce my wife?" "Why put her in a position where she will do something immoral that I want to avoid?" "She's a free woman." "Goebbels can't give her orders." "I would say that the fact that she acts in the film is virtually proof that he didn't really worry about it all." "Because he'd never have imposed something awful on her." "Or something bad." "He found it possible and right to make the film." "That's why she's in it." "The explanation's simple." "And it terrifies me." "The explanation is awful." "Well, Actuarius, you can't be having fun." "You know that voice." "Oh my God!" "Take the cloth down." "Take it down." "What does this mean?" "Do you still hear anything?" "That's the meaning." "So take it down, child." "Oh, you give it back!" "No!" "No?" "Fine." "Keep it then." "But..." " Oh Lord abovel" " What?" "Oh,you're praying?" "Rray to your God." "Rrayl" "Not only Christians have a God." "Wejews do, too." "He is the God of vengeance." "Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth." " You can thank your father." " Let me go." "Should I save the traitors from being shot?" " Don't you touch me." " Don't be so prim and you'll get your Actuarius back again." "As I was saying, you take guilt upon yourself by making such a film, and doing it well." "And this relates to my father." "But my mother, who as a young girl had come across such a despotic man." "And gone through thick and thin with him and done everything that he told her to." "Whilst being incredibly naive." "I mean, my mother's strengths didn't include her intellect or her analytical abilities." "That wasn't really her thing." "She was a person who made a strong impression on others and who could be incredibly sweet and touching and nice." "But she had no idea what she had done there." "So it's just silly to reproach her." "It was a known fact that anti-Semitism was present in Germany." "And it was after 1 938 and I began experiencing those terrible things." "I wasn't in Berlin on Kristallnacht, but it was 1 938, and even if you'd seen nothing, you still knew that people were being persecuted." "Neither she nor Veit Harlan were stupid." "They knew what it meant." "But I think it's easier to say, in retrospect, that she was to an extent complicit than this was in fact plain to her then." "Maybe not in jew Süss but in the films before it, like you said, too." "Because at the start, coming to Germany..." "Filming anything at all..." "And, then, filming with a great director, and with other great actors was something for her..." "And she was young at the time..." "It wasn't apparent to her where this was leading." "What situation she was in and where it might end." "She didn't think about it." "She was a very important and popular actress so she had a certain responsibility and therefore, also, a certain guilt." "You could say that she was, to an extent, naive, but it's also related to the Swedish mentality." "Back then, mail bags would be hung up on the trees, and there'd be money inside and so on, but no one stole anything." "The world was intact there." "And it's naive to think that when you come to Berlin it'll be like that too." "You see." "Kristina Söderbaum had come to Germany as a young actress in 1 935." "Her role models were Elisabeth Bergner and Marlene Dietrich." "Having starred in two of Harlan's films, she became his wife in 1 939." "The same year their son Kristian Veit was born." "Söderbaum acted exclusively in her husband's films including The Immortal Heart, the story of the neglected wife of the pocket watch's brilliant inventor." "The city of Nuremberg is renowned for people like Albrecht Dürer," "Hans Sachs and Peter Henlein." "Your Behaim is a madman like you." "But you shall have memorials after your death." "On our house will be a plaque reading:" ""Here lived and died Peter Henlein."" "And no one will ever know that he was the death of his wife." "Don't you touch me!" "You are immune to it all." "The eternal fame you so crave will be yours." "But me?" "What do I have?" "just pain and suffering and sacrifice." "The conceit of men makes them believe their wives are property there to live and die for them." "You too believe that in your treacherous heart." "But let me tell you this in the name of all womankind:" "I retort to your arrogance with these hands of mine." " Not the watch!" " I'll be rid of it!" "My mother was obliged, when he was directing her, to do lots of things that she didn't want to do." "Like ride a horse into a cage containing six Siberian tigers." "Or, before that," "I think it was in The Great Sacrifice, they waited till the North Sea was wild in November, and she had to ride into it." "He insisted on it." "I must admit, these pictures were great." "But he gave personal feelings scant regard in his professional life." "Aels!" "Don't go in so deep." "It suddenly gets deep." "Aels!" "Do you imagine my horse can't swim?" "I guess he loved her." "But it was... the kind of love where you take complete possession of someone..." "It's not for everyone." "I couldn't stand being loved in that way, and being forced into subordination." "I couldn't stand it." "Kristina Söderbaum, the archetypal naive, childlike woman, became a screen idol with her natural, blonde, Aryan looks." "She was one of the best paid female stars ofher time." "Nobody else embodied purity, unspoiled nature and idyllic romance as she did." "Harlan used this charisma to enhance the dramatic, fateful films he liked to make." "Kristina Söderbaum became noted for her on-screen deaths." "It's happened to me twice, that elderly people have said," ""Ah yes, your grandmother was called..."" "Then they hesitate, say, "No, I won't say it."" "And I say, "The water corpse, I know."" "Annchen!" "When she did die," "Lotte and I were both there." "We went back the next morning and the undertakers had her in her bier her hands folded." "I saw her and thought," ""She isn't dead, she'll get up as soon as someone says 'cut."'" "Harlan's sentimental and gloomy dramas are based on works by writers such as Theodor Storm and Rudolf Binding." "The director is masterful in working with bombastic contexts." "He said himself," ""lf my films found favor, it was due to innocence and its loss," "Eros and nature, cruelty, murder and suicide. "" "I don't quite know what the source was of the kitschy melodramas such as The Great Sacrifice and lmmensee." "I don't know if all this kitsch came from the wife, or if these things were part of him." "I fear they were in him." "Those angelic choirs!" "He had a weakness for things heavenly." "It was the postulation of feelings that didn't really exist." "The synthetic creation of sentiment." "I fear that The Great Sacrifice and lmmensee are prime examples of this:" "Creating artificial sentiment and lending it... credibility." "Thank you, Elisabeth." " Farewell, Elisabeth." " Reinhardt, I'll see you in two years." "Faithfulness was a popular theme." "Both in political and in emotional terms." "It was wartime, the men were away." "So faithfulness was extremely important." "We spoke about my parents' private lives, to both of them this was extremely important." "And that faithfulness in this film..." "My father could usually decide what kind of film he wanted to make." "Normally." "With the propaganda films less so." "But normally he could choose his themes." "And of course these were themes that meant something to him and to her, and were generally popular in any case." "This is the cinema of illusion and of playing with emotions." "And I'd say that that was what was essential to him." "And that this neatly coincided with the implications that Goebbels required and with the fundaments of the Third Reich." "Harlan was solidly conservative." "A German nationalist, etc." "These are the values that he represented and which the Nazis also subscribed to." "In this regard, they fitted together well." "This is a special I D card issued by the Ministry for Propaganda which allowed Veit Harlan to use at anytime the backdoor to the Ministry for Propaganda on Wilhelm Platz in Berlin." "I think this was really an elite group who would be received at all times by Goebbels, or who could wait for an audience with him." "And only the most important filmmakers would receive such a thing." "ln 1 94 2, Veit Harlan presented at the Venice Film Festival his first color feature film, The Golden City." "He was, by then, Germany's leading filmmaker, the prodigy the country could boast of." "His films are shown in most of Europe to great success." "The Agfa colors that characterize The Golden City are mixed with racist undercurrents contrasting the Czechs with the Germans, pure country life with life in sinful Rrague." "The odious thing is this belief in fate." "The mother of a young woman died on the moors, so the daughter has no choice but to follow in her mother's footsteps and to kill herself." "The inevitable and inescapable is being depicted here." "And this is, of course, deeply reactionary." "Mother dear." "Mother dear." "Father wouldn't take me in." "I'm coming to you." "Mother dear." "You see." "I'm going in the same way... as you." "Mother." "I hear you." "You're calling me." "Mother." "During such times when so many people were dying and the meaning of life is questioned, it was important, I think, that death becomes something significant, that there's an aftereffect, that people mourn." "That your death has had a purpose." "That's what these films express." "If you saw a melodrama at that time, and had lost one of your relatives or even one of your immediate family, these films were soothing, gave you the impression" "that death is not just death but contains a significance." "These melodramas gave it importance." "Harlan had difficulty with filigree work, the gentle touch." "In lmmensee there's some of it." "He was quite crude in his use of effects, and often overreached himself by setting such laden accents." "This even makes him interesting at times:" "Few people dared do this." "In The Great Sacrifice it's almost surreal." "Albrecht!" "I'm not at the gate, Aels." "It's Octavia who's greeting you." "Is that really you?" "It is!" "It is you!" "I can see you, Albrecht." "Is that really you?" "Who can say what's real?" "Why did you come here, Albrecht?" "To say farewell, Aels!" "Yes, we must." "Harlan's last film in the Third Reich is the historical film Kolberg." "It depicts a Romeranian town resisting Napoleon's troops in 1 807." "This epic portrayal of steadfastness was the most expensive and laborious of all Nazi films." "Having made The Great King," "Harlan is destined to make this film." "ln spite of the war and the difficulty of getting materials," "The Rropaganda Minister gives the director almost unlimited resources." "We have to destroy the French supply lines." "There's no danger from the sea." "We'll attack their flanks!" "It was all soldiers and battles." "I was very impressed that all the military, that you'd imagine was required at the front was there for the film." "This was a huge-scale thing with 1 0,000 people in the town of Kolberg." "Whilst millions were dying on the battlefields, the film calls on the civil population to never surrender, to die as martyrs and share in this downfall." ""Better buried beneath rubble than ever surrender"" "is the watchword much in keeping with Goebbels' "total war. "" "Kolberg is shown in those few cinemas still standing in january 1 945." "It is the last great film premiere in the Third Reich." "Prussians!" "Germans!" "Our city must encounter a cruel fate, as must our fatherland." "But courage is stronger than fate." "Had you not resisted foreign forces, I'd not be here now." "That's what unites us." "No love is more sacred than the love of the fatherland." "No joy is sweeter than that of freedom." "But what awaits us in defeat, is beknown to you all." "Whatever sacrifice is demanded of you is as nothing compared to the sacred values for which we fight so as to remain Germans and Prussians." "Gneisenau!" "Gneisenau!" "I've never knelt before a man." "But I do so now." "Kolberg may not be abandoned." "Gneisenau!" "That's the spirit, Nettelbeck." "Now we can die together." "Goebbels had a choleric fit when he first saw the film." "He cried that it was a pacifist film." "And remarked incisively that pacifists are always ruled by non-pacifists." "He demanded that all the horrors be cut." "So I had to cut the scenes where doors were torn down to make coffins since there was no other wood, where the corpses had poisoned the water, where a grenade exploded in a house where a woman had just given birth and the child was buried alive." "He called this sadism." "I said, "Minister, I can't portray heroics if I don't show how heroic people are and how terrible their circumstances."" "But he was of a different opinion, and much was cut from the film." "Indeed two million marks worth of horrors were cut from the film." "And this, of course, altered the film considerably." "Because I'd been intent on depicting the horror itself." "In May, 1 945," "Harlan wrote a 23-page statement about his stance on National Socialism." "The trigger was that international and German papers accused him of being the number one Nazi director, so he wrote a long statement, claiming that his life had been under threat throughout this time, as had been the life of his wife," "and that in fact, in legal parlance, he'd been under an "obligation to obey orders."" "And this remained the basic defense during the trials of Veit Harlan." "After the end of the war, the denazification commission found that Harlan had been merely a fellow traveler, but initially banned him from working." "He nonetheless directed several plays under a pseudonym." "ln 1 948, Harlan is prosecuted in Hamburg because ofjew Süss and he is publicly attacked." "I remember that several times they both wanted to go to the theater, and, in Hamburg, it was Ida Ehre, who got up on stage and said in front of everyone she wanted Veit Harlan and Kristina Söderbaum to leave the theater." "And they both did... rather sadly." "I'd known from earliest infancy that my parents had serious problems." "It was obvious, a feature of my earliest conscious experience, that my parents were under attack," "that they defended themselves vigorously, and that this made no difference at all." "I think, however, that the directors of that period all had a good eye on their careers." "Some more than others." "And my grandfather was someone, I think who thought of nothing but his career..." "In his choice of, say, whether to make a given film or not." "And the fact that he never accepted responsibility, never recanted any of it..." "He was never self-critical, never said outright, "I wanted to make films, that's all."" "So attention was concentrated on him." "Self-justification is rejection of guilt and responsibility." "Instead of saying, "Okay, I made a mistake." "I had certain priorities, the leading one being:" "Continue to make films whatever it may cost."" "I imagine that he would have been a little less harshly judged by certain segments of the public." "I struggled with myself." "I saw how people recounted the sufferings they'd experienced, and how their whole family had died in Auschwitz or elsewhere," "I'd feel sick." "Then I'd see how my father was beside himself with all the false accusations, and how he defended himself." "I was beside myself." "I had a friend who studied medicine." "And he demonstrated on the street against Veit." "Kristina had eggs thrown at her, that kind of thing." "And I was already in a position where I understood why this happened and also understood my friend a little." "But nonetheless, I was furious." "Both emotions at once." "I certainly wouldn't say that he was wrongly persecuted." "I just think that both he and others should have been convicted." "And this didn't happen in his or in other cases." "He didn't feel as guilty as others claimed he was." "He always maintained that he'd been forced and that he'd been under such pressure that he couldn't refuse, that he'd had to do as he had." "There he sits, that accursed jew." "In a trial lasting months, he has told nothing but lies, lies and more lies." "His only excuse is that the duke gave him carte blanche." "The charges I face are due to the direct orders I received from my duke." "I have the duke's written orders." "You can check." "I am merely the faithful servant of my master." " Boo!" " Yes, boo..." "The judge, Dr. Tyrolf, who found him innocent on two occasions" "had, during the war had Ukrainian women beheaded for the theft of a head scarf" "during an air raid." "And... the thought that my father had been found innocent amongst and by such people was abhorrent to me." "That was it!" "I thought, "This is a world I want no further dealings with." "I must entirely distance myself from it."" "That's it." "Perhaps I didn't put it that way, but I'll never forget that moment." "Having been found innocent," "Harlan could again direct films." "ln the Germany of the '50s, he polarized public opinion much like director Leni Riefenstahl." "His film premieres and appearances met with protests and boycotts." "ln public meetings, he went on the offensive against his opponents." "He always stressed that as an artist he'd been used by the Nazis and by the "demonic Goebbels. "" "Veit Harlan attempted in his post-war films to return to his old successes." "Kristina Söderbaum was still one of Germany's most popular actresses." "ln order to find any work at all, Harlan had to take less attractive jobs and get by without the huge budgets that Goebbels had given him." "The melodramas he made after the war might just as well have been made in the '30s." "They were of that era." "He simply wasn't capable of adapting to new times or new ideas, to a more open form, or to progress and change." "These films are very hermetic and... his whole oeuvre reflects a very specific world view." "And this is just as consistently represented as it is in the case of some great filmmakers who have a conception of the world that is represented throughout their works." "This can really be said of Harlan." "You do dare to judge others?" "Then let me tell you how I judge you!" "Your love of your brother is sickening." "Impure!" "Criminal!" "Your love is incestuous." "My love is what?" "The whole village says so!" "What does the village say?" "Even your friend, the veterinarian, called you an Isis." "Isis?" "You know what that means, don't you?" "Lord in heaven!" "She's the devil!" "Try to be reasonable." "Don't you touch me." "The atmosphere in the '50s helped Harlan maintain his view ofhimself as a victim of the Nazi era." "He tried to give his family a life of prosperity and normality," "Their lives revolve around a villa in Bavaria." "Friends from the revived film industry would meet there." "But, as Harlan noted in a draft ofhis autobiography, the shadow ofjew Süss won't disappear." "What the film did to us?" "I can tell you precisely:" "It ruined our lives." "That's what it did." "Like that." "And at that point, you simply couldn't have guessed this." "That it would be used in such a way." "That it could simply wreck... a person's life." "The whole fate of my parents, so to speak had, of course, a great influence on my life." "And that already began, when, as an adolescent, in my late adolescence, friends of my parents recommended to me that I change my name." "For me this was out of the question." "I said, "No, why should I?" "I don't have to change my name."" "I once had a history teacher who wasn't pleasant by nature, was rather difficult." "She asked me in front of the whole class if I was related to Veit Harlan my name being the same." "And I said no." "But I was in tears." "I cried and left the class room." "I said, "No, he's not my grandfather."" "But it caused me hardship because then I got called a damn Hun." "That wasn't funny." "And anyway, at college you feel guilty of things regardless of what they are..." "And I'd always refused to find out what had happened or to ask my father, Thomas." "To me, my grandparents were Nazis." "And that's it." "I wouldn't listen to explanations." "But I really felt it." "And I was very ashamed." "It never happened to me, that someone asked," ""Is your name not that of Veit Harlan, the German director?"" "That never happened." "I did voluntarily tell this story to good friends of mine." "But it's not the kind of thing... that you talk about at the bar..." "My sister, Maria..." "Why did she, as an actress, call herself Maria Körber?" "And not Maria Harlan anymore?" "What did it mean?" "She wanted to change her history, to vanish." "And my sister Susanne." "Susanne Harlan." "Why did she take the stage name "Susanne Körber?"" "Why, when she married, was she "née Körber"" "before taking the name ofjacoby?" "Why did they all try to eradicate my father from their identities?" "Although they all felt a kinship that was profound." "He knows perfectly I didn't choose to abandon the name." "I bewailed it myself, my father was unhappy about it too." "My agents said to me," ""We can't place you with the name Harlan." "Change your name."" "I said I loved my father and wouldn't." "They kept on and on at me." "Then one day I got a contract." "And on it was the name "Maria Körber."" "They did it behind my back." "I couldn't change it." "My father cried." "And I was very unhappy." "I didn't use force to keep the name." "But somehow, I never managed to break with it by no longer using the name." "I met a colleague." "He was jewish and his father had been killed by the Nazis." "Right at the end." "And I married him though everyone said," ""You can't!" "He's so unsuitable!" "He's a bad guy."" "And I said, "You don't understand." "He has suffered." "Now he needs help." "And, having heard what I have about my father," "I have the feeling that I must help someone who lost his father like that, and who was abused at school, called a half-jew, expelled from school."" "And since he'd had such a time of it, such a terrible time, I married him." "I thought I was doing a good deed." "But what a mess it turned out to be!" "It really worked out wrong." "Nothing changed." "I couldn't change anything." "And my... feelings of having to compensate someone for the deeds that my father, too, had participated in..." "I didn't succeed at all." "The same thing happened to my sister." "She married Claude, or Klaus, jacoby, who was also a jew." "She married him and went over tojudaism." "My father was 1 7 years older than my mother." "My mother converted tojudaism so as to get closer to him." "And to replace for him all that he had lost." "But it was impossible." "My mother wanted nothing but to leave, leave, leave." "To leave behind her history, her father, and everything that this had meant to her." "So that she felt invisible as a person." "My father died young of a heart attack in 1 964, two weeks after the death of my grandfather." "My mother had a veterinary surgery practice that did worse and worse business." "She found it shameful, being unable to support herself, would never have taken state benefits, and, well... if a person has no sense of self-worth, and no more will to live..." "And it was at that point that she killed herself." "I belong to a family... which the Nazi era divided entirely into perpetrators and victims." "I knew, particularly, that my grandfather had had a career making films for the Nazis, at a time, when the Nazis had murdered my other grandparents." "I knew this at the age of five or six." "My grandfather, Arturjacoby, fought in the First World War and thought himself German." "He was proud of the Iron Cross (First Class) he'd won." "He struggled desperately to be allowed to emigrate with my grandmother." "He wasn't allowed to, was deported to Minsk, and... was murdered there." "Whilst during that period, my grandfather, Veit Harlan, successfully made the feature films of the Third Reich," "lived a life of luxury, and profited from the system to the greatest extent possible, he, too, a war volunteer during the first world war." "One of my grandfathers was in the limelight, was controversial and prominent, the other vanished into the darkness." "So the one made propaganda for the other's destruction?" "Yes." "You could say that, inasmuch as jew Süss is a call to persecute and kill thejews" "in Germany and the rest of Europe." "And my other grandfather and grandmother paid for this with their lives." "Stanley's parents were from Kiev... and Romania." "His parents were ofjewish descent." "Everyone he knew was Italian orjewish." "Stanley was in Munich, we'd decided to marry, he wanted to take me to America." "And Veit said, "You're going to America?" "Terrible!"" "He didn't want me to go." "My parents were there, Veit and Kristina were there, and some others, too." "I said to Stanley, "You'll meet them now."" "I'd confessed already about my awful ancestry." "And... he drank a big glass of vodka, and he met them." "My husband was shaken after meeting all these polite and amusing people." "And he said" "And he was... astonished." "For a long time, he thought about... how to make a film about this." "But he didn't succeed." "Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a film about this era." "The normal course of daily events when producing a film in Berlin." "What was it like?" "A production meeting at 8:00, budget, costumes... the whole thing, casting..." "He wanted to know, wanted to make a film about how this all took place." "What was it like?" "At what point did Goebbels intervene?" "When was the okay required for each scene of the script?" "What were those discussions like?" "What influence was applied?" "What conversations were held?" "Revealing things like that." "I remember being in Maximilian Schell's apartment with him and Kristina Söderbaum, and we worked on her to try to get details that you can work into such a story." "But we got nothing worthwhile." "The interesting thing was that Veit Harlan got his son to write a film script with him in the mid-'50s, in spite of all the son's activities after the war," "and that the father was then criticized because the film was allegedly pro-Communist." "Because it was one of the few '50s films that touched on the crimes of the Wehrmacht, at least briefly." "And in which the Communists and Russians aren't simply maligned." "Hence the film's strange rating." "Thomas Harlan was the child who developed the most strength, energy and activity of all the children." "And it was always from a position that was diametrically opposed to his father's." "After the war, Thomas Harlan lived many years in France," "Roland and the Soviet Union." "He researched the Warsaw Ghetto, found remains of concentration camps, discovered evidence to prosecute war criminals." "ln the '7 0s, he was involved in the socialist revolutions in Chile and Rortugal, realized spectacular avant-garde films like Wundkanal, and wrote many novels on German and Russian history." "You can't just say, "You should have known."" "He should have known that it was wrong." "Simply." "And forbidden himself to enjoy doing it." "It's terrible, feeling that he enjoyed doing it." "But nonetheless, assuming that it had been that way, after the war, having found out, that it had been an instrument of murder." "Imagine!" "You've created an instrument of murder." "Then you'd have to change your life entirely." "And I didn't understand how his mind hadn't been completely changed." "After the war, my father worked as a carpenter, and I'd have understood if he'd never gone back to filmmaking." " But he made films." " He made films again." "I didn't understand how, as a son, he could speak like that about his father." "As if he were a film critic, you know?" "Like a judge or something of the sort." "Somehow the fact has been completely forgotten that your father is your father." "And it's to him and your mother that you owe your life." "That's where it all begins." "You can talk about it amongst the family..." "But really!" "And profiting by so doing, too!" "Honestly!" "That's really shameful!" "I really have no understanding for it." "That for thirty-odd years, somebody could keep on attacking our poor father." "It's too much." "I understand his opinions." "I understand them well, his hatred of the Nazis." "That's a different matter." "But what he said about him." "Our father wept bitterly about it." "But to react in this way as a son!" "That others did so, and that the press took advantage, and that the story was popular," "that bit I do get." "But I want no part of it." "And what I think about my father is no one's business." "I'm not a politician or anything." "So, criticism should be internal, within the family, and not public." "Yes." "Of course." "You talk it over." "Was that the case between your father and you?" "Between my father and me?" "It was not on the agenda for my father and me." "I think that throughout the family, the value ofThomas's work has not been appreciated the way it deserves to be." "His life was destroyed by his attempts" "to try to repair some of the things that his father had destroyed, and by trying to find the people whom he thought deserved punishment." "In his opinion, he never fully succeeded." "But that's impossible, anyway." "I think he's been traumatized and that he can't get over it." "He might have written 50 books, made 50 films." "It'll follow him to his grave." "It's a real injury that will never heal." "After all, he's 7 9 now and he still suffers from it all terribly." "I think it's hard." "I've encountered him in various situations." "Not only on the trail of former SS men and the history of Nazi Germany." "But the historical context is so scandalous that I appreciate the manner my father reacted to it." "I wasn't the son of a father I rejected." "I was the son of my father to such an extent" "that with him" "I was prepared to take responsibility for all the scandalous things" "that he contributed to." "To take this responsibility." "It was self-evident to me to share his responsibility." "Rather than be against him." "I don't know how he, within himself, processed this." "I think he thought me an enemy." "Suffering from chronic cardiac disease, Veit Harlan retreated to Capri in 1 963." "The island on the Gulf of Naples was his favorite holiday resort." "It was the scene of many post-war films and a dream destination for Germans." "He laboriously completed his memoirs, his last attempt to justify himself." "I found it so meaningful that on his death bed, he called for the son who had damned him." "I understood it as a really huge step." "If I'd thought he'd live another year or so, that he'd recover or die an easier death, there'd have been plenty of conversation." "I wouldn't want to publicly say my father had come to understand it all." "But he did think things over." "He spoke with Thomas, with whom he had such confrontations, more than he did with me." "When I came to Capri, and he was in the hospital, he was already..." "He was dying." "It lasted a long time... because he wanted to live until his 25th wedding anniversary." "Which he succeeded in." "The doctors said, "He is actually dead already."" "But he stayed alive long enough to see his wedding anniversary." "He died three days later." "The marriage to my mother was- and this was mutual" "the fixed component in life." "For both of them." "But I remember him as someone who avoided responsibility." "And I'd feel relieved if I knew that he died having accepted this responsibility." "That he died knowing what he had to answer for." "Simply." "I'd feel calmer." "There'd be less unease within me if he'd left behind what had been his life in better order." "So." "I'm a bit tired now." "Would you like to" "No, I'll lie down." "I've lived here and been an activist for 30 years." "And we knew from the beginning that we had to resist" "what was being done here." "You have to learn from what has happened." "I think I have a very deep need to be an active part of this resistance." "And this may well be related to what happened in my family." "I consider this to be the lead-up to a great disaster, the production of atomic waste." "I'm convinced that this is a crime against humanity perpetrated for economic gain." "And the lesson I have learned from German history is that resistance must be prompt." "We're trying to do this, employing all the means we have." "Now I have projects I'm involved with, my music and my son..." "Of course a child is always a bridge reaching into the future." "And indeed I'm much more concerned with all of this, and with my work, than with Veit Harlan or the Harlan family." "Having said this, I'm ready to give the matter consideration." "Intellectual consideration." "It is more intellectual than emotional to me." "But there is something in the psyche of our family, something that could be called a sense of guilt." "Everyone tells me it's not my fault, it was my grandfather." "They don't try to understand that it's still my blood." "So perhaps I have some bad blood too." "When you're young, you don't understand." "I'm sick of this burden upon me." "I want to understand, to know about it." "Because even though I wasn't brought up by my father" "I think there's a genetic link." "When I have children, I want to tell them about it." "All of the story." "Not just not know about it." "So I want to find out, know all about my grandparents," "and about Thomas's life, so I can tell my children." "That's my goal." "It shouldn't be forgotten." "It's like when myjewish patients tell me stories so they don't die out." "The last few of that generation from the Nazi era are vanishing now." "And who'll tell the story then?" "It'd be dreadful if it were forgotten." "No, I think the inheritance of guilt involves having... an obligation to deal with it." "You don't have to project guilt onto yourself, but have to deal with it." "And we're ready to do so." "We're concerned by it." "We don't just reject it out of hand." "Of course it'd be great if Grandpa had been a resistance fighter." "But that wouldn't have meant that I'd been courageous or shown my strength, either." "If I'd had a grandfather who'd sacrificed his life for something it wouldn't reflect on me." "And so, by that token," "I don't bear the guilt, either." "It exists, must be dealt with..." "But it wasn't me who did it." "It's almost something positive, like a reminder to bear all this in mind." "It has nothing to do with the question of guilt." "And I don't believe it would make sense to feel guilty in the third generation." "But it is still important to give it consideration." "You still have the sense of how close it all is." "I don't have to turn Grandfather into a problem for her." "I just have to be there if it becomes one." "I wouldn't want children who'd say," ""It's not my name, leave me out of it."" "It is an infamous story, and I can't imagine that my children's children's children... can really be relieved of all responsibility for it." "Be it only in terms of:" "Are you aware of what happened?" "Sometimes that's enough."