The Lost Angel (1966) - full transcript
August 24, 1937: a day in the life of expressionist sculptor and author Ernst Barlach. Barlach lives in the small town of Güstrow, keeping to himself, not interested in politics. One day he learns that the Nazis have dragged his famous 1927 sculpture "The Hovering Angel" - which bears the features of German artist Käthe Kollwitz - out of the Güstrow Cathedral. Barlach begins to reflect on his life of "inner emigration" and on his work, which has been either confiscated or denounced as "degenerate art" by the Nazis. Although he realizes active opposition is needed, he no longer has the strength. In 1966, this film was banned by East German/DDR officials, who considered it "mystical," with "existentialist interpretations of art and power." It was released in a shortened version only in 1971.
THE LOST ANGEL WAS BANNED
FOR POLITICAL REASONS IN 1966
AFTER THE 11TH PLENUM
OF THE SED PARTY.
FOR THE 100th ANNIVERSARY
OF ERNST BARLACH'S BIRTH
A LIMITED RELEASE APPEARED
IN EAST GERMAN ART HOUSE CINEMAS.
THE FILM HAD BEEN RE-DUBBED
AND CUT BY 20 MINUTES.
THE SECTIONS THAT WERE CUT
CANNOT BE LOCATED.
THE LOST ANGEL
A DAY IN THE LIFE
OF ERNST BARLACH
ADAPTED FROM THE NOVEL:
THE TERRIBLE YEAR
BY FRANZ FÜHMANN.
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED
BY RALF KIRSTEN
GERMANY
MAGDEBURG MEMORIAL-
REMOVED 1933
KIEL MEMORIAL-
BROKEN OFF 1937
HAMBURG MEMORIAL-
DESTROYED 1937
Yes, hello?
Who is this? Who?
No...
No...
Who... who are you?
They...
They've stolen the Angel.
These Nazis!
We've shut ourselves up here.
We've tried to hide ourselves.
Nobody dares visit us anymore.
And if they do, only in secret.
Nobody buys anything from you.
What should we live on?
We've forgotten
how the outside world looks.
But they...
They don't forget us.
When it occurs to them,
they'll find us and hurt us.
We should leave.
What are you still waiting for?
It can happen overnight,
one decides "I don't want to go on."
They say you're un-German!
The victims of bad genes,
creatures of a cultural Bolshevik.
Make yourselves comfortable,
it's just us here.
The cultural Bolshevik,
that's me.
I'm doing just grand...
no doubt about it, you doubter!
- Those in Berlin
- Nagel, Kollwitz...
they're envious
of my grand situation,
here by the lake and forest.
Yes, dreamers,
we've run away,
away from the literary babble,
from the ladies' gossip
and the academic chatter.
Away from the bankers
and stock brokers.
Away from the programs
and pre-formulated attitudes.
Even here, a few requests came
every week, from the Left or Right,
wanting me to participate.
I never did.
But Kollwitz did.
Did I actually like her,
this woman?
More than I thought.
Absolutely unintentionally
her face came into my Angel.
Now I envy Kollwitz.
She belongs somewhere.
She belongs to the Left.
That she is among the persecuted
gives courage to thousands.
Even her silence is needed.
No one needs Barlach anymore.
You shouldn't go
into the city today.
Maybe tomorrow.
Do you still have neighbors
or friends?
Or acquaintances
in the house across the way?
Does he lament
the absence of the Angel,
this German factory owner
at his German-Christian wedding?
How the bride holds his arm.
He owns everything:
his wife, the part in his hair,
his war, his dead...
all his.
What is left of the world for me
if everything is his?
Do they see it?
They see it.
That you must memorize,
Barlach.
They celebrate
the fall of my Angel.
No, I never belonged to the Right.
They were my instinctive enemies.
Have they ever actually stood
before the Angel and listened?
Until they heard it?
The silent scream?
They have heard nothing.
As protector of the holy hearth
in your husband's house,
always happily
performing your duties,
as keeper of domestic peace,
shall you also become
a true, believing German Christian.
Because motherhood means
something great and holy
to your German nation...
...among the soldiers
of the Great War.
You will find it among
the ranks of the fighters
who follow our Führer.
Through them,
may you also find your way
to the great, eternal Führer
who spilled his blood for us.
How grand it would be
if every German home
became a nursery
for real German-Christian virtues.
Is there anything greater
for a young couple?
Anything greater
than the calling to help
in creating
the joyful and bright future
of your entire nation?
Admittedly, it is a difficult task.
And as young people,
you are right to look around
for role models you can follow.
Thus will the new
German-Christian church grow
out of a healthy nationhood,
in which all fellow Germans
graciously pray to their Lord God.
Then will the saying apply
to more than you alone:
Your people are my people...
Your God...
Do you not understand
that the fall of the Angel
was the end of peace?
You understand it very well.
They are only
a few meters away from me.
Yet I cannot reach them.
Did none of them
keep watch with the Angel?
Did they all hide away?
Convulsively
they cling to the illusion of peace.
What am I to them?
A ghost?
A madman? A dowser?
Someone to lock up
in an asylum,
if he had not already
locked himself away
on his Heidberg.
It's warm here.
Life is here.
Time for having children,
time for love
and time to grow old.
Who needs a piece of silent bronze
that screams?
Their Führer provides them
with "Strength Through Joy."
Strength for war,
strength for death.
Why should anyone worry,
when the Nazis
take care of everything?
There are lunatics, Barlach,
who kill themselves
by fearing for their lives.
Who can bear
to freeze to death?
Can't you burrow under life
to where it's warm?
Nonsense, Barlach, if you're cold
have some lilac tea.
I've already tried
to burrow under once.
Back then, in 1914.
I didn't want to be Barlach anymore,
just German.
I wanted to be one
with everyone in Germany.
Take a look at them, Klaus.
Those are our enemies.
Is that one especially evil?
Our enemies are evil.
Is that one very evil?
Look at him, Klaus, closely.
How does he look?
Like a bear. But the bear in
"Snow White and Rose Red" is good.
Because there's a prince
within him.
In the enemy, there dwells a soul:
it is small and evil and hates us.
Do Germans have a bigger soul?
Yes, that's why they hate us.
Are all Germans good?
In times of peace, no;
but in times of war, yes.
In peacetime everyone counts
their money and thinks of food.
But in wartime they become heroes
and think of the fatherland.
War is good.
War makes people good.
What did my son remember?
The loud words of
my enthusiasm for war?
Or the silent wrath of
my sculptures against the war?
What's the use of art when
an inhuman word exacts more
influence than a human image?
The German nation.
Is that what my hands worked for,
in wood and bronze?
Or is it that,
in the name of which
they put people into camps
and torture and beat them?
To whom does
the German nation belong?
To me? Or the Nazis?
I'm an émigré in my own land.
Oh, Mrs. Need.
Back then she sat
as a model for me
and now she comes again.
She had to come.
No, no, I haven't gone hungry yet.
I even still have enough
to go to a mountain spa.
These Brownshirts know exactly
how to wear you out.
Who? The woman who spoke that way?
She's gone.
She was a Jew...
she's long gone.
You always liked being alone.
But I wasn't lonely.
Now I am.
I'm sick of this!
I want peace.
It must be good to be dead.
A pistol to the temple...
then peace.
Nothing but peace.
I only want peace.
I don't need a pistol anymore.
My heart will do it
on its own.
He's not educated,
but knows everything.
Why does he help me?
Is he not one of them?
No, he's one like me.
Here he stands and
here he grew out of the earth.
Not the Nazis.
They grew in Munich beer halls,
fattened on Krupp's money.
How he encloses himself
in his coat
against those who want to own him,
like everything else.
Learn his face by heart,
Barlach.
You must remember him.
What? Am I creating sculptures
in my head again?
Nobody needs my art anymore.
No, just him.
Just a couple more, not many.
I showed them...
and I will show them again...
the meaning of My People.
This Laughing Old Lady...
she still needs to be finished.
Get ready!
It's got to be a laugh
that'll make the laughter
of Goebbels and Rosenberg vanish.
My heart must persevere.
I'm going for treatment,
no matter where I get the money.
The gentleman is ill.
No offense, sir,
if you'll make do with the cart.
It's a good harvest.
But who is bringing it in?
People who work hard for a living.
Others work too.
But don't fight.
Wits are important too.
You need your head.
Yes, you need to keep your head.
Germany, awake!
Germany, awake!
Say it!
Say it!
Germany, awake!
Pardon me that I didn't knock.
You stand there
and feel like a hero.
And you?
You cower up there,
two meters above the ground,
and don't give a damn
about what happens outside.
Can your art undo
the death of a single person?
One who fell for a just cause?
It can perpetuate its memory.
It can save the death from oblivion.
Art can keep desire alive.
That's priestly babble,
keep desire alive,
save death from oblivion.
Why don't you help us live?
Men have been crippled
for generations.
But people don't want to be,
otherwise
our lives would make no sense.
You work too.
The others, your enemies,
want an art to digest and edify.
But... But art,
art is a matter of deepest humanity.
A test for the strength
of the alloy of spirit and soul.
To improve the quality of my art,
that's my duty.
Others can do politics
much better than I.
And when the others are the Nazis?
And-the Angel?
The Angel was intended
for all those who fell in the war.
People are dying again, every day,
thrashed, tortured.
I know.
The war has already begun.
The Angel was in their way.
They're rehearsing for the next war.
My Angel was in the Nazis' way.
Of all people,
a Communist tells me this.
So it wasn't just priestly babble.
What did I expect?
Why is my stomach
turning somersaults?
Did I want to be
the Nazis' Barlach?
No, definitely not.
Did I want to make art
for hardliners and Nazi youth?
Art for bankers and stock brokers?
I wanted to make art
that the most noble spirits
among cooks and coachmen
could appreciate.
Are my people perhaps
the people of the Communists?
Am I the Communists' Barlach?
Does my art have
a knowledge of people they can use?
I don't know.
Maybe
my sculptures know more than I do.
Will the war hold off
until these boys are men?
Hardly.
These children should survive.
They should renew the world
and, if possible, improve it.
Hopefully they'll act
more radically than we did.
The Nazi storm has driven me
far to the Left.
Who would have thought
it would drive me so far?
ON THE NIGHT OF 23 AUGUST 1937
UNKNOWN CULPRITS BROKE INTO
THE GÜSTROW CATHEDRAL
AND TOOK THE PEACE ANGEL.
ONE YEAR LATER
ERNST BARLACH DIED.
THE ANGEL WAS NEVER FOUND.
AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR
A CAST WAS MADE.
THE PEACE ANGEL HAS NOW RETURNED
TO THE GÜSTROW CATHEDRAL.
Subtitles by
Christopher Hench
© 2014 DEFA Film Library,
University of Massachusetts Amherst
FOR POLITICAL REASONS IN 1966
AFTER THE 11TH PLENUM
OF THE SED PARTY.
FOR THE 100th ANNIVERSARY
OF ERNST BARLACH'S BIRTH
A LIMITED RELEASE APPEARED
IN EAST GERMAN ART HOUSE CINEMAS.
THE FILM HAD BEEN RE-DUBBED
AND CUT BY 20 MINUTES.
THE SECTIONS THAT WERE CUT
CANNOT BE LOCATED.
THE LOST ANGEL
A DAY IN THE LIFE
OF ERNST BARLACH
ADAPTED FROM THE NOVEL:
THE TERRIBLE YEAR
BY FRANZ FÜHMANN.
WRITTEN AND DIRECTED
BY RALF KIRSTEN
GERMANY
MAGDEBURG MEMORIAL-
REMOVED 1933
KIEL MEMORIAL-
BROKEN OFF 1937
HAMBURG MEMORIAL-
DESTROYED 1937
Yes, hello?
Who is this? Who?
No...
No...
Who... who are you?
They...
They've stolen the Angel.
These Nazis!
We've shut ourselves up here.
We've tried to hide ourselves.
Nobody dares visit us anymore.
And if they do, only in secret.
Nobody buys anything from you.
What should we live on?
We've forgotten
how the outside world looks.
But they...
They don't forget us.
When it occurs to them,
they'll find us and hurt us.
We should leave.
What are you still waiting for?
It can happen overnight,
one decides "I don't want to go on."
They say you're un-German!
The victims of bad genes,
creatures of a cultural Bolshevik.
Make yourselves comfortable,
it's just us here.
The cultural Bolshevik,
that's me.
I'm doing just grand...
no doubt about it, you doubter!
- Those in Berlin
- Nagel, Kollwitz...
they're envious
of my grand situation,
here by the lake and forest.
Yes, dreamers,
we've run away,
away from the literary babble,
from the ladies' gossip
and the academic chatter.
Away from the bankers
and stock brokers.
Away from the programs
and pre-formulated attitudes.
Even here, a few requests came
every week, from the Left or Right,
wanting me to participate.
I never did.
But Kollwitz did.
Did I actually like her,
this woman?
More than I thought.
Absolutely unintentionally
her face came into my Angel.
Now I envy Kollwitz.
She belongs somewhere.
She belongs to the Left.
That she is among the persecuted
gives courage to thousands.
Even her silence is needed.
No one needs Barlach anymore.
You shouldn't go
into the city today.
Maybe tomorrow.
Do you still have neighbors
or friends?
Or acquaintances
in the house across the way?
Does he lament
the absence of the Angel,
this German factory owner
at his German-Christian wedding?
How the bride holds his arm.
He owns everything:
his wife, the part in his hair,
his war, his dead...
all his.
What is left of the world for me
if everything is his?
Do they see it?
They see it.
That you must memorize,
Barlach.
They celebrate
the fall of my Angel.
No, I never belonged to the Right.
They were my instinctive enemies.
Have they ever actually stood
before the Angel and listened?
Until they heard it?
The silent scream?
They have heard nothing.
As protector of the holy hearth
in your husband's house,
always happily
performing your duties,
as keeper of domestic peace,
shall you also become
a true, believing German Christian.
Because motherhood means
something great and holy
to your German nation...
...among the soldiers
of the Great War.
You will find it among
the ranks of the fighters
who follow our Führer.
Through them,
may you also find your way
to the great, eternal Führer
who spilled his blood for us.
How grand it would be
if every German home
became a nursery
for real German-Christian virtues.
Is there anything greater
for a young couple?
Anything greater
than the calling to help
in creating
the joyful and bright future
of your entire nation?
Admittedly, it is a difficult task.
And as young people,
you are right to look around
for role models you can follow.
Thus will the new
German-Christian church grow
out of a healthy nationhood,
in which all fellow Germans
graciously pray to their Lord God.
Then will the saying apply
to more than you alone:
Your people are my people...
Your God...
Do you not understand
that the fall of the Angel
was the end of peace?
You understand it very well.
They are only
a few meters away from me.
Yet I cannot reach them.
Did none of them
keep watch with the Angel?
Did they all hide away?
Convulsively
they cling to the illusion of peace.
What am I to them?
A ghost?
A madman? A dowser?
Someone to lock up
in an asylum,
if he had not already
locked himself away
on his Heidberg.
It's warm here.
Life is here.
Time for having children,
time for love
and time to grow old.
Who needs a piece of silent bronze
that screams?
Their Führer provides them
with "Strength Through Joy."
Strength for war,
strength for death.
Why should anyone worry,
when the Nazis
take care of everything?
There are lunatics, Barlach,
who kill themselves
by fearing for their lives.
Who can bear
to freeze to death?
Can't you burrow under life
to where it's warm?
Nonsense, Barlach, if you're cold
have some lilac tea.
I've already tried
to burrow under once.
Back then, in 1914.
I didn't want to be Barlach anymore,
just German.
I wanted to be one
with everyone in Germany.
Take a look at them, Klaus.
Those are our enemies.
Is that one especially evil?
Our enemies are evil.
Is that one very evil?
Look at him, Klaus, closely.
How does he look?
Like a bear. But the bear in
"Snow White and Rose Red" is good.
Because there's a prince
within him.
In the enemy, there dwells a soul:
it is small and evil and hates us.
Do Germans have a bigger soul?
Yes, that's why they hate us.
Are all Germans good?
In times of peace, no;
but in times of war, yes.
In peacetime everyone counts
their money and thinks of food.
But in wartime they become heroes
and think of the fatherland.
War is good.
War makes people good.
What did my son remember?
The loud words of
my enthusiasm for war?
Or the silent wrath of
my sculptures against the war?
What's the use of art when
an inhuman word exacts more
influence than a human image?
The German nation.
Is that what my hands worked for,
in wood and bronze?
Or is it that,
in the name of which
they put people into camps
and torture and beat them?
To whom does
the German nation belong?
To me? Or the Nazis?
I'm an émigré in my own land.
Oh, Mrs. Need.
Back then she sat
as a model for me
and now she comes again.
She had to come.
No, no, I haven't gone hungry yet.
I even still have enough
to go to a mountain spa.
These Brownshirts know exactly
how to wear you out.
Who? The woman who spoke that way?
She's gone.
She was a Jew...
she's long gone.
You always liked being alone.
But I wasn't lonely.
Now I am.
I'm sick of this!
I want peace.
It must be good to be dead.
A pistol to the temple...
then peace.
Nothing but peace.
I only want peace.
I don't need a pistol anymore.
My heart will do it
on its own.
He's not educated,
but knows everything.
Why does he help me?
Is he not one of them?
No, he's one like me.
Here he stands and
here he grew out of the earth.
Not the Nazis.
They grew in Munich beer halls,
fattened on Krupp's money.
How he encloses himself
in his coat
against those who want to own him,
like everything else.
Learn his face by heart,
Barlach.
You must remember him.
What? Am I creating sculptures
in my head again?
Nobody needs my art anymore.
No, just him.
Just a couple more, not many.
I showed them...
and I will show them again...
the meaning of My People.
This Laughing Old Lady...
she still needs to be finished.
Get ready!
It's got to be a laugh
that'll make the laughter
of Goebbels and Rosenberg vanish.
My heart must persevere.
I'm going for treatment,
no matter where I get the money.
The gentleman is ill.
No offense, sir,
if you'll make do with the cart.
It's a good harvest.
But who is bringing it in?
People who work hard for a living.
Others work too.
But don't fight.
Wits are important too.
You need your head.
Yes, you need to keep your head.
Germany, awake!
Germany, awake!
Say it!
Say it!
Germany, awake!
Pardon me that I didn't knock.
You stand there
and feel like a hero.
And you?
You cower up there,
two meters above the ground,
and don't give a damn
about what happens outside.
Can your art undo
the death of a single person?
One who fell for a just cause?
It can perpetuate its memory.
It can save the death from oblivion.
Art can keep desire alive.
That's priestly babble,
keep desire alive,
save death from oblivion.
Why don't you help us live?
Men have been crippled
for generations.
But people don't want to be,
otherwise
our lives would make no sense.
You work too.
The others, your enemies,
want an art to digest and edify.
But... But art,
art is a matter of deepest humanity.
A test for the strength
of the alloy of spirit and soul.
To improve the quality of my art,
that's my duty.
Others can do politics
much better than I.
And when the others are the Nazis?
And-the Angel?
The Angel was intended
for all those who fell in the war.
People are dying again, every day,
thrashed, tortured.
I know.
The war has already begun.
The Angel was in their way.
They're rehearsing for the next war.
My Angel was in the Nazis' way.
Of all people,
a Communist tells me this.
So it wasn't just priestly babble.
What did I expect?
Why is my stomach
turning somersaults?
Did I want to be
the Nazis' Barlach?
No, definitely not.
Did I want to make art
for hardliners and Nazi youth?
Art for bankers and stock brokers?
I wanted to make art
that the most noble spirits
among cooks and coachmen
could appreciate.
Are my people perhaps
the people of the Communists?
Am I the Communists' Barlach?
Does my art have
a knowledge of people they can use?
I don't know.
Maybe
my sculptures know more than I do.
Will the war hold off
until these boys are men?
Hardly.
These children should survive.
They should renew the world
and, if possible, improve it.
Hopefully they'll act
more radically than we did.
The Nazi storm has driven me
far to the Left.
Who would have thought
it would drive me so far?
ON THE NIGHT OF 23 AUGUST 1937
UNKNOWN CULPRITS BROKE INTO
THE GÜSTROW CATHEDRAL
AND TOOK THE PEACE ANGEL.
ONE YEAR LATER
ERNST BARLACH DIED.
THE ANGEL WAS NEVER FOUND.
AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR
A CAST WAS MADE.
THE PEACE ANGEL HAS NOW RETURNED
TO THE GÜSTROW CATHEDRAL.
Subtitles by
Christopher Hench
© 2014 DEFA Film Library,
University of Massachusetts Amherst