Ernst Thälmann is an East German communist propaganda film in two parts about the life of Ernst Thälmann, leader of the Communist Party of Germany during much of the Weimar Republic, directed by Kurt Maetzig and starring Günther Simon in the title role. The first part, Ernst Thälmann – Sohn seiner Klasse (Son of His Class), was released in 1954. It was followed by the 1955 sequel. Ernst Thälmann – Führer seiner Klasse (Leader of His Class).
Plot
Ernst Thälmann - Son of his Class After fellow soldier Johannes Harms reports that a revolution has broken out at home, Thälmann - who leads a revolutionary cell on the Western Front - and his friend Fiete Jansen rebel against their officers, Zinker and Quadde, and desert. Harms dies in a shelling. In Berlin, the American capitalist Mr. McFuller demands to crush the Spartacists. Zinker, now a member of the Freikorps, murders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Thälmann hears of it and promises their sacrifice will not be in vain. Jansen falls in love with Harms' daughter, Änne.
When Hamburg faces an attack by Zinker's forces, as part of the Kapp Putsch, the workers organize a general strike; after laborers are shot by the rebels, Thälmann ignores the bourgeois social democrats who reject violence, ambushes the Freikorps and captures their officers. The social democratic Police Senator Höhn frees them after they lightheartedly promise not to use violence.
Thälmann makes a speech in the USPD congress, calling to unite with the KPD, when the Soviet steamship Karl Liebknecht, loaded with wheat for the city's unemployed, reaches the port. Höhn sends Quadde, now a police captain, to prevent the distribution of the cargo, but after a stand-off the police retreat. Thälmann visits Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in Moscow with other German communists.
Thälmann and his friends organize a communist uprising in Hamburg, and manage to hold out against the Reichswehr and the police. Jansen killes Zinker. Then, a delegate from the Central Committee announces that armed struggle is no longer the policy of the party, and the weapons promised to them by the leadership will not arrive. The communists are forced to flee. Jansen is sentenced to death, but eventually his life is spared. Thälmann appears in the Hamburg harbor and promises not to abandon the struggle.
Ernst Thälmann - Leader of his Class In 1930, Fiete Jansen is released from jail and is reunited with his wife, Änne. Thälmann, now a member of the Reichstag and chief of the KPD, assists the coal miners in the Ruhr to organize a massive strike after their wages are cut. When the presidential elections take place, veteran SPD member Robert Dirhagen is reluctant to support Paul von Hindenburg, although this is the party line. Thälmann calls for class unity against the Nazis, but the SPD leaders do not want to collaborate with him.
In the elections for parliament, the KPD gains many seats and the Nazis lose two million votes. However, the Ruhr industrialists and Mr. McFuller support Adolf Hitler. Dirhagen is enraged to hear that the SPD will not oppose Franz von Papen's decision to allow Hitler into the government and tears his party card. The Nazis seize power.
The Nazis burn the Reichstag and accuse the communists, arresting many, including Thälmann and Dirhagen. Wilhelm Pieck and Jansen plan to rescue their leader with the aid of an Orpo jailer, but the SS guards - commanded by Quadde, now a SS Sturmbannführer - foil the plot. Fiete escapes abroad, joining the Thälmann Battalion in Spain, and later - after the Second World War begins - the Red Army's 143rd Guards Tank Division 'Ernst Thälmann'. Änne is arrested by the Gestapo. Hamburg is bombed, and she dies in her cell.
In August 1944, a German corps is encircled by the Red Army. Hitler orders its commanders to fight to the end. The Soviets send in Jansen with a group of German communists to convince the soldiers to defy the SS and surrender. Eventually, the Ernst Thälmann Division soldiers break through the German lines, liberate the local concentration camp - in which Dirwagen was held - and accept the German surrender after the SS were overpowered by Jansen's men. The communist Jansen and the Social Democrat Dirhagen shake hands. In Berlin, Thälmann leaves his cell to be executed, while contemplating on Pavel Korchagin's words from How the Steel Was Tempered: "...All my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world - the fight for the liberation of mankind."
Cast
Günther Simon as Ernst Thälmann Hans-Peter Minetti as Fiete Jansen Erich Franz as Arthur Vierbreiter Erika Dunkelmann as Martha Vierbreiter Wolf Kaiser as Zinker Werner Peters as Gottlieb Quadde Nikolai Kryuchkov as Soviet colonel Michel Piccoli as Maurice Rouger Siegfried Weiss as industrialist Fritz Diez as Adolf Hitler Fred Delmare as soldier Hannjo Hasse as army officer Horst Kube as concentration camp commandant Angela Brunner as Irma Thälmann Arthur Pieck as Wilhelm Pieck (part 1) Hans Wehrl as Wilhelm Pieck (part 2) Karl Brenk as Walter Ulbricht Gerd Wehr as Wilhelm Florin Karl Weber as Friedrich Ebert Martin Flörchinger as Karl Liebknecht (part 1)/Saarland delegate (part 2) Judith Harms as Rosa Luxemburg Kurt Wetzel as army officer (part 1)/Hermann Göring (part 2) Hans Stuhrmann as Joseph Goebbels Eberhard Kratz as Fritz Tarnow Erich Brauer as Carl Severing Peter Schorn as Vladimir Lenin Gerd Jäger as Joseph Stalin (scenes removed) Steffie Spira as Clara Zetkin Joe Münch-Harris as Gustav Noske Hans Flössel as Philipp Scheidemann Karl-Eugen Lenkerring as Gustav Stresemann Fred Kötteritzsch as Franz von Papen Will van Deeg as Heinrich Himmler Georges Stanescu as Georgi Dimitrov Theo Shall as judge (part 1)/Marcel Cachin (part 2) Hubert Temming as Jacques Duclos Karl Heinz Weiss as Maurice Thorez Carla Hoffmann as Rosa Thälmann
Production
Background
Ernst Thälmann, the Communist Party of Germany's chief who was executed by the Nazi regime in 1944 after spending 11 years in prison, was revered as a national hero and a martyr in the nascent East Germany. Thälmann's character combined communist convictions with an uncompromising struggle against Fascism; in a broader sense, he served as part of what author Russell Lemmons referred to as East Germany's "foundation myth": the belief that the communists were the most authentic anti-fascists, and therefore, their successors in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany were the legitimate leaders of a new German state.Davidson, Hake. pp. 91-92. Thälmann became the center of what many historians saw as a cult of personality.Heller, Plamper. p. 312.Nothnagle. p. 121.Roden. p. 170. This veneration required all controversial aspects of his political career be repressed from mass consciousness.Satjukow, Gries. p. 101. Journalist Erich Wollenberg wrote that in the Ernst Thälmann films, "the Thälmann cult reached its apotheosis."Monteath. p. 109.
Inception The film was conceived in 1948, after the Soviet Occupation Zone's provisional authorities and the leadership of the SED commissioned it; according to director Kurt Maetzig, "it was handed down from above".. Budget: p. 4; "handed"/Mcfuller: p. 8; "touched": p. 28. Willi Bredel and Michael Tschesno-Hell, both political functionaries, were exempted from all their other duties to concentrate on writing the script. A 'Thälmann Committee' was convened to direct the production of the film; its members included representatives from the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Press and Agitation, the DEFA studio,Schittly. pp. 64-65. and Thälmann's widow, Rosa, although she was removed in 1949.Davidson, Hake. pp. 103-104. The committee held its first meeting on 8 October 1948. At the third meeting, on the 27th, the members decided that portraying Thälmann's entire life would make the film too cumbersome, agreeing it should concentrate only on the important historical events. The resolution also stated that the plot should focus on meetings between Thälmann and small groups of people, who would be seen embracing Socialism after being convinced by "the radiance of his personality". At the fourth meeting, it was suggested to begin the plot only in 1931 and stress Thälmann's part in the 1932 public transportation strike; yet member Otto Winzer pointed out that in order to appeal to the youth, the picture should deal with the protagonist's earlier years.Davidson, Hake. pp. 94-95.
Development
Bredel and Tschesno-Hell completed the first draft of the script in early 1951. The plot began with the four-year-old Ernst shoving socialist pamphlets in his trousers to hide them from the police officers who raided his father's tavern, where an illegal meeting of the SPD took place.Schittly. pp. 66. It also featured his childhood and youth with his parents, his falling in love with the young Rosa Koch and his years as a simple worker who turned to communism.Davidson, Hake. pp. 95-96.
DEFA concluded that Bredel's and Tschesno-Hell's script would require splitting the film into three parts. This was deemed too long by the committee. After a year of deliberations, most of the original screenplay was rejected.Schittly. p. 65. In January 1951, it was decided to have a two-part picture, the first dealing with the time from the end of World War I to 1930, and the second taking off in 1932 and continuing until the founding of the German Democratic Republic. The two parts were named Ernst Thälmann - Sohn des Volkes and Ernst Thälmann - Führer des Volkes (son and leader of the people, respectively). The titles were later changed to Sohn and Führer seiner Klasse.Davidson, Hake. p. 96.
The political establishment had closely monitored the work. According to historian René Börrner, "no other film, in the years before or after, received such attention from the SED".Börrner. p. 31. On 21 August 1951, Walter Ulbricht sent the committee a letter in which he requested that a meeting between Thälmann and Joseph Stalin would be portrayed.Gabelmann. p. 282.
There were other political concerns, as well. Under the influence of events in the Soviet Union, the Ministry of Culture accused the DEFA filmmakers of taking up a Formalistic approach, and demanded they reject it and adopt a Socialist realist line. During 1952, Bredel's and Tschesno-Hell's script was again subject to revisions and had to be rewritten. In July, State Secretary of Press and Agitation Hermann Axen told the Thälmann committee that the main problem to be solved was "The authors' primitive depiction of Thälmann", which failed to present his "grand revolutionary instinct". Later, committee member Hermann Lauter demanded the inclusion of historical events that had no direct connection with Thälmann's life, such as the October Revolution.Davidson, Hake. pp. 97-98.
Approval
During late 1952, the writers accepted most of the demands. Their final draft was approved by the managerial committee and the Ministry of Culture only on 13 March 1953. The work on the screenplay of Leader of his Class began in summer 1953. Russel Lemmons claimed that this time, the writers "knew what was expected of them". The script was completed on 8 September, and later accepted with only minor changes.Davidson, Hake. p. 100.
The scripts and materials for the film were presented to the State Committee of Cinema on 17 November. The chief of the Soviet commission in East Germany, Vladimir Semyonov, and director Sergei Gerasimov were present as well. Semionov personally made an adjustment to the script; he requested that a scene in which Thälmann appeared to be harboring doubt be removed, since it was not in accordance with the principles of the proletarian struggle. In general, however, he approved of the presentation;Schittly, pp, 67. the script also introduced elements fitting the atmosphere of the Cold War, in the form of the films' main villain, the American capitalist Mr. McFuller.