Subscribe to Print Edition | Sun., July 05, 2009 Tamuz 13, 5769 | | Israel Time: 16:24 (EST+7)
Haaretz israel news English
web haaretz.com
Haaretz Toolbar
Diplomacy
Defense
Jewish World Opinion National
Print Edition
Car Rental Books Haaretz Magazine Business Real Estate Focus U.S.A. Travel Week's End Anglo File
Share |
Film / Why did he have to make it so well?
By Ina Friedman
Tags: Holocaust, Israel News

Harlan - Im Schatten von Jud Suess

(Harlan: In the Shadow of 'The Jew Suess') by Felix Moeller; Germany, 2008

As members of a people so steeped in historical memory and intent on preserving it, Jews seem to be almost the perfect audience for "Harlan: In the Shadow of 'The Jew Suess.'" In this smart, complex, nuanced and haunting documentary, director Felix Moeller, a 43-year-old historian of the Third Reich, explores the flip side of the traumatic Jewish legacy of the Holocaust, namely, how the progeny of Germans who devised, executed or acquiesced in the anti-Semitic villainies of Nazi Germany grapple with the sins of their fathers and the shadow s they cast over their own lives.
Advertisement
Moeller brings us this struggle through the testimonies of the four surviving children and six grandchildren of Veit Harlan (1899-1964), the most successful filmmaker of the Nazi era, who directed the unabashedly anti-Semitic costume drama "Jud Suess" ("The Jew Suess"). In this 1940 version of the rise and fall of the historical figure Joseph Suess Oppenheimer - an 18th-century Jewish financier and adviser to the Duke of Wuerttemberg, who had received sympathetic treatment in earlier works of film, stage and fiction - Harlan portrayed Suess as a cozening, opportunistic enemy of the people and a vicious sexual predator who corrupts and manipulates the duke into allowing his city to be overrun by Jews. The film was regarded as one of the most effective pieces of cinematic propaganda made during the Nazi era, and Harlan went on to make a string of full-color melodramas overlaid with kitschy special effects that film historian Stefan Droessler sums up as the "cinema of illusion and playing with emotions."

After the war, Harlan was pronounced a "fellow traveler" by an Allied denazification commission but was acquitted the two times he was tried by a German court for crimes against humanity, and he even returned to making films in the 1950s. His children tell us that he was neither a Nazi nor an anti-Semite, elaborating that he denigrated the Nazis, had many Jewish friends and was essentially an "?apolitical" artist "who just got carried away." In fact, his first marriage, a short-lived one, was to a Jew: the actress Dora Gershon. Only Jessica Jacoby, his granddaughter through his second marriage, describes Harlan as possessed of a "huge problem" with Judaism - the result, she surmises, of an ego bruised by Gershon's having left him for a Jewish man.

With his second wife, Hilda Koerber, Harlan sired a son, Thomas, and two daughters, Susette and Maria. Oddly enough, both girls married Jews. Maria's union was a short-lived mismatch, but Susette converted to Judaism to "grow closer" to her husband (as we're told by their daughter, Jessica). After divorcing Koerber, in 1939, Harlan married Kristina Soederbaum, a Swedish-born ingenue who performed exclusively in his films (including "The Jew Suess") and bore him two sons: Kristian and Kaspar. With the exception of the late Susette, all of Harlan's four living children, his six grandchildren and a nephew and niece (Christiane Kubrick, widow of the director Stanley Kubrick) are interviewed on-camer in the film.

The gamut of emotions revealed before Moeller's camera is extraordinary. Some family members - particularly Thomas, who publicly condemned his father and devoted his life to making amends for his pernicious actions - are still consumed with anger that Harlan had blithely abetted the Nazis? persecution of the Jews. Others attempt to reconcile their love and filial loyalty with their resentment of their father, as they struggle to explain his behavior without condoning it. Maria, for example, twists in a vortex of shame and denial as she first tells us, bitterly, that Harlan's career was the only thing that mattered to him and then lamely professes that, at the start of her own film career, she discarded the Harlan name only because her agents had duped her into it. Meanwhile, the two sons from Harlan's marriage to Kristina Soederbaum strain to defend their mother's honor by ascribing her appearance in "The Jew Suess" to her youth, and her subjection to their domineering father. In one of the film's most poignant moments, Kaspar, the youngest son, says he accepts his father's life-long protestation that he made "The Jew Suess" under duress - fearing for his and Kristina's lives if he defied propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels (whose ministry funded the film). Still, Kaspar asks plaintively, "Why did he have to make it so well?"

The perceptions of Harlan's grandchildren make for no less compelling viewing. It's difficult to watch the six of them making their way through a museum exhibit on "The Jew Suess" - probably getting the full, unadulterated version of the story for the first time. No two reactions are alike in this generation. While Chester - whose father, Thomas, dominates the film's moral high ground with his abiding outrage toward Harlan - speaks of relating to the family saga more on an intellectual than an emotional level, his half-sister, Alice, frets about being "genetically linked" to her grandfather's conduct and wonders whether she carries "bad blood." Nele, one of Kaspar's three daughters - expecting, after so long a buildup, to be horrified by "The Jew Suess" - reports that she was surprised to find it so "cheesy and banal." But the most chilling line in this film comes from Jessica, who describes her family as having been divided between perpetrators and victims (her father's Jewish parents having been deported from Germany to Minsk and killed there).

Haaretz spoke with director Felix Moeller by phone from Munich.

Is Harlan still known in Germany in the way a director like Frank Capra remains iconic in the U.S.?

Moeller: "No, because in East Germany his films were strictly banned, and in the West he was probably known only to people who studied cinema or remembered seeing his films during the war."

Is "Jew Suess" still banned in Germany?

"Banned is not the right word, for we have no censorship in Germany. But the film can be screened only under strict limitations, meaning before a closed audience after a historian has given a 15-minute introduction."

How did you happen upon this subject?

"I'm also a historian of cinema and have always been fascinated by Harlan?s films. Leni Riefenstahl is usually cited as the top director of Nazi cinema. But I think Harlan was far more important to the Nazis, because he drew in much larger audiences with big box-office hits. After I met his eldest son, Thomas, and was very taken with him, I wanted to explore the broader context of a family dealing with such a difficult legacy."

Were you surprised by anything you learned while making the film?

"In terms of Nazi cinema, I was sometimes surprised by how amazingly successful and effective Harlan's movies were. The absolute conjunction between the concept behind his melodramas and what the public wanted to see - and we're talking about 20 [million] to 30 million people taking in his films - is rare. Harlan was adored by the people. And compared to the crude and strictly ideological movies produced by Goebbels, Harlan's films were subtle and very powerful."

There are undoubtedly many stories of children who agonized over their parents' conduct during the Nazi era. Do you see this film as emblematic of a broad social phenomenon extending over two generations?

"Absolutely. Many books, some of them by the children of prominent members of the Nazi elite, deal with how the second generation came to terms with their legacy. But there are very few instances in which such people were prepared to talk in front of a camera. What makes the Harlans so special is that the entire family took part in the film. Also, you can hear many Germans, even youngsters still in school, saying: 'We can't bear to hear about the Holocaust or the Third Reich anymore. We already know it all.' And it's true that almost every subject has been researched and documented by now. But when you set aside the official histories and ask people, 'What happened in your family?' they don't know much at all."

There's a wealth of ambivalence and irony in your film. Thomas, who initially comes across as a heroic figure, ultimately seems no less obsessed with making amends for his father's mistakes than his father was obsessed with advancing his career.

"Thomas would probably object to [his cousin] Christiane Kubrick's comment that his life was ruined by his relentless mission to make up for what his father had done. He wouldn't consider himself a victim of the story, though that's obviously the case. Yet we must be careful not to feel sorry for any of these people, because that would feed into the temptation to see themselves as victims of circumstance."

But they were only children during the Third Reich and acquired this burden through no fault of their own.

"Right, what happened then wasn't their fault. But they must accept some responsibility - the responsibility to ensure remembrance of what happened.

"At the other end of spectrum, it's striking that the reaction of Harlan's youngest granddaughters after seeing 'Jew Suess' was puzzlement at what all the fuss had been about. We must put this in context: These girls are in their 20s, and in contrast to all the vivid violence and brutality shown today in films and on the Internet, 'Jew Suess' is a costume drama, a period film, so it's probably difficult for them to appreciate the impact it had in its day. And from a technical standpoint, it was very well-made for its time − very clever and insidious. In fact, Harlan's son Kaspar could not understand why he had made the movie so well. But not every question in this film finds an answer, just as many sore issues remain unresolved in this fractured family."

Ina Friedman, a Jerusalem correspondent for the Dutch daily Trouw, is co-author of "Murder in the Name of God: The Plot to Kill Yitzhak Rabin."
PROMOTION: Mamilla Hotel
Bookmark to del.icio.us  
 
Refaeli in the nude
24-year-old Israeli supermodel reveals all in a new and artistic promotional video
'Hitler got things done'
Formula One Chief says Saddam was the only one who could control Iraq
Special Offers
Advertisement
hotel Jerusalem
David Citadel Hotel, come stay at the finest of Jerusalem hotels.
ISRAEL ARMY SURPLUS STORE
IDF insignia,Uniforms, Paladium Boots Watches, Israel Army T-shirts & Collectibles
Dead Sea Skin Care
Quality cosmetics from the Dead Sea. Coupon code HAARETZ for 12% off!
Eldan Rent a Car
Israel's leading car rental company offers you a 20% discount on online reservations
Junkyard
Junk a car - get free towing nationwide and a tax-deductible receipt
More Headlines
14:57 Netanyahu: We delivered consensus on two-state solution
10:04 Report: Saudis to let IDF use airspace to attack Iran
09:05 U.S., Saudis push Syria over IDF withdrawal from Shaba Farms
03:24 Will Israel help NATO police the Mediterranean?
08:05 Palestinians wrong to halt peace talks over settlements issue
14:00 Defendants seek retrial 27 years after the murder
03:40 High hopes for Shalit release, Hamas-Fatah truce prove premature
20:58 WATCH: Daily news round-up from Israel
09:03 Airport etiquette, Britain vs. Israel
14:08 9 Israelis suspected of scamming millions from U.S. pensioners
14:12 First MK to give birth while serving in Knesset has 8th child
08:15 Israel seeks Arab response for settlement building freeze
09:01 Israel braces for influx of new immigrants this summer
04:15 IAF fighter jets and transport planes to get a workout at U.S. bases
Home | TV | Print Edition | Diplomacy | Opinion | Arts & Leisure | Sports | Jewish World | Site rules |
| Israel 2009 election results | Makom: Engaging on Israel
| Search engine marketing
Haaretz.com, the online edition of Haaretz Newspaper in Israel, offers real-time breaking news, opinions and analysis from Israel and the Middle East. Haaretz.com provides extensive and in-depth coverage of Israel, the Jewish World and the Middle East, including defense, diplomacy, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the peace process, Israeli politics, Jerusalem affairs, international relations, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, the Palestinian Authority, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli business world and Jewish life in Israel and the Diaspora.
© Copyright  Haaretz. All rights reserved
om/c1.js">