In YOU BLED, TERRA FILM, horrifying facts and controversial questions around art and filmmaking in
20th century Germany hit home and strike hard. History douses youthful desires for truth, love, and openness.
Personalities and movements blur and blend. Individual impulses lay amidst atmospheres of duty, force, and obligation.
VEIT HARLAN (b. 1899)
An enigmatic, entertaining, energizing figure most of his life, Veit Harlan built a reputation as an actor in progressive theater and film productions, arousing displeasure in growing German nationalist circles. In 1935, he became a director, going on to produce a number of magnificent, sweeping commissioned epics. In his final days, they called him Des Teufels Regisseur ("The Devil's Director").
DORA GERSON (b. 1899)
Raven-haired Jewish-German cabaret singer Dora Gerson attended the Reinhardt School in Berlin, earning a place in the Holtorf Tournee Truppe. She appeared on camera with Bela Lugosi in the 1920s, however their films have gone missing. Following the Nazi capture of power in 1930s Germany, she went abroad, representative of a bygone era. The sparse surviving information abut her describes an unfeigned passion and talent with no hint of artificiality.
MAX REINHARDT (b. 1873)
Averaging somewhere between 20 and 40 stage productions a year, Jewish-Austrian Max Reinhardt blended classical performances and modern imagery, technology, and techniques to leave a lasting mark on the early 20th century stage and screen. The multiple Reinhardt acting schools were built upon his techniques. The earliest German screen stars came from the Reinhardt troupe.
(Kurt Tucholsky wrote in his "Danton's Death" poem: Act Three was great in Reinhardt's play —Six hundred extras milling. Listen to what the critics say! All Berlin finds it thrilling... But in the whole affair I see / A parable, if you ask me./ "Revolution!' the Public howls and cries/'Freedom, that's what we're needing!/We've needed it for centuries —Our arteries are bleeding.'/The stage is shaking./The audience rock./The whole thing is over by nine o'clock./The day looks grey as I come to./Where are the People — remember? —That stormed the peaks from down below?/What happened to November?")
LEOPOLD ULLSTEIN (b. 1826)
An important, innovative Jewish-German publisher and printmaker, Leopold Ullstein died in 1899 having established a lively, colorful series of publications defying the censorship policies of Otto von Bismark's Imperial Germany/Prussia. He was a member of the Jewish mutual aid organization, The Society of Friends, which carried over into the Weimar Republic and opened itself to non-Jews.
VICKI BAUM (b. 1888)
Vicki Baum was an Jewish-Austrian writer, connected with Ullstein publishing. Her works inspired a number of German and American films and she is considered to be one of the earliest examples of contemporary, commercial, "best seller" authorship.
JOSEPH GOEBBELS (b. 1897)
Born into a Catholic family of modest means, Paul Joseph Goebbels studied literature and philosophy at several German universities, writing his doctoral thesis on the 18th century Romantic writer Wilhelm von Schütz. Distinguishing himself from progressive intellectuals (given the anti-intellectualism of the Nazi Party), Goebbels became a close associate of Adolf Hitler, and was Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. In 1921 he had a less than promising literary career: "The very name of the hero, Michael, to whom he gave many autobiographical features, suggests the way his self-identification was pointing: a figure of light, radiant, tall, unconquerable," and above all "'To be a soldier! To stand sentinel! One ought always to be a soldier.'" (Fest, Joachim, The Face of the Third Reich, p. 88)
KRISTINA SÖDERBAUM (b. 1912)
Daughter of Henrik Gustaf Söderbaum, head of the Nobel Prize Committee, Kristina was a Swedish-born German film actress, whose blond hair and angelic features made her a marketable damsel-in-distress during the re-nationalized period of the German film industry. Her career began developing in both Stockholm and Paris, where she was an honored student of art and language.
BERTOLT BRECHT (b. 1898)
Marxist German poet, playwright, and constructivist man of theater, who saw the stage as an arena for experimentation and living politics.
CONRAD VEIDT (b. 1893)
German actor who appeared in well over 100 movies. Originally from a working class neighborhood, he opposed the Nazi regime, eventually fleeing it. A symbol of cinema across borders, he worked from Weimar to Hollywood --- from the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Casablanca.
KURT TUCHOLSKY (b. 1890)
A Jewish-German poet, writer, and satirist, he also served as one of the more important observers and journalists of the Weimar Republic. He frequently wrote about all shades of anti-democratic tendencies in politics and culture. He moved abroad in 1924, and his books were heavily censored, then nearly obliterated.
CURT BOIS (b. 1901)
Jewish-German actor born in Berlin; began acting at age 8, making him one of the world's first child stars. Throughout his life, Bois showed himself to be very adaptable, performing in theatre, cabaret, musicals, silent film and "talkies" over his career as an actor.
HEINRICH GEORGE (b. 1893)
Once a man of the left in the early days of the new century (active in Germany's Communist Party and performing on stage under such left-wing directors as Erwin Piscator and Bertolt Brecht), Heinrich George later played in a number of UFA Nazi propaganda films before and during World War II.
MAX GLASS (b. 1881)
From "Les Indépendants du Premier Siècle" [lips.org]: "The youngest of 5 children, Max arrived as a young boy in Vienna with his parents Hersh Mendel, a Talmud scholar and jeweler and his mother Rachel - known as Rosa - Wachsmann, whose parents were from Krakow... Max Glass moved to Berlin where he devoted himself to script writing, to directing and producing films... In Berlin, Max Glass' second novel "Humanity Unleashed" was brought to the screen by Joseph Delmont in 1920, in a Max Nivelli production... Max Glass rapidly entered production himself and rose to the head of the Terra Film. According to German journalist Georg Fuchs, Terra Film owed its rise to international recognition to Max Glass, sometimes nicknamed "the dictator of cinema" because of his iron will."
ROSA LUXEMBURG (b. 1871)
Rosa Luxemburg was born into a Jewish family, the youngest of five children. In 1889, at 18 years old, Luxemburg's revolutionary agitation forced her to move to Zürich, Switzerland to escape imprisonment.
Luxemburg left Zürich for Berlin in 1898, and joined the German Social Democrats. In 1906, Luxemburg began to strongly advocate her theory of The Mass Strike as the most important revolutionary weapon of the proletariat. This continual drive became a major point of contention in the German Social Democratic party.
She wrote: "Yes, dictatorship [of working people]! But this dictatorship consists in the manner of applying democracy, not in its elimination... It must be the work of the class and not of a little leading minority in the name of the class -- that is, it must proceed step by step out of the active participation of the masses..."
THE GOEBBELS KIDS (b. 1932-1940)
Helga, Hildegard, Helmut, Holdine, Hedwig and Heidrun: six attractive little darlings born to Magda and Joseph at the height of Dad's political career. Mom and Dad's marriage hit crisis in 1938 following the discovery of Joey G's affair with czech UFA actress Lída Baarová. (It caused a rift in her relationship to Metropolis star Gustav Fröhlich.) Uncle Adolf intervened, helping keep up appearances by banishing Lida and displaying Helga, Hilde and Helmut with family in front of the UFA cameras -- cinematic symbols of domestic reconciliation and Reich family values.
Seven years later, the youngest heard the rumble of Red Army artillery and wondered why rain never followed the thunder. Mom gave a spoonful of syrup to help them quiet down.
