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Hitler Farce Breaks German Taboos
By David Crossland
An alarming sight in Berlin: The city's central "Lustgarten" square transformed into a Nazi rallying ground complete with giant swastika banners and a ranting Führer. But Germany's first comedy film about Hitler was bound to break taboos.
Tourists passing in sightseeing buses stared open-mouthed at the scene in central Berlin on Monday: huge red banners bearing the Nazi swastika fluttering in the winter sun outside the city's cathedral, Wehrmacht soldiers in their steel helmets standing guard between the imposing pillars of the Old Museum and a crowd of hundreds cheering their Führer with enthusiastic Hitler salutes and chants of "Sieg Heil!"
But a second glance caught the film crew, catering buses and cinema equipment and quickly dispelled any concern that the Fourth Reich had quietly dawned in Germany over the weekend. Still, the sight was unusual enough to draw a crowd of onlookers and it marked a bold first in the history of German cinema since World War II -- a comedy about Hitler.
"Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler" by Swiss director Dani Levy, who is Jewish, takes a tongue-in-cheek look at Hitler's final days and parodies both the dictator and recent portrayals of him such as the critically-acclaimed 2004 film "Der Untergang" ("The Downfall"), which itself broke a taboo by attempting to showing the Nazi leader's human side.
Levy has said he wants the film to be an "anti-signal" against films which he believes have put Hitler on too much of a pedestal. The film is being backed with €450,000 of public money from film development firm Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg which describes the plot as follows: "Hitler lives and tells the story of what he was really like -- a weakling who only made it to the top with the help of the Jew Grünbaum."
In Chaplin's Footsteps
It remains to be seen whether the film can match the 1940 classic "The Great Dictator" in which Charlie Chaplin as "Adenoid Hynkel" dances around his office holding the earth in his hands in the shape of a big balloon and holds rabid speeches in gibberish German in which "Wienerschnitzel" seems to be the only recognizable word.
Levy's Hitler is portrayed by German comedian Helge Schneider -- who is perhaps best-known for his hit song "Katzeklo" about a cat litter box sung in a slightly disturbing nasal tone. Levy won acclaim for his 2004 comedy "Alles Auf Zucker" about an atheist sports journalist from eastern Germany forced to reconcile himself with his brother, an orthodox Jew from western Germany, to get hold of his mother's inheritance.
A German-made farce about Hitler would have been unthinkable until quite recently. But the gradual dying out of the Nazi era generation -- over 80 percent of Germans today were born after 1941 -- has given the country a more detached view of its past, even though politicians continue to acknowledge the country's deep moral responsibility for the Holocaust.
Several taboos have fallen in recent years. Germans have started recalling their own suffering in bombing raids and mass evictions from eastern territories. An intimate -- if unsympathetic -- portrayal of Hitler followed in "The Downfall." And the public ZDF television channel is currently screening a film about the February 1945 bombing of Dresden, which some Germans see as the unnecessary destruction of a city that caused mostly civilian casualties.
So despite a headline in top-selling tabloid Bild Zeitung alerting people to the "Swastika Shock in Berlin," the sight of the Nazi symbol didn't stoke much controversy. The president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Paul Spiegel, told the paper: "Helge Schneider and Dani Levy have the ability to approach this work with the necessary sensitivity."
Tourists as extras
Some tourists even joined in as extras to beef up the 300-strong crowd, which Levy plans to enhance digitally to give the impression of a mass rally.
Steve Krause, 31, an Aryan-looking American student, was picked along with a number of fellow students to join the crowd hailing the Führer. "I'm going to have to try not to laugh," said Krause, who just happened to be passing when a member of staff lured him with the offer of a hot chocolate after the shoot.
Dutch tourist Louw Hekkema couldn't believe his eyes at first. "I thought there was a far-right demonstration going on," he said. "I don't think making such a film here is a problem anymore."
Since Nazi symbols like the swastika and SS runes are banned in Germany, Levy must have obtained special permission to display his banners.
Locals watching the filming also didn't seem particularly bothered by it. One Berlin pensioner said he remembered watching the real Hitler hold a May Day speech from the same spot 65 years ago. "We Berliners came here and cheered," said the man who declined to be named. "I don't see why anyone should get angry about a film being made here. It's part of our history."
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,druck-404573,00.html
Critical Mass
Posted : 06/03/2006 8:32 pm
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,450286,00.html
November 23, 2006
GERMANY'S FIRST NAZI COMEDY
Meet Hitler, the Bed-Wetting Drug Addict
By David Crossland in Berlin
German cinema breaks new ground in January with its first comedy about Hitler. Jewish director Dani Levy
is following in the footsteps of Charlie Chaplin, maker of "The Great Dictator," with a decidedly unsympathetic
portrayal of Hitler as a bed-wetting drug addict who is making the world suffer for his beatings as a child.
Hitler likes to play with his toy battleship in the bath, wets his bed, can't get an erection and is addicted to
drugs he keeps in his giant globe, according to Germany's first comedy about the Führer, made by Jewish
director Dani Levy.
"Mein Führer: The Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler," which [color="Red"]received public funding, opens in January
and fits a recent trend in Germany to break new ground in dealing with its Nazi history. It follows the
2004 movie "The Downfall," one of the first German films to show Hitler up close and personal.
A German-made farce about Hitler would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. But the passage
of time and the gradual dying out of the Nazi-era generation have given the country a more detached
view of its past.
Swiss director Levy says he wants to follow in the tradition of Charlie Chaplin's 1940 classic
"The Great Dictator," and to take a tongue-in-cheek look at the theory that Hitler was taking revenge
on the world for being beaten by his father.
Levy, who won critical acclaim for his 2004 comedy " Alles Auf Zucker" about Jewish people in post-unification
Germany, sees nothing wrong with a tragicomic approach to the Holocaust. "I don't want to give this cynical,
psychological wreck of a person the honor of a realistic portrayal," he says in a statement.
And indeed he doesn't. In the film, Hitler, played by comedian Helge Schneider -- who imitates the
Führer's clipped, gutteral speech -- crawls around his giant Chancellery office on all fours barking like his pet
Alsatian Blondi, whom he has taught to make the Hitler salute and has dressed in a little SS uniform.
"Don't take the final solution personally"
Here's the plot. It's late 1944. Hitler has lost faith in himself and a desperate Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels
summons former Jewish acting coach Adolf Grünbaum from a concentration camp to get the dictator back
in shape for a mass rally to reinvigorate the German people.
"Don't take the final solution personally," Goebbels tells an emaciated Grünbaum as the professor
arrives in the Chancellery surrounded by Nazi officials who keep whipping out their arms in deafening "Heil Hitler!"
salutes every few seconds.
Successive attempts by Grünbaum to kill Hitler fail, so he resigns himself to giving the troubled dictator
acting lessons and eventually turns into a kind of psychiatrist, discovering that the dictator can't get
over the fact that he could never please his strict father.
Lying on the couch of his grand office, Hitler recalls a disturbing childhood incident. "My father once gave
me a catapult. He looked up and told me 'Kill that pigeon!' I fired and the pigeon landed at his feet,
stone dead. 'That was a fluke,' he said, and walked off." Tears keep trickling down his face.
Another scene shows an embarrassed looking Hitler lying on top of Eva Braun who says "I can't feel
you Mein Führer."
At the end of the film, Hitler's barber accidentally shaves off half his little moustache, sending the dictator
into a violent rage which causes him to lose his voice minutes before he is due to hold his speech. Grünbaum
has to take over ...
Behind all the gags it's evident that Levy has a serious message. He said he was inspired by a theory that
Hitler was making the world suffer because of his unhappy childhood. "The 'analytical journey'
Hitler embarks on with his 'therapist' Grünbaum is based on true material," said Levy. "I have been wondering
for a long time why nobody made a film about this link, in the form of a drama or a comedy."
"Comedy is more subversive than tragedy"
Levy has criticized Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" for trying to give a realistic portrayal of the Holocaust.
He prefers Italian director Roberto Benigni's approach with his 1997 tragicomedy "Life is Beautiful" about
a Jewish man's struggle to help his son survive in a concentration camp. "Benigni never made an
attempt to claim his portrayal of the period and the horror was realistic. Benigni ventured onto another level.
He uses a poetic fairytale set in a concentration camp to recount how a child's phantasies are indestructible."
Using phantasy and fable may come closer to explaining the era, says Levy. "Comedy is more subservise
than tragedy. It can assert things that aren't possible in an authentic, serious portrayal."
Interest in the Nazi era has been surging in Germany in recent years, with a host of feature films, documentaries
and books exploring the era. Some of them have been controversial, highlighting the plight of Germans in
Allied aerial bombing or in the mass evictions from what is now Poland and the Czech Republic after World War II.
While there has been a popular comic series about Hitler by cartoonist Walter Moers, a film comedy about Hitler
is new and is creating strong interest.
The filming in Berlin already caused a stir. In March, Levy decked out Berlin's central Lustgarten square in giant
swastika banners and hired hundreds of extras to wave swastika and cheer "Heil Hitler" for his final scene.
Passing tourists and Berliners alike were aghast.
[color="White"].-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"A careful study of anti-semitism prejudice and accusations might be of great value to many jews,
who do not adequately realize the irritations they inflict." - H.G. Wells (November 11, 1933)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted : 23/11/2006 10:23 am
I'm laughing already 
LAME!
Then again a mainstream Hitler may be good for the racially aware.
"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him...." ------ John 8:44
Posted : 23/11/2006 2:55 pm
I'm laughing already
LAME!
Then again a mainstream Hitler may be good for the racially aware.
"Jews despise what we consider holy, and do things that create revulsion in us." ---- Gaius Cornelius Tacitus
Just more Jewish smears.
Posted : 24/11/2006 7:00 am
The Jews really have trouble forgetting Hitler. They just can't leave him alone.
They must fear that someone among us might rise up and kick the Jews out AGAIN! (I wish!)
The birth of every white baby is the First Born of the next generation.
"Segregation did not exist to hold back other races. It existed to protect us from them." D. Roof
Posted : 24/11/2006 3:01 pm
The jewz and Hitler definately have a love-hate relationship going. They use him for monetary gains, power, political advantage, subjects for books, shows and movies.....oh and tactics to oppress palestinians....YET they consider him "evil"....go figure!
"Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him...." ------ John 8:44
Posted : 24/11/2006 4:44 pm
Jews have a monopoly on representing National Socialist Germany and the Swastika in the media.
Ask the White liberal lemmings why they think that is?
Posted : 24/11/2006 8:06 pm
The jewz and Hitler definately have a love-hate relationship going. They use him for monetary gains, power, political advantage, subjects for books, shows and movies.....oh and tactics to oppress palestinians....YET they consider him "evil"....go figure!
They want to BE little Hitlers. A jew I know spent a year in Jerusalem and when he came back he told me that Israelis are basically jewish Nazis.
They say immitation is the most sincere form of flattery . . .
Posted : 24/11/2006 8:42 pm
Take heart men, someday we will be making movies about Israel. That fat-ass Sharon is prime for satirical mockery!!
Posted : 24/11/2006 9:47 pm