The Condemned Village (German: Das verurteilte Dorf) is a 1952 East German propaganda film directed by Martin Hellberg.The film is about a man who returns from a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp to his home village in occupied West Germany and leads a resistance to the American military's plans to demolish the village to build an airfield. The film was commissioned to build East German opposition to the United States and support for the Soviet Union during the early Cold War.
Plot
Farmer Heinz Weimann returns to his small Bavarian village of Bärenweiler after several years in Soviet captivity. He tells his neighbors, who have been subject to anti-Soviet propaganda disseminated by the Nazi Party and the American occupation forces, that the Soviets have treated him well. His old sweetheart Käthe has married another man, Fritz Vollmer, but he is not concerned with that. His joy on returning home is interrupted when the mayor announces that the U.S. Army intends to destroy the village and to build an airfield on its lands, in preparation for a confrontation with the Soviet Union.
The people turn to the government and to the local bishop, but receive no assistance. Led by Heinz, they turn to peaceful protests. All residents refuse to leave their homes, except Vollmer. Heinz is arrested and imprisoned. Trade unions from throughout the Federal Republic of Germany mobilize to aid the villagers. When the United States Military Police arrives to evict the inhabitants, thousands of workers arrive in Bärenweiler, and the Americans are forced to leave and abandon their plans to build the airfield.
Cast
Helga Göring as Käthe Vollmer
Günther Simon as Heinz Weimann
Wolf Kaiser as American colonel
Hans Finohr as American general
Eduard von Winterstein as priest
Albert Garbe as mayor
Marga Legal as Mrs. Rühling
Albert Doerner as Fritz Vollmer
Charlotte Crusius as Mrs. Weimann
Otto Eduard Stübler as Meisel
Friedrich Gnaß as Scheffler
Ulrich von der Trenck as teacher
Aribert Grimmer as Riebnitz
Helmuth Hinzelmann as minister
Paul Paulsen as Bishop
Heinz Dhein as Klaus Meitner
Hermann Stövesand as Anton Reinhard
William Gade as postman
Werner Pledath as director
Josef Peter Dornseif as second director
Albert Venohr as American captain
Heinz Rosenthal as government councilor
Production
In 1951, the state control over the DEFA film studio was tightened, as manifested in the creation of the DEFA commission in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany's Politburo. On the backrougnd of the nascent Cold War, an emphasis was put on the creation of anti-Western films; all the six pictures released by DEFA in 1952 were dedicated to this theme.
Writers Jeanne and Kurt Stern wrote the draft of the script in early 1951, after reading a newspaper report about a protest against American military presence that took place in the West German village of Hammelburg. The draft was submitted to DEFA on 14 March 1951. The National Film Board dubbed it "a remarkable agitational work in our campaign against re-militarization, for the unity of Germany and for peace." The final version was completed on 16 May; the writers took care not to highlight the importance of communism but rather, the demand for peace. a positive figure of a cleric, the village's priest, was included in the plot; DEFA director-general Sepp Schwab decided that it would be unwise to portray the church in a wholly negative light. A happy ending was added, as well. In the original draft, the village was evicted.
The SED considered the film as one of the most important cinematic projects produced during 1951. The party's DEFA Commission praised the script as "one of the best written this year." State Secretary of Press and Agitation Hermann Axen had personally made many adjustments to the plot, and demanded that the Americans would be presented as aggressors.
Two directors who were approached by DEFA - Erwin Wilhelm Fiedler and Falk Harnack - declined to work on the film. Eventually, the manager of the Dresden Theater, Martin Hellberg, who had no experience in the field of cinema, was selected to direct The Condemned Village. Principal Photography began on 28 August 1951 and ended in early December.