Heimkehr (Homecoming) Gustav Ucicky, Paula Wessely Essay Booklet
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Scholarly Essay Booklet for the Nazi Propaganda Film Heimkehr directed by Gustav Ucicky.
Heimkehr Essay Booklet: Nazi Propaganda Film Analysis Delve into the controversial history of Nazi cinema with this standalone 19-page booklet, "Heimkehr: Historical Origin & Production Notes" by historian Shelly Threshansky. Originally designed as a companion to the restored DVD of the infamous 1941 film Heimkehr (Homecoming), this booklet is now offered separately for researchers, historians, educators, and film enthusiasts exploring propaganda, World War II, and the Third Reich's manipulation of media. Measuring compactly and enriched with numerous color and black-and-white images—including posters, promotional materials, behind-the-scenes photos, and historical sketches—this booklet provides an exhaustive examination of one of the most reviled propaganda films of the era.
Shelly Threshansky, a noted film historian specializing in European cinema and wartime propaganda, unpacks the origins, production, and legacy of Heimkehr, directed by Gustav Ucicky and scripted by Gerhard Menzel. Conceived at the behest of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in early 1941, the film was produced by Wien-Film GmbH, a studio under German control since 1936 via Tobis AG's acquisition—predating Austria's Anschluss. Goebbels, fresh from the invasion of Poland in September 1939, sought to portray the plight of Volhynian Germans, an established minority in southern Poland facing escalating hostilities. Threshansky details how this narrative served to retroactively justify Hitler's aggression as a "defensive" war to liberate oppressed ethnic Germans, inverting victim and perpetrator roles by exaggerating real events into a venomous anti-Polish and anti-Semitic diatribe.
The booklet begins with a detailed plot synopsis set in spring 1939 Poland. It follows Maria Thomas (Paula Wessely), a young German teacher, her father Dr. Martin Thomas (Peter Petersen), and her fiancé Fritz Mutius (Carl Raddatz) in a small town where the German minority endures harassment. The demolition of their school for a police station sparks protests, leading to violent confrontations: refusal to sing the Polish anthem incites a cinema brawl, resulting in Fritz's death after denial of hospital care. Escalating atrocities include the eviction of innkeeper Ludwig Launhardt (Attila Hörbiger) from his ancestral "Deutsches Haus," his wife's stoning by a mob, and Maria's father blinded in an ambush. Culminating in a secret radio gathering raided by Polish soldiers, the Germans are imprisoned in a torturous cell, facing execution in a flooded cellar—only to be rescued by Luftwaffe Stukas and Wehrmacht tanks. The film ends with preparations for a triumphant trek to Germany, symbolizing "homecoming" to the Reich, as Maria weds the widowed Launhardt.
Threshansky emphasizes the film's propaganda core: Poles are depicted as a barbaric, inferior mob, with explicit anti-Polish dialogue and anti-Semitic undertones, such as the portrayal of Jewish merchant Salomonson (Eugen Preiss). This inverts historical realities, distracting from Wehrmacht atrocities like "total warfare" against Polish civilians, clergy, intelligentsia, and Jews, as ordered by Hitler. While based on genuine incidents—like anti-German policies post-Versailles, land reforms, school closures, and pogroms in cities like Bromberg (Bydgoszcz)—the narrative amplifies them for ideological effect. Threshansky draws on primary sources, including Goebbels' diaries, to reveal his direct oversight: three screenplay drafts in 1940, refined with input from Reich film advisor Fritz Hippler.
Contextualizing Heimkehr within Nazi filmography, the booklet compares it to predecessors like Ucicky and Menzel's Flüchtlinge (1933), depicting Volga Germans fleeing Soviet turmoil; Friesennot (1935), showing communist oppression; and Feinde (1940), portraying pre-war escapes from Poland. Unlike these, Heimkehr prioritizes authenticity: filmed partly in Chorzele, Poland (substituting for Przemyśl due to Soviet occupation), with Vienna's Rosenhügel studios reconstructing Lutsk on 22,000 square meters, including a ghetto and prison. Production spanned January to July 1941, ballooning costs from 1.4 to 3.5 million Reichsmarks due to weather delays—not sabotage, as postwar claims suggested.
Casting highlights add depth: Paula Wessely, Hitler's favored actress earning 150,000 Reichsmarks, embodies the resilient Maria, building on her role in Ucicky's Ein Leben lang (1940). Polish actors like Bogusław Samborski (mayor) were recruited via Igo Sym, an ethnic German intermediary executed by Polish resistance in 1941 for treason. Jewish actor Eugen Preiss, coerced amid deportation fears, survived to resume his career. The Vienna Philharmonic and Boys' Choir contributed musically, under Willy Schmidt-Gentner.
Reception analysis covers the Venice premiere on August 31, 1941, as the Biennale opener, earning the Italian Ministry of People's Culture prize amid applause from a "plutocratic" audience. Vienna (October 10) and Berlin (October 23) premieres drew Nazi elites, wounded soldiers, and workers; Goebbels awarded it "Film of the Nation"—a rare honor shared with Ohm Krüger, Der große König, Die Entlassung, and Kolberg. Screened in occupied Poland (Krakow, Königsberg, Łódź), it evoked mixed reactions among ethnic Germans fearing reprisals. Box-office success hit 6.6 million Reichsmarks by early 1942, extending to Tokyo in 1944, praised for embodying National Socialism.
Threshansky critiques the film's enduring infamy: by attributing inhumanity to Poles—death marches, executions—it whitewashes Nazi crimes, including the Bromberg Bloody Sunday (over 1,000 Germans killed amid panic) and broader resettlements per the Hitler-Stalin Pact, relocating 60,000 Volhynians to Warthegau, expelling Poles and Jews. Inspired partly by Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser's sketches of 1940 treks, Heimkehr exemplifies Goebbels' "educational reminder" to justify conquest and racial hierarchy.
This booklet invites critical reflection on cinema's role in fostering hatred and rewriting history, with a full cast list (including Polish extras like Hanna Chodakowsky, Stefania Stoinska) and references to scholars like Friedemann Beyer, Jochen Böhler, and Elke Fröhlich. Essential for academic collections, it underscores the blurred line between art and atrocity. Note: This is the booklet only; the DVD Heimkehr is available separately.
Shelly Treshansky is a freelance writer and scholar who teaches history and film in the Chicago area. Special thanks to the Gillespie Collection Australia for images of posters and production stills.
USA, 2021, 20 pages, 29 photos, 7 inches by 4 3/4 inches, softcover booklet
Scholarly Essay Booklet for the Nazi Propaganda Film Heimkehr directed by Gustav Ucicky.
Heimkehr Essay Booklet: Nazi Propaganda Film Analysis Delve into the controversial history of Nazi cinema with this standalone 19-page booklet, "Heimkehr: Historical Origin & Production Notes" by historian Shelly Threshansky. Originally designed as a companion to the restored DVD of the infamous 1941 film Heimkehr (Homecoming), this booklet is now offered separately for researchers, historians, educators, and film enthusiasts exploring propaganda, World War II, and the Third Reich's manipulation of media. Measuring compactly and enriched with numerous color and black-and-white images—including posters, promotional materials, behind-the-scenes photos, and historical sketches—this booklet provides an exhaustive examination of one of the most reviled propaganda films of the era.
Shelly Threshansky, a noted film historian specializing in European cinema and wartime propaganda, unpacks the origins, production, and legacy of Heimkehr, directed by Gustav Ucicky and scripted by Gerhard Menzel. Conceived at the behest of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in early 1941, the film was produced by Wien-Film GmbH, a studio under German control since 1936 via Tobis AG's acquisition—predating Austria's Anschluss. Goebbels, fresh from the invasion of Poland in September 1939, sought to portray the plight of Volhynian Germans, an established minority in southern Poland facing escalating hostilities. Threshansky details how this narrative served to retroactively justify Hitler's aggression as a "defensive" war to liberate oppressed ethnic Germans, inverting victim and perpetrator roles by exaggerating real events into a venomous anti-Polish and anti-Semitic diatribe.
The booklet begins with a detailed plot synopsis set in spring 1939 Poland. It follows Maria Thomas (Paula Wessely), a young German teacher, her father Dr. Martin Thomas (Peter Petersen), and her fiancé Fritz Mutius (Carl Raddatz) in a small town where the German minority endures harassment. The demolition of their school for a police station sparks protests, leading to violent confrontations: refusal to sing the Polish anthem incites a cinema brawl, resulting in Fritz's death after denial of hospital care. Escalating atrocities include the eviction of innkeeper Ludwig Launhardt (Attila Hörbiger) from his ancestral "Deutsches Haus," his wife's stoning by a mob, and Maria's father blinded in an ambush. Culminating in a secret radio gathering raided by Polish soldiers, the Germans are imprisoned in a torturous cell, facing execution in a flooded cellar—only to be rescued by Luftwaffe Stukas and Wehrmacht tanks. The film ends with preparations for a triumphant trek to Germany, symbolizing "homecoming" to the Reich, as Maria weds the widowed Launhardt.
Threshansky emphasizes the film's propaganda core: Poles are depicted as a barbaric, inferior mob, with explicit anti-Polish dialogue and anti-Semitic undertones, such as the portrayal of Jewish merchant Salomonson (Eugen Preiss). This inverts historical realities, distracting from Wehrmacht atrocities like "total warfare" against Polish civilians, clergy, intelligentsia, and Jews, as ordered by Hitler. While based on genuine incidents—like anti-German policies post-Versailles, land reforms, school closures, and pogroms in cities like Bromberg (Bydgoszcz)—the narrative amplifies them for ideological effect. Threshansky draws on primary sources, including Goebbels' diaries, to reveal his direct oversight: three screenplay drafts in 1940, refined with input from Reich film advisor Fritz Hippler.
Contextualizing Heimkehr within Nazi filmography, the booklet compares it to predecessors like Ucicky and Menzel's Flüchtlinge (1933), depicting Volga Germans fleeing Soviet turmoil; Friesennot (1935), showing communist oppression; and Feinde (1940), portraying pre-war escapes from Poland. Unlike these, Heimkehr prioritizes authenticity: filmed partly in Chorzele, Poland (substituting for Przemyśl due to Soviet occupation), with Vienna's Rosenhügel studios reconstructing Lutsk on 22,000 square meters, including a ghetto and prison. Production spanned January to July 1941, ballooning costs from 1.4 to 3.5 million Reichsmarks due to weather delays—not sabotage, as postwar claims suggested.
Casting highlights add depth: Paula Wessely, Hitler's favored actress earning 150,000 Reichsmarks, embodies the resilient Maria, building on her role in Ucicky's Ein Leben lang (1940). Polish actors like Bogusław Samborski (mayor) were recruited via Igo Sym, an ethnic German intermediary executed by Polish resistance in 1941 for treason. Jewish actor Eugen Preiss, coerced amid deportation fears, survived to resume his career. The Vienna Philharmonic and Boys' Choir contributed musically, under Willy Schmidt-Gentner.
Reception analysis covers the Venice premiere on August 31, 1941, as the Biennale opener, earning the Italian Ministry of People's Culture prize amid applause from a "plutocratic" audience. Vienna (October 10) and Berlin (October 23) premieres drew Nazi elites, wounded soldiers, and workers; Goebbels awarded it "Film of the Nation"—a rare honor shared with Ohm Krüger, Der große König, Die Entlassung, and Kolberg. Screened in occupied Poland (Krakow, Königsberg, Łódź), it evoked mixed reactions among ethnic Germans fearing reprisals. Box-office success hit 6.6 million Reichsmarks by early 1942, extending to Tokyo in 1944, praised for embodying National Socialism.
Threshansky critiques the film's enduring infamy: by attributing inhumanity to Poles—death marches, executions—it whitewashes Nazi crimes, including the Bromberg Bloody Sunday (over 1,000 Germans killed amid panic) and broader resettlements per the Hitler-Stalin Pact, relocating 60,000 Volhynians to Warthegau, expelling Poles and Jews. Inspired partly by Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser's sketches of 1940 treks, Heimkehr exemplifies Goebbels' "educational reminder" to justify conquest and racial hierarchy.
This booklet invites critical reflection on cinema's role in fostering hatred and rewriting history, with a full cast list (including Polish extras like Hanna Chodakowsky, Stefania Stoinska) and references to scholars like Friedemann Beyer, Jochen Böhler, and Elke Fröhlich. Essential for academic collections, it underscores the blurred line between art and atrocity. Note: This is the booklet only; the DVD Heimkehr is available separately.
Shelly Treshansky is a freelance writer and scholar who teaches history and film in the Chicago area. Special thanks to the Gillespie Collection Australia for images of posters and production stills.
USA, 2021, 20 pages, 29 photos, 7 inches by 4 3/4 inches, softcover booklet
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