Film Review: "Rosenstrasse"

I first heard of the film Rosenstrasse several years back.    I don’t think it was as far back as 2003, when the film was originally released.  At any rate I heard an interview about it on Fresh Air on NPR.  I got the impression that the film dealt with a woman who helped Jews escape from Nazi Germany. I thought it was a true story.  It took me this long to actually watch the film.

I was right and wrong about the material.  It is about a woman who saved a little girl from the Nazis—one girl, not many people.  The film is based on a true incident; but the incident did not involve a gentile woman who hid Jews from the Nazis; it involved one of the few known acts of resistance to the Nazi—and it was public resistance, by non-Jewish Germans.

Yet it was an isolated incident.  Early in 1943, just after Germany’s defeat at Stalingrad, Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels called for “Total War” against the Allies.  There were still thousands of Jews living in Berlin.  Many were rounded up and detained in a former Jewish Community Center in downtown Berlin—less than a mile, I would guess, from what became Hitler’s Reichsbunker.  Many of the men were married to non-Jews.  These women gathered across the street from the detention center and kept vigil for their husbands.  They refused to disband, even when threatened by the police and by soldiers with machine guns.  After a week, the detainees were released from the threat of deportation—which would have sent them to the gas chambers at Auschwitz.

This much is historically true.  I think the actual characters in the film were fictional, however.

As a film, I found it confusing.  I sometimes lost track of the various characters.  The film follows several sets of people impacted by the detentions.  It starts in the present with an older Jewish woman in New York whose husband dies.  During the mourning, the woman seems to “go Jewish,” causing her daughter to go to Berlin to try to find the woman who saved her during the Nazi years.  The film hops between different time periods and characters—rather hard to follow.  It was also difficult, sometimes, to believe some of the situations.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the film and found it interesting.  I’d recommend it—especially for anyone interested in that historical period.

Anthems (10) -- Those Problematic German Anthems

Yes, I have vague memories of having been surprised, in a good way, by various national anthems I had previously known nothing about (India, Indonesia).  I remember feeling some anthems were distinctly “odd”, at least in the presentations I found on YouTube (Saudi Arabia, whose anthem I could never find the lyrics to; Iran, played against images of what I imagine to be Revolutionary Guards, armaments, and explosions).  And sometimes I was surprised by my non-reaction; I’d expected to somehow be impressed or stunned, and wasn’t, particularly (China, North Korea).

But several countries turned out to be much more interesting than I had anticipated.

Let’s start with Germany.

The lyrics of the German anthem, known to most of us as “Deutschland Über Alles,” was actually written, in 1841, as “Song of the Germans.”  At a time when German had disintegrated into hundreds of kingdoms, principalities, and duchies, it urged Germans to put “Germany Above Everything”—Germany first—rather than squabble on behalf of your own particular little (or large) fragment of Germany.

The music, on the other hand, comes from the famous Austrian composer Franz Joseph Haydn.

Austrian?  Yes.  Since the Austrians are ethnically and linguistically German; one of those kingdoms that Germany (or rather the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation) had dissolved into—though a rather luckier one; since, in driving the Turks back from the gates of Vienna, it had amassed its own empire of largely non-German peoples.  When Bismarck reconstituted Germany in 1871, he specifically excluded Austria.

Haydn’s tune became the anthem of the Austrian (later Austro-Hungarian) empire.  Meanwhile, the new German empire (like other nations we have discussed) did not really have an official anthem.  Unofficially, Germans might sing “The Watch on the Rhine”—famously presented in the film “Casablanca” before being drowned out by Frenchmen (and French women) singing “The Marseillaise”—or they might sing “Heil Dir im Siegerkranz” (to what seems the perpetually popular and apparently omnipresent—as we shall see!—English tune “God Save The King”).

After World War I—and the collapse of the German Empire as well as the Austro-Hungarian Empire—“The Song of the Germans,” sung now to Haydn’s melody (no longer used as the Austrian anthem—some Austrians were rather glad to be rid of it) became the anthem of the new German state.  With the rise of the Nazis fifteen years after The Great War, “Germany Above Everything” became known to the world as “Germany Over Everybody Else”—though in the Reich the custom was to sing only the first verse, then follow that up with the “Horst Wessel Song”—the anthem of the Nazi Party.

After World War II, what was a German to do?  The first stanza was clearly verboten; not only did it talk about “Germany Above All,” it mentioned various territory that supposedly constituted “Germany”—including non-German ethnic areas that had been lost.  The second stanza—invoking German “wine, women, and song” seemed comparatively trivial and a little bit sexist.

The Haydn tune was kept, along with the third stanza.  Known as the “Germany-Song,” it proclaims the ideals of “unity, justice, and freedom” for Germany:  The foundations of happiness.

There are lessons here:  Not to think of your country in terms of specific geographical boundaries (which can change); and to be mindful of how your national anthem might come across to others (Arrogant?  Sexist?).  There’s still the question, though, of using songs from other countries as your own (though, since borders change, and a song may come from a mixed background, let’s not be over-possessive).  In any case, we’ll see that several nations have shared one particular tune…

Anthems (4) – Russia Again

I’ve been immersed in the Russian national anthem, which I find interesting and appealing for several reasons.  More than other anthems, it makes me think and reflect.  And I’ve been improving my Russian by trying to learn the lyrics.
 

The Russian anthem retains the music of the previous Soviet anthem.  Therefore the current anthem brings to mind the earlier anthem.  This was a point of controversy, but this links the present and the past—perhaps in a provocative way.  But modern Russia is linked to its Soviet past.

The 1944 Soviet anthem mentions Stalin as well as “Great Lenin.”  It alludes to the victory over the Nazi invaders.  It mentions the “will of the people,” and victories, and the people’s glory. 

Not surprisingly, the 1977 Soviet revision dropped the reference to Stalin.  But it also dropped references to the war.  Still, only now did we see overt references to Communism (unless my sources are wrong).  For example:

“The Party of Lenin, the strength of the people/Leads us to the triumph of Communism!”  And:  “In the victory of the immortal ideas of Communism/We see the future of our country.”

With this backdrop, we come to the current Russian anthem, beginning with references to “our sacred homeland” and “our beloved country.”  It goes on to mention “Age-old union of fraternal peoples/Ancestor-given wisdom of the people!”

Beautiful stuff!  It continues with references to the vast and varied geography of the country:  “From the southern seas to the polar lands/Spread are our forests and fields./You are unique in the world, one of a kind.”

Finally, it becomes more personal and human:  “Wide spaces for dreams and for living
Are opened for us by the coming years.”

So it has dropped the overt political propaganda of the 1977 Soviet anthem and instead combined patriotism, geography, and humanity.  Not bad for an anthem!  Almost ideal!

And yet—the first verse proclaims the Russian heritage will be “a mighty will, a great glory.”  I’m not convinced that this is ideal.  The second verse mentions “this sacred land protected by God.”  This, of course, was a bone of contention for the remaining atheist communists—and raises questions about the role of religion in modern Russia (but then, religion—meaning Orthodox Christianity—had always had a strong role in Russia).  The third verse proclaims:  “Our strength is derived through our loyalty to the Fatherland./Thus it was, thus it is and thus it always will be!”  That last phrasing is taken from religion; but—probably because I am an American—the idea that strength comes from loyalty to the country somehow bothers me.  American tend to distrust governments.  But then again governments are distinct from countries.

What is the purpose of a national anthem, after all?  And who is it written for?  The current Russian anthem is pretty remarkable.