Ewiger Wald
Ewiger Wald | |
---|---|
Directed by | |
Written by | (writer) (poems[clarification needed]) |
Produced by | Albert Graf von Pestalozza (producer) |
Starring | See below |
Cinematography | Sepp Allgeier Werner Bohne Guido Seeber |
Edited by | Arnfried Heyne |
Music by | Wolfgang Zeller |
Release date | 1936 |
Running time | 75 minutes 88 minutes (Germany) |
Country | Nazi Germany |
Language | German |
Ewiger Wald is a 1936 German film directed by and .
The film is also known as Enchanted Forest (International English title)
Plot summary[]
Commissioned by Alfred Rosenberg's cultural organization Militant League for German Culture in 1934 under the working title Deutscher Wald–Deutsches Schicksal (German Forest–German Destiny), the feature-length movie premiered in Munich in 1936. Intended as a cinematic proof for the shared destiny of the German woods and the German people beyond the vicissitudes of history, it portrayed a perfect symbiosis of an eternal forest and a likewise eternal people firmly rooted in it between Neolithic and National Socialist times.
In accordance with Rosenberg's anti-Christian beliefs, the first section on prehistory displayed various customs and rituals of an asserted pagan forest religion like a maypole dance or funerals in treetrunk coffins. Further, it depicted the forest sheltering ancient Germanic tribes, Arminius, and the Teutonic Knights, facing the German Peasants' War, being chopped up by war and industry, and being humiliated by black soldiers from the French occupation army. The years of the Weimar Republic appeared to be disastrous for people and forest alike to legitimize the assumption of power and thus the film culminated in a National Socialist May Day celebration filmed at the Berlin Lustgarten.[1]
Cast[]
- Günther Hadank (voice)
- (voice)
- Paul Klinger (voice)
- (voice)
- Aribert Mog
- (voice)
References[]
- ^ Pierre Aycoberry The Nazi Question, p11 Pantheon Books New York 1981
Further reading[]
- Meder,Thomas. “Die Deutschen als Wald-Volk. Der Kulturfilm EWIGER WALD (1936).” in: Il bosco nella cultura europea tra realtá e immaginario, ed. Guili Liebman Parrinello, 105-129. Rom: Bulzoni, 2002.
- Wilke, Sabine. “'Verrottet, verkommen, von fremder Rasse durchsetzt'. The Colonial Trope as Subtext of the Nazi-'Kulturfilm' EWIGER WALD (1936).” German Studies Review 24 (2001): 353-376.
- Zechner, Johannes. “Wald, Volksgemeinschaft und Geschichte: Die Parallelisierung natürlicher und sozialer Ordnungen im NSKG-Kulturfilm EWIGER WALD (1936).” in: Kulturfilm im „Dritten Reich“, ed. Ramón Reichert, 109-118. Wien: Synema, 2006.
- Zechner, Johannes. “Politicized Timber: The 'German Forest' and the Nature of the Nation 1800-1945.” The Brock Review 11.2 (2011): 19-32.
External links[]
- Ewiger Wald at IMDb
- Ewiger Wald is available for free download at the Internet Archive
- German-language films
- 1936 documentary films
- 1936 films
- German black-and-white films
- Nazi propaganda films
- Films based on poems
- German documentary films
- German films
- Films of Nazi Germany
- Black-and-white documentary films