Does anyone know how the black performers in the Turkish section of the film were treated? Considering that it was made during the Third Reich, I find myself wondering whether they were paid or forced to appear.
I'm not having a dig at the film itself by the way, I think it's a masterpiece regardless of it's origins and there's certainly no fascistic themes that I can see in it.
You've asked a good question, and I wish I knew the answer. Can anyone recommend a definitive history of World War II-era German cinema?
Considering that the film's scenario was actually written by an author who had been banned by the Nazis, I'm not sure that Goebbels had that much to do with the production of this film. Still, it would be interesting to know how "non-Aryans" were treated. I also wonder how cordial the relations were between the film crews and the people of Venice, where some sequences were located. The whole "thousand-year Reich" was starting to unravel by this time, and I would imagine that the people of Italy were rather keenly aware of the fact. A production such as "Münchhausen" must have left a substantial paper trail, and I would think that a detailed history of the film's production could be documented. Maybe there's a PhD dissertation for some film scholar?
Thanks Keith, I wondered about the Venice situation too. There's a few good points raised there, food for thought.
EDIT- This looks interesting:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0520220692/102-8660013-7626547?v=glance&n=283155
But this review, which I've only skim read due to being at work, (Work? Ha!), seems to suggest that the translation is a bit lifeless, hasn't been updated since '92 and that the book is overly apologetic for UFA's erstwhile Nazi connections.
http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/reviews/rev1100/chbr11a.htm
This looks like a book that I want to read. I did notice, however, the word "abridged" in the review that you provided. Maybe I'll wait for an updated translation. (There was a time when I probably could've read the book in German, but I've been out of practice for a long, long time.)
"Münchhausen" is as interesting--no, fascinating--a film as I've ever seen, both in execution and in conception, and any information about it that might be available is something that I want to know about. I wonder whether Josef von Báky or Erich Kästner left any personal writings about their work on the film. (Like I said, there's got to be at least one doctoral dissertation out there waiting to be written about this movie.)
Many thanks.
KF
Well, actually Hitler never had any problems with black people. He just never took them serious. So, they were not forced by henchmen (which would be a bit too dramatic, wouldn`t it).
[i]Check out my new, cool MySpace-account: http://www.myspace.com/perzman
That's what I came to understand about Hitler's view of blacks. (as a black man I totally understand that the dude was beyond crazy, plus part jewish so in a way I feel more sorry for hitler than I do hate for the fool.a really crazy misguided person that just happened to obtain control of a nation.i bet that sounds familiar).While this was a good movie and the director wasn't a nazi himself, I did read somewhere that the producers of the film were.But they're dead so what are they gonna do?heh...
-"we're gonna have to lose the arm yo".
Since much of what people believe today about Hitler and the Nazis, is to a large part propaganda presented as truth, it would be safe to say, that the Black actors in this film were probably treated better than their counterparts in the U.S., at that time.
shareUnless you back up your comment about truth being propaganda with facts, protek22, it'll be no better than propaganda.
share[deleted]
That's great news. I have several friends who'll be pleased to know that their friends and family members have only been pretending to be dead all these years.
shareDead ? No way! Like my dearest friend, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad -- uncontestably an honest, reliable and independent source -- said : "it's all a zionist conspiracy".
shareAnd to the propagandist friends among the above inputs, I'd like to say: Sure! - just as Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, Song-My and of course 9/11 - these are all (or will soon be) pure nonsense & propaganda, invented by Comunsits, Jihadists and other sinister individuals.
No matter what the evidence and testimony, there will always be people like you twisting history to whatever stupid purpose it suits you! It's just the way people are.
Gentlemen, you can't FIGHT here, this is a War Room!
The idea that there is some simple "true" history lesson that can be easily summed up in a few paragraphs or books, complete with good guys and bad guys and devoid of any mysteries, exaggerations, or downright lies, is very naive. We can barely even grasp the "truth" in the present in our small, direct spheres of influence. Tracking down the "truth" in history is an exercise in forensics, except that the data, testimonies, and so on have long been trampled, manipulated, and were only selectively maintained to begin with. Who do you believe? I really don't see any good, definitive answer to that question, which is why I simply don't believe anyone and withhold my judgement. Most people seem happy to believe what everyone else believes. Most people tend to be stupid (they mistake popularity for truth), unable to think for themselves (they don't question authority), and probably too comfortable for their own good (it's comfortable being part of the herd). Therefore, it's not surprising that history continues to repeat itself and for popular opinions on it to be heavily distorted.
~ Observe, and act with clarity. ~
If people painstakingly provided evidence against every single idiotic misconception on Hitler and Nazi Germany (such as Hitler being "part Jewish" or wanting to "conquer the world," for that matter), they would need to be walkig encyclopedias.
Perhaps if you began thinking for yourself, you'd slowly come to figure it out.
--
"Den Gleichen Gleiches, den Ungleichen Ungleiches."
As far as I know, there were no blacks in Germany at that time. I am thinking they were imported. After the war, they were treated just like the Germans, no difference. One mor think, Kaestner wrote among other things The Parent Trap. He left a whole body of work behind and I am sure if someone were to dig into his writings you would find material on Munchausen. Heideb
shareSeveral things:
1. Goebbels was indeed quite involved with the film, it was on his initiative, and with direct backing from the Propaganda Ministry, that the film was conceived and shot.
2. It is true that the OFFICIAL nazi ideology believed in the arian rubbish, but in practical life non-arians were not harassed in any way - least they were jews, gypsies, gay or whatever else particular ethnic group the nazis considered dangerous.
3. Forreign nationals, such as perhaps actors residing in Germany during the war, were not harassed, least they were of some of the 'enemy' coutry origin, in which case they were restricted, no more.
4. 'Black' or 'oriental' US citizens were probably treated worse in the US Army than they were in German society. Patton, for one, definitely didn't want 'Blacks' in his tanks.
(PS. Gay people is not an ethnic group, of course, my error, and behind close doors there were lots of gay nazis too)
Saigon... s**t! I'm still only in Saigon...
[deleted]
Germany did have a considerable black population - 24,000 by one account, who were either from Germany's pre-1914 African colonies, the offspring of liaisons between German women and black French colonial troops that occupied parts of Germany in the early 1920s and immigrants from America and elsewhere who came to Europe to work as at least before 1933 they found it often less oppressive and racist than say the USA or South Africa.
Under Hitler blacks were definitely considered inferior and non-Aryan - in fact as barely human - and many of them would have been rounded up and sent to concentration camps as 'asozials'.
However if they were lucky enough to have acquired German citizenship before 1933 they were at least marginally better off than Jews or Gipsys, in that they were not considered numerous enough to justify their systematic rounding up and extermination.
Blacks who worked for a big company like UFA (and its clear from German films of the period that some did do so as actors, musicians, dancers and extras) seem to have received at least some degree of protection and thus may still been around and working by the time Munchausen was produced.
In addition a number of black troops serving in the French Army would have been captured in 1940 and taken to Germany as POWs.
Contra the picture we all have of German POW camps from films like the Great Escape, only officers were generally kept behind barbed wire while ordinary non-commissioned POWs of all nations were used as slave labour in German fields and factories.
Other German films made in WW2 certainly used slave labour when the needed picturesque ethnic extras (Leni Reiefenstahl's Tiefland for instance used gipsy extras who were executed by the SS after they were no longer needed for filming) so it would not surprise me if Munchausen used black French POWs or concentration camp inmates.
Thanks for the replies, there are some very well informed, interesting and knowledgeable posts, especially RogerMcCarthy's.
shareBlacks - including African Americans - were badly treated by the Nazi regime: beaten up, discriminated against, arrested, imprisoned, tortured, murdered.
Check the following site :
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005479
--just like blacks in America even AFTER the war. whatever, whatever--nobody has treated Africans as badly as Europeans in the Americas have.
what's the point of this thread again?...
Roger McCarthy's post from March '07 (above) is the best synopsis on this thread regarding the status and use of blacks in Nazi Germany, including their availablity for this film.
Anyone who says that Hitler and the Nazis weren't anti-black, or at least not concerned about them, is foolish or dishonest (and I've noticed a couple of apparent Nazi apologists on this thread -- amazing, isn't it?). If you ever see German newsreels of captured French soldiers from 1940, there is at least one showing black French colonial troops, with the Nazi narrator sarcastically referring to them with racial epithets and mocking the French for having to resort to using [n-word] troops (the Nazi narrator's word, not mine) in their pathetic fight against Aryan superiority, and stating that using black soldiers was evidence of French weakness and decadence.
Not that the US or anyone else has a good record on race in that era, of course. But blacks weren't treated well in Nazi Germany. They were left relatively unmolested only because they weren't taken seriously, or as a threat, certainly nothing compared to the Nazis' psychopathic and murderous anti-Semitism.
Here is a link talking about the subject:
http://duala.kazeo.com/?page=article&ida=391146
I often wondered this as I’ve seen this film at least three times on German television when I was living in Germany & its one of my favourite films of all time. Once on a visit to the States an elderly black American told me when he was a 22 year old lieutenant in France in 1944 serving in the racially segregated US Army of WWII he was driving along a road in Normandy that intelligence said was clear of enemy forces & he was captured by a small group of German soldiers even younger than he was at the time. Once they got over the shock of seeing a black man for the first time in their lives (touching his skin & hair) he was treated in strict accordance with the Geneva Convention & this remained the case even after he was interned in a POW camp in Germany. He said he was treated better by the Germans than by his fellow American POW’s & at one point began to wonder who the enemy was. If his experience was typical or isolated I don’t know.
shareThat's a great article. Thanks Juan.
shareThere's no real point to the thread Ohiowatha. I'm just curious about a film with no apparent ideological concerns that was made by a studio specifically founded to promote Nazi philosophy.
shareHi
Here you will find informations about the few African-Germans during the 3. Reich.
Sorry, it's only in German. Marie Nejar alias Leila Negra wrote in her biography about the filming of Muenchhausen.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/3499622408/sr=8-2/qid=1264037237/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books&qid=1264037237&sr=8-2
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Nejar
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Wonja_Michael