Morgenrot (1933)

Directed by: Vernon Sewell and Gustav Ucicky

Written by: Gerhard Menzel (Idea: Edgar von Spiegel von und zu Peckelsheim)

Produced by : Gunther Stapenhorst

Music by: Herbert Windt

Distributed by: Universum Film AG (UFA)

Release date:  2 February 1933

Running time: 75 minutes

Country: German Reich

Language: German

 

Cast:

 

Rudolf Forster: Captain Lieutenant Helmut Liers

Fritz Genschow: First Lieutenant ‘Phipps’ Fredericks

Adele Sandrock: Liers’ mother

Camilla Spira: Grete Jaul, Fredericks’ girl

Paul Westermeier: Seaman Jaul

Gerhard Bienert: Seaman Boehm

Friedrich Gnaß: Juraczik

Franz Nicklisch: Petermann

Hans Leibelt: Mayor of Meerskirchen

Else Knott: Helga, Jaul’s girl

Eduard von Winterstein: Captain Kolch

 

 

Morgenrot is a 1933 German submarine film set during World War I.

 

Released three days after Adolf Hitler became Reichskanzler, it was the first film to have its screening in National Socialist Germany. It became a symbol of the new times touted by the National Socialists. The title (literally “morning-red”) is the German term for the reddish colouring of the east sky about a half-hour before the sunrise. Dawn was the U.S. title. It was filmed in Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, the first German submarine movie made after World War I.

 

Plot

 

Set in 1916, the film offered up a highly fictionized version of the death of the British War Secretary, Field Marshal Herbert Kitchener aboard the cruiser HMS Hampshire, on his way to Russia. A successful U-boat ace, Helmut Liers, lives in the fictional north German town of Meerskirchen with his mother, who has already lost two sons in the war. Liers is the local hero of Meerskirchen due to his command of U-21 and the first part of the film concerns the high-spirted adventures of Liers and his crew while on leave. Everyone thinks that Helga, the daughter of the mayor of Meerskirchen is in love with Lieutenant Phipps “Fips” Fredericks, but in fact she is in love with the older man Liers. The Majorin (Lier’s mother), tries to get him a shore assignment, which he blocks, saying that he will fight on until Germany either wins the war or he dies, and then goes out to sea on his latest mission.

 

In the second part of the film, the German Navy learns that a very important British military leader - who is not named in the film, but is clearly meant to be Kitchener - has boarded a cruiser taking him to Arkhangelsk, leading Liers and his U-boat being sent out to essentially assassinate him by sinking the cruiser, a task which is performed successfully (in reality, the Hampshire was sunk by a mine laid by an U-boat, but not in a torpedo attack). Afterwards, a Q ship (a disguised British merchant cruiser), which illegally flies the flag of neutral Denmark, ambushes Liers’s submarine, which is badly damaged. A squadron of British destroyers pursue U-21 across the North Sea, which is finally sunk and comes to rest on the seabed. Two of the U-21 crew members including Fips sacrifice themselves to save the others including Liers who make their way back to the Fatherland. The film ends with Liers boarding a new submarine to once again go out to continue the war at sea with the last shot being a close-up of the Imperial German Navy Ensign, which flutters proudly in the wind.