Immensee (1943)

Directed by: Veit Harlan

Screenplay by: Alfred Braun, Veit Harlan

Based on: Immensee by Theodor Storm

Music by: Wolfgang Zeller

Production company: UFA

Release date: 17 December 1943

Running time: 88 minutes

Country: National Socialist Germany

Language: German

 

Starring:

 

Kristina Söderbaum: Elisabeth Uhl

Carl Raddatz: Reinhart Torsten

Paul Klinger: Erich Jürgens

Carola Toelle: Elisabeth's mother

Lina Lossen: Torsten's mother

Max Gülstorff: Torsten's father

Otto Gebühr: Erich's father

Germana Paolieri: Singer Lauretta

Wilfried Seyferth: Werner, music student

Käthe Dyckhoff: Jesta, music student

Malte Jäger: Jochen, music student

Clemens Hasse: Max, music student

Albert Florath: Chairman of the examination board

Ernst Legal: Director of the Jürgens gasoline factory

Walter Bechmann: Reinhart's servant

Jack Trevor: Waiter

Claire Reigbert: Reinhart's chambermaid

Marta Salm: waitress

Hans Eysenhardt: young servant with Jürgens

Ernst Stimmel: member of the examining board

 

Immensee: ein deutsches Volkslied (Immensee: A German Folksong) is a German film melodrama of the National-Socialist era, directed in 1943 by Veit Harlan and loosely based on the popular novella Immensee (1849) by Theodor Storm. It was a commercial success and, with its theme of a woman remaining faithful to her husband, was important in raising the morale of German forces; it remained popular after World War II.

 

Immensee was shot primarily in Holstein, on alternating days with Opfergang, to save money on colour production; Harlan’s previous film, Die goldene Stadt, had been very expensive. Originally he proposed to shoot three films simultaneously using the same principals and mostly the same locations and sets, but the third, Pole Poppenspäler, another novella by Storm, was dropped. Additional exteriors were shot in Rome. Dr. Joseph Goebbels was so pleased with Die goldene Stadt that he did not interfere with the production of Immensee, and Harlan wrote in 1974: “Of all the films that I made during the war, this was the only one which remained true to the original scenarios and was distributed just as I had foreseen.” He said that he filmed the novella “to reflect his love for his wife”, Söderbaum; she and Raddatz, who played Reinhardt in Immensee and Albrecht in Opfergang, believed that both films were successful with the public because of the genuine chemistry between them.

 

Plot:

 

Elisabeth’s great love is Reinhart, a budding musician.  They spent a happy childhood together on the Immensee.  And although he loves her, too, he leaves Immensee to take up his studies in Hamburg.  For a long time, no one knows what’s become of him; until they meet once again at Immensee.  Happy about this meeting, Elisabeth visits him in Hamburg.  But she finds city life to be strange and confusing; and so, she returns back home disappointed.  Finally, Erich, who has waited for her a long time, confesses to her, that he’s in love with her.  When Eric’s father dies and he inherits the farm, he asks Elisabeth to marry him.  When he eventually dies, Elisabeth stays loyal to him even in death.  Now that the famous director Reinhart is ready to show her his affections, she’s not to be swayed.

 

Reception

 

Immensee was highly successful, making a profit of 4,305,000 RM on an investment of 2,059,000 RM; it made 800,000 RM in its first month and with a longer run, would likely have overtaken Die goldene Stadt as the all-time leading moneymaker among German films. It was seen by more than 8 million people within the original borders of the Reich. At a time when German forces were greatly concerned about the fidelity of their womenfolk left at home, the film was “one of the most important cinematic contributions to front-line morale”. As part of the front and home-front morale effort, it was specially distributed to locations where there was no cinema. Söderbaum received many letters from men at the front; she said in a 1993 interview: “The soldiers were homesick at the front. And the girl I played was an ideal for them. She loved her husband and was faithful to him. I still get letters today.” Klaus Jebens, who had been a young soldier in 1943, remembered the film so fondly that in 1975 he bought the estate on Lake Plön where shooting had taken place, and was still living there twenty years later. In 1993 he said: “It was very depressing. It was wartime. The whole world was… destroyed and then we saw this film with this unfulfilled love.”