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Ewiger Wald

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1936 Nazi Germany film
Ewiger Wald
Directed byHanns Springer
Rolf von Sonjevski-Jamrowski
Written byAlbert Graf von Pestalozza (writer)
Carl Maria Holzapfel (poems)
Produced byAlbert Graf von Pestalozza (producer)
StarringSee below
CinematographySepp Allgeier
Werner Bohne
Otto Ewald
Wolf Hart
Guido Seeber
A.O. Weitzenberg
Bernhard Wentzel
Edited byArnfried Heyne
Music byWolfgang Zeller
Production
company		Culture Group
Release date
  • 8 June 1936 (1936-06-08)
Running time75 minutes
88 minutes (Germany)
CountryNazi Germany
LanguageGerman

Ewiger Wald is a 1936 German film directed by Hanns Springer and Rolf von Sonjevski-Jamrowski. The film's international English title was Enchanted Forest.

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 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.

Plot

In accordance with Rosenberg's anti-Christian beliefs, the first section on prehistory displays various customs and rituals of an asserted pagan forest religion like a maypole dance or funerals in treetrunk coffins. Further, it depicts 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 brought into Germany by the French occupation army. The years of the Weimar Republic appear to be disastrous for people and forest alike. The film culminates in a National Socialist May Day celebration filmed at the Berlin Lustgarten.

Cast

Production

Ewiger Wald was produced by the Culture Group and co-directed by Hanns Springer and Rolf von Sonjevski-Jamrowski.

Release

The film premiered at the UFA Palace in Munich on 8 June 1936. It was re-edited to reduce its length and this version was accepted by the censors on 20 August, and premiered in Oldenburg on 28 August.

References

  1. Pierre Aycoberry The Nazi Question, p11 Pantheon Books New York 1981
  2. Welch 1983, pp. 86.
  3. Welch 1983, pp. 88.
  4. Welch 1983, pp. 87.
  5. Welch 1983, pp. 91.

Works cited

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 Archived 2015-05-18 at the Wayback Machine.

External links

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