Hans Westmar

Hans Westmar (1933)

Nazi film about the story of a Nazi Storm Trooper named Horst Wessel--here called "Hans Westmar"--who took part in street brawls and assassinations in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s against Communists and other opponents of the Nazis, and was killed by Communists not long before this film came out.

Date of release
1933-12-13
TMDB
5.6 / 10 (8)
Runtime
1h 35m
Genres
Crime
Director
Franz Wenzler

Casting

Interesting facts

Hans Westmar was the last of an unofficial trilogy of films produced by the Nazis shortly after coming to power in January 1933, celebrating their Kampfzeit – the history of their period in opposition, struggling to gain power. The film is a partially fictionalized biography of the Nazi martyr Horst Wessel.

Production

The recently established Volksdeutsche Filmgesellschaft produced the film based on Hanns Heinz Ewers' novelistic biography of Horst Wessel. It was among the first films to depict dying for Hitler as a glorious death for Germany and as resulting in his spirit inspiring his comrades. His decision to go to the streets is presented as fighting "the real battle".

This was the third adaption of Wessel's life after being covered in Blutendes Deutschland and a short made by Franz Wenzler in 1932. Wenzler was the director and Richard Fiedler, a SA-Oberführer, oversaw the film's production. Giuseppe Becce and Ernst Hanfstaengl, a friend of Adolf Hitler, composed the music. Hertha Thiele declined an offer to star in the film. The end scene at the Brandenburg Gate was originally shot in color in August 1933.

Along with S.A.-Mann Brand and Hitlerjunge Quex, Hans Westmar was the last of the trilogy of films released in 1933, and designed to present an idealized account of the Nazis' 'heroic struggle' to come to power in Germany.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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