Naked Among Wolves (1963)

Interesting facts

• Based on: Naked Among Wolves

Naked Among Wolves is a 1963 East German film directed by Frank Beyer and starring Erwin Geschonneck and Armin Mueller-Stahl. The film is based on author Bruno Apitz's 1958 novel by the same name. The film was remade in 2015 under the direction of Philipp Kadelbach.

Production

Bruno Apitz, a member of the Communist Party of Germany, was incarcerated at Buchenwald concentration camp from 1937 to 1945. He later recalled that in the last months before liberation, he heard about a little Jewish child who had been harbored by the International Camp Committee and protected from the SS guards. In a 1974 interview, Apitz claimed he swore that "If I will survive, I will tell the story of this child."

After the war, Apitz resided in the German Democratic Republic, working as a journalist and as a dramatist in the state-owned DEFA Studio. On 27 November 1954, Apitz wrote to DEFA's director-general Hans Rodenberg and suggested producing a film about the child's story.

Apitz abandoned the idea to make a film and instead, turned his rudimentary screenplay into a novel. He wrote the book from 1955 to 1958. Historian Bill Niven commented that since April 1955, the 10th anniversary of the camp's liberation, "the collective memory of Buchenwald's communist prisoners was transformed into the official memory of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany", and incorporated into the country's "anti-Fascist legitimization myth…

Already in April 1959, DEFA chief dramatist Klaus Wischnewski contacted Apitz with a proposition to adapt his novel for the screen, but the author was unwilling and made demands which the studio was unable to accept. Representatives of the Deutscher Fernsehfunk station approached Apitz, and he agreed to produce a television film based on his novel, which was broadcast on 10 April 1960.

During 1960, after prolonged negotiations, Apitz and DEFA settled on an arrangement. Director Wolfgang Langhoff was chosen to direct the planned picture. Being engaged in his duties as manager of the Deutsches Theater, he eventually declined the role. It was then passed on to the young Frank Beyer, who had been working on Star-Crossed Lovers. In early 1962, he and Apitz began working on the planned film.

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