Council of the Gods

Council of the Gods (1950)

Der Rat der Götter

Based on the records of the Nuremberg trial of the chemical giant IG Farben; a story about the collaboration between international corporations and Nazi scientists, whose research contributed to the death of millions. The chemist Dr. Hans Scholz lives through a tortuous political transformation and maturation process. Eventually, he adopts political neutrality and closes his eyes to the fact that the poison being produced in his factory is being used in the extermination camps. Standing before the judges at the Nuremberg trials, he must face the fact that he is implicated in the deaths of millions in the gas chambers of the concentration camps.

Date of release
1950-05-12
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (7)
Runtime
1h 50m
Genres
Drama
Director
Kurt Maetzig

Casting

Interesting facts

Der Rat der Götter is an East German black-and-white film, directed by Kurt Maetzig. It was released in 1950.

Production

Friedrich Wolf and his Soviet co-author, Phillipp Gecht, began writing the script in the summer of 1948, shortly after the end of the IG Farben Trial. They used many original documents from the trial, but mainly relied of Richard Sasuly's book IG Farben. Another event which influenced their work was the explosion that destroyed BASF's chemical plant in Ludwigshafen and caused 280 deaths on 28 July 1948, which was combined into the plot's ending.

The characters in Wolf's story were modeled on the real directors of IG Farben, and even their names sounded much alike: the film's arch-villain, privy councillor Mauch, was based on Carl Krauch. Wolf sought a director to create the film himself, and eventually chose Kurt Maetzig. The author's son, Konrad Wolf, served as an assistant-director. The work on The Council of the Gods lasted for two years.

The filming took place against the background of the escalating Cold War. In 1949, the Socialist Unity Party's Politburo established a DEFA Commission to directly oversee all films produced in East Germany, after it found those made during 1946-7 as "lacking in statements on the matters of society".

Principal photography took place in Halle an der Saale. As many as 500 extras were used to film the crowd scenes. Although DEFA director-general Sepp Schwab demanded that the film be in Socialist Realist style, only one common worker - Uncle Karl, played by Albert Grabe - was featured in the picture.

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

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