Film »Hitlers Mein Kampf: Prelude to the Holocaust« at the Snowdance Festival

Created: 01/26/2022, 08:00

Adolf Hitler was imprisoned in Landsberg from November 1923 to December 1924 – and it was here that he wrote the first volume of Mein Kampf.

The film "Hitler's Mein Kampf: Prelude to the Holocaust" deals with this time and its effects up to the present day.

© Schwaiger

Landsberg – The independent film festival Snowdance starts next Saturday – for the last time in Landsberg.

Also in the luggage: the world premiere of a film whose starting point is in Lechstadt in two respects: "Hitler's Mein Kampf: Prelude to the Holocaust" by John and Susan Michalczyk.

Hitler wrote the first part of his manifesto during his imprisonment in Landsberg in 1923/1924.

But the idea for the documentation, which analyzes Hitler's then 'views' and their consequences to this day on the basis of the critical 'Mein Kampf' edition of the Institute for Contemporary History, also came about in Landsberg: at the festival week "70 Years Leonard Bernstein" 2018, to director John Michalzcyk was a guest in Landsberg for the first time.

"During this time he got in touch with Professor Markus Brechtgen from the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich," says the Landsberg journalist Karla Schönebeck - who can also be seen and heard in the film. Because a year later she gave the lecture "Hitler's Ties to Landsberg" at a conference at Boston College. And she establishes contact with the 15-year-old son of an eyewitness in 1924: one of Hitler's prison guards. "It's the voice of someone who was very close," says Schönebeck. The father often reported to the son about Hitler's time in prison - knowledge that the son passed on "openly and factually and very dryly": His father was a civil servant who did his job.

For example, the father told of how Hitler's 'buddies' in prison, all drunk except for Hitler himself, made a row and he admonished him with the words "Herr Hitler, don't do that!"

But Hitler was not a conspicuous prisoner - apart from the numerous visitors he was allowed to receive due to his privileged imprisonment in a fortress.

According to Schönebeck, it was a rumor that Hitler was constantly drinking coffee in Café Deible.

Nazi celebrities met there, but “Hitler was not allowed to go free.”

Karla Schönebeck with historian Michael Bryant reshooting the 2020 film scenes in Landsberg.

The book "Hitler's Mein Kampf and the Holocaust" with Schönebeck's article will be published by Bloomsbury in March.

© private

The prison guard's son also reported on how Hitler's notes for "Mein Kampf" were checked by the guards and their superiors in the evening and released with a "no objection". How Hitler often came to his “city of disgrace” in a fancy Mercedes after his imprisonment – ​​always unannounced. Or about the time when the Americans arrived after the end of the war and “whatever could be burned was burned in prison,” says Schönebeck. For example, Hitler's slippers, which the visitors of the hitherto 'place of pilgrimage', Hitler's cell number seven, would have worshiped as devotional objects.

But the film also refers to the present: for example to the marches of right-wing extremist groups in Charlottesville in 2017 - or to the actions and statements of AfD politicians.

Because "despite the positive steps that Germany and America have taken to stop the spread of hate groups, they still rear their ugly heads to divide our society," the two directors point out.

In addition to the jailer's son, John Michalzcyk also interviews Schönebeck for the film.

The recordings for this were made in 2020, including interior shots in the prison, says the journalist.

Also present was the historian and Hitler expert Michael Bryant, who was visiting Lechstadt to see the original locations.

"But then Michalzcyk's laptop was stolen in Boston and we had to reshoot everything," she recalls.

Which is why no current footage from the prison can be seen, but instead some original footage from the American occupation period.

Karla Schönebeck finally told Snowdance director Tom Bohn about the film - and the jury included it in the program.

It can be seen on Sunday, January 30 at 11 a.m. in the Stadttheater, and a second time on February 6, also at 11 a.m. in the Stadttheater.