Heinrich Breloer turns 80 - New project in the works
Created: 02/17/2022, 00:18
Filmmaker Heinrich Breloer turns 80. © Oliver Berg/dpa
Heinrich Breloer is considered the inventor of docudrama.
"Speer und Er", "Todesspiel" and "Die Manns" were such highly acclaimed films.
In his office full of souvenirs, he makes new plans.
Cologne – The widow of employer president Hanns Martin Schleyer, who was murdered by RAF terrorists.
Thomas Mann's favorite child Elisabeth Mann Borgese.
Hitler's armaments minister Albert Speer.
If you want to learn something about these personalities, you have to pick up books or watch films.
Heinrich Breloer, on the other hand, tells about her from his own memory.
During his life he met many figures of contemporary history personally.
The filmmaker turns 80 on Thursday (February 17).
His study in an old building in the south of Cologne looks like a mixture of antiquarian bookshop, history workshop and film museum.
Books and mementos are stacked everywhere.
On the wall are a portrait of him drawn by actor Armin Müller-Stahl and a snapshot in which he jokingly reaches into the inside pocket of the jacket of WDR director Tom Buhrow - in search of funding for his Bert Brecht film.
The film awards he has collected are lined up on top of the glass cabinets: Emmy, Grimme Prize, Bambi, Golden Gong and so on.
Breloer still seems to live completely in his films.
He talks about the different projects in such a committed and detailed way, as if they had just been completed.
"The energy and curiosity with which he still does his work never ceases to amaze me," says Artistic Director Buhrow.
The hotelier's son from Marl in the Ruhr area is regarded as the inventor of docudrama, in which documentaries and feature films are mixed.
He is currently working on a new project for WDR, about the content of which he does not want to reveal anything yet.
He's still struggling with whether he should direct it himself: "After my 80th birthday, it would be enough for me to be there as a consultant."
Breloer is convinced that he has made a difference with his films.
"I helped shatter the lying myth of the 'innocent spear'.
The film narrative was the foil that we laid over his false memories.” Hitler's favorite architect knew how to stage himself as a “decent Nazi” in the post-war period.
He didn't want to know anything about the mass murder of the Jews.
"He helped build Auschwitz."
Later he dealt with the RAF.
His film "Todesspiel" dealt with the conspiracy theory that the terrorists imprisoned in Stuttgart-Stammheim were liquidated by the state in the "German Autumn" of 1977.
"Now you could see how the guns got into the prison and how the suicides were staged," says Breloer.
“After that you knew who Andreas Baader was and you knew who Helmut Schmidt was.
And how badly the people in the kidnapped "Landshut" suffered.
This has particularly disturbed the sympathizers of the RAF.”
With the "Manns" he brought new attention to what he considered to be the most interesting German family.
The great discovery of the series was the previously largely unknown Elisabeth Mann Borgese (1918-2002), Thomas Mann's youngest daughter.
"She was the overlooked kid because she wasn't an actress or a writer.
But then I realized that she was the only child he really loved.” Perhaps that explains her contagious happiness, with which she enchanted the television nation at the time.
Breloer attributes the fact that even difficult interview partners opened up to him to the fact that he had built up a relationship of trust with them.
An example of this is Golo Mann, the writer's second eldest son, whom he visited at his home in Zurich: “We talked before about trivial things like the temperature in Lake Zurich.
And before Golo Mann noticed it, we had arrived in the casual tone in the memories of his father and brother Klaus.
Golo Mann had never been seen like this before.”
The docudrama style is very popular today.
However, Breloer attaches great importance to the fact that he has found a new basic dramaturgical idea for each of his films.
In "Todesspiel", for example, he used the image of the prison: Schleyer who was kidnapped was imprisoned in the so-called "People's Prison", the RAF terrorists were imprisoned in Stammheim, and the travelers from Mallorca were in the flying prison of the kidnapped "Landshut".
"And actually Helmut Schmidt was isolated in the Federal Chancellery with his advisors, like in prison."
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Today, on the other hand, a lot of simple re-enactment has developed under the label docudrama.
"I don't want to judge that in any way," he emphasizes.
"But that's not what I did." dpa