''Die Mörder sind unter uns'', a German film known in English as ''Murderers Among Us'' in the United States or ''The Murderers Are Among Us'' in the United Kingdom was one of the first

post-World War II The aftermath of World War II was the beginning of a new era started in late 1945 (when World War II ended) for all countries involved, defined by the decline of all colonial empires and simultaneous rise of two superpowers; the Soviet Union (US ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

films and the first '' Trümmerfilm''. It was produced in 1945/46 in the Althoff Studios in

Babelsberg Babelsberg () is the largest quarter ('' Stadtteil'') of Potsdam, the capital city of the German state of Brandenburg. The affluent neighbourhood named after a small hill on the Havel river is famous for Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Pala ...

and the Jofa-Ateliers in Johannisthal. The film was written and directed by Wolfgang Staudte.

Plot

Berlin in 1945 after Germany's defeat in the war. The former military surgeon Dr. Hans Mertens ( Ernst Wilhelm Borchert) stumbles down the street, drunk. He suffers from flashbacks of the war and has an aversion to people in pain, which prevents him from practicing medicine. Instead, he spends his days

drinking Drinking is the act of ingesting water or other liquids into the body through the mouth, proboscis, or elsewhere. Humans drink by swallowing, completed by peristalsis in the esophagus. The physiological processes of drinking vary widely am ...

. An artist and Nazi concentration camp survivor, Susanne Wallner (

Hildegard Knef Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef (; 28 December 19251 February 2002) was a German actress, voice actress, singer, and writer. She was billed in some English-language films as Hildegard Neff or Hildegarde Neff. Early years Hildegard Knef was born ...

), finds him living in her apartment as she returns home. They reluctantly live together at first, then become friends. Susanne finds a letter to a Mrs. Brückner in the apartment and confronts Mertens about it. Mertens tries to get a job at a hospital, but a screaming woman gives him flashbacks and he is left incapacitated. Meanwhile, Susanne meets with Ferdinand Brückner (

Arno Paulsen Arno Paulsen (1900–1969) was a German actor who appeared in around sixty films in the post-Second World War years. He also appeared frequently on stage and was also a voice actor dubbing foreign films for release in Germany. He appeared in a mix ...

). When Mertens returns, Susanne informs him that Brückner is alive and well. Mertens visits Brückner, his former captain, and stays for dinner. Brückner is now a successful businessman, producing pots out of old '' Stahlhelme'', the German military steel helmet. After the dinner, Brückner returns to Mertens his gun from the war. Mertens has another flashback and goes home drunk. Soon after, Mertens decides to kill Brückner. He leads Brückner away under the pretense of going to a bar and takes him along a purportedly shorter route, through the rubble and abandoned buildings of Berlin. When he thinks they are alone, he draws his gun. As he does so, a woman in need of a doctor runs out of one of the ruined buildings. Brückner tells her that Mertens is a doctor, but Mertens is reluctant to help. The woman tells him her only child stopped breathing an hour before, and he goes along with her, while Brückner leaves for the bar alone. Mertens performs a

tracheotomy Tracheotomy (, ), or tracheostomy, is a surgical airway management procedure which consists of making an incision (cut) on the anterior aspect (front) of the neck and opening a direct airway through an incision in the trachea (windpipe). The r ...

on the girl, then Mertens returns home and proclaims his love for Susanne. The film skips forward to Christmas Eve. Susanne and Mertens are still living together, and Mertens is now a practicing surgeon. Mertens tells Susanne he has to finish something. He goes to Brückner's factory, where Brückner and his employees are singing Christmas carols. Mertens has a flashback, which reveals that Brückner had ordered the shooting of over a hundred civilians on Christmas Eve of 1942 in a Polish village on the Eastern Front. Mertens tries to kill Brückner again, but Susanne stops him at the last minute. Instead of killing Brückner they denounce him and he is put on trial for war crimes.

Filming

To get permission for the film, Staudte had gone to the British, the French, and the Americans, but they all rejected the proposal, citing its political nature as the reason for refusing to grant the film a license. The Soviets, on the other hand, accepted the script with a change to the film's ending. Originally the film was supposed to be named ''Der Mann den ich töten werde'' (''The Man I will kill'') and Mertens was supposed to succeed in killing Brückner, but the script and the title were changed because the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

s were afraid that viewers could interpret that as a call for vigilante justice. The title alludes to the initial title of

Fritz Lang Friedrich Christian Anton Lang (; December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976), known as Fritz Lang, was an Austrian film director, screenwriter, and producer who worked in Germany and later the United States.Obituary ''Variety'', August 4, 1976, p. 6 ...

's 1931 classic ''M'', which was to be called ''Mörder unter uns'' (''Murderer Among Us''). ''The Murderers Among Us'' debuted on 15 October 1946 in the Admiralspalast, which was at the time the home of the

Berlin State Opera The (), also known as the Berlin State Opera (german: Staatsoper Berlin), is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic center of Berlin, Germany. The opera house was built by order of Prussian king Frederick the Great from ...

, in the

Soviet sector The Soviet Occupation Zone ( or german: Ostzone, label=none, "East Zone"; , ''Sovetskaya okkupatsionnaya zona Germanii'', "Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany") was an area of Germany in Central Europe that was occupied by the Soviet Union as a c ...

. The television debut in the

German Democratic Republic German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **G ...

was on 1 November 1955 and in the Federal Republic on 18 November 1971.

Denazification

In the post-war period, it was a goal of both the American and the Soviet authorities to reeducate the German public. For the Americans, this meant exporting American films to West Germany. For the Soviets, this meant the establishment of

DEFA DEFA (''Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft'') was the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) throughout the country's existence. Since 2019, DEFA's film heritage has been made accessible and licensable on the PRO ...

. The Soviets believed film could be used to reeducate the public. With ''The Murderers Are Among Us'', the aim was to urge the public to judge those responsible for the atrocities committed during the war. Angel Wagenstein, a Bulgarian director, said, “For me taudtewas the first ambassador, who through his film renewed our faith in a nation capable of self-reflection, of looking into the mirror and acknowledging its own guilt, of making a confession that very few nations would be able to make.” Ernst Wilhelm Borchert was removed from advertisements for the movie because he had been accused and arrested for lying on denazification paperwork, but an article published in the ''Neue Zeit'' in 1947 later reported that he’d been exonerated by the Denazification Commission for Artists.

Reception

The picture sold 6,468,921 tickets.List of the 50 highest-grossing DEFA films.
/ref> Most of the reviews were positive, although some criticized the fact that the characters appeared in modern and trendy clothes, which did not reflect the reality of the living conditions of Berliners in the immediate post-war period. In this film, Staudte was not only dealing with Germany's past, but also with his own, as he had been involved in the filming of the Nazi propaganda film ''

Jud Süß (, "Süss the Jew") is a 1940 Nazi German historical drama and propaganda film produced by Terra Film at the behest of Joseph Goebbels. It is considered one of the most antisemitic films of all time. The film was directed by Veit Harlan, who ...

''.

References

The Murderers are among us
in progress-film.de, the distributor of the complete DEFA film heritage

in filmref.com. Retrieved 2007-01-19.
Murderers Are Among Us, The (Moerder sind unter uns, Die)
in German-films.de. Retrieved 2007-01-19.

External links