''Frisians in Peril'' (German: ''Friesennot'') is a 1935 German

drama film In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular ...

directed by Peter Hagen and starring

Friedrich Kayßler Friedrich Martin Adalbert Kayssler, also spelled Kayßler (7 April 1874 – 30 April 1945), was a German theatre and film actor. He appeared in 56 films between 1913 and 1945. Biography Kayssler was born in Neurode in the Silesia Province ...

, Jessie Vihrog and Valéry Inkijinoff. Made for

Nazi propaganda Propaganda was a tool of the Nazi Party in Germany from its earliest days to the end of the regime in May 1945 at the end of World War II. As the party gained power, the scope and efficacy of its propaganda grew and permeated an increasing amou ...

purposes, it concerns a village of ethnic

Frisians The Frisians () are an ethnic group indigenous to the German Bight, coastal regions of the Netherlands, north-western Germany and southern Denmark. They inhabit an area known as Frisia and are concentrated in the Dutch provinces of Friesland an ...

in Russia. It was shot at the Grunewald Studios in

Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...

. The film's sets were designed by the

art director Art director is a title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, live-action and animated film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supe ...

s Robert A. Dietrich and

Bernhard Schwidewski Bernhard Schwidewski (1885–1966) was a German art director.Hardt p.234 Selected filmography * '' The Tragedy of a Great'' (1920) * '' Struggle for the Soil'' (1925) * '' The Dice Game of Life'' (1925) * ''Lightning'' (1925) * '' Gretchen Schube ...

Location shooting Location shooting is the shooting of a film or television production in a real-world setting rather than a sound stage or backlot. The location may be interior or exterior. When filmmaking professionals refer to shooting "on location", they are ...

took place around the

Lüneburg Heath Lüneburg Heath (, ) is a large area of heath (habitat), heath, geest, and woodland in the northeastern part of the state of Lower Saxony in northern Germany. It forms part of the hinterland for the cities of Hamburg, Hanover and Bremen and is ...

near Bispingen. It premiered at the

Ufa-Palast am Zoo The Ufa-Palast am Zoo, located near Berlin Zoological Garden in the City West, New West area of Charlottenburg, was a major Berlin cinema owned by Universum Film AG, or Ufa. Opened in 1919 and enlarged in 1925, it was the largest cinema in German ...

in the German capital.

Plot

Soviet authorities are making life as difficult as possible for a village of

Volga German The Volga Germans (, ; ) are ethnic Germans who settled and historically lived along the Volga River in the region of southeastern European Russia around Saratov and close to Ukraine nearer to the south. Recruited as immigrants to Russia in th ...

s, most of whose ancestors originated in the

Frisian Islands The Frisian Islands, also known as the Wadden Islands or the Wadden Sea Islands, form an archipelago at the eastern edge of the North Sea in northwestern Europe, stretching from the northwest of the Netherlands through Germany to the west of Denm ...

, with taxes and other oppression. After Mette, a half-Russian, half-Frisian woman, becomes the girlfriend of Kommissar Tschernoff, the Frisians murder her and throw her body in a swamp.

Erwin Leiser Erwin Leiser (May 16, 1923 – August 22, 1996) was a Swedish director, writer, and actor. He is best known for his 1960 documentary film ''Mein Kampf'', based on Nazi footage from secret archives and depicting Nazi atrocities. He subsequently ...

, ''Nazi Cinema'', p. 40 Open violence breaks out and all of the Red Army soldiers stationed nearby are killed by the villagers. They then set fire to their village and flee.

Cast

as Jürgen Wagner * Helene Fehdmer as Kathrin Wagner * Valéry Inkijinoff as Kommissar Tschernoff * Jessie Vihrog as Das Mädchen Mette *

Hermann Schomberg Hermann Schomberg (22 August 1907 – 16 November 1975) was a German film actor, film and television actor.Giesen p.194 Filmography References Bibliography * Giesen, Rolf. ''Nazi Propaganda Films: A History and Filmography''. McFarland, 2003. ...

as Klaus Niegebüll * Ilse Fürstenberg as Dörte Niegebüll * Kai Möller as Hauke Peters * Fritz Hoopts as Ontje Ibs * Martha Ziegler as Wiebke Detlevsen * Gertrud Boll as Telse Detlevsen * Maria Koppenhöfer as Frau Winkler *

Marianne Simson Marianne Simson (July 29, 1920 – July 15, 1992) was a German dancer and film actress. She was born in Berlin as the daughter of an insurance clerk John Edward Simson. Her brother was Helmut Simson, who later served as mayor of Wolfsburg. Origina ...

as Hilde Winkler * Franz Stein as Christian Kröger *

Aribert Grimmer Aribert () is a Germanic given name, from ''hari'' ("host") and '' beraht'' ("bright"). Notable people with the given name include: * Aribert (archbishop of Milan) (between 970 and 980–1045), archbishop of Milan * Prince Aribert of Anhalt (1866� ...

as Kommissar Krappien

Production

Willi Krause, under the name Peter Hagen, directed a film adapting the novel by Werner Kartwig.

Release

The film was one of the few to be directly distributed by the Nazi Party. It was approved by the censors on 15 November 1935, and premiered in Berlin on 19 November. It was banned in 1939 shortly before the

Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, officially the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and also known as the Hitler–Stalin Pact and the Nazi–Soviet Pact, was a non-aggression pact between Nazi Ge ...

due to its strong anti-Soviet message. It was unbanned after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and re-released under the title ''Red Storm over the Village''.

Motifs

A cynical piece of anti-Communist

propaganda Propaganda is communication that is primarily used to influence or persuade an audience to further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be selectively presenting facts to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded l ...

depicts the Communists as posting obscene anti-religious posters, and the Frisians as piously declaring that all authority comes from God. The portrayal of Kommissar Tschernoff does not conform to the heavy-handed depiction of Communists as brutal and murderous in such films as ''

Flüchtlinge ''Refugees'' (German: ''Flüchtlinge'') is the 1933 German drama film, directed by Gustav Ucicky and starring Hans Albers, Käthe von Nagy, and Eugen Klöpfer. It depicts Volga German refugees persecuted by the Bolsheviks on the Sino-Russian ...

''; he is truly and passionately in love with Mette, and only in response her death does he unleash his soldiers. A villager objects to the affair on the grounds that even though her mother was Russian, her father's Frisian blood "outweighs" foreign blood, and therefore she must not throw herself at a foreigner. Her murder is presented as just retribution for her violation of the Nazi principle of "

race defilement ''Rassenschande'' (, "racial shame") or ''Blutschande'' ( "blood disgrace") was an anti-miscegenation concept in Nazi German racial policy, pertaining to sexual relations between Aryans and non-Aryans. It was put into practice by policies like ...

." Richard Grunberger, ''The 12-Year Reich'', p. 384,

References

Works cited

* *

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Friesennot 1935 films Banned films in Nazi Germany Films of Nazi Germany 1930s German-language films German black-and-white films 1935 drama films Nazi propaganda films Films about the Soviet Union in the Stalin era German drama films 1930s German films Films scored by Walter Gronostay German-language drama films