''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 saw the rise of two global superpowers, the United States (U.S.) and the Soviet Union (U.S.S.R.). The aftermath of World War II was also defined by the rising threat of nuclear warfare, the creation and implementati ...

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

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

Althoff Studios The Althoff Studios () were film studios located in Potsdam outside the German capital Berlin. The studios were constructed in 1939 by the film producer Gustav Althoff who controlled the independent company Aco-Film. The original building was a f ...

Babelsberg Babelsberg () is the largest quarter of Potsdam, the capital city of the German state of Brandenburg. The neighbourhood is named after a small hill on the Havel river. It is the location of Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Palaces and Park ...

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

Wolfgang Staudte Wolfgang Staudte (9 October 1906 – 19 January 1984), born Georg Friedrich Staudte, was a German film director, script writer and actor. He was born in Saarbrücken. After 1945, Staudte also looked at German guilt in the cinema. Alongside ...

Plot

In Berlin in 1945, after Germany's defeat in the war, 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 among ...

. An artist and

Nazi concentration camp From 1933 to 1945, Nazi Germany operated more than a thousand concentration camps (), including subcamp (SS), subcamps on its own territory and in parts of German-occupied Europe. The first camps were established in March 1933 immediately af ...

survivor, Susanne Wallner (

Hildegard Knef Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef (; 28 December 19251 February 2002) was a German actress, singer, and writer. She was billed in some English-language films as Hildegard Neff or Hildegarde Neff. Early years Hildegard Knef was born in Ulm in 19 ...

), 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 Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

, and stays for dinner. Brückner is now a successful businessman, producing pots out of old ''

Stahlhelm The ''Stahlhelm'' (German for "''steel helmet''") is a term used to refer to a series of German steel combat helmet designs intended to protect the wearer from common battlefield hazards such as shrapnel. The armies of the great powers began ...

e'', 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 on the front of the neck to open a direct airway to the trachea. The resulting stoma (hole) can serve independently as an airway ...

on the girl, then Mertens returns home and proclaims his love for Susanne. The film skips forward to

Christmas Eve Christmas Eve is the evening or entire day before Christmas, the festival commemorating nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus. Christmas Day is observance of Christmas by country, observed around the world, and Christma ...

. 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 A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hos ...

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 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

s were afraid that viewers could interpret that as a call for

vigilante justice Vigilantism () is the act of preventing, investigating, and punishing perceived offenses and crimes without legal authority. A vigilante is a person who practices or partakes in vigilantism, or undertakes public safety and retributive justice ...

. The title alludes to the initial title of

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

'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 The Admiralspalast (German for ''admiral palace'') is a theatre on Friedrichstraße in the Mitte district of Berlin, Germany. The theatre has 1,756 seats. It opened in 1910, built as part of a large leisure complex on the former site of the 187 ...

, which was at the time the home of the

Berlin State Opera The Staatsoper Unter den Linden ( State Opera under the Lime Trees), also known as the Berlin State Opera (), is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic center of Berlin, Germany. The opera house was built by order of P ...

, in the Soviet sector. The television debut in the

German Democratic Republic East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...

was on 1 November 1955 and in the

Federal Republic A federal republic is a federation of Federated state, states with a republican form of government. At its core, the literal meaning of the word republic when used to reference a form of government means a country that is governed by elected re ...

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 PR ...

. 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 Denazification () was an Allied initiative to rid German and Austrian society, culture, press, economy, judiciary, and politics of the Nazi ideology following the Second World War. It was carried out by removing those who had been Nazi Par ...

paperwork, but an article published in the ''Neue Zeit'' in 1947 later reported that he'd been exonerated by the Denazification Commission for Artists. Part of

was also the search toward finding a new German culture. Being a part of German culture, post-war period German cinema had a role to play and embarked on this search by exploring different film styles. ''The Murderers Are Among Us'' embarks on this search by drawing namely on the

Western Western may refer to: Places *Western, Nebraska, a village in the US *Western, New York, a town in the US *Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia *Western world, countries that id ...

and the domestic

melodrama A melodrama is a Drama, dramatic work in which plot, typically sensationalized for a strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodrama is "an exaggerated version of drama". Melodramas typically concentrate on ...

. The movie adopts certain features of the classical Western, while also giving them a unique twist. Hans, although presented as a Western hero, is an atypical one, as he does not give into vengeance at the end of the movie. The style of the domestic melodrama is also given a twist by being awkwardly placed in a Western-like movie. It serves the purpose of wanting to restore order through the character of Susanne and her attempt to establish a household for Hans, cure his precarious emotional state, and re-integrate him in society. The melding of these film styles explains why despite being “an often overlooked cinematic legacy” ''The Murderers Are Among Us'' “tells us much about the politics of the past in early postwar German culture,” namely the tension between establishing a new society and culture while also coming to terms with a Nazi past.

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 (, ) is a 1940 Nazi German historical drama/propaganda film produced by Terra Film at the behest of Joseph Goebbels. Considered one of the most antisemitic films of all time, the film was directed by Veit Harlan, who co-wrote the screenplay w ...

''.

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