Death is My Trade (film)
| Death is My Trade | |
|---|---|
| Aus einem deutschen Leben | |
| Directed by | Theodor Kotulla |
| Written by |
|
| Based on |
Death Is My Trade by Robert Merle |
| Language | German |
Death is My Trade (German: Aus einem deutschen Leben) is a 1977 German film, which is based on the script of director Theodor Kotulla starring Götz George in the leading role. The realisation of the script is based on the French novel La mort est mon métier by Robert Merle, which was published in 1952 (English edition: Death Is My Trade).
Like the novel, the film is partly based on interrogation records of the trial against Rudolf Höß, SS-officer and commander of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, as well as on his autobiographical notes. He made these notes first during his time as British POW, then, after he was extradited, as Polish prisoner in 1946/47, before he was executed as a convicted war criminal. Instead of using the name Rudolf Höß, whose life was the model for the film, the pseudonym Franz Lang is used, in order that he remain anonymous. The real Rudolf Höß had gone into hiding allegedly working as a boatman after World War II using this (fake) name until he was unmasked and arrested in 1946.
The film is divided into 14 different episodes, which describe fragmentary and important scenes of Franz Lang´s (alias Rudolf Höss) life.
Franz Lang, born in 1900, tries to get to the front line during World War I when he is a teenager - at first unsuccessfully. Finally, he volunteers to work at a military hospital, where he gets to know injured Hauptmann Günther. The latter explains to him the only sin: not being a "good German" - a key sentence for Lang and his future life. The officer promises young Franz to take him into his newly founded regiment.
In 1917 Franz Lang serves at the front, which he had long desired, under the command of Captain Günther: Joining three of his comrades Franz is to take machine gun position and has to experience the death of two of his comrades. The third tries to convince Franz of desertion, but he wants to fulfill the wish of his group leader, who had just died, to stay in machine gun position as long as possible, and so kills the deserter. Severely wounded carrying his machine gun Franz Lang drags himself behind the front line, where he is found unconscious by Captain Günther. Later he promotes him to the rank of non-commissioned officer, as Franz Lang is the only survivor of the hopeless battle.
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