“History is not about the facts. It is about the context and who is telling the story.” —Prof. Milton Fine.
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past." –– George Orwell in his novel "1984."
Thirty–five lobby cards have been acquired in one Lot of this late war feature film starring the great Heinrich George, as the father of a German family in Lübeck during WWII. Die Degenhardts was one of the very few contemporary war films which showed the destruction of a German city due to Allied air bombings. George played the role of a civil servant who is passed over for promotion and cannot tell his family that he has been in fact given a pension and forced into retirement instead of a promotion. He 'goes to work' every morning from home but eventually his family discovers his dilemma, and rallies to his side. He is subsequently called back to service when the war takes his successor into the military, and he finds himself as Town Planner. The melancholy heartbreak of civilian deaths and the wanton destruction of his beloved city's landmarks, cultural treasures, churches and homes is evident. The film was one of the last to have a movie poster issued to promote it, and we have the extremely rare original poster in our collection -- shown below. With this acquisiton we have 38 lobby cards and 5 large press photos from the film.
Here forur members of the Degenhardt family visit their bombed–out gothic church, in Lübeck, destroyed by British terror bombing attacks in 1943.