''Berlin 36'' is a 2009 German film telling the fate of Jewish
track and field
Track and field is a sport that includes athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name is derived from where the sport takes place, a running track and a grass field for the throwing and some of the jumping events ...
athlete
Gretel Bergmann
Gretel Lambert (born Margarethe Bergmann; April 12, 1914 – July 25, 2017)[1936 Summer Olympics
The 1936 Summer Olympics (German: ''Olympische Sommerspiele 1936''), officially known as the Games of the XI Olympiad (German: ''Spiele der XI. Olympiade'') and commonly known as Berlin 1936 or the Nazi Olympics, were an international multi-sp ...]
. In the movie she was replaced by the
Nazi
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...
regime with a fellow athlete which she befriended. The film, based on a true story, was released in Germany on 10 September 2009.
Reporters at ''
Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
'' challenged the historical basis for many of the events in the film, pointing to arrest records and medical examinations indicating German authorities did not determine
Dora Ratjen as being male until 1938.
[. Accessed September 2, 2010]
Plot
The athlete Gretel Bergmann wins the
high jump
The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...
championships in the United Kingdom. Since the Nazi racial laws prevented her continuing her training in Germany, being a Jew, her father had sent her to England, where she could live more safely and continue her sporting career.
At the Berlin Olympics in 1936, the Americans and the
IOC
The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swiss ...
(International Olympic Committee) demand that Jewish athletes are not to be excluded from the event, especially the high jumper Gretel Bergmann of international fame, thus putting the Nazi Olympic Committee in great difficulty. A victory by a Jewish athlete would seriously humiliate the
Nazi party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that crea ...
. When her family in Germany is threatened, Gretel returns to Germany. She is included in the German Olympic high jump team, seemingly with the same rights as the other athletes in the training camp.
Hans Waldmann, the coach of the team, is enthusiastic about the skills and discipline of Gretel and adopts a policy of impartiality based solely on sportsmanship. However, Waldmann is dismissed by Nazi party officials and replaced as coach by Sigfrid Kulmbach, loyal to the party. Kulmbach attempts, instead, by every means to discourage the young athlete and undermine her self-esteem.
Her roommate and sole competitor in talent is Marie Ketteler. Marie, however, is really a man, by whom the Nazis want to attain the
gold medal
A gold medal is a medal awarded for highest achievement in a non-military field. Its name derives from the use of at least a fraction of gold in form of plating or alloying in its manufacture.
Since the eighteenth century, gold medals have bee ...
in high jump. Between Marie and Gretel, despite numerous threats from outside, a friendship forms.
Despite being the most promising athlete in high jump training, Gretel is suddenly excluded from competition under false pretences, only a few days before the Games. She is replaced by Marie, the second best athlete.
Marie, however, behaves in strange ways: she never takes a bath with her companions, shaves her legs several times a day and has a deep voice. Gretel, therefore, discovers her true identity. Meanwhile, Marie discovers that Gretel was excluded from the race under false pretenses. So Marie decides to deliberately lose the final and decisive leap. The dislodged bar spells the shattering of hope of victory in the German officials, who are dumbstruck. Marie gains only the fourth place. Marie and Gretel, the latter observing the contest as a spectator, exchange a secret happy smile, for their common opposition led to the defeat of the cruel Nazi ambitions and ideals.
Cast
*
Karoline Herfurth
Karoline Herfurth (; born 22 May 1984) is a German actress.
Life and career
Herfurth was born in East Berlin, East Germany, the daughter of a psychologist mother and a geriatric nurse practitioner father. Her parents divorced when she was tw ...
as
Gretel Bergmann
Gretel Lambert (born Margarethe Bergmann; April 12, 1914 – July 25, 2017)[Sebastian Urzendowsky
Sebastian Urzendowsky (born 28 May 1985) is a German actor. He has appeared in more than thirty films since 1998.
Selected filmography
References
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Urzendowsky, Sebastian
1985 births
Living people
Male a ...]
as
Marie Ketteler
*
Axel Prahl
Axel Prahl (born 26 March 1960 in Eutin) is a German actor and musician.
Prahl, born in Eutin, grew up in nearby Neustadt in Holstein. After his A-levels, Prahl started studying music and mathematics, but then went on to acting school in Kiel. ...
as Hans Waldmann
* August Zirner as Edwin Bergmann
* Maria Happel as Paula Bergmann
* Franz Dinda as Rudolph Bergmann
* Leon Seidel as Walter Bergmann
* Thomas Thieme as Hans von Tschammer und Osten
* Johann von Bülow as Karl Ritter von Halt
*
Julie Engelbrecht
Julie Charon Engelbrecht (born 30 June 1984) is a French-born German actress.
Early life
Engelbrecht was born in Paris. She is the daughter of the actress Constanze Engelbrecht, and made her acting debut at 12 years old, appearing with her mot ...
as Elisabeth 'Lilly' Vogt
* Klara Manzel as Thea Walden
* Robert Gallinowski as Sigfrid Kulmbach
* Elena Uhlig as Frau Vogel
* Tausig as Leo Löwenstein
* John Keogh as Avery Brundage
Premiere
''Berlin 36'' premiered on 22 August 2009 in the German capital, Berlin. The film received a critics generally positive. The film has been called "interesting" by the German magazine ''
Der Spiegel
''Der Spiegel'' (, lit. ''"The Mirror"'') is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. With a weekly circulation of 695,100 copies, it was the largest such publication in Europe in 2011. It was founded in 1947 by John Seymour Chaloner ...
'' and placed in the category "play" with the German weekly ''
Die Zeit
''Die Zeit'' (, "The Time") is a German national weekly newspaper published in Hamburg in Germany. The newspaper is generally considered to be among the German newspapers of record and is known for its long and extensive articles.
History
The ...
''.
In January 2010, the film was presented in the Palm Springs International Film Festival. On the same date, the film was presented in the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival and the New York Jewish Film Festival, a film festival that engages with Jewish history.
During the presentation of the movie in the Atlanta Jewish Film Festival, the consular officer Lutz Görgens compared the theme of the movie to
Jeremy Schaap
Jeremy Schaap is an American sportswriter, television reporter, and author. Schaap is an eleven-time Emmy Awards winner for his work on ESPN's '' E:60'', ''SportsCenter'', and ''Outside the Lines''.
Biography
He is a regular contributor to ...
's book ''Triumph'', which tells the story of the American athlete
Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens (September 12, 1913March 31, 1980) was an American track and field athlete who won four gold medals at the 1936 Olympic Games.
Owens specialized in the sprints and the long jump and was recognized in his lifet ...
, who won the gold medal in the 1936 Olympic Games, despite the strong discrimination he suffered. Görgens said that "the book and the movie teaches us about the bad politics of sport. They remind us of the preciousness of political freedom, the excellence of athletic futility, and the true value of friendship".
In fact, unlike the film, Gretel Bergmann, as a young woman did not know her partner was later determined to be a man, but she learned it only in 1966, reading an article in ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
''. Bergmann told the magazine ''Der Spiegel'', at the age of 95 years, "I never suspected anything. We all wondered why she never got naked in the shower. Being so shy at seventeen, it seemed absurd, but we thought, well, it is bizarre and weird".
See also
*
List of films about the sport of athletics
The following is a list of films featuring the sport of athletics, including track and field.
List
See also
*List of sports films
*List of highest grossing sports films
{{Sports films
Athletics films, List
Sport of athletics-related lis ...
References
External links
*
*
{{Authority control
2009 films
2000s German-language films
Films about anti-fascism
Antisemitism in Germany
Antisemitism in the United States
Athletics films
Running films
Cross-dressing in film
Films about fascists
Films about rebels
Films set in 1934
Films set in 1935
Films set in 1936
Films set in Berlin
Films set in Germany
Films set in London
Films shot in Germany
Films shot in London
German drama films
German independent films
Jewish British history
Films about Jews and Judaism
Jewish Nazi German history
Jews and Judaism in Berlin
Films about Nazi Germany
Films about the 1936 Summer Olympics
Films about Olympic track and field
Olympic Games controversies
Sports films based on actual events
2000s political films
Cultural depictions of German women
Cultural depictions of track and field athletes
Cultural depictions of transgender people
Biographical films about sportspeople
2000s German films