Falk Harnack (2 March 1913 – 3 September 1991) was a German director and screenwriter. During Germany's Nazi era, he was also active with the German Resistance and toward the end of World War II, the partisans in Greece. Harnack was from a family of scholars, artists and scientists, several of whom were active in the anti-Nazi Resistance and paid with their lives.
In 1942, Hans Scholl, Alexander Schmorell and other members of the Munich Resistance group the White Rose got in touch with Harnack through Lilo Ramdohr, a mutual friend who had gone to school with Harnack. Through him, they hoped to build a relationship with the Berlin Resistance members who were involved with Harnack's brother, Arvid,[4]Harro Schulze-Boysen, Hans von Dohnanyi and others. Harnack put them in touch with his cousins, Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The same year, the Gestapo intercepted communications revealing the existence of the Red Orchestra and leading to numerous arrests. Many of those arrested were later executed, including Harnack's brother on 22 December 1942 and, on 16 February 1943, his sister-in-law, Mildred Harnack, an American citizen. Ramdohr was engaged to Falk Harnack, which Arvid mentioned in his farewell letter to his family that was written hours before his execution.[5]
Though his brother had just been executed, Harnack went to Munich to meet with Sophie and Hans Scholl on 3 February 1943.[4] He and Hans agreed to meet again on 25 February, but Harnack waited in vain since he had already been arrested and executed,[4] along with his sister. Thirteen other members of the White Rose were taken into custody,[4] including Kurt Huber, Willi Graf and Harnack. Of the lot, Harnack was the only one acquitted.[4] The others were found guilty and condemned to death, some being executed the same day they were tried by the Volksgerichtshof, the civilian "People's Court". On 19 April 1943, Harnack was acquitted because of a lack of evidence and "unique special circumstances".[6]
After the war, Harnack returned to his career as a director and dramaturge, first working at the Bavarian state theater in Munich. In 1947, he began working at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. From 1949 to 1952, he was the artistic director at DEFA, where he made the film The Axe of Wandsbek, adapted from a book by Arnold Zweig. According to Zweig's son, the movie is based on a true story and may also relate to the events of Altona Bloody Sunday in Hamburg.[10]
The main character carries out a Nazi execution though he ruins his business, marriage and life over it. Opening to positive reactions from the public, the film met with disapproval from the Socialist Unity Party and its Soviet advisors, who felt that the movie's political position was not clear enough. One such adviser said that the film had "an undesired and deleterious effect on people in the GDR, as it does not depict hatred of fascism, but rather pity for the murderers".[10] The government banned the movie within weeks. The poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht remarked after the banning, "It is important to emphasize that there can be no sympathy for a Nazi executioner". After all that Harnack had lost to the Nazis, the dispute hit him hard, and in 1952, he left East Germany for West Berlin.[10]
For the first few years, Harnack worked for the film production company CCC Film and, along with Helmut Käutner and Wolfgang Staudte, was one of the most important directors of German post-war films.[11]
From the late 1950s, however, he worked almost exclusively in television. He also wrote the screenplays for many of his films. From 1962 to 1965, he was the leading director of the newly founded German television station, ZDF. Subsequently, he worked primarily as a free lance. In addition to entertainment, he also made challenging films, which sometimes dealt with the Nazi era and the Resistance, such as his 1955 release The Plot to Assassinate Hitler (Der 20. Juli) about the 20 20 July 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler,[12] which won the 1956 German Film Award in the category "Films Contributing to the Encouragement of Democratic Thought". In 1962, he directed for television, Jeder stirbt für sich allein, an adaptation of Hans Fallada's novel, Every Man Dies Alone,[13] based on the story of Otto and Elise Hampel, a working-class couple that became involved in the anti-Nazi Resistance but was later executed.[citation needed]
Recognition and personal
Commenting retrospectively on Harnack's filmmaking, film historian Gerhard Schoenberner noted that, working at "a time when West German postwar film had sunk to ... [an] artistic and political low", Harnack had "set new standards" in both the film industry and exposing the "false glorification of the past", which "had become fashionable during the Adenauer period, as a result of the Cold War."[10]
Harnack was married to German actress Käthe Braun,[1] who was often in his films. He died on 3 September 1991, aged 78, after a long illness.
Awards (selected)
1940 Goethe Medal of the German National Theater Weimar
^Others who were close to Harnack and were executed by the SS were his cousin Klaus Bonhoeffer and Hans von Dohnanyi, who was Klaus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer's brother-in-law.
Armin Ziegler: Dramaturg des Widerstands – Falk Harnack und die Geschichte der „Weißen Rose“. Ein Beitrag zur „Weiße-Rose“-Forschung. Selbstverlag, (September 2005) (in German)
Falk Harnack: Die Dramen Carl Bleibtreus. Eine dramaturgische Untersuchung. (Germanische Studienhefte 199), Kraus-Reprint, Nendeln/Liechtenstein (1967) (in German)
Maike Bruhns: Kunst in der Krise, Vol. 2, Dölling und Galitz Verlag, Munich and Hamburg (2001), p. 43. ISBN3-933374-95-2(in German)
Hans Coppi, Jürgen Danyel, Johannes Tuchel: Die Rote Kapelle im Widerstand gegen den Nationalsozialismus. Edition Hentrich, Berlin (1994), p. 117. ISBN3-89468-110-1(in German)
