Annas Heimkehr (2003)

In 1942, Anna Schweighofer works as a maid for a family in Munich. They live on a spacious estate and are preparing a lavish feast of bacon, wine, and cigars for a visit from the Reichsführer-SS. Anna takes some of the food and brings it to her former employers, the Goldberg family, for whom she worked as a nanny from 1932 to 1939. The Goldbergs are starving and living in hiding in rooms at the back of their bookshop, which has been ransacked. They are “packed and ready to go” because the next morning, at around six o’clock, they plan to flee by train via Zurich to London, to Franziska’s aunt. As Anna puts little Franziska to bed as she used to and sings her a lullaby in Yiddish, she hears the Gestapo knocking on the apartment door. They then force their way in and arrest Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg. Anna manages to hide the child in a wardrobe just in time. When two uniformed men walk through the building, she hides behind a door so the Gestapo will not arrest her too. Anna takes Franziska to her family in Drachselreuth, in the Bavarian Forest, and passes her off as her illegitimate child. Anna’s brother Toni lives there; he is the mayor and the local Nazi Party leader. Ten years earlier, after their father’s death, she had broken off contact with her brother over an inheritance dispute and moved away with their mother, Josefa. After Toni’s wife, Helene, speaks in favor of taking in her sister-in-law, Toni reluctantly welcomes his sister and Franziska into the inherited inn. When Toni keeps asking about Franziska’s father, Anna lies, telling him that the father is a Wehrmacht officer whom she met in 1933 at a race at the Riem racetrack, and that she went with him to an “Amazons’ festival” in Nymphenburg Park. Toni eventually arranges an Aryan certificate and a passport for his “illegitimate niece,” complaining, “[…] it cost me twenty kilos of beef tenderloin […]”. Anna kisses her brother in thanks. When he mentions that no one named Franziska Schweighofer is registered at the Munich registration office, she replies, “[…] did I forget to tell you she was born in Landshut?” Corporal Kurt Ramsauer, whose engagement to Anna was called off ten years earlier because her father refused to consent, is still in love with her. Kurt hears that Franziska was born six months after Anna left him. He then wants to marry Anna. In the confessional, a clergyman asks Anna whether Franziska is a Jewish girl. When Anna leaves the confessional without answering, he breaks the seal of confession. Toni then throws the two of them out of the house. Anna flees with the girl to her former fiancé, Kurt, and reveals Franziska’s secret. At first, Kurt tries to dissuade her from continuing to hide Franzi, because he considers it too dangerous—he now believes the Nazis capable of anything. When Anna stands firm, he not only gives in but proposes to her, saying, “Then Franzi Ramsauer is what she’ll become […]”. While Anna spends the night at Kurt’s, Gregor Brunner waits all night outside the Ramsauers’ farm, because he desires her too. Thanks to his connections, Gregor had earlier learned, as an SS-Obersturmbannführer, who Anna worked for and that the Goldberg family’s daughter had not been captured. He had used this to blackmail and rape Anna. After Anna walks past him without a word and wants nothing more to do with him, he intends to arrest Anna and Franziska. When they run away, he takes out his gun to shoot Anna. But Kurt gets to Gregor first and shoots him with his rifle. In an official report, the mayor states that Gregor died in a low-flying air raid. Kurt later falls at the front. When US troops take the town, Toni is arrested. However, he is released when his sister testifies that Toni helped Franziska even though he knew she was Jewish. Anna sends the girl to her aunt Lydia in London, and years later she meets her again in a bookshop called “Goldberg” in Munich, which now belongs to Franziska Goldberg.