In jenen Tagen (1947)

In 1946, among the ruins of Hamburg, Karl and Willi dismantle an old car and talk about whether there are any human beings left in these times. Various traces and objects in and on the car hint at its previous owners and their fates. Since the men do not always interpret them correctly, the car itself begins to tell its story in seven episodes linked by the framing narrative. 1. Story Sybille takes delivery of a new car. It comes from Peter, who asks her in a letter to drive it to him in Berlin. When she sets off the next day, January 30, 1933, she runs into her lover, Steffen. He tells her that he intends to leave for Tampico, Mexico, the following morning and wants to take Sybille with him. She decides against going with him, however, and continues her journey to Berlin. Only when she speaks with Peter does Sybille understand that Steffen must flee abroad because the Nazis have seized power. She then decides to go with him after all. 2. Story The car next belongs to Wolfgang Grunelius, a modern composer. He is a good friend of the Buschenhagen family and visits them often. Their daughter, Angela, asks Wolfgang if she can accompany him on his tour, but he refuses and travels alone. Around the same time, Angela’s mother, Elisabeth, goes to Bremen to visit her sister. When both return, Angela finds her mother’s comb in Wolfgang’s car. She suspects her mother is having an affair with the composer. She plans to expose them during an outing together, but changes her mind when Wolfgang tells her that his music has been banned as degenerate. 3. Story Wilhelm and Sally Bienert, a married couple, own a framing business in Berlin. Sally is Jewish, and the business is registered in her name. The two drive in their fully loaded car to their allotment garden outside the city. There, Sally says she wants to divorce Wilhelm and leave the business to him. But they cannot bring themselves to part, and drive back into the city, where the 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms have meanwhile begun. All Jewish businesses are being destroyed and looted. Since the display windows of the framing shop have not been marked with white lettering, it is spared. Wilhelm then smashes the window himself. A few days later, the couple are found dead in the allotment-garden settlement; they have chosen to die together. 4. Story Dorothea Wieland’s husband, Jochen, has disappeared. Her sister Ruth confesses that she and Jochen are in love and active in the resistance. They had planned to flee together to Zurich. The plan has presumably been discovered. From their acquaintance Dr. Ansbach, Dorothea learns that Jochen was “shot while trying to escape”—in other words, murdered by the Nazis. He advises her to flee herself without delay, since the Nazis assume she is the woman who tried to escape with Jochen. Instead, she calls Ruth and tells her that she must leave the country by the route they had planned. Since Ruth would probably otherwise stay with her sister, Dorothea lies and says that Jochen is alive and managed to escape. Dorothea is arrested shortly afterward and leaves the car behind. The Wehrmacht requisitions it. 5. Story Wehrmacht soldier August Hintze uses the car in Russia to pick up a new lieutenant from the train station. He suggests returning the next day, since at night there is a great danger of being attacked by partisans in the moonlight. But the lieutenant does not take his warning seriously and insists on leaving immediately. Even when signs of partisans nearby appear along the way, he presses on. Hintze speaks of the horrors of the Russian campaign and says that Russians are human beings too, and that to them the Germans are “the enemy.” The lieutenant has no understanding for such remarks. When partisans fire flares, the two soldiers try to escape with their headlights off. Moonlight breaks through the clouds, and the car comes under fire. Hintze is hit and dies. 6. Story In Berlin, Erna tries to get her former employer, Baroness von Thorn, out of the city. The baroness’s son was involved in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt. But Erna pretends not to know anything and claims she only wants to get the baroness to safety from the bombs. During the drive, the women have a breakdown—the car has run out of coolant. A policeman recognizes the baroness’s name and arrests them both. Only then does Frau von Thorn learn that Erna knew about her son’s involvement and had nevertheless risked danger to help her escape. 7. Story In 1945, during the final months of the war, the soldier Josef finds the car in a barn. There he meets Marie, a young widow who has fled on foot from Silesia with her newborn child and is trying to reach the fictional village of Illingenworth, north of Hamburg. Although he needs to go south and risks being stopped by a patrol and immediately shot as a deserter, Josef drives the two of them to Hamburg the next morning. There, he assures Marie that he will visit her one day. On his way back, a patrol stops him. Although he cannot explain why he is near Hamburg, one of the military police gives him the chance to escape on foot. The framing story concludes with a monologue by the car: even in inhuman times, there are human beings.