Meines Vaters Pferde, 1. Teil: Lena und Nicoline (1954)

“This is the story of a German: We are in the postwar year 1950.” Badly wounded, the young soldier Jürgen Godeysen has returned to his homeland from Soviet captivity after the Second World War. Professor Gunthermann has already tried three times to remove the shrapnel from Jürgen’s skull, but each time had to postpone the life-threatening operation because the patient showed too little will to live. Now the professor tries a ruse: fate has sent him a young woman who has been trying for a long time to find Jürgen Godeysen, and he enlists the stranger to help. She has Jürgen’s father Michael’s diaries and is to read them to the patient. They tell of the joys and sorrows of a life shaped by fate. Michael Godeysen prefaced his diary with the words: “For the human heart is indestructible and eternal.” The first part, which begins on a day in May 1897, recounts the love of Michael Godeysen, a former Uhlan officer and gifted horse breeder, for Lena, a woman from Berlin, and later for Nicoline, an Irish aristocrat. Lena loves Michael deeply, but has to part from him because, at her parents’ wish, she is going to marry another man of higher standing. Nicoline, whom Michael loves deeply, is already married to Pat, an Irish aristocrat and Michael’s friend. When Michael confesses his love to Nicoline, she makes it clear that she has always loved only her husband. Although Pat deliberately rode Nicoline’s beloved horse Abony to its death in a reckless tournament and was himself seriously injured in the process, the young woman is certain that she belongs at her husband’s side. Complicating matters, Pat has joined the Irish freedom fighters, and the Secret Service is now after him. Pat rejects the suggestion that he leave the country, saying that flight is no way out and that he cannot abandon his people. When Lady Nicoline sends word to Michael that one must not stray from one’s path, he leaves Ireland for home. Just as a horse, Bajar, played an important role in the story with Lena, a horse is again involved in the episode with Nicoline: the mare Abony and, a little later, her foal Lena. At first somewhat hesitantly, but becoming more confident as time goes on, the girl reads to the patient from the diary. She is the granddaughter of Pat and the Irish aristocrat Nicoline. Very gradually, something like love begins to blossom between the two. When the girl, who is also named Nicoline, has finished the first part of the diary, she begins the second. “The struggle for the son’s life continues, but will his father’s diary really have the healing power to save Jürgen Godeysen, who has been robbed of his faith? The second part will tell.” The continuation is told in the film My Father’s Horses, Part II: His Third Wife.