Theodor Körner (1912)

The film tells the story of the life of the poet Theodor Körner (1791–1813) and his brief but passionate love for the Viennese actress Toni Adamberger. It focuses mainly, however, on the anti-Napoleonic freedom fighter, whose life this ambitious production traces in a solemn, high-flown tone. At the center of the story is Körner’s service in the Lützow Free Corps in the year of his death, 1813. The film consistently emphasizes his heroic side and his higher purpose: serving the “greater whole” and liberating Germany. The story begins with a brief period of carefree student life as a member of a student fraternity, and his engagement to Antonie, called Toni, in Vienna. But then he joins Major Lützow, and in 1813 a general uprising against the arch-enemy Napoleon Bonaparte takes place. The French enemy appears in the form of a foraging detachment: famished marauders who plunder villages and farmers—neither straw nor livestock is safe from them—and flee in haste from their brave pursuers, the Lützow cavalrymen. Charging ahead on a white horse is the daring Körner, who does not fear death. Beforehand, he has heard from the robbed farmers how they were plundered and which route the French, laden with their loot, took as they fled. In a nearby forest, the Lützow men catch up with the retreating enemy and launch one death-defying attack after another. Sabre fights ensue, and once again the Prussians put the French to flight, forcing them to abandon their loot. More battle scenes follow, this time in open country, and at one point even the elderly Major Lützow falls from his horse. Körner is eventually seriously wounded near Gadebusch, and dies beneath an oak tree that is both picturesque and mighty. The closing scene shows the solemn burial of the daring freedom fighter.