Wir Kellerkinder (1960)

West Berlin in 1960: A reporter for the “Neue Deutsche Schau” (a newsreel) is asked by his boss to look in the archives for footage of the swastika graffiti that had become more frequent in late 1959, which the “Minister for Our Interior” intends to address in a speech. But they discover that such footage exists only abroad, not in the archives of the Federal Republic of Germany. The “Minister for Our Interior’s” film adviser is also pressing them to take up the issue as part of coming to terms with the past. To avoid embarrassment, they assign the reporter Kemskorn and cameraman Keschke to stage some suitable footage. The two spend the entire day unsuccessfully searching for a passerby who will paint a swastika on a wall for a few marks. Late that evening, they come across three men outside a jazz club—Macke, Arthur, and Adalbert—accompanied by Nenne, a young woman. Macke accepts the newsreel crew’s offer and paints a swastika on the window of a bar owned by his father. When a police car approaches, everyone flees for shelter in the jazz cellar—except Nenne, who keeps walking down the street. Inside the jazz club, Macke demands that the filmmakers record what led him to mark his father’s bar with a swastika in particular. His account becomes a story lasting an hour and a half. As a child in Berlin during the Nazi era, he had already discovered the benefits of the cellar in the apartment building where his family lived. Macke belonged to the Jungvolk and was an enthusiastic drummer; the cellar became his practice room. From 1938 on, he hid the Communist Knösel in his cellar from the Nazis who lived in the building, including local group leader Glaubke and Macke’s father, a petty careerist who rose to become a block warden. The antiques dealer Briel’s wife gave birth to their daughter Nenne in Macke’s cellar during an air raid, while Knösel hid behind the cellar door. He survived the war in that cellar; later, Macke hid his father there when the police were looking for him as an old Nazi. For the next four years, Macke drove his father mad with drum-practice sessions, since he planned to become a professional jazz musician. One day, Knösel turned up to reminisce in the cellar. But Macke behaved strangely toward him because he was hiding his Nazi father there. A confrontation between the two was inevitable. In the end, Macke was slapped by both sides: by his old friend Knösel and by his father, since each saw him as a traitor to their cause. This ideological game of hiding and confusion soon landed Macke in a mental institution, where he befriended Adalbert and Arthur, two fellow patients. In their free time, the three played jazz together. They decided to stick together after they were discharged, too. After the war, Adalbert had worked as a restroom attendant at Munich’s Hofbräuhaus. Because of the shape of his moustache and his hairstyle, people kept taking him for Hitler reincarnated until he began to think he was Hitler himself. Arthur was a passionate jazz pianist, but this caused him problems in East Germany; he was expelled from the Theater der Courage in Cottbus and fled to the West. All three were to be discharged from the mental institution if they could prove, while on leave, that they had fully recovered. But two outings, which the three made to Munich and Cottbus at the direction of the institution’s director, Professor Nürn, failed because Adalbert suffered severe relapses each time and put on an act as Hitler reborn, first in the Hofbräuhaus restroom in Munich and then at the theater in Cottbus. In Cottbus, Macke met Knösel, who was now a cultural-policy director, and, to his great surprise, also the former Nazi Glaubke, who had married his sister Almuth and was working as a director at the theater. The third outing was to West Berlin. Macke’s father owned a successful bar there called the Fata Morgana and had opened a jazz club for his son across the street, in the old cellar, which Nenne, the antiques dealer Briel’s daughter, ran in his place. The trio played at the jazz club, the atmosphere was excellent, and champagne flowed freely. Knösel appeared in the middle of it all. Macke learned that the disillusioned former Communist now lived in Cologne and had written two books about pseudo-communism. A sour note arose when Zörrl, a master butcher and friend of Macke’s father, insisted on marching music—and promptly sat down at the drums himself to play the Badenweiler March, Hitler’s favorite march. The bar emptied out quickly: first the young people made themselves scarce, then a quarrel broke out between the master butcher Zörrl and the antiques dealer Briel. Briel protested against the desecration of Hitler’s memory. After this performance, including a Nazi salute, Nenne only just managed to keep her father from being committed to a mental institution, while Adalbert managed not to act as Hitler—and instead kicked the antiques dealer in the backside. Dr. Tanobren, Professor Nürn’s assistant, who had constantly accompanied and supervised the trio, gave his approval: They had passed the test, and all three could be discharged as cured. Relieved, they wanted to go for a walk. Then the two newsreel men appeared in the street... Macke’s flashback ends here. Shortly afterward, the police knock on the cellar door. They had stopped Nenne in the street, and it is decided that the three men will be taken back to the mental institution because of the swastika graffiti. Kemskorn and Keschke’s film fails to interest the “Minister for Our Interior”: he passes it on, and it is eventually thrown away carelessly.