Germany, Pale Mother (1980)

The story of Germany, Pale Mother is simple enough and instantly recognizable: Lene and Hans meet, fall in love, get married, have a child, are separated by circumstances, and reunited years later when both are changed people. What makes this story atypical is that the lovers are living in Nazi Germany and Hans is shipped off to fight on the Eastern front while Lene and her daughter Anna must survive the physical and psychological consequences of war.

Germany, Pale Mother was written and directed by Helma Sanders-Brahms, partially based on her own experience as a child during World War II. The film was released in 1980, during a period broadly referred to as New German Cinema. This was a time when many young German filmmakers were using the medium to confront and document Germany’s past, evidenced by the release of such films of The Marriage of Maria Braun, Heimat,  Hitler: A Film from Germany, and The Tin Drum.

Sanders-Brahms’ film draws a number of comparisons to Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun, a film that was released around the same time and also tells the story of a woman’s life during wartime. While the conceits are similar, The Marriage of Maria Braun received more critical and commercial success. Yet decades later, Germany, Pale Mother stands out among the two.  

There is a healthy body of critical analysis of Germany, Pale Mother and being neither an expert in German cinema nor German history, I won’t be addressing these texts directly, but rather adding my own interpretations and impressions of the film. If you are interested in reading some much smarter takes I’ve included suggestions for further readings at the end of this post.

Taken at face value, Germany, Pale Mother is a well-crafted study on the gendered nature of war. Hans is sent off to defend the fatherland, while Lene remains on the homefront with Anna.  In the end both characters are forever transformed by their wartime experiences in subtle but unmistakable ways.

Hans begins the film as a man who refuses to join the Nazi Party. Early in the film he is distraught by his friend’s declaration that the German people deserve either victory or destruction. Once at he is drafted Hans is hardly a hardened solider. At the front he is unable to shoot a woman because she resembles his wife and is mocked by his fellow soldiers when he refuses to patronize prostitutes.  Over time Hans experiences a shift in his outlook and demeanor. As the war begins to wind down he has no trouble executing civilians and he mocks his wife when she sings to their daughter. 

When the war finally ends Hans returns home no longer the man he once was. He beats Anna when she dares to disrespect him and allows a dentist to remove all of Lene’s teeth in hopes of curing her facial paralysis. As those of you who have never been to dental school may have guessed, this doesn’t work. It is also one of most gut-wrenching scenes I have ever sat through and I voluntarily saw Battlefield Earth in a movie theater.

Some scholars have suggested these scenes illustrate how war has brought Hans’ brutality to the surface. I disagree with his assessment. It is not brutality that has been brought out in Hans, but rather an unquestioning loyalty to authority. He disciplines Anna when she does not give him the respect he believes his deserves and he acquiesces to a ludicrous medical procedure because the person suggesting it is in a position of authority. When the dentist recommends the treatment Hans merely responds with “Whatever you think is correct.” Sanders-Brahms is not indicting the authoritarian mindset of former Nazis, but rather how military service can strip away one’s individuality and empathy.

In contrast, Lene’s expected role is alluded to in the opening scene of the film. As Hans and his friend row down a river they happen upon Lene being harassed by a cadre of SS soldiers. She does not scream or cry for help, rather electing to ignore the harassment. Hans comments on how he finds her silence attractive. In the world of men, women are supposed to be kept silent. Lene dutifully abides by this expectation throughout the film. In a particularly disturbing scene, two drunk Allied soldiers stumble upon Lene and proceed to rape her off screen. After the act is complete Lene explains to her daughter that the act was the right of the victor.

The major difference between Lene and the titular character of The Marriage of Maria Braun is that Lene is largely on her own. Her attempts to rely on others for help, such as her distant relatives, tend to be met with failure. For much of the film Lene is left to fend for herself and Anna without any outside assistance. Maria Braun, unlike Lene, initiates relationships with a handful of men, relaying on them to define and protect her. Lene and Anna’s shared burdens and solitude solidify their bond, which only serves to create a tense environment when Hans returns after the war and attempts to resume domestic life.

The most interesting feature of the film is the extended fairy tale sequence in which Lene and Anna travel around war-time Germany, scavenging for food and shelter. They are nomads waiting out normalcy. During this time Lene tells Anna a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm about a young woman and some robbers. It is worth reproducing the tale in its entirety here.

A miller betroths his daughter to a suitor who lives in the depths of the forest. Whenever the miller's daughter sees her husband-to-be, she is filled with dread. He insists that she visit him, and so that she can find her way to his house, he scatters the path with ashes. The miller's daughter sets out on her journey with unease, sprinkling her path with peas and lentils. She travels into the depths of the forest where she sees the bridegroom's house and is warned by a talking bird that she is about to enter the house of murderers. The girl enters the seemingly deserted house to find an old woman who repeats the warning already given to her. The old woman predicts that the girl will marry death and that her husband-to-be wants to kill her, cut her body up into pieces and eat her. 

The two conspire to escape from the house of murderers by giving the bridegroom and his band of robbers a sleeping potion. The old woman hides the girl behind a vat, from where she witnesses the return of the bridegroom and his accomplices who have in their midst a maiden [virgin]. The troop give the girl three glasses of wine, one red, one yellow and one white, and her heart bursts in two. They rip off her clothes and hack the maiden into pieces. One of the robbers notices that she wears a golden ring.  

They chop off her finger to seize the ring, but the finger springs into the lap of the hiding miller's daughter. The men sprinkle the virgin's dismembered body with salt and eat her, after which they drink the sleeping draft. The old woman and the miller's daughter leave the house to find that the ashes which marked the path have blown away. The peas and the lentils, however, have sprouted, and the pair make their way in the moonlight back to the miller and tell him of the events.

The wedding festivities, already planned, take place. Each of the wedding guests is asked to tell those assembled a story. The miller's daughter tells the story of her trip into the forest, of the house of murderers and the robber bridegroom, prefacing the tale with, "It was just a dream, my love". But when she reaches the end of the tale, and tells of the golden ring and of dismemberment, she turns to the bridegroom to announce, "Here is the finger and here is the ring". The bridegroom turns as pale as ash. He is detained by the guests at the wedding party and is brought to trial and punished for his crimes.

The most remarkable aspect of the fairy tale is that it was not produced for the film. It is an authentic fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm nearly 150 years before the rise of Nazi Germany. Many authors have commented on the parallels to Nazi Germany (particularly the murder house) and the structural similarities between the tale and Lene’s narrative arc. It is difficult to argue against these interpretations, particularly as visual companion to tale is Lene and Anna visiting bombed out building and at one point a smokestack is visible in the background.

What struck me though is that the miller’s daughter watches a crime being committed. Not just any crime, but the brutal murder of another woman. She and the old woman allow this heinous crime to occur in order to make their escape. Yes, she eventually does turn the robber in, but only after her silence allowed let a woman die. Is Lene recounting her own crimes? Is Sanders-Brahms stressing how many Germans preserved their lives by staying silent throughout the war? Earlier in the film Lene and her sister watch a Jewish family being taken away by the SS, they debate whether to intervene, but ultimately decide to return to bed.

As already mentioned, the fairy tale sequence takes up a rather large portion of the film. Sanders-Brahms incorporates the telling of the tale into a montage sequence, so we see Lene and her daughter traveling through the country side, hearing the story multiple times. It has been told so many times and in so many different places that it has become a refrain Lene uses to comfort not only her daughter, but also herself.

After the war ends Hans returns home a changed man and the family’s attempts to begin a domestic life are not particularly successful. Not only have Lene and Anna formed a bond that Hans will never be able to replicate, but Lene has succumbed to facial paralysis making life for her quite difficult. Finally, depression compels Lene to lock herself in the bathroom and attempt to commit suicide with gas. (The protagonist of The Marriage of Maria Braun attempts to take her life in the same way, drawing obvious parallels to the gas chambers used during World War II.) Anna pleads with to open the door, desperately asking her mother not to leave her alone. The door does eventually swing open, but we are left with these lines from an adult Anna: “It was a long time before Lene opened the door. Sometimes I think she’s still behind it. And I’m still standing outside…and she’ll never come out to me.” For Lene, Anna, and Hans, for Sanders-Brahms and her mother, for millions of Germans and Jews, and for millions more around the world today, the war has never ended.

Germany, Pale Mother is a fascinating, harrowing, and devastating portrait on the micro impacts of war. It is more than anything a reminder that our lives are the products of decisions made by strangers and those decisions can live on for years and years to come, eventually hobbling us. It is a film that deserves a wider audience beyond the small circle of film critics who see it as an essential text.

Germany, Pale Mother is available for rental through Netflix. Some cinephile has even uploaded the film on YouTube if you prefer to view it that way.

For further reading I recommend:

• Leonie Naughton, Germany, Pale Mother: screen memories of Nazism (probably the best article written about the film)
• Anne Lynne Blume, Absent mothers, absent fathers: Aspects of German Fascism as seen through the contemporary camera
• Judith Keene, Mothering Daughters: Subjectivity and History in the Work of Helma Sanders-Brahms’ Germany Pale Mother
• Germany, Pale Mother: The Ever-Present Anguish of National Trauma