Starring: Burgart Klaussner, Ronald Zehrfeld
Distributor: Independent
Runtime: 105 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2016
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At the same time as this film was released, there was another German film, Labyrinth of Lies, going over some of the same material and featuring the character, Fritz Bauer, as central to the action. However, in this film he is quite centrestage.
Fritz Bauer may not be a familiar name to film audiences or, perhaps, German audiences. The screenplay fills in his background. He was a strong socialist in the 1930s, in the public eye, clashing with the Nazis, arrested, sentenced to a concentration camp but, to his later regret as expressed in this film, submitting to them and being released. He was also Jewish.
This film is set in the late 1950s. Bauer is one of the attorney generals in Germany, based in Frankfurt. Part of his role is to pursue Nazis who had taken up significant positions in the now prospering West Germany under the leadership of President Adenauer. He has many files, has young attorneys pursuing the suspects – and these include files on Adolf Eichmann, creator of the Final Solution, but who has disappeared since the war.
Burgart Klaussner makes an impression as Fritz Bauer, busy about his work, not being physically will, upset by the action of a number of authorities, men who had been in the Nazi party and resented him and kept him under surveillance.
One of the principal aspect of this film is his role in the abduction of Adolf Eichmann and his being taken to Israel for trial – though Bauer actually wanted him to be tried in Germany itself so that Germans would become conscious of what it happened in the 1930s and 1940s.
There are some scenes with Eichmann in Argentina, living an ordinary life, his son dating one of the local girls, her father recognising him and writing to Bauer, leading to further investigations, Bauer getting in touch with Mossad for his return to Germany but the Mossad wanting a second independent source. In the meantime, Bauer has appointed one of his junior attorneys whom he trusts to help him. It is he who has a journalist friend who is able to confirm that Eichmann is in Argentina although the German authorities suggested Bauer that he is in fact in Kuwait.
The abduction scene is very brief but effective.
There is a subplot concerning the young attorney, his defending a young homosexual man in court, Bauer (who had some pre-war convictions of homosexual acts suggesting a precedent with the lenient sentence which the judge ignores. The young woman in the court invites the attorney to visit a club – which leads to the attorney, a married man, and his potential downfall.
The film does not go on to the Eichmann trial – there are many films which illustrate the taking of Eichmann, The House on Garibaldi Street, The Man in the Glass Booth and the role of Hannah Arendt in the film of that name. Final information indicates Bauer’s role in the taking of many former Nazis to court in the early 1960s – which is also, in more detail, a subject of Labyrinth of Lies
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