Rote Erde | |
---|---|
Created by | Klaus Emmerich Peter Stripp (Writer) |
Music by | Irmin Schmidt |
Country of origin | Germany |
No. of seasons | 2 |
No. of episodes | 9 (Red earth) and 4 (Red earth II) |
Production | |
Running time | 60 minutes (Red Earth) 90 minutes (Red Earth II) |
Release | |
Original network | Ard |
Original release | 1983 Red Earth 1989 Red Earth II |
Rote Erde (German for "Red Earth") is a German television film series in 13 parts (total playing time about 15 hours), the 1983 (first season: Red Earth, 9 parts) and 1989 (second season: Red Earth II, 4 parts), all directed by Klaus Emmerich. The camera was led by Joseph Vilsmaier and Theo Bierkens. The title music was composed by Irmin Schmidt. [1] The German premiere was on (ARD) channel at 23 October 1983. [2] The last episode was screened on 4 March 1990. [3]
The subject of the series is the story of a fictional family of miners in the Ruhr area over a period of about 70 years between the end of the 19th and the mid 20th century, against the background of the history of the German Empire from the Empire to the Weimar Republic to the end of the Nazi dictatorship .
The shooting took place in the studios and on the grounds of the Bavaria-Film am Geiselgasteig near Munich. The elaborately designed exterior backdrops stood until 1996.
In 1984, Peter Stripp (writer), [4] and Klaus Emmerich, [1] received an honorable mention for the series at the Adolf Grimme Award ceremony
The farmer Bruno Kruska comes, attracted by advertisers, at 17 years of Pomerania in the Ruhr area to work there as a miner on the pit Siegfried. First as a tug, later as a hawker, Bruno finds the work hoped for and witnesses the events surrounding the Siegfried colliery before the turn of the century. He marries Pauline, the daughter of the miner Friedrich Bötzkes. His son Karl developed into a Social Democrat in the imperial era, overran his father and leaves the family. He becomes union official and finally member of the Reichstag, Bruno is critical of the activities of the Social Democrats and can not be taken. He is drafted into the First World War, but is called back from the front for mining.
Bruno's wife Pauline sympathizes with the Social Democrats and the Spartacists during the war, which Bruno does not really support, but does not refuse. At the end of this first part of the saga, the emperor abdicated and the miners, among them Bruno and his friend, the miner Otto Schablowski, occupy the mine and demand their nationalization. That they could not prevail with this is only hinted at in the cinematic presentation.
Max Kruska, son of Bruno Kruska, experiences the depression and - also his own - unemployment after the First World War. The Siegfried colliery is occupied by Frenchmen and the coal mining primarily serves the reparation. Max is impressed by the promises of the National Socialists and Adolf Hitler and enters the NSDAP. At the colliery, where Max could invest again, the progress has arrived. But Max's doubts come from National Socialist Germany; When his uncle Karl and his brother-in-law Richard are imprisoned, he turns away from the formerly supported policy. From then on he supports the forced laborers who are under him underground and hopes the war will end soon. But the assassination of a young Russian forced laborer at the mine, which Max has witnessed, further intensifies his anger towards the regime. After all, Max, together with his brother-in-law Richard, who has since been released from custody, prevents the Siegfried colliery from being destroyed by the Wehrmacht at the end of the war.
The story ends with the colliery being shut down a few years later for economic reasons and the winding tower blown up.
Season 1: Red Earth (first broadcast in 1983)
Season 2: Red Earth II (first broadcast in 1990)
In the 2nd season, he is long-time unemployed and has a brief affair with Charlotte. fathering an illegitimate son, who is called Olaf who he calls 'Olli'. Charlotte marries a much older Jewish laundry owner and Max rarely sees his son. He becomes a member of the NSDAP and often wears an SA uniform. He provokes repeatedly Charlotte's Jewish husband and later he marries Sofie, Richard Brosch's sister, and has more children with her. He later loses his National Socialist idealism, after seeing a young Russian peasant hanged for stealing food. He later meets again Jupp, who now works as a translator of the British. Together with Fränzi, Sofie, Jupp and Richard, Max witnessed the demolition of the winding tower of the Siegfried colliery in the late 1950s.
First season
Second season
During the entire course of action, no concrete place of action is mentioned. Since the Ruhr area only half belonged to Westphalia administratively (as the title 'Rote Erde' indicates), the Siegfried colliery must be located in the northeastern district. The chaplain comments on his sentencing to Werden as saying that he should "get as far away as possible", which confirms this somewhat.
In episode 2, on the occasion of the election of the strike delegates, instead of fictional mines ("Hermine II", "Cäcilie", "Karl August", etc.) real mines are mentioned: "Wilhelmine Viktoria", [5] and "Count Bismarck" are located in Gelsenkirchen, " Bonifacius " in Essen. In the second season, a few statements and signs indicate where the colliery is located: The inhabitants see and hear the explosion of the ammunition depot that Otto blew up, which according to Max is located in Haßlinghausen . Later, a sister of the Caritas Hattingen office (as it says on her coach) delivers laundry and hidden communist leaflets to the Kruska family from. Together with Rewandowski's statement that the Siegfried colliery is already more than 100 years old (at the beginning of the 19th century the Ruhr mining industry concentrated on the last mentioned cities), the area of today's Ennepe-Ruhr district appears to be the most likely place of action. On a sign at the restaurant is a beer brewery from Dortmund to read. The newspaper, which is read by Friedrich Boetzkes, is called 'Tremonia', which is the Latin name for the city of Dortmund.
The constituency winner of the 1912 Reichstag election, Karl Boetzkes, is indeed a fictional character, but has a similar life as the actual Wahlkreissieger (election district winner) Max King (about the life data, the craft work at a young age and the rise to the trade unionist). [6] This won the mandate in the constituency Hagen - Schwelm - Witten , which includes the mentioned localities. The only other constituency winner of the SPD in the Ruhr area was that year the dentist and writer August Erdmann in the constituency of Dortmund - Hörde .
The conveyor tower in the first season has a clear similarity to an early photograph of the Hibernia colliery from the 1850s, as it is printed in the WAZ Chronicle of the Ruhr (1987). Such scaffolding was around 1887, when the action of the series begins, of course, long outdated and almost nowhere in use.
Based on the TV series, the director Volker Lösch staged a play by the same name at the Schauspiel Essen 2012 . [7]
The Red Ruhr Army was an army of between 50,000 and 80,000 left-wing workers who conducted what was known as the Ruhr Uprising (Ruhraufstand). It was the largest armed workers' uprising in the nation's history, and ran from 13 March to 2 April, 1920, in Germany's most important industrial area. The workers were reacting to the Kapp Putsch, an effort by right-wing forces in March 1920 to overthrow the elected government.
The Deutscher Werkbund is a German association of artists, architects, designers, and industrialists, established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern architecture and industrial design, particularly in the later creation of the Bauhaus school of design. Its initial purpose was to establish a partnership of product manufacturers with design professionals to improve the competitiveness of German companies in global markets. The Werkbund was less an artistic movement than a state-sponsored effort to integrate traditional crafts and industrial mass production techniques, to put Germany on a competitive footing with England and the United States. Its motto Vom Sofakissen zum Städtebau indicates its range of interest.
The history of coal mining goes back thousands of years, with early mines documented in ancient China, the Roman Empire and other early historical economies. It became important in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was primarily used to power steam engines, heat buildings and generate electricity. Coal mining continues as an important economic activity today, but has begun to decline due to the strong contribution coal plays in global warming and environmental issues, which result in decreasing demand and in some geographies, peak coal.
The Miners Strike of 1910-11 was an attempt by miners and their families to improve wages and living conditions in severely deprived parts of South Wales, where wages had been kept deliberately low for many years by a cartel of mine owners.
New Waterford is an urban community in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality of Nova Scotia, Canada.
The Stars Look Down is a 1935 novel by A. J. Cronin which chronicles various injustices in an English coal mining community. A film version was produced in 1939, and television adaptations include both Italian (1971) and British (1975) versions.
On April 21, 1920, during a miners strike in Butte, Montana's copper mines, company guards fired on striking miners picketing near a mine of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, killing Tom Manning and injuring sixteen others, an event known as the Anaconda Road massacre. His death went unpunished.
The National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers (NACODS) is an organisation representing former colliery deputies and under-officials in the coal industry.
The House Order of Hohenzollern was a dynastic order of knighthood of the House of Hohenzollern awarded to military commissioned officers and civilians of comparable status. Associated with the various versions of the order were crosses and medals which could be awarded to lower-ranking soldiers and civilians.
William Abraham, universally known by his bardic name, Mabon, was a Welsh trade unionist and Liberal/Labour politician, and a member of parliament (MP) from 1885 to 1920. Although an MP for 35 years, it was as a trade unionist that Abraham is most well known. Initially a pioneer of trade unionism, who fought to enshrine the principle of workers' representation against the opposition of the coal-owners, he was regarded in later life as a moderate voice believing that disputes should be solved through conciliation rather than industrial action. This drew him into conflict with younger and more militant leaders from the 1890s onwards. Although the defeat of the miners in the Welsh coal strike of 1898 was a clear defeat for Mabon's strategy, his prestige was sufficient to ensure that he became the first president of the South Wales Miners' Federation which was established in the wake of the dispute. Abraham was noted for his powerful speaking voice, and was a renowned orator in English and Welsh.
Wagner is a 1983 television miniseries on the life of Richard Wagner with Richard Burton in the title role. It was directed by Tony Palmer and written by Charles Wood. The film was later released on DVD as a ten-part miniseries.
Erni Mangold is an Austrian actress and stage director. Since 1948, she had appeared in more than 75 films and TV productions.
Klaus Johannes Behrendt is a German actor. Since 1992 he has starred in the Westdeutscher Rundfunk version of the popular television crime series Tatort; he also stars in the 2008 film Die Bienen - Tödliche Bedrohung.
The Ruhr uprising or March uprising (Märzaufstand) was a left-wing workers' revolt in the Ruhr region of Germany in March 1920. The uprising took place initially in support of the call for a general strike issued by the Social Democrat members of the German government, the unions, and other parties in response to the right-wing Kapp Putsch of 13 March 1920.
The actual boundaries of the Ruhr vary slightly depending on the source, but a good working definition is to define the Lippe and Ruhr as its northern and southern boundaries respectively, the Rhine as its western boundary, and the town of Hamm as the eastern limit.
Abraham Moffat was a Scottish trade unionist and communist activist. He was elected repeatedly to high office in the trade unions and represented the union on government coal boards. He held major union offices: President of the National Union of Scottish Mine Workers; member of the Executive Committee of the Miners' Federation of Great Britain; Vice-Chairman Scottish Regional Coal Board; and member National Coal Board. He served as president of the union from 1942 to his retirement in 1961, when he was succeeded by his younger brother Alex Moffat, also an activist.
Erna Schlüter was a German operatic dramatic soprano and voice teacher. Beginning as a contralto at the Oldenburgisches Staatstheater in 1922, she moved to the Nationaltheater Mannheim in 1925 where her voice developed to dramatic soprano, to the Stadttheater Düsseldorf in 1930 where she appeared in 1933 in the world premiere of Winfried Zillig's Der Rossknecht and was awarded the title Kammersängerin. Her last station, from 1940, was the Hamburg State Opera.
The Prince of Wales Colliery, was a coal mine that operated for over 130 years in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, England. It was permanently closed in 2002 after geological problems were found to make accessing remaining coal reserves unprofitable, and most of the site was later converted for housing.