Conversation With Lars Kraume — Director Of ‘The People Vs. Fritz Bauer’

August 19, 2016
By Masha Leon

I was blown away by German director Lars Kraume’s riveting and revelatory film “The People vs. Fritz Bauer” starring Burghart Klaussner in a brilliant portrayal of indomitable Nazi hunter Bauer. A based-on-fact thriller, the film chronicles the travails and obstacles faced by Fritz Bauer—a German attorney general who—in the 1960’s— was unrelenting in his search for Adolf Eichmann eventually helping the Mossad [an act of treason!] find him and bring him to justice in Israel. In his film notes Kraume posits that Bauer wanted “to teach the Germans to be a better people, to fundamentally change the country during the Adenauer era”.

Bauer, a Jew, was born in Stuttgart in 1903. An atheist, he became the youngest district judge in Germany in 1930, was arrested by the Gestapo in 1933, fled to Denmark, then Sweden, returned to Germany in1949 to become attorney general of Hesse in Frankfurt-am Main [till his death in 1968].

I called Lars Kraume in Germany:

ML: How did you come to do the film?

LK: My co-writer, a [French-Jewish] journalist wrote a book…described the Auschwitz trials in the 1960’s. I grew up in Frankfurt—never heard of Bauer, he was just a short chapter…in the ‘50’’s he was unknown.

ML: What was the reaction about opening this can of worms.

LK: It was well received in Germany…a big success…. It irritated people that in the 50’s and 60’s no one knew about the German atrocities. He died in 1968…. When you show the film to younger people it’s difficult for them to understand so many people at the top of society had jobs during the Nazi regime…

http://forward.com/the-assimilator/348106/conversation-with-lars-kraume-director-of-the-people-vs-fritz-bauer/



Full movie (with registration): http://playing4k.filminstan.pw/4193400