‘A ray of light in hard times’ – this is how one of the main heroines characterizes the events described in ‘Rosenstrasse‘, the 2003 film directed by Margarethe von Trotta. The episode took place in February-March 1943 and was one of the few, if not the only, public protest in Nazi Germany against the deportation and extermination of the Jews. The demonstrations took place on Berlin’s Roses Street (hence the name of the film) where hundreds of Jews who were to be deported to concentration and extermination camps were held in a former Jewish welfare center. They were organized by the non-Jewish wives of the arrested men, mixed couples having a special status in the context of the racial laws (the Nurenberg laws). This unique public display of solidarity with the Jewish population (albeit motivated by family ties) led to the release of about 1,800 Jews, most of whom survived the war. In German history, the episode is considered as proof that ‘it could have been otherwise’ and presented as one of the few moments of anti-Nazi civil resistance.
The screenplay (co-written by Margarethe von Trotta and Pamela Katz) is conceived as a journey into family history and rediscovery of identity that is undertaken more than 50 years after the war by Hannah Weinstein, a young Jewish New Yorker. Her mother, about whose biography the daughter knows very little, except that she came to the United States as a child after the war, seems to go through a crisis of identity radicalization, deciding to mourn her deceased husband according to the laws of Jewish orthodoxy and opposing vehemently Hannah’s marriage to a young non-Jew. With the help of a cousin who came to her father’s funeral, Hannah begins to retrace her mother’s biography and discovers that the 8-year-old Jewish girl had been rescued and sheltered during the last years of the war by Lena Fischer, a woman descended from the German aristocracy, who in turn was married to a Jew. Lena still lives in Berlin, and Hannah will travel to meet her. From here, the story of the events in Rosenstrasse is reconstructed through flash-backs that visually translate the accounts of the woman who, almost 60 years ago, had participated in the protests to save her husband, had met and taken under her protection the Jewish girl, remained alone in the world after her mother’s deportation.
Margarethe von Trotta is a multi-talented filmmaker – actress, screenwriter, director – who spent the first years of her career in the milieus of the French New Wave and then the German New Cinema, to establish herself in the following decades with films and roles in which she analyzes (especially) German history and brings into debate important figures and moments, some not without controversy. ‘Rosenstrasse‘ is an important film in its very subject matter, but it is an uneven film in its achievement. The most powerful part seemed to me to be the individual stories that reconstruct destinies – many tragic – broken by war and the horrors of the Holocaust. It is the secondary characters, some of whom only appear in a scene or two, that have the best chance of remaining in the viewers’ memory. The contemporary plot and especially the episodes set in America don’t hold up as solidly and are based too much on stereotypes. As in all of the director’s films, the prominent characters are women and the actresses are given the opportunity for solid roles. Maria Schrader (herself a remarkable director and actress) is excellent as the woman on a quest for the truth about her family history and her own identity. Katja Riemann and Doris Schade interpret the role of Lena at both ages with aplomb and dignity. I was less impressed by Jutta Lampe as the mother. The way her role is written does not clarify either her supposed identity crisis or the radical change that occurs towards the end. The episode of the flirtation with Goebbels, which would have led to the release of the prisoners, has been widely criticized, especially in Germany, because it appears to downplay the impact of the women’s protests. I think these criticisms are justified, although it seems that, historically, it was indeed Goebbels who ordered the release of the prisoners. Franz Rath‘s cinematography differentiates the leaps into the past by shooting in gray and metallic shades, almost black and white. ‘Rosenstrasse‘ remains an interesting and important film both for its subject matter and for the discussions it has generated and will continue to generate.