SKU 1394
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DIE SCHWEDISCHE NACHTIGALL (1941)

Ilse Werner, Karl Ludwig Diehl and Joachim Gottschalk, Peter Paul Brauer
$9.99
Traveling together, the Swedish singer Jenny Lind and the writer of fairy tales, Hans Christian Andersen, get to know each other.  He is so enthusiastic about her voice, that he recommends her to the state minister, Count Rantzau.  Jenny becomes his lover and, with his help, ends up in the opera school in Stockholm.  When Andersen finds this out, he takes a trip to Rome.  Jenny, meanwhile, has declined an offer of marriage from the count, because she's thinking about her career.  Andersen, still madly in love with her, tries once more to talk to her about a common future together. 

Joachim Gottschalk, who appears in this film, and who was a much beloved actor in Germany, married a Jewish woman, Meta Wolff, shortly before the Nazis came to power, and they had a half-Jewish son, Michael. The Gottschalks managed to avoid the anti-Semitic Nuremberg laws and the rising tide of anti-Semitic violence in Nazi Germany, because of his immense popularity with the public. Then, in an extraordinarily unwise and tactless move, Gottschalk took his Jewish wife to a social function and introduced her to some of the prominent Nazis, who were present. Although the Nazis were charmed, propaganda chief Josef Goebbels learned about the incident and ordered Gottschalk to separate from his wife. When Gottschalk refused, Goebbels ordered the wife and child to be transported to Theresienstadt. Gottschalk insisted on accompanying them, which Goebbels tried to prevent by ordering him to report to duty in the Wehrmacht.

In November 1941, minutes before the expected arrival of the Gestapo, Gottschalk and his wife sedated their son and then committed suicide by opening the gas taps on their stove. Goebbels ordered that no mention of Gottschalk be made from that point on in the newspapers, but word got out anyway and millions of German women mourned his death. Because of Nazi censorship, most of his devoted fans never learned the circumstance of his death until after war's end.

 
Auf einer gemeinsamen Reise lernen die schwedische Sängerin Jenny Lind und der Märchendichter Hans Christian Andersen kennen. Er ist von ihrer Stimme so begeistert, dass er sie dem Staatsminister Graf Rantzau empfiehlt.  Jenny wird dessen Geliebte und kommt mit seiner Hilfe an die Opernschule in Stockholm. Als Andersen davon erfährt, geht er mit einem Stipendium nach Rom. Einen Heiratsantrag des Grafen lehnt Jenny ab, sie denkt an ihre Karriere. Andersen, der sie noch immer liebt, versucht noch einmal mit ihr über eine gemeinsame Zukunft zu reden.
 

THERE IS A NEWSREEL PREVIEW BEFORE THE FILM, JUST AS GERMAN AUDIENCES MIGHT HAVE SEEN WHEN THE MOVIE WAS FIRST SHOWN (except this newsreel may not be contemporary to when the film was released).

DVD-R IS IN GERMAN WITH NO SUBTITLES (except for the Newsreel). APPROX. 124 MINS. COMBINED TOTAL.