The year is 1931, and young Heini Volker has a problem. His unemployed father demands he joins Berlin’s young communists. But his heart belongs to the Hitler Youth. How Heini resolves this quandry is the story of Hitlerjunge Quex, a movie that became central to the moral instruction of young Germans throughout the National Socialist years. Produced in 1933, just months after Hitler’s ascension to power, Hitlerjunge Quex drew from the real-life story of Herbert Norkus, a Hitler Youth killed by communist street-fighters in 1932. An expressly propagandistic vehicle, the film pulls few punches in its depiction of Depression-era misery and the escalating violence of the Weimar Republic’s last years. Indeed, its bracing realism owes a strong debt to Germany’s left-wing proletarian theater movement – an impression underscored by the several prominent leftist (or formerly so) actors featured here. Also striking are the movie’s many quotations – a camera angle here, a mise-en-scéne there – from other Weimar-era classics, from Caligari to Fritz Lang’s M and Bertolt Brecht’s Kuhle Wampe. The fascinating result is a film that, more than any other National Socialist-era production, combines hard-scrabble realism with National Socialist myth-making, its singular portrait of German working-class misery refracted through the transformative lens of National Socialist ideology. An immediate box office success, the film became a National Socialist propaganda staple for years afterwards, by 1945, an estimated 20 million viewers had paid some degree of witness to Heini’s life and martyrdom. Directed by Hans Steinhoff; music by Hans-Otto Borgmann; featuring Heinrich George, Berta Drews, and Claus Clausen.
The great song in this film is “Vorwärts! Vorwärts! schmettern die hellen Fanfaren” (Forward! Forward! Blare the bright fanfares)
Lyrics (Deutsch)
Uns’re Fahne flattert uns voran.
In die Zukunft ziehen wir Mann für Mann
Wir marschieren für Hitler
Durch Nacht und durch Not
Mit der Fahne der Jugend
Für Freiheit und Brot.
Uns’re Fahne flattert uns voran,
Uns’re Fahne ist die neue Zeit.
Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit!
Ja die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod!
Vorwärts! Vorwärts!
Schmettern die hellen Fanfaren,
Vorwärts! Vorwärts!
Jugend kennt keine Gefahren.
Deutschland, du wirst leuchtend stehn
Mögen wir auch untergehn.
Vorwärts! Vorwärts!
Schmettern die hellen Fanfaren,
Vorwärts! Vorwärts!
Jugend kennt keine Gefahren.
Ist das Ziel auch noch so hoch,
Jugend zwingt es doch.
Uns’re Fahne flattert uns voran.
In die Zukunft ziehen wir Mann für Mann
Wir marschieren für Hitler
Durch Nacht und durch Not
Mit der Fahne der Jugend
Für Freiheit und Brot.
Uns’re Fahne flattert uns voran,
Uns’re Fahne ist die neue Zeit.
Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit!
Ja die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod!
Lyrics (English)
Our flag flutters before us
into the future we march man for man
We are marching for Hitler
through night and despair
With the flag of youth
For freedom and bread
Our flag flutters before us
Our flag is the new era
and the flag leads us to eternity
Yes, the flag means more than death
Forward Forward!
Our flag flutters before us
Forward Forward
The Youth has no fear
Germany, You shall stand radiant
Even if we shall fall
Forward Forward
The trumpets are blaring
Forward Forward
The youth has no fear
even if the goal is high
Youth we’ll look, to you
Our flag flutters before us
into the future we march man for man
We are marching for Hitler
through night and despair
With the flag of youth
For freedom and bread
Our flag flutters before us
Our flag is the new era
and the flag leads us to eternity
Yes, the flag means more than death
Germany, 1933, B&W, 87 Minutes, German dialogue with English subtitles.