Habermann

Habermann is a 2010 Czech-German-Austrian war drama film directed by Juraj Herz. In the story, the lives of a German mill owner and his family in the Sudetenland are changed dramatically as Europe heats up in 1938. The movie is based on true events and is the first major motion picture to dramatize the post-World War II expulsion of 3 million ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia. Production Juraj Herz has made this statement in describing his film and his reasons for creating it: The script was created on the basis of a book by Josef Urban, based on the fate of the real Hubert Habermann, a miller from Bludov in North Moravia. In 2001, the novel Habermannův mlýn (Habermann's Mill) by Urban was published, being the first novel in Czech literature about the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans, concerning the murder of the miller Habermann in 1945 who was known to be friendly towards Czechs. Herz gave his interest in adopting the novel Habermannův mlýn into a film as based on his own Jewish background growing up in wartime Slovakia. Herz recalled that the Hlinka Guard were brutal towards Jews like himself, but that the local volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) were kindly and friendly. Herz complained that in 1945, the volksdeutsche were all expelled into Germany as traitors to Czechoslovakia while the Hlinka Guardsmen who had deported him to Auschwitz simply changed their uniforms, joining the Czechoslovak security forces and the Communist Party. Plot In 1937, August Habermann is a wealthy ethnic German owner of a local mill that serves as both a sawmill and gristmill in the town of Eglau in the Sudetenland. Habermann employs both Sudeten Germans and Czechs and believes that the two peoples should co-exist peacefully. Habermann is apolitical and marries a Czech woman, Jana, whom he later learns is half-Jewish. Habermann's best friend, Karel Březina, is Czech. In October 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland is transferred to Germany. Habermann welcomes the change as it gives his firm access to the German market, but Karel warns him that he and all the other Czechs in the Sudetenland are now second-class citizens. Karel's warning is soon confirmed by the arrival of the brutal SS Sturmbannführer Kurt Koslowski, who mistreats the local Czechs. Koslowski takes a bullying tone toward August, forcing him to sell flour from the mill to a local hospital/spa that treats wounded German soldiers at cost.