The Sailor's Song

The Sailor's Song is an East German black-and-white film directed by Kurt Maetzig and Günter Reisch. It was released in 1958. Plot As the news of the October Revolution sweep through the world, the German High Seas Fleet's command, wary of a mutiny, decides to send all its ships to a suicide mission in the English Channel. Sailors Albin Köbis and Max Reichpietsch are sentenced to death for political activity. When the socialist sailor Steigert, a member of the firing detail, cannot bring himself to shoot them, he is arrested. On the cruiser Prince Heinrich, Steigert's friends Lenz, Lobke, Kasten and Bartuschek receive Vladimir Lenin's transmit to all of mankind calling for peace. Slowly, the sailors in Kiel — all members of different socialist parties: the Social Democrats, the Independent Socialists and the Spartakists — begin to realize the need for a revolution. The workers and the shipmates rebel against the officers, but the political gaps between them lead the uprising to a failure. In the end, many of the rebel sailors attend the foundation conference of the new Communist Party of Germany. Cast Hilmar Thate as Ludwig Bartuschek Raimund Schelcher as August Lenz Günther Simon as Erich Steigert Ulrich Thein as Henne Lobke Horst Kube as Jens Kasten Stefan Lisewski as Jupp König Jochen Thomas as Sebastian Huber Vladimir Gulyaev as Grisha Dieter Klamand as Kuddel König Elfriede Née as Berta König Ekkehard Schall as Schuckert Adolf Peter Hoffmann as Gollwitz Wolfgang Langhoff as attorney Siegfried Weiß as Captain Hans-Ulrich Lauffer as machine gunner Hans-Hartmut Krüger as officer Fred Delmare as sailor Rolf Ripperger as sailor Sabine Thalbach as lady Production The Sailor's Song was conceived in aftermath of the Socialist Unity Party's Conference on Cultural Affairs at October 1957, during which the East German establishment embraced a conservative line and ended the brief period of liberalization that begun after Nikita Khrushchev's Secret Speech. The Sailor's Song was commissioned shortly after, for the celebrations of the fortieth anniversary to the German Revolution.