New Hitler Comedy

Mein Fuehrer – the Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler

Hitler in the bathtub

Much has changed since my high school days in a posh suburb north of Copenhagen. An elegant middle-aged German guest lecturer shared her knowledge with us on German classics such as Goethe and Thomas Mann. After a couple of classes, someone raised her hand to ask what German students our age (16-17) were taught about the Second World War. She looked at the impudent student to make sure that she had heard the question correctly, and all of a sudden she left our classroom and never returned. This event took place in the late '70's and much has changed since then. Walls have been demolished, communist regimes are being replaced by democracies and Hitler is on the agenda.

Breaking down a myth
The weekly Der Spiegel says the new wave of films about Hitler demonstrates "a need to break the myth down to a normal human… that makes him more everyday, perhaps easier to understand, in any case smaller. The ultimate way to shrink a myth is to make it laughable". The War and all that went with it has now made it into in a mainstream comedy about Adolf Hitler.

"Mein Fuehrer - the Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler" shows a different image of Hitler than any of us are used to. In one scene he is splashing about in a bathtub with his toy battleship. When he is told there is a conspiracy to kill him, he disappears under the soap bubbles.

Jewish director
The comedy is written and directed by Swiss-born Jewish director Dani Levy. He told the BBC:" Making comedies about hateful people is weird! Usually you're making comedies about people you really love. As a Jewish person who's been living in Berlin more than 25 years, I felt I needed a new approach, and create a comedy to deconstruct the Nazi figures, to have a better understanding of what made German people follow Adolf Hitler dragging the nation into war and the holocaust. I had the feeling that I must do it with another genre, do it by being able to exaggerate through comedy."

Deconstructed Hitler
Hitler is certainly deconstructed in this comedy that would have been unthinkable even a few years ago. He takes acting tips from a Jewish concentration camp inmate and dresses his dog in a Nazi uniform. He has a difficult time performing in bed with Eva Braun and is a bed-wetter.

Critique
Yet, not everyone is laughing. Film critic Knut Elstermann believes that portraying Hitler as a sick and weak individual manipulated by strong characters such as Goebbels and Goering is a mistake. Hitler becomes an innocent child that is being used as a puppet - the danger being that we thereby forget that he truly was the leader of the Third Reich in the 1930's and 40's, who was prepared to conquer the world using any method. Others have pointed out that combining comedy with moral punch lines just doesn't work. You have to choose a genre; otherwise you risk falling between two stools.

Subtitle and Hitler-statement
In "Mein Führer," Levi begins with the mocking subtitle "The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler" and ends with a statement by Hitler (actor Helge Schneider). Hitler here reveals an anthropological - and may I add theological - secret: "Good and evil have the same home, and that home is man."

Mein Fuehrer - the Truly Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler
Instructor Dani Levy

The film was released in Germany on January 11 and is being shown in Europe.