Production and Reception
The creation of the film was based on pictures by the artist Otto Engelhardt-Kyffhäuser, who in January 1940, on Heinrich Himmler's orders, took numerous sketches when he accompanied a trek of resettlers from Volhynia. The indoor shots ran from 2 January to the middle of July 1941 in the Wien-Film studios at the Rosenhügel in Liesing, at Sievering and the Schönbrunn Palace gardens in Vienna. The external shots took place between February and June 1941 in Polish Chorzele and Ortelsburg (Szczytno) in East Prussia. The picture was submitted to censorship at the Film Review Office on 26 August 1941, it was G-rated and received a top attribute as "political and artistical particularly valuable".
The first public performance took place on 31 August 1941 at the Venice Film Festival in the Cinema San Marco, winning an award from the Italian Ministry for Culture. The festive Austrian premiere followed on 10 October 1941 at the Viennese Scala-Kino in the presence of Gauleiter Baldur von Schirach, the premiere in Berlin on 23 October 1941 simultaneously at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo and the Ufa-Theater Wagnitzstraße. The film grossed 4.9 million Reichsmark, thereby below expectation. Nevertheless Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in his diary referred to Wessely's performance in the prison scene as "the best ever filmed".
After the end of World War II the Allies banned any showing of the film. Director Ucicky was also banned from working, although this ban was waived by Austria in July 1947, whereafter he resorted to the Heimatfilm genre. Paula Wessely and her husband Attila Hörbiger became the acclaimed dream couple of the Vienna Burgtheater ensemble. The Austrian author and Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek stated that Heimkehr is “the worst propaganda feature of the Nazis ever”. She utilized some text fragments in her 1985 play Burgtheater. Posse mit Gesang, causing a major public scandal. The film's rights are held by Taurus Film GmbH.
Read more about this topic: Heimkehr
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