Ich war neunzehn
Tags: autobiographical, murder

Plot synopsis:
Its April 16th, 1945. Soviet soldier Georg Hecker (Jaecki Schwarz) is announcing to German troops over a loudspeaker system that the war is over and they should surrender to the Russian army. Ich bin Deutscher (Im a German) Georg says. Georg and his parents left Köln, Germany when he was only 8 years old and Georg was raised in Moscow. He is now 19 and returning to the Fatherland as a Soviet soldier. Georg is traveling with his platoon through German towns on the way to Berlin.April 22nd 1945, the Russians are coming into the German town of Bernau. A section of troops are given the task of finding any Nazis in the town. The Russian General (Mikhail Glusski) makes Lieutenant Hecker the commandant and gives him control of the town. As soon as Georg and his troops are left alone, a very young German girl (Jenny Gröllman) appears. The girl is clearly in post traumatic shock from having lived through the war. She saw a woman commit suicide and feels that everyone is better off committing suicide. They girl lost her parents and his confused as to what she should do. She asks Georg if she should Stay in this town? Go home? Go west? They leave the girl and tell her to figure it out for herself.While in Bernau, the troops come across a house with a red flag. Checking if they are Soviet supporters, the troops instead find the towns Mayor (Erich Giesa) and his wife attempting to make a good impression on their new rulers by offering them wine and pretending to be communist sympathizers. The troops instead drink their wine and confiscate their house. As soon as the commandants quarters are set up, Georgs first order of business is to meet with a reverend who wants to hold a service in the town. We are not sure as to Georgs decision as the next scene is quickly ushered in. Georg is having a printer make copies of flyers that have been produced, and after he answers no to being either a Communist or Nazi party member, Georg appoints the old printer as the new mayor of Bernau.While in his quarters, Georg is fixing a tear in his uniform while a female Soviet soldier (Galina Polskikh) eats nearby. Soon thereafter, the same German girl that Georg spoke to briefly is brought into the room by one of the other Russian troops. The girl asks if she can sleep in Georgs quarters and he quickly tells her no. Through this act, the female soldier discovers that Georg can speak German. The girl expresses her fears of the Russian troops and, incensed, the female soldier begins to yell at the German girl about the terrible things that happened in her home town. The girl quickly replies I didnt do anything and its not my fault. Russian tanks arrive and continue through the town without stopping to assist the small number of troops in Bernau.Still in Bernau, Georg sleeps with the radio on and hears German news reports of 15 year old Hitler Youth and wounded soldiers carrying out the German counter offensive. Georg is awakened, given breakfast and then leaves. As he is leaving, he again comes across the German girl. They say nothing and only stare as the Soviet truck drives away.April 23rd 1945, trying to find a new place to set up headquarters, Georg and his troops find a Nazi supply unit. Being mostly officers, the unit does not believe Georg when he tells them the war is over and it is best that they surrender. The commanding officer says that he must file a formal request for permission to surrender.April 24th, 1945, driving farther into Germany, they come across a group of Russian soldiers about to execute a man who they believe to have been a Nazi camp guard. Georgs friend Wadim (Vasili Livanov) tries to convince them not to. After finding the German mans Nazi uniform, Wadim leaves and a gunshot is heard.At this point, the film shows actual footage of a Sachsenhausen concentration camp executioner explaining how he operated the gas chambers and the crematorium. A quick shot of Georg standing in a shower is shown, perhaps washing off the sins of his Fatherland. According to the executioner, 13,500 Russians were killed in this manner in only two months.Wadim and another soldier, Sascha (Aleksei Ejbozhenko), sit in a German mans apartment. They ask him how he could live under a Nazi regime, then the German explains to them the seduction of the Nazi party. Sascha takes records that belong to the man. As the German man explains the ideas of Germanness more, Sascha plays the records, while Gregor and Wadim look through German books to try and understand things better.April 30th, 1945, given a special mission as truce bearers, Wadim and Gregor approach Sandau fortress, which contains a number of SS officers. When they present themselves to the fortress, a rope ladder comes down and SS Colonel Lewerenz (Johannes Wieke) along with an adjutant (Jürgen Hentsch) greet Georg and Captain Heymann (Wadim). After being given the terms of surrender, Colonel Lewerenz says that the decision must be made by his fellow officers as a group. The adjutant returns with the news that the other officers refuse to surrender. Gregor and Wadim enter the fortress to try and reason with the other officers. Gregor and Wadim tell the officers that not only is Sandau surrounded, but so too is Berlin. The officers do not believe them and say that their intelligence says otherwise. Disregarded as Goebels propaganda, Wadim still tries to convince them it is best to surrender. They are told that those who surrender will be given extra rations and will be taken care of.Deeper into the fortress, a teenage soldier tells his commanding officer (Kurt Böwe) a harrowing story of how he single handedly destroyed a tank and its driver with a bazooka. The boy says that he was given a chocolate bar for his efforts. Disgusted that he only received sweets, the commanding officer gives the boy his own Iron Cross. Approached by one of the officers who talked to Wadim and Gregor, the commanding officer and he discuss matters, suggesting even killing Gregor and Wadim. The other officers along with Colonel Lewerenz decide that they will surrender only with the unconditional surrender of the German Army. Wadim and Gregor give them until 7am to surrender, or the Soviet army will storm the fortress.Gregor and Wadim are blindfolded and escorted out of the fortress a different way than they came. When they reach the exit, the same officers that escorted them to Sandaus exit, escape down the river on a raft. Gregor continues to warn the Germans of the impending attack via loudspeaker. They surrender only 5 minutes before 7am.May 1st, 1945 Gregor, Wadim, Sascha and their driver Dshingis (Kalmursa Rachmanov) speed down the autobahn swerving around the flaming wrecks of German automobiles. Celebrating the surrender of the German Army, soldiers dance and sing as officers sing, drink and make tiny meat filled pastas called pelmeni. The soldiers decorate the courtyard with lights and a band of German firefighters plays music. While enjoying their meal, the Soviet General comes into the officers dining hall and brings with him former concentration camp inmates who are to be their guests of honor for having resisted the Nazis. A coincidence, one of the inmates actually turns out to be an old family friend of Gregors. Sadly, Gregor does not remember him.Having had too much to drink, Gregor falls and hurts himself. He hears the voice of his mother who tells him that he is always doing things too early. He smoked when he was 8 and was drinking schnapps when he was fifteen. Wadim is discussing with one of the camp inmates and asking him how he should explain the war to children. Being a school teacher, Wadim is very confused as to what he should do. The inmate tells how Hitler came into power and Wadim still asks how he should clarify that Goethe and Auschwitz are both German names.May 2nd, 1945, the troops come to a small town in the countryside and appoint one of the former inmates as the new mayor. As they dive away, they play the war ballad about Jamara. While driving, Gregor discusses things with one of the other inmates. Gregor asks about how things were in Germany before the war. The inmate asks Gregor what he is planning to do after the war, Gregor ponders that maybe school is an option. The inmate jumps onto another truck as he tries to make his way home and Gregor whistles Jamara as they drive away.Gregor and his troops reach a clearing in a small valley and find a whole platoon of troops playing dominoes, volleyball and soccer, cooking and sunbathing. Gregor finds another soldier who is just as young, if not younger than he is. They talk briefly and then encounter a German counter offensive in which the German troops were disguised as Russians and using a Russian tank. In the exchange, the young soldier is killed. Gregor and his troops are able to get away.May 3rd, 1945, Russians discover that there are counter offensives going on all over Germany. The General reports that in every counter offensive, the Germans are disguising themselves as Russians. Gregor, Wadim, Sascha and Dshingis are stationed at a small farmhouse and are setting up a surrender site. The young children at the farmhouse dont like or trust the Russian troops, even though Gregor is a German. Along the road are wounded and weary German soldiers. Again over the loudspeaker, Gregor tells them to surrender. Slowly, one by one the troops cross over the river and the small footbridge that separates them from the road.Among the surrendered is the same young boy from Sandau who received the Iron Cross for his valiant efforts. The farm family then offers to take him in. Gregor begins to make friends with one of the German soldiers (Dieter Mann). While packing up to leave, they are attacked by a group of SS resistance soldiers from across the river. They begin to fire back and Gregors German friend even joins in. After the exchange, it turns out that Sascha has been killed. Enraged, Gregor announces over the loudspeaker that he will have vengeance and kill all of the troops for having killed his friend. They finish packing up, along with all of the German prisoners. Gregors German friend asks him to mail a letter for him, everyone packs up and leaves.

Review: No candy-coating on this one..
Director Wolf has a small masterpiece in this film, which is about the exploration of a young German-born Russian soldier's attempt to find his roots during the final days of World War II as the Russian Army advances on Berlin.
This is also an unsweetened account of the chaos of war.
Many suspenseful moments and never boring.
Gregor, the nineteen-year-old of the title reveals himself throughout as the confused, self-conscious, prideful and sometimes ruthless young man that he is, not unlike any young man of 19 caught up in wartime situations.
Highly recommended.
Another look but an unusual one at the war that marked the 20th Century..
Communist propaganda in a human way.
Shot in Eastern Germany in 1968, 'Ich war neunzehn' (= German for 'I was nineteen years old') is among the better films from the former Communist part of Europe.Set in the last days of Adolf Hitler, 'Ich war neunzehn' deals with Stalin's Red Army invading Germany from the East.
To avoid the countless atrocities committed by both sides in the most savage war in history of mankind, the East German filmmakers choose to show events through the eyes of a nineteen year old boy.
A logical choice: this introduces innocence, as well as hope for the future.The rest of this enjoyable film is propaganda, sold in a friendly and human way.
The Red Army is presented as liberating the German common people from Hitler's rule.
Its victorious soldiers show themselves eager to make friends with them.In reality, after three terrible years of German occupation in the Soviet Union, Stalin's soldiers applied a fearful revenge when invading Germany.
A revenge encouraged by steady Communist propaganda.
It resulted in many crimes, such as the free rape of German women.
You will understand that 'Ich war neunzehn' ignores this..
Soviet/East German propaganda, sugar coating history.
I rented this film because of an interest in German culture and history.
I lived there for a while, and have a (former East-) German wife and relatives.
My wife, who was 11 in 1945 when this film takes place, says that it was much worse then than the movie shows, particularly with regard to the utter devastation, starvation, and behavior of the Russian soldiers.
Few women between ages of 13 and 50 escaped being raped, and most boys of her age and a bit older were taken away and never seen again.
After reunification, the mass graves of many of them, killed by Russians, have been found.
Her father, who was never a soldier or Nazi, was shipped off to slave labor in Kazakhstan for about ten years.
In the movie, it is implied that the surrendering German soldiers were rewarded with extra food, and then sent home.
Get real.
The intent of the movie, made in the GDR at a time when they were barraged with propaganda trying to make them believe that Russians were their friends, is obvious.Nevertheless, I did enjoy watching it, because even propaganda can be interesting for what it is.
(Example: Triumph of the Will, which is infinitely better than this movie).
The events involving the surrender of Spandau prison to the 19 year old Russian "commandant", which may have been based on fact and the director's own experience, were of particular interest, and well dramatized..
Good but not Great.
The main problem with Ich war 19 is that glosses over several essential realities.
It seems like a Soviet propaganda movie trying to white wash the past.
The invasion of Germany by Soviet troops in 1944/5 was nothing short of barbaric.
18 million people were driven from their ancestral lands - over 2 million civilians were brutally murdered.
More than a million POW's were liquidated and another 2 million Ukrainians, Poles and White Russians of German descent were also exterminated by the Soviets.
The landscape was almost completely destroyed by allied bombing and soviet artillery.
80% of the buildings were destroyed.
Women (and boys) were frequently raped on the spot.
The boys were lucky - they were invariably bayoneted after-wards - but the women were passed to next comrade.
Of course we can argue that this was justified because of the Holocaust and the German barbarism in Russia and Poland.
But women and children?
The film does not even suggest this was happening.
It represents the war as a sort of part time activity in which a few unlucky people got killed.
The buildings are all intact.
The people all look well fed.
The faces look completely undramatized.
It doesn't bring home the reality of truth.
1945 was truly horrific for everyone between Berlin and Konigsberg (Kaliningrad)It is an indelible scar on the memory of everyone old enough to remember it.
This film does not convey that horror..
Wes Anderson Style.
This movie is superb!
If you enjoy Wes Anderson, then watch this film!
It's very similar in characters, cinematography, costuming and actor blocking.What a powerful message to the German people at the same time.
This piece of art calls out their hatred and is quite blunt about it.
No spoilers, but I love that the lead Russian soldier is German.
It adds a sense of rebellion to his actions.
It's refreshing and fun to watch.
Again, I highly recommend this to Wes Anderson fans.
The cinematography is fantastic!
Great long shots, close ups and framed scenes.A film definitely worth finding and owning.
This film is VERY deceiving..
I actually wanted to give this film a "7" or "8"; yet there are some terrible problems with the entire premise of it.
The story comes from the memoirs of a former Soviet soldier whom the protagonist is based upon.
Filmed in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) it portrays a person with his background (born German though raised in Russia) as being somewhat unusual (which it was and still is) but nonetheless a "good" or "noble" person.In the 1930s the communist party was at it's zenith in popularity in the United States.
In that day and age it was not uncommon to meet a communist, in the United States, who did not have an accent (Jack Reed of "Reds" fame was not the only such person in the United States).
This is understandable due to the horrific Great Depression.
However, Communists or Socialist Workers were still a minority party in our country.
A few of them "progressed" from being members of a minority party to being total lunatics and actually migrated to the Soviet Union to live and work.
During the Stalin purges of the late 1930s many of them were seen running to the U.S. embassy, being chased by KGB agents, and waving their (by then) useless passports trying to find asylum with their embassy of their former country.
Usually they were gunned down before they reached the embassy.
A movie dealing with similar emigrants to Russia after WWII is "East/West".Anyway, the protagonist of this film is the son of similar wackos who lived in Germany prior to emigrating to the USSR.
Most Germans at that time who fled the Third Reich (such as Albert Einstein) went to the west; NOT to Russia.
One really has to question the motivation of the author's parents and the burden they saddled him with (having to live in a totalitarian regime for a long time afterwards).
Anyway, this kid essentially became a "freak" by being a Soviet citizen born in Germany.
His parents were obvious wackos and/or weirdos.Still, I will have to admit that as bad as the Soviets were they palled in comparison with the Third Reich.
That, unfortunately, is the truth.
And, it shows just how terrible that regime was.
Interesting film; showing the conflict of a pretty bad system (USSR) with an utterly terrible one (war time Germany).
The film shows, as other reviewers have noted, the hope for a reconciliation between post war Germany and Russia.
Fair enough, except the reconciliation was to include a socialist German (ALL of Germany; not just East Germany).
Fortunately, like the battle of Spandau Fortress in the film, that never happened..
East German war flick to put in your DVD collection, right besides Untergang..
War propaganda movie?
Pull-heeze.
And what do you think Guns of Navarone, Sands of Iwo Jima and SPR are?
Of course, for the popcorn-fed fan of Hollywood war flicks, those are instead "accurate, realistic depictions of war", so more credible than anything coming from beyond the former Iron Curtain.
As for me, let me put it this way: if I was abducted by sadistic goons and given the choice of having to watch non stop SPR or IWN, I'd choose IWN hands down.
This is why.For a propaganda film, IWN is pretty restrained.
So much so, even if we are here in the weeks of the final Red Army assault on Nazi Germany, the moment of greatest military glory for the URSS, you won't see a single Soviet flag.
The only flag seen here is one made of bed covers to be used to identify a Command Post.
And that in a movie 2 hrs.
long long--did you see that, Steven?.
No triumphalism or braggadocio either.
Nowhere you'll see here the gun-ho attitude of the soldier eager to kill enemies so present in so many Hollywood war flicks, neither the blatant jingoism nor the spiteful treatment of the enemy.
But in all fairness, more than a war film this is one about things happening during a war, as there are few combat scenes and those shown are mostly to remind us of the realities of war.
But IWN isn't about Russians either but about a 19-year old from Cologne, Germany, whose parents had to emigrate to the URSS when he was 8 because of Hitler and who comes back in 1945 with the victorious RA.
So this is really about returning to your roots, which in his case are German.It has been said many times that IWN is about memory, but I disagree.
To me it's mainly about identity, national or cultural.
Greg Hecker is now a Lt. in the Red Army and, perhaps because of that, he's picked as CO in Bernau.
That takes the whole first chapter of the film, where we see him grappling with his new obligations, which include taking, as POWs, a few Germans who have already stopped fighting anyway and deals with two girls--German & Russian--whose lives have been destroyed by war, thus giving occasion for the most emotionally charged scene in the film and one of the best dramatic scenes I have seen in a war flick.
What makes the power of this scene, as of most, is the authenticity of the people playing the parts.
They really live their roles; this isn't just a job or a chore for them--and that right from the lead down to every soldier, farmer, child, parading in front of the camera.
All that make for IWN one of the most gratifying movies you'll ever watch.IWN could be a bigger treat if you watch it back to back with Downfall.
One amazing thing—considering that it was made when East Germany was still a satellite of the URSS and that DF was shot in a free, united Germany--is how much both resemble each other.
You may even put them together, in your mind, and get a good global idea of what was going on while the RA was taking Berlin.
They really complement each other, the events of one fitting to perfection the other.
the rant of the Nazi boss in Spandau, in the dark catacomb that has become his last refuge, how eerily echoes that of Hitler to his generals (and his end also: he shoots himself when Spandau falls).
And his previous chat with the tank-destroyer kid reproduces the medal giving ceremony in the Chancellery.
And the kid himself could have been Peter Krantz, had not been for him becoming a POW hours later.
The German officers debating the Spandau surrender also mirror the discussions in the Berlin bunker at that time and the officer, amongst them, using the Russian truce bearers to conceal his own escape could have well been Fegelein.
(As for Russian raping & pillaging, don't ask Germans to delve on that, and they know well why).As said, the acting is superb all across the board, while understated at the same time.
No Rambos here.
one episode on the surrender of Spandau, where Gregor and his pal succeed in an almost suicidal peace mission, but this is treated with the utmost simplicity: just a Thanks from the General.
No medals, nor patriotic speeches, just Thanks.The pacing is fast; from its beginning IWN takes an intense, suspense filled, rhythm and it never lets up.
You never know what's gonna happen next--even if you know already the end of the overall story--as the plot takes an episodic nature.
At any given moment the action could take an unsuspected turn, except during a brief lull for May Day celebrations.The cinematography is masterful, despite the B/W, and the soundtrack hauntingly evocative.
I could watch some scenes many times over: the hanged soldier floating down the river; Spandau and its catacomb like corridors.
But most of all the scene where a truck leaves a girl and we see her disappearing from our field of vision, as the vehicle takes a turn; then she appears again, barely visible in the morning haze; then she disappears again.
Simply genius.
But what I loved most here is Greg being recognized by every German as one of their own and that bothering him a lot.Vastly ignored, underrated, classic.
Ideology Ruins Potential Classic.
(Note: this film is based on director Konrad Wolf's 1945 diary.
It is, therefore, pretty much an autobiographical story about his own life and experiences.)In 1934, to escape Hitler, a German Jewish family flees to Russia.
In 1945, the son, now a nineteen year-old lieutenant, returns as a member of the Soviet army.
Among the many things he experiences on his way to Berlin is a tour of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
There a demonstration of the workings of a gas chamber is performed.
The film as a whole, however, suffers greatly from having been produced in East Germany.
The protagonist's Jewish identity is never introduced.
This seriously weakens the ambiguous impact of his return "home." Also, in general, the Russian soldiers invading Berlin behaved badly.
For example, a hundred thousand rapes or more are said to have occurred.
Yet, the film presents not even a whiff of this.
Indeed, only one German girl is shown to be worried, and she is reassured and sent upon her way.
Meanwhile, throughout all the movie, Soviet personnel deport themselves in noble and gentlemanly ways.
Thus, a potentially realistic classic is ultimately doomed by ideology..
East Germany elaborating on the war.
"Ich war neunzehn" or "I was nineteen" is a German movie from 1968 and the duo who made this were Konrad Wolf and Wolfgang Kohlhaase, both very much known today here in Germany.
There were so so many films that elaborated on the subject of World War II, also from the German perspective, and here we have one of the most known approaches from the Eastern Side of the Wall.
Also it has lots of autobiographical impact in terms of Wolf's early years.
All this is a good basis for an interesting and convincing film, but sadly I must say the overall outcome did not impress me at all.
It is tough to say what the major problem is, but I just felt that it was never interesting in terms of the characters, story or historic context.
Lead actor Jaecki Schwarz is also a bit known today because of the work he did later in his career and he is still pretty active, especially in German television.
Unfortunately, his performance here is nothing that got me really curious about his other works.
This film is slowly dripping forward in its massive slightly under two hours, but there were no moments at all where I was really impressed or which I would call memorable.
I give it a thumbs-down.
Not recommended.