Von Richthofen Flies Again

[George Armstrong Custer]

From yesterday's London 'Times':

After 88 years, the Red Baron is flying high again

By Roger Boyes in Berlin

The producers of a new war film want to reclaim the ace pilot as a German hero.

FASTEN your seatbelts for some historical turbulence and critical fire. Germany is preparing to break a 61-year-old taboo by celebrating the life of one of its war heroes, the flying ace known as the Red Baron.

A film depicting the daring deeds of Manfred von Richthofen — who shot down 80 British, Canadian, and Australian pilots during the First World War — will be released in German cinemas next year.

It is sure to stir up a furore. Since 1945 German soldiers have either been portrayed on film as heel-clicking fanatics, closet pacifists or reluctant victims of the Nazi machine. From the terrified submariners in Das Boot (1981) to the tired survivors of Downfall (2004), there has not been much space for derring-do.

The Red Baron however is different: a cult figure abroad, though not in Germany, he is set to bring back the idea of battlefield bravery.

The film, directed by Nikolai Müllerschön, was intended to be a Hollywood vehicle with Val Kilmer playing the German pilot. The US appetite is big for the legend: the Peanuts strip cartoon frequently features imaginary battles between Snoopy and the Red Baron; there are Red Baron computer games and, for some reason, Red Baron pizzas.

But the Germans have decided to reclaim their flying ace and turn him into a truly modern hero. With German troops drawn increasingly into potential combat missions overseas, senior officers have been calling for new regimental role models, untarnished by the Nazis, to encourage the right military virtues.

The Red Baron will thus be played by a young German actor, Matthias Schweighöfer, who presents him as a man with all the instincts of a 21st-century icon: first, as a young pilot who is happy only in the air, then as a swaggering figure bloated by success and, finally, as someone with doubts about how he is being manipulated by the propaganda apparatus.

“He is the forerunner of today’s megastars,” says Herr Schweighöfer, “because he is manufactured into something and then has to fit into that mould.”

The film portrait is historically accurate: von Richthofen was a style-conscious maverick. Typically, members of his squadron did not salute other officers. He had his planes painted red and accommodated his men in extravagant tents — hence the squadron’s nickname, used by both the British and the Germans, of Richthofen’s Flying Circus.

Von Richthofen may thus be a German fighting hero but the director is careful to depict him as a rebel against the Establishment. One scene shows him jumping out of the car of a field marshal to buy a mouth organ for a friend —an unthinkable break with Prussian discipline.

Decades of debate about the cause of the Baron’s death followed his fatal shooting down in April 1918. The first claim to have killed the German ace was by a Canadian pilot, Roy Brown, who had been in a dogfight with the Baron. Played by Joseph Fiennes, the Canadian pilot is given the film role of von Richthofen’s nemesis. But British and Australian historians believe that the Baron died after being shot by an Australian soldier on the ground.

The British kept the Red Baron myth alive at a time when most Germans wanted to forget both the First and the Second World Wars.

It is the British who have always hailed von Richthofen as a brilliant pilot. In fact, says historians, the Red Baron was not particularly gifted as a flyer but he was a very accurate shot. It is this that gave him his exceptionally high success rate.

The Germans acknowledged the British role in cherishing the Red Baron by sending his great nephew, Hermann von Richthofen, as Ambassador to London between 1989 and 1993. Even so, German producers were still reluctant initially to put up money for a film that honoured a man who had killed so many British pilots.

Now that taboo has crumbled: it is possible for Germans to celebrate military prowess once again.

[End of 'Times' article]

I guess one of the most contentious issues which this movie will raise - at least in the UK, Canada and Australia - is the producer's decision to award the credit for downing the Baron to Roy Brown. In my view it almost certainly wasn't Brown; so plenty of scope for debate there!

For more info, images and video clips, go to the movie's official website (German & English versions) at:

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Ciao,

GAC