Don't Forget My Little Traudel

Don't Forget My Little Traudel (German: Vergeßt mir meine Traudel nicht)^[1] is an East German comedy film, directed by Kurt Maetzig. It was released in 1957.

Don't Forget My Little Traudel
Directed by	Kurt Maetzig
Written by	Kurt Barthel
Produced by	Hans-Joachim Schoeppe
Starring	Eva-Maria Hagen
Cinematography	Erwin Anders
Edited by	Ilse Peters
Music by	Hans Hendrik Wehding
Distributed by	Progress Film
Release date	15 November 1957 (1957-11-15)
Running time	86 minutes
Country	East Germany
Language	German

Plot

Traudel is a war orphan, whose mother died in the Ravensbrück concentration camp after refusing to renounce her love for a Czechoslovak prisoner. The only memento of her mother is a letter ending with the words "don't forget me, my little Traudel". When she turns seventeen, she flees the orphanage and ventures to Berlin, where she meets policeman Hannes, who falls in love with her and even forges documents for her. He is caught, but is only slightly reprimanded, and marries her.

Cast

• Eva-Maria Hagen: Traudel Gerber
• Horst Kube: Hannes Wunderlich
• Günther Haack: Wolfgang Auer
• Erna Sellmer: Mrs. Palotta
• Günther Simon: Police officer
• Fred Delmare: Traudel's roommate
• Paul R. Henker: man in the shop
• Sabine Thalbach: cashier
• Nico Turoff: night watchman

Production

In the late 1950s, the East German cultural authorities allowed a certain liberalization in the national cinema industry, and a series of entertainment-oriented films was produced by DEFA as a result, mainly comedies.^[2] Director Kurt Maetzig told an interviewer that he decided to create a light-hearted comedy after being exhausted by the work on "the all-too-serious" Castles and Cottages. He encountered difficulties when he tried to have the script approved for filming by the DEFA Commission, which criticized it for lack of morality and overly-sexual content; only the influence of the director and of writer Kurt Barthel enabled it to be authorized.^[3] Maetzig was influenced by The Seven Year Itch when making Don't Forget My Little Traudel, and included a scene in which Eva-Maria Hagen's skirt fluttered in the wind in a manner reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe's famous appearance. The movie was the actress's debut on screen.^[4][5]

Reception

Although Traudel was a commercial success, Maetzig complained that most critics did not respond well to the film: Mikhail Romm told that the director "betrayed Socialist Realism" after watching it.^[3] The East German authorities continued to see it in negative light after its release.^[2]

Antonin and Miera Liehm called the film "a tale of cheap sentimentality".^[6] Joshua Feinstein wrote that "the director was certainly not above... depicting women in demeaning conventions... as a voluptuous ditz".^[7] Sabine Hake noted that the film, while presenting the adventures of a teenage girl, still used the conventions of class struggle and other communist motifs when depicting society.^[8]

References

1. "Vergeßt mir meine Traudel nicht" [Don't Forget My Little Traudel]. defa.de (in German). Archived from the original on 28 March 2018.
2. Schittly, Dagmar (2002). Zwischen Regie und Regime: die Filmpolitik der SED im Spiegel der DEFA-Produktionen. Berlin: Links Verlag. p. 122. ISBN 978-3-86153-262-0.
3. Poss, Ingrid; Warnecke, Peter, eds. (2006). Spur der Filme: Zeitzeugen über die DEFA. Berlin: Links Verlag. p. 124. ISBN 978-3-86153-401-3.
4. Schenk, Ralf (25 January 2005). "Der Mann, der das Kaninchen schuf" [The Man who Made the Rabbit]. Berliner Zeitung (in German). Archived from the original on 9 May 2012.
5. "Retrospective: Vergesst mir meine Traudel nicht" [Don't Forget My Little Traudel]. berlinale.de. 2011.
6. Liehm, Miera; Liehm, Antonin J. (1980). The Most Important Art: Soviet and Eastern European Film After 1945. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 262. ISBN 978-0-520-04128-8.
7. Feinstein, Joshua (2002). The Triumph of the Ordinary: Depictions of Daily Life in the East German Cinema, 1949–1989. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. p. 134. ISBN 978-0-8078-5385-6.
8. Hake, Sabine (2002). German National Cinema. London: Routledge. p. 101. ISBN 978-0-415-08901-2.

External links

• Vergeßt mir meine Traudel nicht at IMDb
• Don't Forget My Little Traudel on cinema.de.