The axe of Wandsbek

“The Axe of Wandsbek” by Arnold Zweig is regarded together with Anna Segher’s “The Seventh Cross”, as the most significant example of German literature about the Third Reich, written in exile, this is the only novel of distinction depicting the Hamburg of the thirties, and it is therefore doubly astonishing, why this story is still so little known in the Federal Republic—the first reprint of a GDR publication appeared as late as 1979 Zweig’s novel is only an example of what had been the fate of so many works of exile-literature, which did not receive “admission” into the Federal Republic in the fifties and sixties, and which had to be discovered as late as during the seventies. It was argued again and again, especially in the context of exile-literature whether one was dealing here with “journalistic trash-literature” meaning anti-propaganda or with “literary works of art”. The film attempts to raise the interest of the spectator to read the novel. The parts played connect to points of “suspense”—alternately or parallel the research-parts set in, investigating all those details which could not be fully explored by Zweig or had to be coded. This way two realities compete with one another: the parts which are played and the parts of the investigations but united through the figure of the reporter. Two stones run opposite: The one “hero is the corrupted petit bourgeois Albert Teetjen, the fiction, the hangman. The second “hero” is the victim—young Bruno Tesch, who is executed as a result of that Bloody Sunday in Altona together with three other Communist.Hangman and victim who don’t meet in Zweig’s version either and know nothing of the other, clash here through two parallel running stories.In the Axe there is the competition of two “realities”. On one side there is—again—the collective memory (as stated in Adolph Passage—in fact the work there inspired The Axe because talking to the old people got us to the first traces of the “butcher-as-hangman”—story). The city Hamburg (with its part “Altona” has secrets—still today. There are things which are only being whispered about—gossip about the Third Reich. And then of course the question: there are Jewish ship owners today. What happened to them during the Third Reich? Haven’t they been on the run from “German” ship owners with whom they have to deal again today—“that’s business”. Many questions which arose after the reading of Arnold Zweig’s novel. And the strange thing happened to the “detective” Heinrich Breloer: using the fiction as a guide, he stumbled over “reality”. Suddenly there were hints of a “real” hangman; suddenly it seemed that there was much more than gossip. On the other hand there is the story of the book which we tell. It has been produced in black-and-white by Horst Königstein—distinctively in the feel of Thirties-movie (that means in its triviality very much up to the Gothic feel of German expressionism in the movies and its aftermath, like Fritz Lang and even Alfred Hitchcock in his British period; but then of course there is the feel of UFA-drama which nourished the other side of fantasy in German people during the Third Reich—keeping wishes for even “contradictory living” beyond the party-line alive, at least before 1983). Both stories start like films which of course every television viewer knows: “documentary” and “drama” (though with a specific “movie”-Approach); then both formats mingle and the questions come immediately: is this true? Has it been like this? And the “heroes” become alive. The young communist Bruno Tesch (19 years old at the time of his death) isn’t the cardboardhero anympre—he had been in love, he was afraid of dying. The butcher becomes sympathetic: though business along—the big business uses him; the ship owners expand but the misled butcher loses his butchery. His growing despair, his love for his wife their death looks like ultimate tragedy: it is the allegory for the German people. They—like Faust—signed a treaty with the devil (which in this case is the ship owner Foot, or as you may say: “Foot”, devil’s foot—and being overtook by these forces.