In Liebe, Eure Hilde (From Hilde, with Love)
Directed by Andreas Dresen
Starring Liv Lisa Fries, Johannes Hegemann, Gabriela Maria Schmeide, Lisa Wagner

Review by Barry Healy

Screening nationally as part of the German film Festival, In Liebe, Eure Hilde focuses on the story of Hilde Coppi, a leading figure in one of the Communist-led, underground Resistance movements in Nazi Germany. Her individual story opens a narrative of the groups in which she participated.

This is a film in which even characters in seemingly minor, subsidiary roles are great, historical Resistance heroes. In discussing this I will be referring to some of the film’s key plot points. So, a spoiler alert applies.

Hilde Coppi and her husband, Hans participated in various anti-Nazi circles. After serving a year in a Nazi concentration camp in the early 1930s, Hans helped to build an anti-Nazi network of hundreds of factory workers.

The couple hid people who were on the run and slowly moved into espionage activities and radio communications with Moscow. Their radio transmissions failed; they appear to have only successfully communicated once. However, the intelligence their group gathered was sent via other methods to the USSR.

The couple conducted other dangerous propaganda work such as in 1942, when the Nazi government put on a major anti-Soviet exhibition called, The Soviet Paradise. With other activists they roamed the streets late at night, putting stickers denouncing the propaganda on the advertising posters. The stickers read: “Permanent Exhibition; The Nazi Paradise; War, Hunger, Lies, Gestapo; How much longer?”

They illegally monitored Radio Moscow broadcasts, transcribing statements by captured German soldiers from the Eastern Front. They wrote anonymous letters to the soldiers’ families letting them know their loved ones were alright. This undercut Nazi stories that all captured German soldiers were immediately executed.

They also produced leaflets that were circulated around working-class areas using methods such as surreptitiously leaving copies on the seats of public transport.

The couple hid Albert Hossler, a German Communist who had managed to get to the Soviet Union. In 1942, the Soviet spy service, the NKVD parachuted Hossler into German-held territory to connect with the Resistance.

Hilde and Hans Coppi were arrested in September 1942 when Hilde was heavily pregnant. The Nazis allowed her to give birth in prison and nurse her son for five months. Then they guillotined her.

It is this period in prison that In Liebe, Eure Hilde concentrates on, with the story of the Resistance activities told in episodic, non-sequential flashbacks.

It is a moving and well-made film that is worth seeing. However, as a historical account of the Resistance militants it distorts reality. Director Andreas Dresen spoke with Red Ant about his film and said that his approach was to “humanise” his subjects.

Dresen grew up in the former German Democratic Republic (DDR, East Germany) and still chaffs against what he regarded as unreal representations the authorities fed him of the Resistance heroes. “We were told that they were active 24 hours a day, like they were super-people,” he said. “I wanted to show their human side.”

What Dresen succeeds in doing is presenting the militants as amateurishly failing as underground fighters. The definite impression is given that Hans manipulated the naive Hilde into the Resistance.

The only motivation the film presents for Hilde Coppi’s activities is her infatuation with her husband, not any political beliefs. Apparently, this circle of Communists spent their time in drinking and sex with nary a political thought in their minds. Certainly not a word of political analysis passes their lips.

It is simply inconceivable that such activists would risk everything without a profound motivation.

The Nazi execution process is shown, in which the prisoners were given a chance to give a final statement. I have no idea if Hilde Coppi used her last breaths to heroically denounce fascism, but in this telling she just passively goes to her doom.

Dresen is also at pains to “humanise” the Gestapo! Hilde Coppi is not only treated with kindness while interrogated, but she is also fed snacks by one of her captors. Dresen told Red Ant that he wanted to show that most Nazi supporters acted out of opportunism, not a sense of commitment.

One such character in the film is the female prison guard, Annaliese Kuhn, a real historical figure. She is depicted as a hard-hearted Nazi who slowly softens when faced with Hilde’s loving relationship with her baby son.

In fact, as Dresen admitted to Red Ant, Annaliese Kuhn actively supported the female political prisoners, smuggling messages in and out for them. Dresen changed her role for reasons of “dramatic development.”

Another character whose historical role is lessened is that of Pastor Harald Poelchau who offers spiritual support to the death row prisoners. In the film he is a dour, inscrutable figure who, for no apparent reason, kindly passes messages among the prisoners. In reality, he was a member of the resistance Kreisau Circle, out of which emerged the plot to assassinate Hitler!

In “bending the stick” of these Resistance heroes’ stories, Dresen certainly softens them, but at the expense of the depth of their being. And it is also at the expense of showing the breadth of anti-Nazi sentiment in Germany. He leaves the viewer with the feeling that the people in Hilde and Hans’ circle gave their lives for nothing.

Hilde and Hans’ son, Hans Jr. grew up in the DDR and became a historian at the German Resistance Memorial Centre. He is old and severely incapacitated now but was honoured earlier this year on the stage of the Berlin International Film Festival premiere of In Liebe, Eure Hilde.

At the film’s completion he rose to his feet with his fist in the air. No matter the political weaknesses of In Liebe, Eure Hilde the revolutionary heritage of Hilde and Hans Coppi lives on.