Wim Wenders turns MiniFilm over the German surrender – Diepresse.com
« The keys to freedom » is the name of the four-minute film that traces the importance of the champagne city of Reims for the end of the Nazi Empire.
With a film that is only about four minutes, the German world star and filmmaker Wim Wenders (79) tells the hardly known history of the German surrender 80 years ago in the champagne city of Reims. The Berlin Foreign Office has now published the film « The Key To Freedom » by Wenders and the Scholz & Friends Berlin agency in line with the 80th anniversary of the end of the war.
« There are places where history was written – and nobody knows, » begins Wenders (« The Heaven over Berlin », « Paris, Texas », « Perfect Days »).
Wenders travels to the « most secret place in Europe » 80 years ago: to the map room of a high school in Reims in French, which served as a room of the Allies. In the film, Wenders skillfully interweaves the atmosphere of this room and original recordings of the surrender with current thoughts.
« Freedom is never a matter of course »
« I was born just a few months after the end of the Second World War and had lived in a country for 80 years that was able to regain peace and freedom, completed in 1990 through reunification, » says Wenders (« Buena Vista Social Club », « Pope Francis – a man of his word »), according to a message to the short film.
« With many creative people from Germany and France and the warm support of the participants in Reims, I was able to make a small film that shows not only in a historical review: Freedom is never a matter of course. »
Eisenhower organized the fight against the Wehrmacht from Reims
In the middle of the regular school company, Reims from the mid -1940s organized the American General Dwight D. Eisenhower the fight against the Wehrmacht. And there – a week after the death of Adolf Hitler – the German General Alfred Jodl intended in the early evening of May 7, 1945 with the intention of only negotiating a German surrender on the western front. But he was moved to sign the complete unconditional surrender.
Two months later, a US general is said to have handed over the keys to the Mayor of Reims the keys to the Lycée card room (the secondary school) with the words: « These are the keys to the freedom of the world ».
German surrender first in Reims, then in Berlin
The Second World War started on September 1, 1939 with the German attack on Poland. The German surrender was signed in Reims on May 7, 1945 and came into force on May 8th at 11:01 p.m. CET. On the night of May 9, a second signing in Berlin-Karlshorst followed at the Soviet wish-so Russia celebrates May 9th as the day of the victory. (APA/dpa)
