Background
Veit Harlan was born on 22 September 1899 in Berlin, the son of the novelist and dramatist, Walter Harland.
Veit Harlan was born on 22 September 1899 in Berlin, the son of the novelist and dramatist, Walter Harland.
He made his début in the theatre at the age of sixteen and for eleven years played at the Berlin State Theatre, until in 1927 he began a new career as a film actor. In 1934 he made his début as a movie director with a popular comedy.
The Harlan-Söderbaum duo were profoundly committed to Nazi ideology as exhibited in such movies as Verwehte Spuren (1938), Das Unsterbliche Herz (1939) and above all in Jud Süss (1940).
After World War II Harlan claimed that he was not anti-semitic, that he had been an ‘involuntary’ accomplice of the Nazis and that Goebbels was responsible for the anti-Jewish scenes in Jud Suss Harlan's films were technically well made but suffered from pomposity, blatant propagandist intent and a lack of imaginative inspiration.
His work Kolberg, was the most expensive film in the history of the German cinema - it cost 81/2 million marks and Harlan had at his disposal all the resources of the army, State and Party - was also the last one produced in the Third Reich and contained a desperate appeal for resistance to the bitter end. After 1945
Harlan was imprisoned several times and finally tried before the court of assizes at Hamburg, which found him not guilty of ‘crimes against humanity’ on 29 April 1949. He disappeared from public life until 1951 when he made his film comeback with Unsterbliche Geliebte, starring Christina Söderbaum. Despite an attempted boycott of the work of this Hitlerian film maker, Harlan directed a dozen films after 1951, mostly featuring his Swedish wife.
Jugend
(Movie about German youth with its condemnation of puritan...)
1938Kolberg
(About the resistance of a small Baltic port near Danzig t...)
1944Jud Süss
(The anti-semitic film which was shown in the East every t...)
1940Der Grosse König
(About Frederick the Great.)
1941Krach im Hinterhaus
1934Kater Lampe
1935Die Kreutzersonate
1937Verwehte Spuren
1938Das Unsterbliche Herz
1939Hanna Amon
1951Die Blaue Stunde
1952Sterne über Colombo
1953Verrat an Deutschland
1954Das Dritte Geschlecht
1957Liebe Kann wie Gift sein
1958Die blonde Frau des Maharadscha
1962