It is a story about courage and resistance, about pride, dignity and trust, as well as about a woman’s unshakeable love for her husband and his work: the ARD drama “Martha Liebermann – A Stolen Life”.
The leading role is played by the actress Thekla Carola Wied, along with Fritzi Haberlandt as a resistance fighter, Franz Hartwig as the ice-cold Gestapo commissioner and Rüdiger Vogler as the painter Max Liebermann. ARD will show the film produced by Regina Ziegler this Monday (October 10) at 8:15 p.m.
The year is 1943: the artist’s widow Martha Liebermann is threatened – like all Jews in Germany – with deportation to a concentration camp. She hardly ever leaves her apartment in Berlin. Art treasures hang on the walls – works by her husband. The elderly lady is assisted by her maid Luise (Lana Cooper) and a group of resistance fighters. Her daughter Käthe had already emigrated to the USA five years earlier. Martha Liebermann stayed in Berlin because she didn’t want to leave her husband’s paintings.
Stayed out of love for her husband and his pictures
“The pictures are my life, and when I leave them, I leave my life. Then my life is over,” quoted Thekla Carola Wied in an interview with the German Press Agency Martha Liebermann. The pictures also stand for the great love between Martha and her husband. The artist’s wife could not have imagined that the situation in Germany would actually get so bad and therefore did not flee with her daughter.
When things became more and more dangerous for Jews, Martha Liebermann applied for emigration to Switzerland and Sweden, despite her concerns about the paintings. However, because her accounts were frozen by the Nazis, she cannot raise the sums required for emigration. Her helpers suggest selling pictures, but that’s not an option for Martha Liebermann.
Director Stefan Bühling shows the secret and dangerous deployment of the resistance fighters around Hanna Solf (Fritzi Haberlandt) as well as the great loyalty of the non-Jewish housekeeper Luise to her boss in haunting images and almost chamber play-like scenes. When the Gestapo went to see Martha Liebermann, Luise courageously, almost carelessly, opposed the men.
race against time
The relationship between Martha and Luise plays a special role in the film, says the leading actress, Wied. In the gloomy apartment of the painter’s widow, the women stick together – until Martha makes a hard decision to protect Luise, who is now considered a traitor and is also threatened.
But can Luise and the Solf Group also protect Martha Liebermann? When the Gestapo put the painter’s widow on the deportation list, a race against time began.
At the television festival in Monte Carlo this summer, the film “Martha Liebermann – A Stolen Life” and Thekla Carola Wied were awarded Golden Nymphs – in the categories “Best TV Film” and “Best Actress”.
