The Marriage of Maria Braun Rainer Werner Fassbinder (FDR; 1979)
The Marriage of Maria Braun Rainer Werner Fassbinder (FDR; 1979) Hanna Schygulla, Klaus Lowitsch, Ivan Desny
viewed Star and Shadow Cinema Newcastle 24 April 2025; ticket £7
the constant companion
In the opening shot of Fassbinder’s ‘Marriage of Maria Braun’ we see Maria and Hermann’s wedding ceremony presided over by a Nazi functionary with a stock portrait of Adolf Hitler looming over the proceedings. It’s the middle of an air raid; a bomb explodes, the room shakes, plaster crumbles, the picture of Hitler crashes to the ground out of sight.
In the final sequence Maria, re-united with Hermann, dies in an explosion at her home after she ignites the gas she has left on in her kitchen. She has just heard she and Hermann are the joint beneficiaries in the will of her boss.
Fassbinder’s movie begins and ends on an explosive note.
In ‘The Marriage of Maria Braun’ Fassbinder creates Hermann the mystery man: Maria’s husband. A husband who for the most part is absent, yet in his absence remains present in the life of his wife. As scripted Hermann and Maria are a war time couple who’ve known each other for only a couple of weeks prior to being wed. Immediately after the marriage Hermann is ordered to the front line and disappears. Despite the short duration of the liaison Hermann occupies the space at the centre of Maria’s identity. Whenever asked she says that she is Hermann’s wife, she waits for his return so that she can take her rightful place as his wife.
Maria’s caste iron commitment to the return of her Hermann appears in antithesis to the confident self sufficiency she expresses, as her career (in parallel with the economic recovery of the FDR) flourishes and she ends up managing a large successful business enterprise. Of course people can incorporate contradictory psychological needs into their lives; but perhaps the existence of contradictory/oppositional drives has the capacity to provoke in the individual a self destructive schizo reaction.
Who is Hermann Braun? He’s a wonderful Fassbinder construct. Hermann comes and goes fades in fades out of the action, but is always there in Maria’s mind always a central reference point in the scenario. When Fassbinder allows him to appear, we are only allowed brief glimpses. He returns from the war, takes the rap and does time for Maria’s killing of Bill, he’s visited in prison and on release takes off to Canada to make his own life. And of course he’s there for the finale. Absent – yes, but when he’s actually in a scene, in Maria’s apartment, in prison, in the final sequence set in Maria’s dream home, he is a very solid presence. In physicality in style of dress in his few words. He’s a man of steel. Hermann’s dialogue is focused, he sees what needs to be said and done. Not just for Maria but for the audience Hermann becomes more and more present, really there on the screen.
Fassbinder’s film making is informed by his work in theatre – theatre inspired by Brecht. What he understands is how to realise theatrical ideas in two-dimensional movie space. He achieves this through his sensibility of shot framing and lighting that always contains the potential for movement. In the course of the film there’s never a feeling of stasis but of kinetic development and which is given further dynamic by the script.
The nature of Fassbinder’s script works to establish the characters in a way that owes much to Brecht. His persona are built on the premise that they take up certain ‘positions’ vis a vis their lives; we understand them through the particular attitudes they evince in relation to the world about them and themselves. Maria is of course exemplary in this respect, and the film’s intentionality takes its cue from her. Maria’s career, whether she is a whore or a CEO, is defined by her statements about her marriage, her boundary setting in other relationships, and her desire to make money to provide for her husband. Likewise Karl’s relationship with Maria is defined by his position in relation to her and the deal he does when he visits Hermann in prison. The audience establish a cognitive bond with the characters rather than an emotional nexus. This is the opposite of Hollywood style and means that Fassbinder cannot resort to the emotional manipulations typical of this Cinema. It’s all in the mind and Fassbinder leaves it to the audience to figure it out. And as a complex (and very well edited) movie, ‘Marriage’ sustains its power to engross its audience even though its relational demands differ from most movie experiences.
So who is Hermann Braun? In the first sequence of ‘Marriage’ Hitler appears then disappears, followed by Herman who appears then disappears. Both vanish without trace. Which is no coincidence as in Fassbinder’s film Hermann plays the role of the phantom Führer who haunts this post war Germany. Hitler is not just an image he’s a reality who won’t – no can’t – go away. He is absent from Germany but omnipresent, the secret incubus of the FDR (West Germany). Maria’s role exemplifies the history of post war FDR through the ‘40’s and ‘50’s. Firstly as whores for the victors, as despised Nazis who had to pay with their very bodies for what they had done. Then when the victors fell out, the FDR is co-opted into the West’s great expansionist enterprise, now walking in lockstep with capitalism’s corporate ethos individualistic values and ideology of acquisitive greed. The phantom Führer has his get out of gaol card; he’s released from prison and finally returns not so much in the form of Hermann, but as myth ready to guide Germany to her never to be forgotten destiny.
As the film progresses Fassbinder sends us radio messages from the FDR front line. The re-armament, the increasing international influence the heroic sporting victories and finally at end of the final credits strange negative ghost-like images of post war FDR chancellors: Adenhauer, Erhard, Kiesinger, Schmid. Of course the constant companion, Hitler, is absent.
Fassbinder began ‘Marriage’ with a perception. Hitler was not dead. Despite collective amnesia, he lived on in the psyches of the people. His image may have vanished from the State Registrary Offices, he might no longer give the Nazi salute from podiums or be fawned by Leni: but he was still present. And it was ridiculous to imagine otherwise: as if some magician could wave a magic wand to give the command: Forget Him. As if the victorious West could issue an imperative command to the German People: He is gone, he never existed. Banished vanished Hitler lived on and lives on, he cannot go away. In the years after WWll Fassbinder witnessed the resurrection of German industries: steel: Krupp; automobiles: VW, Mercedes; chemical industry Beyer, Agfa, Hoechst, BASF (except Beyer all now changed company name). All these companies were deeply implicated in the Third Reich and its slave labour programmes; all massively rewarded by the Third Reich, now in the embers of the post war years, all massively rewarded in the can-do neo-liberal economic climate where they all become world forces. Fassbinder perceived something of the Hitler Spirit at work.
As a footnote, we can look at the current situation in Palestine. The Israelis have turned Gaza into an extermination camp and are subjecting the West Bank to a daily Kristallnacht. It’s to be noted that besides the USA, the one country that is least critical, that is unfailingly in its support of Israel’s war on the Palestinians, is Germany. It’s anti-Semitic legislation has been re-interpreted to suppress anti-Zionism. A country that might have learnt to understand something from its own Holocaust, now acquiesces in the spectacle of another country adopting its genocidal past of mass murder. As Fassbinder knew: Hitler is a phantom who lives on in many guises.
adrin neatrour
adrinuk@yahoo.co.uk