'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

eichte, daß sie nichts brauchte als sich selbst und eine Hoffnung. (Sanders-
Brahms, Film-Erzählung 10) 73
Sanders-Brahms goes on to suggest that the survival skills her mother gained are
representative of the courage, determination, and tenacity of thousands of German
women during the war years:
Dies ist die positive Geschichte Deutschlands während des Faschismus, des
Zweiten Weltkriegs und danach. Die Geschichte der Frauen, die das Leben in
Gang hielten, während die Männer zum Töten eingesetzt wurden [...] Die Frauen
haben [die Kriegszeit] anders erlebt, sachlicher. Das Heldentum war ihnen egal,
sie hätten lieber ihre Männer bei sich gehabt. Und dann, als sie lange Zeit auf
sich allein gestellt, in brennenden Städten überlebt hatten, aus Bucheckern Öl
gepreßt, Schuhe geflickt, Kühe gemolken, bekamen sie das Bewußtsein ihrer
Kraft: der Kraft nicht zum Heldentum, sondern zum Überleben...[Diese Frauen
lebten] ohne Selbstmitleid, ohne Gejammer, ohne Geschrei, sondern mit Witz, mit
Spaß, mit der Unabhängigkeit eines freien Menschen. (Sanders-Brahms, Film-
Erzählung 25-6) 74
As will be discussed in Chapter 5, Sanders-Brahms attributes her personal development
as a feminist along with that of other second wave feminist authors and filmmakers of the
1980s as being rooted in their role models of resilient, independent, active and
courageous mothers, mothers who discovered previously unknown strengths through
their experiences of war-time survival.
The director also includes the figure of the miller‟s daughter in her film because
the fairy tale heroine, like Lene, is both a victim and passively complicit in the
73 “The war demanded [from my mother] skills that she didn‟t know she possessed, namely to stay awake
after forty sleepless nights of bombing, also to survive without food, without new clothes, to dig for
potatoes, to collect mushrooms, to cross through Europe in flames with a suitcase in hand and a child in her
arms or on her back in search of her husband […] She had learned how far her strength could reach, that
she didn‟t need anything else except herself and her hope” (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 10).
74 “This is the positive history of Germany under fascism, during the Second World War and afterwards.
The history of the women who kept life going while the men were sent to kill […] Women experienced [the
war era] differently, more objectively. They were indifferent to heroism, they would have preferred to have
their men at their sides. After they had relied on their inner-strength for a long time alone in flaming cities,
had pressed oil from beech-nuts, had darned shoes, had milked cows, they developed an awareness of their
strength which came not through heroism, but through survival... [Those women] lived with the
independence of a free person– without self pity or self-indulgence, without complaining, but rather with
humour and amusement” (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 25-6).
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