'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

screen showing the dedication “Diese Geschichte ist einerseits für Lene und anderseits
für Anna” (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 8). 99
In my opinion, the image of Lene‟s golden ring evokes the idea that the entire
film is the symbolic “evidence” of Lene‟s gendered experiences of the war and post-war
era. If Sanders-Brahms had not told her mother‟s story in the public forum of film or
through some other media, it would, like countless women‟s stories before it, have been
suppressed from the historical record. Just as the ring in the final scene disappears into
darkness, Lene‟s story would have faded into historical and cultural obscurity.
In her voice-over commentary, Sanders-Brahms addresses the first close-up image
of Lene, stating that while Lene learned to be silent, she, the filmmaker, learned to speak.
While historical, cultural, and personal forces have conspired to silence Lene, her
daughter finds a voice by creating a film recreating her mother‟s story. In conclusion, a
central message of Deutschland, bleiche Mutter is that women must find a voice in order
to take control of their personal stories and to share knowledge of their histories.
Sanders-Brahms tells a story of a woman‟s gendered experiences of the war and post-war
period and gathers “physical proof” in the form of authentic documentary footage that the
horrors of war that shaped this story were real. In so doing, she takes a small step to
insure that an aspect of German women‟s history heretofore considered peripheral and
unimportant will be added to the historical and cultural discourse. By choosing the
public medium of film to depict Lene‟s story, Sanders-Brahms sees that Lene‟s gendered
experiences and the lessons of her personal story will not be forgotten, but will instead be
accessible to her own daughter and to future generations of women. The story Sanders-
99 “This story is on one hand for Lene and on the other hand for Anna” (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung
8).
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