'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

Appendix: Personal Interview with Helma Sanders-Brahms
Note: This interview took place between Helma Sanders-Brahms and Rebecca Reed,
Thursday 5 March 2009 at the Café Einstein in Berlin, Germany. The vast majority of
this conversation has been transcribed verbatim so as to authentically document Sanders-
Brahms grammar and speech patterns. The exception to this is that some thinking words
such as "um," "uh" or "ah" have been omitted.
Rebecca Reed (R.R.): What factors (personal, political, or artistic) inspired you to make a
film about your mother‟s experience of the war and post-war era?
Helma Sanders-Brahms (H.S.-B.): Well, it was when I was pregnant that I felt closer to
my mother, about how she might have lived [through] this experience, having a child, in
the middle of the war. I mean, it was 1940; I was born in November 1940. It was still
the time when Germany was victorious. But my parents were not at all Nazis and they
were not very happy…well, of course they were happy that the war was not yet inside the
country, but it was all around. And my father was convinced that one day or another
victory would be over and we would all become victims ourselves. And that‟s what
finally happened.
R.R.: Where do you see this film, Germany Pale Mother, fitting into the history of
German film? Or, another way to ask the same question is which Tendenzwende or
trends in German literature and film influenced the creation of this film?
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