'Murderer's House' - University of Victoria

defeat and loss which is often accepted as the public memory of Germans‟ reaction to
their country‟s capitulation. In contrast, Lene‟s personal reaction to Germany‟s surrender
and Hitler‟s death is one of joy and relief. Thus, Sanders-Brahms juxtaposes the public
collective traumatic memory of the German experience of the end of the war with Lene‟s
personal joyful reaction.
The themes of the “Maikäferlied” also emphasize elements of Lene and Anna‟s
personal story. Like the cockchafer, Lene and her daughter are living through a period of
conflict. The song encourages the cockchafer to flee, lest it be lost in the destruction of
war. Lene and Anna have also had to flee Berlin to avoid the aerial bombing raids.
Moreover, the cockchafer‟s father is in battle as Anna‟s father, Hans, is absent from his
family as he has been enlisted to fight. Further, the small insect‟s mother is in
Pomerania, and Lene and Anna are in the German east, having fled the air raids in Berlin.
Sanders-Brahms‟ film does not show the flight of German civilians from the advancing
Russian army and the raping of German woman by Russian soldiers. However, her
original film script depicted Lene and Anna fleeing from the Red Army, Lene‟s rape by
Russian soldiers, and the subsequent termination of her pregnancy by a female Russian
doctor (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 77-80). 51 Just as the cockchafer‟s mother is
caught up in the destruction of Pomerania, so Lene too, in the film script, is caught up in
the destruction of the German east by Russian troops. Therefore, in many ways, the
circumstances of the small beetle in Maikäferlied parallel those of Lene and Anna in the
film narrative.
51 In her film, Sanders-Brahms decided to insert Lene‟s telling of the “Räuberbräutigam” fairy-tale instead
of her rape by Russian soldiers and the subsequent abortion. Sanders-Brahms regarded the substitution as
one of the more successful aspects of the film (Sanders-Brahms, Film-Erzählung 116).
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