ABSTRACT
On 6 June 1975, the film version of Thomas Mann's Lotte in Weimar was premiered in Weimar, East Germany, in recognition of both the showplace of the novel and its author's 100th birthday. All signs pointed to the importance allotted to this production by DEFA, the East German film company. Earlier that year, Lotte in Weimar had become the first film ever to represent the German Democratic Republic (GDR) at the Cannes Film Festival. Director and scriptwriter was Egon Günther, a novelist already known for his proficient cinematic adaptations of literary works. 1 In a move designed to make the film equally suitable for West and East German distribution, the West German actress Lilli Palmer was selected for the title role. GDR screen favorites Jutta Hoffmann and Katharina Thalbach played the duo of Adele Schopenhauer and Ottilie von Pogwisch, while the actors portraying the young Goethe of Lotte's imagination (Hilmar Eichhorn) and the Goethe she actually encounters in Weimar (Martin Hellberg) embodied to a startling degree the images of Goethe we possess from contemporary portraits. Shot partly on location in Weimar and making ample use of Mann's descriptions of the characters' clothing, mannerisms, and even ways of speaking, the film vividly evoked Weimar life in the years around 1816. Even the prestigious Gewandhaus-Orchestra of Leipzig contributed to the production, playing selections from Mahler's Sixth Symphony for the soundtrack.
