Diederich Heßling is scared of everything and everyone. But as he grows up, he comes to realize that he has to offer his services to the powers-that-be if he wants to wield power himself. His life motto now runs: bow to those at the top and tread on those below. In this way, he always succeeds: as a student in a duel-fighting student fraternity and as a businessman in a paper factory. He cajoles the obese district administrative president Von Wulkow and wins his favor. He slanders his financial rivals and hatches a plot with the social democrats in the town council. On his honeymoon with his rich wife Guste, he finally finds a chance to do his beloved Kaiser a favor. And when a memorial to the Kaiser is unveiled in the town where Diederich lives and works, he delivers the address. He stands behind the lectern in the pouring rain, saluting his Kaiser. The crowd is dispersed. Everything is laid in ruins...
Acting
Werner Peters transforms groveling into grotesque art.
Direction
Staudte frames toadying with devastating irony.
Writing
Heinrich Mann's poison pen, sharpened for screen.
Director
Wolfgang Staudte
Werner Peters
Diederich Heßling
Paul Esser
Regierungspräsident von Wulckow
Blandine Ebinger
Frau von Wulckow
Renate Fischer
Guste Daimchen
Carola Braunbock
Emmi Heßling
Sabine Thalbach
Agnes Göppel
Friedel Nowack
Mrs. Göpel
Friedrich Maurer
Göpel
Erich Nadler
Father Heßling
Ernst Legal
Zillich
Raimund Schelcher
Dr. Wolfgang Buck
Hannsgeorg Laubenthal
Mahlmann
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Made in East Germany, this was Staudte's pointed post-war indictment of bourgeois collaboration—released when West Germany still employed ex-Nazis in government.
Heinrich Mann's 1918 novel was banned by the Nazis; his brother Thomas fled to America while Wolfgang Staudte spent the war in hiding, making this a family revenge across decades.
XG
