Season 1 • Episode 4
LatestThe boy Simplizissimus grows up with simple farmers in the Spessart region. But the idyll is abruptly destroyed by the Thirty Years' War. Simplizissimus is sent to the besieged fortress of Hanau. When the lansquenets there play crude jokes on him, he flees with his friend Herzbruder to the Croats. But even here he does not fare much better.
Acting
Matthias Habich's face carries entire centuries of confusion.
Production
Seventies German TV somehow made mud feel expensive.
Writing
Baroque prose adapted with surprising narrative agility.
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Grimmelshausen's 1668 novel invented the German picaresque and influenced Brecht; this adaptation emerged when West Germany was reckoning with its own militarized past.
Fritz Umgelter shot on location in Yugoslavia standing in for war-torn Germany because authentic German locations looked too peaceful and well-funded by 1975.
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