Demons of the past have awakened in Germany. Such a conclusion can be made from what happened last week, i.e. the discovery of an anti-state plot…

Behold the world learnt about the existence of the Reich’s Citizens Movement. It planned a coup aimed at establishing a political order that would modeled after the authoritarian regime of the Otto von Bismarck era, a German chancellor in the second half of the 19th Century.

Arrests followed. The German secret service detained, among others, a 71-year-old who uses the title of Henry XIII – his name is Reuss – and is considered to be the leader of the failed putsch. It’s a businessman of noble descent dating back to the Middle Ages. Supposedly he got engaged in anti-state activity due to his being let down by the German state After the unification of Germany he pursued the return of his real estates confiscated by East Germany authorities.

It is to be added that the Reichs’ Citizens do not appeal to German national socialism. Of course, they make up a milieu in which there circulate many conspiracy theories – also those one the machinations of Jewish financiers. Nevertheless their views can be described as Prussian monarchism above all. They rebel against the Federal Republic of Germany. Under their eyes it’s a non-sovereign state – an American colony set up in 1949, subordinated to the interests of global capital.

I associated Henry XIII with a certain figure active in pre-war Germany. The person in question is Alfred Nyssen. He belonged to a dynasty of entrepreneurs, but not of noble descent. Nyssen dreamt of rebuilding his country’s power status. He made plans for Germany to conquer the Universe. And he collaborated with nationalist milieus, including with NSDAP.

The thing is that we are talking here about a fictional character form the “Babylon Berlin” series (shot since 2017). And it came to pass that the news about the coup d’état prepared by the Reich’s Citizens reached me right after I had watched the latest (fourth) season of this production.

“Babylon Berlin” is the most expensive investment in the history of German cinema. It was shot by three directors. Among them there is Tom Tykwer who has to his credit a renowned film “Run Lola Run” (1998) inspired by Krzysztof Kieślowski’s “Blind Chance” (1981). SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE The action of the series is set in the German capital in the twilight of the Weimar Republic. It is primarily a detective story based on a series of novels by the contemporary German writer Volker Kutscher. The main character of the books is the police commissioner, a veteran of the First World War, Gereon Rath. And the historical background is not without significance here.

Thus, in the series we can see the misery of German society, which later turned out to be one of the important factors in bringing Adolf Hitler to power. Meanwhile, it may seem that at the turn of the 1920s and 1930s nothing had yet been decided. The Nazi movement is just getting stronger. Communists supported by the Soviet Union are also active. In the streets of Berlin, they fight against the national socialists.

Organized crime thrives in the German capital. At the same time, new trends in culture and entertainment come to the fore.

Jazz is gaining popularity. For people in a difficult financial situation, participation in dance marathons is a chance for quick earnings. These are American influences.

But at the same time, the dark side of the German soul becomes more and more visible. Cinematography is developing, in which expressionism is at the forefront. Occultism and parapsychology are fashionable.

Meanwhile, the illegal German military structures – The Black Reichswehr – seek to reverse the results of the First World War. They are trying to circumvent the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles on the disarmament of Germany. They form alliances with the Soviets on the sly in order to secretly arm the German state by exchanging services with them.

Ideologically, however, the Black Reichswehr has no sympathy for Bolshevism. On the contrary. We are dealing here with a group of officers eager to get revenge for the Treaty of Versailles. They are aligned with aristocrats and entrepreneurial circles who would like to restore Germany to its pre-World War I international position. The aforementioned Alfred Nyssen is associated with the very Reichswehr.

In “Babylon Berlin” there is a scene in which one of the participants of the party of this environment raises a toast to the “conservative revolution”. He also quotes the words of the well-known German writer Ernst Jünger.

The point is that in interwar Germany, there emerged a multi-current political and intellectual movement known as the Conservative Revolution. Jünger is one of its leading representatives. The Conservative Revolution was an expression of anti-liberal and anti-bourgeois protest against the world that was developing after 1918 /a>.

The series by Tykwer and his associates is full of references to authentic historical figures.

For example, there is talk of Konrad Adenauer (future chancellor of Germany), although we do not see him on the screen. In the years 1917-1933 he was mayor of Cologne. It is from this city that Gereon Rath comes to Berlin. The point is that Adenauer is being blackmailed with a pornographic film that is somewhere in the German capital. Rath’s task is to find this material, which is the tool of the crime against the Cologne politician.

In “Babylon Berlin” we do not see Adenauer, but other characters known from the pages of history appear. Gustav Stresemann and Walter Stennes can be pointed out here.

The former in the Weimar Republic was a chancellor for a short time, but for much longer - the head of German diplomacy, who, moreover, adopted an anti-Polish policy.

The latter man was the leader of the SA (Sturmabteilungen: the NSDAP Storm Detachment) in the eastern part of Germany (east of the Elbe). In the early 1930s, Stennes tried to take control of the Nazi Party. He was more radical than Hitler – he wanted the NSDAP to seize power in Germany through a coup, not parliamentary elections. This thread is also present in the series.

In turn, Alfred Nyssen, although – as I wrote – was not an authentic historical figure, has its prototype in the past. It’s about Fritz Tyssen – an industrialist who financially supported the National Socialists, seeing them as a barrier against the communists.

Finally, there is the problem of political correctness. Although the makers of “Babylon Berlin” try to follow it, they show that people from sexual minorities were also attracted to Nazism. Nothing unusual about it, but it complicates the rainbow narrative about brown “homophobia”. It is also worth noting that in the series, the feature of the interwar German society is not moral rigor (according to various left-wing theories, paving the way for Hitler), but sexual promiscuity. Homosexuals, on the other hand, do not hide their inclinations away.

However, it cannot be overlooked that in the German production some events are simply contrary to the facts. These slip-ups were discussed in one of the issues of Wiktor Świetlik’s journalistic program broadcast on TVP Historia.

For example, there is shown the Berlin activity of the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky – an organization associating communists opposed to the Stalinist course in the USSR. This happens at the end of the 1920s, while the Fourth International was founded only in 1938.

However, it is difficult for me to agree with the opinion expressed by the guests of the “Not such a simple story” program (otherwise I highly recommend this series) that the best film showing the birth of German national socialism is Bob Fosse's “Cabaret” (1972). I’m not going to deny the artistic value of this production. But I think that as a study of the birth of Nazism, it is politically instrumentalized and in that sense it is overrated. Today in Poland, it happens that scenes from it (especially the one in which an innocent-looking boy from the Hitler Youth sings the song “Tomorrow Belongs to Us”) are used as a propaganda truncheon in the hands of left-wing and liberal columnists tracking Brownshirtism on the right.

However, when it comes to the topic of the birth of National Socialism in Germany, it is a pity that the guests of the “Not such a simple story” program did not mention another film - one that eludes political instrumentalization. It is ”The Serpent’s Egg” by Ingmar Bergman .

An important theme in this film are gruesome medical experiments conducted 10 years before Hitler came to power by a doctor, Hans Vergerus. It is significant that in “Babylon Berlin” there is also a mysterious character who, it seems, does the same thing. This is Doctor Anno Schmidt. At the end of the last episode of the fourth season, he reflects on the dangerous potential of a German society brutally hit by a powerful crisis – just as Vergerus does in “The Serpent's Egg”.

Someone could accuse the creators of “Babylon Berlin” of taking this thread from Bergman’s film. But I wouldn’t regard it that way. The series as a whole retains its original character. And the preparation of the ground for Nazism by German scientists – also in the field of psychiatry, psychology, sociology – is an important subject.

Going back to our times, one can ask: does “Babylon Berlin” scare with the possibility of a political success that could be achieved by milieus such as the Reich’s Citizens? Does it reveal mechanisms favorable to the realization of such a scenario?

In fact, such an approach is a sign of naivety. The hypothesis arises that the anti-system right wing ... is somewhat convenient for the German political elites. The crackdown on the Reich’s Citizens Movement is also something of a spectacle. Democracy shows the society its enemy and by stopping it from attacking the state, builds up its image.

In Germany, however, demons of the past don’t have to seek vent in the activity of radical protesters. New forms of nationalism are sufficient for them – such as united Europe under German leadership.

And by the way, Otto von Bismarck, revered by the Reich’s Citizens is honored in Berlin. There is a statue to him there and he is the patron of one of Berlin’s streets.

– Filip Memches
– Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists