Rogowski and Friedrich’s exceptional and fearless performances dovetail with a screenplay that navigates decades yet feels personal and intimate. Through Hans and Viktor’s journey, Meise explores the very notion of ‘freedom’ in a world of continued oppression and the importance of our shared LGBTQ+ history in understanding the barriers that continue to haunt us. Great Freedom will play in theatres nationwide starting March 11th and on MUBI starting May 6th.
The year 2000 saw the premiere of an urgent and historically important documentary at various film festivals worldwide. Directed by the Oscar-winning duo Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, Paragraph 175 would give voice to the experiences of gay men and women as it explored the persecution of Europe’s gay community during Hitler’s rule. This groundbreaking documentary interviewed survivors of the Holocaust while studying the effects of Paragraph 175 before, during and after Third Reich rule, aiming to increase knowledge and awareness of this period of history. It was a significant step forward in discussions on the horror of Paragraph 175 and the pink triangle in a world where LGBTQ+ history was too often sidelined.
Now, Sebastian Meise’s outstanding Great Freedom takes another bold step forward as he explores the post-World War II experience of gay men and the shame, institutional abuse and oppression they endured when others bathed in ‘freedom.’
Like many countries across Europe during the early 20th Century, homosexuality was against the law in Germany; in fact, it had been against the law since the introduction of ‘Paragraph 175’ in 1871. ‘Paragraph 175′ and its British equivalent, the ‘Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885’, shared similar wording, and both resulted in gay men living secret lives as they entered arranged marriages, creating the blackmailers’ charter that Basil Dearden would explore in Victim (1961). As with most laws established before and during the 20th Century, sexual acts between women were neither mentioned nor restricted, but that did not mean lesbians were not affected by such laws, as their very existence was dismissed under a veil of sexism and misogyny.
Due to these laws, underground gay communities and clubs flourished throughout the early 20th Century, and it was Berlin that would become Europe’s first gay mecca. Berlin was home to one of the most vibrant, welcoming, and diverse gay communities in Europe during the 1920s and early 1930s. Its back streets were awash with clubs and secret bars where gay men and women could explore their sexuality with relative freedom. Equally, many boys’ clubs and groups that the Nazi youth would later infiltrate celebrated male sexuality in all its forms. Meanwhile, the groundbreaking German-Jewish physician and sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld would lead the way in research on sexuality and gender, furthering the case for equality through his ‘Institut für Sexualwissenschaft’ in Berlin. However, as gay Berlin flourished, the clouds of fascism were already building in the skies above Germany, and as Hitler seized power, fear would quickly replace hope.
Many gay, bisexual and trans Germans refused to give up on the hope built during the 1920s and early 1930s, despite the unfolding horrors; after all, Hitler had not made any direct statements concerning gay or trans culture or made any direct mention of potential curbs on freedom. Alas, this hope quickly faded as just six months into power, the Nazi party became Germany’s only legal, political force, and just one year in, gay, trans and bisexual people would be pronounced as enemies of the state.
The Hirschfeld Institute was forcibly closed, its books and research burned in public, and its leader was forced into exile in France, where he would die in 1935. At the same time, the Third Reich revised ‘Paragraph 175’, strengthening its wording to allow for convictions and arrests based solely on hearsay. Those who were lucky would find themselves incarcerated in local jails, but for those who ended up in the new ‘work’ camps, medical experiments, forced castration, and beatings awaited them. It is still unknown how many gay people died during the Holocaust, but estimates sit between ten thousand and fifteen thousand, many of them German citizens.
When allied forces came to Germany in the name of freedom, gay men were denied liberation, as the continued use of ‘Paragraph 175’ saw them move from camps to prisons. Meise’s Great Freedom is the story of those men who survived the camps only to find themselves housed in a new prison by Allied forces.
It’s 1968, and Hans (Franz Rogowski) has just arrived in prison for the third, fourth or maybe even fifth time, and his return is quickly acknowledged with a smile by another prisoner, Viktor (Georg Friedrich). His crime is homosexual acts in public, and it’s not long before he ends up in solitary confinement.
There in the darkness, we find ourselves transported back to the same cell in 1945, where a young emancipated Hans screams for help in the dark, the terror of a Nazi concentration camp replaced by the horror of prison. On release from confinement, Hans is paired with Viktor, a straight inmate less than enthusiastic about sharing his cell with a ‘175 queer’. But when Viktor notices the concentration camp tattoo on his cellmate’s wrist, his dislike of Hans turns to sympathy and guilt. His first act of care and friendship is to cover Hans’s tattoo with a new symbol that doesn’t cause mental distress.
Meise charts both men’s unlikely yet essential friendship as we move from 1945 to 1957 and then 1968/9, their story one of unlikely support, unconditional love and institutional conditioning as they navigate the isolation of their prison world. Hans’ world suddenly changes when a ‘Great Freedom‘ is announced in 1969. But can the abolishment of ‘Paragraph 175’ bring him more than just physical freedom, or is his mental imprisonment irreversible?
Throughout Great Freedom, Meise and his co-writer Reider slowly build a picture of Hans’ life both inside and outside of prison through several encounters, from the story of Leo (Anton von Lucke), a young gay schoolteacher saved from an assault by Hans, to a short but beautiful love affair between Hans and Oskar (Thomas Prenn). Alongside these glimpses into Hans’ life, Meise offers a sharp political commentary on post-war Germany, the division of a nation, and the abolition of ‘Paragraph 175’ in East Germany, long before the democratic West.
However, the heart of this story lies in the relationship between Hans and Viktor, as Great Freedom explores an unlikely yet powerful friendship, based on shared loyalty and vulnerability. The relationship between Hans and Viktor is one of domestic support and platonic love, as both men search for meaning and find a fractured yet essential comfort and security in each other’s arms.
Rogowski and Friedrich’s exceptional and fearless performances dovetail with a screenplay that navigates decades yet feels personal and intimate. Through Hans and Viktor’s journey, Meise explores the very notion of ‘freedom’ in a world of continued oppression and the importance of our shared LGBTQ+ history in understanding the barriers that continue to haunt us. Great Freedom is, quite simply, one of the most powerful and urgent LGBTQ+ dramas of the year and one of the most important of the past decade.
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