Rosenstrasse
review by Agnieszka Tennant | posted 8/20/2004
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Note: This film is showing in limited theaters. For a list, go to the official site and click "Dates."
When in February of 1943 a group of Aryan women in Berlin decided to take on the Nazis, their courage manifested itself in a spontaneous and unorganized instinct rather than a deliberate protest. Theirs was a bravery born out of marital fidelity, anguish of separation, and a consequent fury.
Staring down SS soldiers was for these women—a group historians say was anywhere between 150 and 1,000—the most natural thing to do. Those who gathered on Rosenstrasse, in front of the building where their husbands were awaiting deportation to concentration camps, were not feminists or any other kind of activists. They stood there because they demanded to be seen as human, and because they demanded that their husbands be treated as human, too. The greatest acts of courage are sometimes as simple as that.
Fabian and Lena in happier times, before the Final Roundup
Rosenstrasse, a feature film based on this true story and by the German director Margarethe von Trotta, opens in the New York apartment of recently widowed Ruth Weinstein (Jutta Lampe). She is mourning her husband the orthodox Jewish way: she drapes fabrics over mirrors and the television set, forbids her daughter to answer the phone when it rings, and turns framed photographs face down. She indicates to her twentysomething daughter Hannah (Maria Schrader) that her Gentile boyfriend isn't welcome in her home. The gathering family and friends are surprised by Ruth's sudden rediscovery of Jewishness, and Hannah wonders if her mother's gone off the deep end.
The widow begins to think back to the childhood memories she's been repressing. We see her as an 8-year-old girl (played endearingly by Svea Lohde), when she stood with the women gathered in front of the former Jewish welfare office, waiting for her Jewish mother to come out of the building. This begins a series of flashbacks that transport us to Rosenstrasse—a street in central Berlin—in February of 1943.
Maria Schrader as Hannah, in search of the true story behind her mother's past
In the meantime, we discover that Hannah has never heard much about her mother's childhood. She has had enough of her mother's silence and her weird behavior. All this makes her curious, and—somewhat implausibly—she decides to go to Berlin in order to unearth the mystery of Ruth's childhood.
She finds there 90-year-old Lena (Doris Schade), once a stunning blue-eyed blonde baroness (played by Katja Riemann) whose husband was imprisoned at Rosenstrasse, and who took care of Ruth during the weeklong protest. Lena's flashbacks blend with Ruth's to compose an exploration of the two of them growing close, only to later grow apart. Riemann shines in the role in which her character goes from scrawny to dazzling, from desperate to determined, from straightforward to subversive. She has already received a European Film Award nomination in the Best Actress category and the Best Actress Award at the 2003 Venice Film Festival.
Lena Fischer (Katja Riemann) confronts the Gestapo
Through Lena's and Ruth's intertwined memories, we also learn about the Nazi-era laws concerning mixed couples, of whom there were hundreds if not thousands. In short, Jews married to Aryans were safe from deportation to concentration camps. The abrupt capture and subsequent imprisonment of 1,500 to 2,000 Jews at Rosenstrasse marked the first attempt to change this policy.
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