The review that Michael Meisner published on January 20, 1951 on page 3 of the Main Post, which he had been publishing since 1949, was sparkling with enthusiasm. The film “Die Sünderin” is “finally a film with which the German production establishes the connection to the top products abroad in terms of direction, representation and photography”. The 25-year-old leading actress Hildegard Knef “played her way into the first row of real experts”.
The Würzburg newspaper publisher had been to the film premiere in Frankfurt two days earlier, which was accompanied by storms of applause, and had then celebrated with Hildegard Knef, director Willi Forst and unit manager Heinz Fiebig. “In the course of this premiere party for four, I promised Hildegard Knef to write a review of the film,” Meisner wrote later in his memoirs. He kept his promise – with unforeseen consequences.
Würzburg bishop extremely appalled, newspaper chopped off
Meisner’s euphoric discussion met with horror at the Würzburg bishop Julius Döpfner. The horror was so great that Döpfner wrote a declaration that he had read from every pulpit in the diocese. The believers heard that no Catholic should read the Main-Post from now on, which published such articles.
“The Sinner” developed into the first scandalous film of the post-war period. The melodrama dealt with topics such as prostitution, suicide and euthanasia, and in a scene that lasted a few seconds, Hildegard Knef’s bare chest, playing the painter model Marina, could be seen.
Around seven million West Germans streamed into the cinemas, most of them probably because of the short nude scene and not because of the problems like the blindness of Knef’s lover, whom she spares the final torment by poisoning him and then voluntarily following him to death.
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At the lavish premiere party
The presence of the publisher of a Bavarian regional newspaper at a lavish premiere party in Frankfurt may come as a surprise. But Meisner, who was actually a lawyer by profession and from 1949 to 1949 at the request of the US-American District Administrator of Würzburg, had a heart for art and wrote plays and film scripts himself under a pseudonym. He was president of the “Kulturverband Mainfranken”, which played theater in the gym of the Würzburg teacher training institute on Wittelsbacherplatz from 1946, and got to know the theater’s director, Heinz Fiebig, from Berlin.
Fiebig had supervised several dozen films as head of production at UFA, now worked as production manager for the “Sünderin” and invited Meisner to the premiere at the “Turm-Palast” cinema in Frankfurt.
The director had rejected cuts and demands from the FSK
It was not a given that there would be a premiere at all. Three days before the premiere, the “Voluntary Self-Control” (FSK) demanded a few cuts on the “Sinner”. The director refused, however, and when the FSK finally released the film without cuts from the age of 18, the church representatives temporarily resigned from the Wiesbaden facility.
The protest was sparked above all by the depiction of prostitution and killing on demand, which is shown in the final scene and which reminded some of the euthanasia propaganda of the “Third Reich”. The short nude scene also played a subliminal role. At that time the Catholic Church sought to “maintain its opinion leadership and its position in the public sphere”, it says in the three-volume “History of the City of Würzburg”. The fight against films that contradicted the morality of the Church and against the cinemas that showed them was therefore only logical.
The Würzburgers had to wait for the premiere
In the cathedral city, the strip did not appear on the screen for weeks? probably because the cinema owners were frightened by Döpfner’s intervention and shied away from open conflict with the church. Everything the citizens knew was in the paper.
In the Main-Post on January 22nd, culture editor Anton Mayer denied that “The Sinner”, as the opponents claimed, had “demoralizing effects”. Mayer literally: “This girl Marina goes through the deepest depths of human depravity, and yet once in her soul the dormant power for good is awakened when she meets the painter, marked by death and feels called to help – she becomes a person. “
At the end of January, the Main-Post reported that around 20 people in Osnabrück wanted to blow up a performance and “Ugh, mess, stop!” roared. When the cinema owner asked the audience whether the film should continue to be shown, the audience replied almost unanimously, “Keep playing!” and “Throw out the interferers!” That’s what happened. The strip ran for weeks in front of a sold-out house in Osnabrück, as in other cities.
At the beginning of February there were further protests in a Bielefeld cinema and after riots in a Koblenz cinema, the screening of the “Sinner” was even temporarily banned there.
The Passage Kino dared
It was only over a month after the premiere, on February 23, 1951, that the owner of the Würzburger Passage-Kino in Herrenstrasse (now Liga-Bank) dared to include the film in his program. “Anyone who sees the film will be deeply impressed and remain so,” read the ad, along with a quote from Michael Meisner’s laudatory review. The people of Würzburg were able to get an impression of the “Sinner” four times on weekdays, and on the weekend in addition in a late night show.
Now that “Die Sünderin” was screened in Würzburg, Meisner published a second article on February 28th, which again vigorously defended the film. Meanwhile, “a large number of people have formed their own judgment,” he wrote. Anyone who expected an incentive for any lower instincts “will not have come up with their money” Meisner cited a survey of young viewers who agreed that they had no inclination “to move in such a milieu”, that is, to become prostitutes or to commit suicide.
Bishop calls for a boycott of cinemas – and entry into the “film league”
On Thursday, March 8th, “Die Sünderin” was shown for the last time in the Passage-Kino after only two weeks and was replaced by Erich Kästner’s “Doppelten Lottchen”. The dispute with the Catholic Church did not end there. Shortly afterwards, Bishop Julius Döpfner asked the believers in his diocese to join the “Film League”. The members had to undertake “not to go to any film that contradicts Christian beliefs or customs” or to boycott those cinemas that play such films.
As with the call to stop reading the Main-Post, the church tried again to exert economic pressure. Around two million West Germans, including many in Lower Franconia, joined the “Filmliga”.
“That celibacy… Was certainly to blame for his tension”
The dispute between Michael Meisner and Julius Döpfner, who originally got along well, initially continued. It wasn’t until much later that the two reconciled. Döpfner, born in 1913, admitted in conversation with Meisner that in 1951 he was “still very young”. Meisner gave reasons for the bishop’s behavior in his memoirs: “For me personally, it was clear that with Döpfner, who was a full-blooded man, celibacy, which he took seriously like everything in his life, was certainly to blame for his tension . “
The film that moved Germany back then is now open to all viewers aged twelve and over. Incidentally, as Meisner wrote in his memoirs, the Main-Post had hardly suffered from the episcopal boycott call: “It is interesting to note that this unjust condemnation did not cause any damage worth mentioning to the circulation of our Main-Post.”
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