The filmmaker Peter Lilienthal died in Munich on 28 April 2023 at the age of 95. His long and eventful life is the subject of one, or rather several, films. In 1939, at the age of 11, he fled to Uruguay with his Jewish mother to escape the Nazis. His passion for film began at the university film club in Montevideo, where he studied art history and music.
After the war, he returned to Berlin, where he completed his first film (“Im Handumdrehen verdient”, 1959). More than twenty feature and documentary films followed, in which his critical attitude towards the political class, his sympathy for anarchism and his preference for stories of destitute and/or oppressed protagonists are clear.
Lilienthal won the big prizes (such as the Golden Bear in 1979) and was well acquainted with the big names in the industry (Ballhaus, Wenders etc.) Nevertheless, he was alienated from the (power) structures of the film industry. So it is perhaps no coincidence that his last film Camilo – The Long Road to Disobedience (about a conscientious objector in the US army during the Iraq war) was made in collaboration with the Filmwerkstatt Münster. Lilienthal appreciated the independent production structures.
Even after the collaboration, he remained a regular guest in Münster at the filmclub münster or at the film festival. It was Bernd Drücke and Isabel Lipthay from Münster who – together with the Filmwerkstatt Münster – nominated Lilienthal for the Carl von Ossietzky Medal.
In memory of Peter Lilienthal, the filmclub münster screened his last film “Camilo – the long road to disobedience” on Monday, 5 June 2023. Companions talked about Peter Lilienthal’s life and work as well as their collaboration with him.
Obituary from: Grassroots Revolution No. 490, Summer 2024, www.graswurzel.net
“So I decided in favour of anarchism”
Memories of the director, author and non-violent anarchist Peter Lilienthal (1929-2023)
On 28 April 2023, Peter Lilienthal died at the age of 93 in his long-time adopted hometown of Munich. Peter was one of the most important filmmakers in Germany. Numerous obituaries have been published in the Tagesschau, Frankfurter Rundschau, FAZ, Welt and Süddeutsche Zeitung. That’s why I hesitated for a long time to write an obituary for him. However, as the published tributes always swept Peter’s anarchist and anti-militarist world view under the carpet, I would like to contribute my personal, grassroots revolutionary view of this great man.
Peter Lilienthal was born on 27 November 1929 in Berlin to Jewish parents. His father was a stage designer and related to the aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal.
After the Reichspogromnacht in 1938, the situation for Jewish people in Nazi Germany became increasingly life-threatening. In 1939, before the start of the Second World War, Peter’s mother and grandmother fled with him from the Nazis to Uruguay. Peter told me that his best friend from his childhood days had to stay in Berlin and was murdered in Auschwitz.
Peter grew up fatherless in the hotel that his mother ran in Montevideo. He came into contact with what was happening in the world through the exiles stranded there. There he also got to know some anarcho-syndicalists who had fled from Spain to escape the Franco fascists and other interesting personalities. During this time, he developed his love of film from his frequent visits to the cinema. He founded a cine film club and made his first attempts at film.
When Peter returned to Germany from exile in 1954, he studied film and photography in Berlin after completing a banking apprenticeship and was soon offered a permanent position at Südwestfunk. Together with his cameraman Michael Ballhaus, he used the broadcasting slots still available at the time to explore the possibilities of television intellectually with experimental experiments.
Peter soon became one of the most influential directors in Germany. This is also evident in many obituaries. Der Spiegel paid tribute to him on 5 May 2023: “On paper, the director (…) was an unlikely representative of the New German Cinema. (…) He fulfilled the promise of developing new, challenging perspectives on Germany in his films like no other. (…) Lilienthal was honoured with the German Film Award a total of three times; (…) as a lecturer at the Cologne Academy of Media Arts, he left his mark on German film culture far beyond his own work.”
His feature films made Peter internationally famous. They were radical and solidary from a grassroots perspective. They contributed to the politicisation of many people and shed light on power and domination relations.
Many of his cinema films were set in Latin America: about the emancipation of a young Chilean woman in the Allende era (LA VICTORIA), about the consequences of the military coup in Chile (ES HERRSCHT RUHE IM LAND, 1975) and about the commitment of a National Guardsman to the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua (DER AUFSTAND, 1980).
He criticised repression from the perspective of the oppressed, mostly through the broken biographies of individual fates, but also showed the potential for action. His utopia was a life without domination and violence.
He summed up his concept as a filmmaker in 1963: “I show the story of people who have no heroic aureole around them, who cannot express themselves, who stand silently before the terrible events and really have nothing to say.”
In his 1979 Golden Bear-winning film DAVID, he explores the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany and questions the origins of racism, anti-Semitism and hatred. This feature film from 1978 is, according to the German Film Service in December 2023, “one of the most sensitive German-language films about the Holocaust”. David is 18 years old and Jewish. He lives with his family in Berlin. The day after the Reichspogromnacht, his father is arrested, abused and imprisoned. The family thinks they have got off lightly, but then David’s parents are deported. David goes into hiding, hides from the Nazis and desperately searches for a way to escape from Germany. Peter’s film is based on Joel König’s autobiographical notes “Escaping the Nets”.
In many documentary films, he also turned his attention to the oppressed, but also to strong characters who try to master their lives even under the most adverse circumstances. In his last film CAMILO, the intention of the “restless nomad” became clear. Lilienthal’s original question in this documentary film about two soldiers in the Iraq war was: Why do fathers send their sons to war?
Two individual fates are used to show the possibility of resisting state rule. At the same time – in the subtext – the double exploitation of Latin American countries by the USA is shown, which recruits the destitute sons from these countries as soldiers for its wars with promises of a better future. CAMILO is also a look at Nicaragua today, which is a far cry from the Sandinista dreams of THE UPRISING.
My first meeting with Peter Lilienthal
In December 2004, Peter Lilienthal’s 75th birthday was celebrated in my adopted home town of Münster with a gala in the ESG auditorium and a presentation of some of his films in the Schlosstheater arthouse cinema. Among the films shown was the feature film MALATESTA about the time of the Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta (1853-1932) in exile in London. When this film was first broadcast in 1970, it caused a scandal at the SFB – it was the time of “terrorist hysteria”.
On 11 December 2004, I had my first opportunity to interview Peter for Graswurzelrevolution (GWR). The occasion was his documentary film about the Gulf War deserter Camilo Mejia, which was not yet finished at the time. It was our first meeting and the beginning of a wonderful friendship. Fortunately, Volker Pade (1) from the Filmwerkstatt took the opportunity to film part of our preliminary discussion, so that we were able to transcribe the conversation recorded together for a citizens’ radio programme at the Medienforum Münster and publish it under the title “Anarchism, a philosophy of peace” in GWR No. 296 of February 2005. In my view, it is one of the most beautiful interviews (2) I have ever done.
I had brought Peter a few taster copies of Graswurzelrevolution to the first meeting, which he then subscribed to and read carefully. He later took part in a solidarity campaign for the GWR by appealing for donations.
Peter told me that because he had made a film about Malatesta, there were always curious situations. When he was in cities where he didn’t know anyone, someone always turned up, “usually not under 95, who spoke to me as a veteran anarchist and for some reason thought I was a specialist”. In fact, Peter had not only studied anarchism intensively for the film MALATESTA.
“The people I meet along the way who are involved in anarchism have something beyond the real world, their ideology is so liberating and at the same time so inefficient, which is nice. I don’t even know what to say then. But they are pure souls and therefore a role model, of course. Anarchism is a philosophy of peaceful debate and ideas, a philosophy of peace. It’s been misused all the time, not just the name; you know what ‘anarchists’ means to the police or to some people. It’s hard to set the record straight.”
I asked him how he came up with the idea of making a film about Malatesta in 1969. He told me that when he was in exile in Montevideo, he had a history teacher at grammar school who came from Spain and was an anarchist.
“The first thing we learnt from him was that on Monday he was either in a fantastic mood and the best history professor in the world or the angriest you could imagine.
For one simple reason: on Sunday he went to the horse races; if he won, he regarded us as sympathisers of his idea, of anarchism, and if he lost, we were insulted as the ‘last filth of the bourgeoisie’ that you weren’t even allowed to look at.”
This kind of pathos appealed to Peter, beyond the political ideas of his teacher, who had fled Spain after the victory of Franco fascism in 1939. The anarchist had also told Peter and his classmates something about Bakunin and Bakunin’s conflict with Marx.
Peter: “That interested me, also because he described Bakunin so vividly, as a non-bourgeois – I had an idea of what that was – and Marx as the last philistine. Now it was as if he got up on the table in his theatricality and played all the roles. He spoke like Marx or narrated, adopting Marx’s and Bakunin’s theories. During this story, we sat mesmerised in front of him, either as the insulted and despised or as the greatest supporters of anarchism.
At some point, I had to decide whether I wanted to continue living in my role as a despised bourgeois – or as an anarchist. So I decided in favour of anarchism and have continued to study this philosophy to this day.”
In Peter’s view, anarchism was “always an abused philosophy. Abused for every kind of reaction that would perhaps be labelled terrorism today.”
Peter had a captivating language. The flowery way he talked to me about anarchist ideas was exhilarating: “Through the great philosophical thoughts of a man like Malatesta, who was a pacifist, who wanted to convince, I realised how important it is to refuse the authority of the state, to go your own way, to choose every day, to recognise the importance of the decisions of the collective on the smallest scale.”
This accompanied him and became part of his discussions with other political ideas, “because such a utopia always sheds light on the training of a political idea to which people are subjected”.
He is not fighting for difference, but for similarity.
Peter: “That’s interesting about Derrida, about his ‘politics of friendship’, that he says that the real friendship arises where we don’t refer to, for example: ‘I’m an anarchist, you’re a socialist’, ‘I’m Jewish, you’re Christian’, ‘I grew up in Münster and you grew up in Chile’, but rather: ‘What do we have in common? Where is the ability to accept others in their differences?”
This is so alien to most people because everyone says: “I separate myself! You don’t understand me if I’m an anarchist and you’re a communist.”
Peter’s clear position: “No, we have to look for a different kind of connection.”
CAMILO
Peter made the documentary film “CAMILO – The long road to disobedience” together with the Filmwerkstatt Münster. In November 2007, the almost finished film about Camilo Mejía, the first US deserter of the 3rd Gulf War, was presented at the Münster Film Festival. After the presentation of the film, I had the great pleasure of taking part in a panel discussion on desertion and conscientious objection at the Cineplex cinema with Peter and Rudi Friedrich from Connection e.V., among others. Following this event, the then GWR intern Kerstin Wilhelms interviewed him for GWR 324 (3).
CAMILO was released in German cinemas on 24 April 2008 and premiered on ARTE television on 12 September 2009.
Peter and the Ossietzky Medal
On 9 December 2012, Peter was awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal (4) by the International League for Human Rights (ILM) for his political and artistic life’s work and his outstanding contribution to the realisation of human rights.
Together with the artist Isabel Lipthay and Winfried Bettmer from the Filmwerkstatt, I nominated him. We enclosed the first GWR interview with him with the nomination letter.
The presentation of the Ossietzky Medal at the GRIPS theatre in Berlin was filmed by Filmwerkstatt and mentioned on the Tagesschau in the evening. The duo Contraviento played Peter’s favourite song “Clandestino” by Manu Chao. There was live music from the I Felici Ensamble and moving speeches from ILM President Fanny-Michaela Reisin, Rolf Gössner and Michael Ballhaus. I enjoyed hosting the award ceremony and also being able to give a speech.
The medal is named after the anti-militarist and anti-fascist journalist, human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Carl von Ossietzky. The publisher of the Weltbühne and board member of the German League for Human Rights died in 1938 as a result of his imprisonment in a concentration camp.
By his own admission, this “alternative Nobel Prize” was more important to Peter than the Federal Cross of Merit and all the other prizes with which he was honoured for his life’s work.
In December 2014, he hosted the Ossietzky Medal ceremony for whistleblower Edward Snowden, filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald. It was a moving moment when Snowden was broadcast live from exile in Moscow to the cinema screen in Berlin. The people in the packed cinema jumped to their feet and gave Snowden a standing ovation.
In the years that followed, I only met Peter rarely. We often spoke on the phone and congratulated each other on our birthdays. We lost contact during the coronavirus period.
Peter spent the last years of his life in a care home in Munich. He died there.
After his death, the GWR editorial team and the film workshop showed his CAMILO film, which is still relevant today in the face of wars and remilitarisation, at the Schlosstheater. Afterwards, we shared our memories of Peter. It was a dignified commemoration in a small circle.
Throughout his life, Peter campaigned for a non-violent and non-domineering society. With his artistic means, he tried to point out mechanisms of violence from a bottom-up perspective and to encourage people to commit themselves to a solidary, egalitarian society. Beyond nation-state thinking, the fate of people is at the centre of his work.
This attitude also characterised his educational work. Together with Hark Bohm and Wim Wenders, he founded the “Filmverlag der Autoren”. In anti-militarist networks (Graswurzelrevolution, Connection e.V., DFG-VK and others) he was committed – in the tradition of Ossietzky – as a consistent anarcho-pacifist against militarism and all forms of militarisation.
Peter Lilienthal was a great humanitarian. It makes me happy that I was able to learn so much from this warm-hearted man and be his friend.
Rest in peace, dear Peter!
Bernd Drücke
Notes:
1) Volker Spade’s Peter Lilienthal brochure from 2004: https://www.volker-pade.de/Pdf/Peter Lilienthal.pdf
2) An extended version of the interview with additional questions, information and answers can be found here: “Anarchism, a philosophy of peace.” A conversation with the filmmaker Peter Lilienthal, in: Bernd Drücke (ed.): ja! Anarchism. Living Utopia in the 21st Century, Interviews and Conversations. 2nd, expanded edition, Unrast, Münster 2018, pp. 36-48. The original version: https://www.graswurzel.net/gwr/2005/02/anarchismus-eine-philosophie-des-friedens/
3) “I have no certainty.” Camilo – The long road to disobedience. An interview by Kerstin Wilhelms with Peter Lilienthal, in: GWR 324, Dec. 2007, https://www.graswurzel.net/324/camilo.shtml
4) See: https://www.graswurzel.net/373/lilienthal.shtml
[Emphasis added.]
“At some point, I had to decide whether I wanted to continue living in my role as a despised bourgeois – or as an anarchist. So I decided in favour of anarchism and have continued to engage with this philosophy to this day.”
[Caption:]
Peter Lilienthal. Drawing of Findus, from: Bernd Drücke (ed.), yes!
Anarchism, living utopia in the 21st century, Unrast 2018
