The Jew Angel Wagenstein was a partisan in Bulgaria, wrote screenplays for Konrad Wolf in the GDR and for Wolfgang Staudte in the FRG. The Toni cinema pays tribute to him.
Film excerpt from “Angel Wagenstein: Art Is a Weapon”Arcadia Pictures
He was a partisan in the anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War in Bulgaria, in a labor camp he narrowly escaped the death he had already been sentenced to, on October 17 he celebrates his 100th birthday in Sofia: Angel Wagenstein. What a life.
Angel Wagenstein was born in 1922 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, into a Jewish family of craftsmen. He met his father in prison when he was four years old. The father had taken part in the September 1923 Uprising initiated by the Communist Party. After the father’s dismissal, the family moved to Paris, but returned to Bulgaria after a general amnesty. Wagenstein joined the partisans when the Nazis invaded Bulgaria in 1941. After a bank robbery he was arrested and sentenced to death. It was the Red Army that saved him. When she was in front of Sofia, the Germans withdrew.
Wagenstein studied at the film school in Moscow, graduating in 1950. In the GDR he works with Konrad Wolf, he is considered his best friend. For him he wrote the screenplays of “Stars”, “The Little Prince” and “Goya or the bad path of knowledge”.
“Stars” with Wagenstein’s screenplay wins an award in Cannes
“Stars” is the story of a German non-commissioned officer who was stationed in Bulgaria during the Second World War and met a Greek-Jewish teacher there in the camp. The woman is to be sent to her death with her fellow prisoners, including numerous children and old people. The non-commissioned officer, who falls in love with her, helps her with medication. But he cannot save her, she is deported to Auschwitz.
People at Defa are enthusiastic, but in Bulgaria the party leadership rejects the film. The accusation is: “abstract humanism”. Why does a religious symbol have to be displayed on the portal of a church? And why does “Stars” take up the strictly taboo subject of Bulgaria’s collaboration with the German occupiers? Angel Wagenstein is appalled by the decision. Then “Stars” is invited to the festival in Cannes, starts as a Bulgarian production, since the Federal Republic of Germany insists on its claim to sole representation. He receives the special prize of the jury, more than seventy countries buy the film.
Angel Wagenstein is instrumental in the coup in Bulgaria
But Angel Wagenstein also works with Wolfgang Staudte in Germany, he shoots documentaries for ARD, for example from North Vietnam, where the country is still at war.
In November 1989, Angel Wagenstein was instrumental in preparing the large demonstration that initiated the coup in Bulgaria. This goes hand in hand with the decline of Bulgarian cinema, and Wagenstein begins to write novels. In “Far from Toledo” he tells the story of his family. His 2010 novel, Farewell Shanghai, is available in German and tells the story of European Jews who moved to Japanese-occupied Shanghai before the Nazis.
On October 17 at 6 p.m., the Toni cinema will show a documentary about his life “Angel Wagenstein: Art Is a Weapon” (OmU) by US director Andrea Simon. Paul Werner Wagner will give an introduction and the laudatory speech.