2024-01-17 17:31:31
Actually, it’s a completely normal day. Hannah Herzsprung has already experienced it fifty times, the day on which a new film of hers premieres. She took the ICE from Berlin to Leipzig, arrived late, missed the connection – everything was completely normal – and then had to fight her way to Hof via Zwickau.
Hof an der Saale, formerly in the remote West German “zone fringe area”, medium-sized town, 45,000 inhabitants, not the predestined place for film premieres. But: Hof has a festival, a pretty renowned one at that.
It’s only a 15-minute walk from the Hof train station to the Hotel Strauss. The Strauss has been around since 1826, the current building was built in 1926. 50 years ago, FC Bayern preferred to spend the night here before the European Cup game at Dynamo Dresden rather than in the GDR, as the Stasi cooks could have mixed something into the players’ food.
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Beckenbauer and Hoeneß and Sepp Maier and Gerd Müller stayed at the Strauss. You could also set up a Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders or Peter Jackson room there, all of which have already been at the Hof Film Days.
Hannah Herzsprung also spent the night in these holy halls, 17 years ago. She was a stranger and had appeared in two dozen episodes of a Bavarian family soap. But the director Chris Kraus gave her the first leading role, that of the young murderer Jenny von Loeben, who becomes a pianist in prison. The film was called “Four Minutes”.
Herzsprung’s new film is called “15 Years” and is the sequel. The unique case of a German auteur film receiving a sequel is, apart from Wenders’ “The Sky Over Berlin” from 1987 (which was continued after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1993 with “In Far Away, So Close!”). And again the premiere takes place in Hof.
Hannah Herzsprung is Jenny von Loeben
Source: Dor Film-West/Four Minutes Filmproduktion, Wild Bunch Germany
The “15 Years” team meets in the Strauss breakfast room shortly before the premiere: in addition to Herzsprung, the actors Albrecht Schuch, Hassan Akouch and Christian Friedel, the composer Annette Focks, the camerawoman Daniela Knapp, Herzsprung’s agent Andrea Lambsdorff; only the most important man is missing: Chris Kraus, the director.
The reception at Strauss is a “remember that?” affair. The Hof premiere of “Four Minutes” was once a kind of fix, remembers Herzsprung. The Berlinale rejected the film and the distributors didn’t want to take it. Then came the invitation from the festival in Shanghai, a bit exotic, but at least an A-festival.
“I sat next to Chris at the awards ceremony,” remembers Hannah Herzsprung at the Strauss reception. “Finally, the head of the jury, Luc Besson, came to the main prize and began with the sentence ‘It didn’t take us more than four minutes to decide’. We went up the stage, Chris was presented with the Golden Chalice – and Besson leaned towards me: ‘And who are you?’ He didn’t recognize me!”
She turned and turned and turned
The rest is history: German premiere in Hof, a German distributor, half a million cinema viewers, cinema releases in 20 countries. One of the few cult films by a German auteur. The breakthrough for Hannah Herzsprung, who had marveled at the well-known actors and their T-shirts during filming; Jasmin Tabatabai wore one from “Bandits”.
“When I came out of the premiere of ‘Four Minutes’,” Herzsprung remembers, “Dominik Graf and Caroline Link were standing in front of the cinema: ‘Can we get in touch with you,’ they asked me.” Graf got in touch, and Herzsprung played one of the “Beloved Sisters” in his Schiller film.
For a decade, Kraus tried to stop thinking about this Jenny von Loeben while Herzsprung played and played: the comedian’s congenial partner in “Liesl Karlstadt & Karl Valentin”, Ralph Fiennes’ daughter in “The Reader”, the young Julia , who survives long years in a GDR women’s prison in the “Weissensee” series.
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Then Kraus got in touch again and asked Herzsprung to meet: “Would you like to play Jenny again?” She was keen: “I didn’t even ask if she should play the piano again. I had forgotten that by now.” Herzsprung plays the piano again, she even sings, although she can’t sing, but she’s already mastered that once, as Polly in “Mackie Messer”.
Jenny has spent 15 years torn apart for a murder she didn’t commit. Now she has to get used to a life of freedom – and to the ghosts from the past that inevitably appear. She is no longer the impulse-driven, angry young girl she was back then, but Kraus picks up many old threads and spins them further.
Not all. Monica Bleibtreu, Traude Krüger’s strict piano teacher, and Vadim Glowna, Jenny’s abusive father, had since died. But there is a parallel figure to Traude Krüger, and Jenny’s lover, whose murder she took upon herself and who made a great career over the 15 years, comes into focus.
Simultaneously in eight halls
It has become dark, it is cold, it is drizzling, but it is only a stone’s throw from the Strauss to the Scala, where the premiere of “15 Years” is to take place. All 400 seats are occupied, festival director Torsten Schaumann greets, and the lights go out. This is the moment when actors usually sit in the back row at premieres to experience the audience’s reaction for the first time.
There is no time for that in Hof. “15 Years” is showing in eight different halls that evening, such was the demand, there must be quite a fan base for the original film. And so Hannah Herzsprung goes from cinema to cinema so that she can be seen before the performances begin every quarter of an hour: “It was so nice to stand in front of eight full theaters.” After the last one, she takes a short break the pedestrian zone: “There is no one on the street except us. It feels like everyone from Hof is in the cinema.”
At the end of the course she returns to the Scala, the film is still running, she stands in the back in a corner for the last half hour. Then the big introduction aria follows, everyone is called onto the stage and gets their share of applause, with Hannah Herzsprung being the last to be celebrated: “I had never received a standing ovation before,” she later admits.
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The fact that the spiritus rector of the whole thing, Chris Kraus, does not appear is briefly mentioned – “unfortunately he couldn’t come” – but not explained. What no one in the audience knows: Kraus stayed in Berlin, in the Charité, where his wife is dying, Uta Schmidt, who edited many of his films, most recently “15 Years”.
Kraus is not present at the premiere of the film, which he worked on for five years and which is closer to his heart than almost anyone else, but if you look closely you can still spot it: in the last scene, Jenny von Loeben plays the piano in a bar , her audience applauds, and if you look closely, you’ll see Chris Kraus in the left corner of the picture, and he’s clapping too. Three weeks after this premiere he will have to bury his wife. Most of those present had no idea of this tragedy.
After the film ends, people in Hof like to stand together in the foyer for a while, viewers and creators. A visitor, already starting to walk, runs past Hannah Herzsprung. A few steps later she matched the woman on the screen with the one standing here. She turns around and says: “I didn’t like the first part that much, but I did like the second part. Have a nice evening” and leaves. That’s how they are, the Franks in Hof.
The whole burden is on her
The inevitable premiere party takes place in the Bürgergesellschaft, the most beautiful venue in the city, an Art Nouveau building. There are no entry controls, anyone can come. The buffet already has a vegetarian influence, but still shows Bavarian rusticity.
Many premiere parties present themselves as exclusive events; you get access with the invitation, but you need a second pass to get into the VIP area with the stars. In civil society everything is civilized, no tabloid snaps, everyone is approachable, including the leading actress.
At one in the morning, it’s pouring, Hannah Herzsprung makes her way back to the Strauss; The first time she walked this path was with the unforgettable Monica Bleibtreu. The next day there are a few more interviews, an audience discussion at the civil society and another appearance at the ninth screening on the program.
The director, who usually bears an important part of the PR burden, is not there. This time the entire burden is on the star. She likes wearing them. For Chris Kraus, she is brave.
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