By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Rosa von Praunheim
Original language title: Meine Mütter - Spurensuche in Riga
Country: germany
Year: 2008
Running time: 87
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1139364/
Bruce says: “Rosa von Praunheim (his real name is Holger Mischwitzky) is now 65. When he was 57 his mother Gertrud, then 94 revealed a dark family secret, his parents were not his natural parents – he was adopted. He was adopted from a children’s home in Riga, Latvia, where his parents were stationed during the war. The details supplied by his mother were fuzzy at best. Were they the vague recollections of a nonagenarian or part of a carefully concealed plan to obfuscate his true origins? Von Praunheim decided that the process of discovery would be a good subject for a documentary.
“TWO MOTHERS plays like a mystery. Von Praunheim sets out with two crackerjack researchers and no more than a few flimsy clues, the main one of which was the unnamed children’s hospital in Riga. There are many dead ends and detours. Fortunately for von Praunheim the Nazis kept precise records which remain undestroyed. Knowing where his father ad worked in Riga and where his parents had lived certainly will help narrow down the possibilities for finding the children’s home. But that is not to be.
“On a lark, the researchers examine some diaper orders and there it was – a record of his adoptive mother ordering diapers for an infant named Holger Radke. Then birth records reveal his mother’s name: Edith Radke. Now that he knows who his mother was – and it was easy to find her – certainly finding his father would be easy, too. There are many clues but there were also many men with whom Edith Radke was involved. Somewhere at about this point in his film, von Praunheim steps back a bit and suddenly the film is as much about the history of the German people as it is a personal history and discovery. It is the increase in scope that elevates the film way beyond a selfish indulgence.
“His mother had a photograph of his father with a swastika arm-band. His mother passed it off as decoration. ‘He didn’t do anything terrible.’ In examining the various men that might have been his father, von Praunheim looks at what they were doing during the war and how the Third Reich functioned. Additional research uncovers Edith’s fate. Medical records from the Wittman Sanitarium finally confirm that Edith Radke died of chronic diarrhea. It appears that Wittman was a well-known facility for electroshock therapy and they had a reputation for their euthanasia program and drug experimentation. Was Edith mentally ill or difficult and provoking? Was electroshock therapy actually a punishment for her behavior? Was she a guinea pig?
“von Praunheim readily admits that he was not particularly distraught learning about his birth mother. ‘It is like looking at someone else’s life.’ He did suggest that he might have become more emotionally involved had he found out about his adoption when he was in his youth. 4 cats
“TWO MOTHERS screened at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival.”