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A German Life
Author(s): Christopher Hampton
The woman is Brunhilde Pomsel, who died in 2017 at the age of 106. Before her death, she recorded a filmed interview with Christian Krönes and Florian Weigensamer, shot in graphically simple black and white, in which she recalled growing up in Germany between the wars and how she came to work as a secretary for the Nazi minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, from 1942 until his suicide in May 1945.
Brunhilde Pomsel’s life spanned the twentieth century. She struggled to make ends meet as a secretary in Berlin during the 1930s, her many employers including a Jewish insurance broker, the German Broadcasting Corporation and, eventually, Joseph Goebbels.
Format: Drama
Cast Size: 1W
Running time: 45 minutes
Character breakdown
Brunhilde Pomsel
Snapshot
Notes:
Maggie Smith, alone on stage, plays Brunhilde Pomsel.
Christopher Hampton’s play is drawn from the testimony Pomsel gave when she finally broke her silence shortly before she died to a group of Austrian filmmakers, and from their documentary A German Life (Christian Krönes, Olaf Müller, Roland Schrotthofer and Florian Weigensamer, produced by Blackbox Film & Media Productions).
Original or Prominent Production: Bridge Theatre, London. April 2019
Original Source Material: Videotaped testimony of Brunhilde PomselProduction Rights Holder:
Christopher Hampton and Bridge Theatre
Experience(s) Chronicled: Germany, Hitler and the Growth of Nazism | Survivors and Subsequent Generations | Women and the Holocaust