"The Bridge"...


On October 22, 1959, Bernhard Wicki's now world-famous anti-war film "Die Brücke" ("The Bridge") was shown in Germany for the first time.



Eight underage boys are drafted into the Wehrmacht in the final days of the war in April 1945. In a completely nonsensical way, they are given the task of defending a strategically completely meaningless bridge against the advancing American troops.



With enthusiasm and patriotic enthusiasm, they believe they must fulfill their mission.

But one after the other dies defending the bridge.



When only two of them are alive, a German demolition squad arrives ready to blow up the bridge, revealing the futility of the original order.

"Die Brücke" is one of the German feature films that received the most awards after 1945. With an impressive dramaturgy and strongly affective images, Wicki...



...on how the German youth who grew up under National Socialism grow up with a misguided idealism and are brought up to a heroic delusion, which consequently leads them to the politically abused "death for the fatherland".



Three of the seven boys' actors had their first film role in "Die Brücke" and later ranked among the best and most sought-after German actors: Frank Glaubrecht, Volker Lechtenbrink and Michael Hinz.

Vicco von Bülow, later famous as the enigmatic comedian "Loriot", has one of his first supporting roles in a film here. As a staff sergeant in the barracks scene, he called out the code word "Here's a beehive - a beehive!" several times over the phone.

Incidentally, "The Bridge"...







... stands in the Bavarian town of Cham in the Upper Palatinate and is now called "Florian-Geyer-Bridge"...:





The film was awarded five times at the German Film Prize in 1960:
Golden bowl (challenge prize)

• Fono-Film for the best feature-length film Federal film tapes in gold
• Edith Schultze-Westrum for Best Supporting Actress
• Cordula Trantow for Best Young Actress
• Bernhard Wicki for directing
• Hans-Martin Majewski for the best film music


Bernhard Wicki received another special award from the Federal Film Awards for this film in 1989 on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany.

The film also received a Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film, as well as other awards at home and abroad.

A remake was produced in the USA in 2008, which is now also being shown on television, has "better" action scenes but overall does not come close to the quality of the original...: