Word: richthofen
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...lens. Even the upcoming Valkyrie, a Tom Cruise movie about a German officer who tried to kill Hitler, focuses mainly on the horrors of war. Der Rote Baron, by contrast, portrays its combatant hero in a positive light. "It's a remarkable movie," the Baron's nephew, Manfred von Richthofen, told Die Welt this week. "Somehow it did not turn into a war film. The personality and especially the thoughtfulness of my uncle are true to life...
...filmmakers employed some poetic license: The movie's love affair is fictional - "complete rubbish" says biographer Castan. "The historical Richthofen was the James Dean of World War I, an idol of his time," says Castan. "[But] he had no affairs with women. He also did not drink and did not visit brothels...
...Richthofen legend was always more pronounced outside of Germany, in any case. A great deal was made in Britain, for example, of his supposed chivalry, a salutory example of the "good German." And it is true that on three occasions he waved his enemy to the ground rather than shooting them out of the sky. (In one case, seeing that an enemy pilot's gun had jammed, Von Richthofen waved him down to the ground, jumped out, shook his hand and then took off again.) But in other respects, Von Richthofen was "cold-blooded," says Castan. "He was mainly interested...
...never aim at the machine but shoot the pilot right away," Von Richthofen once wrote in instructions about how the "manhunt" should be practiced...
...military. "The film," says Castan, "provides a fundamentally German perspective on World War I, with certain heroic elements. But [the Red Baron] is an ambiguous hero, who at the end sees war in a negative light. It shows how we look at war today. The tragic thing about Von Richthofen is that he was the poster hero of the Kaiserreich [the German empire] who, deep down, knows that war is senseless." With reporting by Stephanie Kirchner and Laura Laabs/Berlin