11th September 2026
This is a fictionalised account of some of the episodes in the life of GW (Georg Wilhelm) Pabst, a successful film director in Weimar Germany, his Pandora’s Box (1929) acclaimed as a classic of the silent cinema.
In the early 1930s, many of his compatriots in the industry flee the antisemitism of their homeland for America. Pabst is not Jewish, but he is also enticed to Hollywood with its sunshine, glamour and riches. There, he is feted by DW Griffith and rubs shoulders with Greta Garbo, Fred Zinnermann and Fritz Lang. (Previously, he has rubbed more than shoulders with the famous American actress, Louise Brooks, who starred as Lulu in his earlier masterpiece).
Unfortunately – as Pabst had feared once the studio producers had begun to interfere with the film he had been dragooned into making (A Modern Hero) – his first release in America is a flop, closing after one weekend. This results in another émigré, whom he meets at a garden party, suggesting that he goes back to Germany, where he would be given complete artistic control. Pabst – fully aware of what conditions are now like in the country – responds with a combination of disbelief and anger.
But return to Europe he does – with his wife Trude (against her wishes) and son Jakob to the post-Anschluss Austria in order to make what he expects to be a final (and short-term) visit to his ailing mother. Unfortunately, his journey back to America is delayed by a domestic accident and then, fatefully, war is declared and the borders are closed.
And so Pabst is reduced to making films in Nazi Germany. Before doing so, he has the ordeal of a desperately uncomfortable interview in Berlin with the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, who is described by Daniel Kehlmann as having a “gaunt, strangely youthful face: it was pale, slightly sweaty, with cheekbones protruding prominently under the deep eye sockets, as if he were trying to bite through something hard”. The menace of Joseph Goebbels (who is not named) jumps off the page. When Pabst initially says that does not intend to make any more films, the Minister interrupts: “Now it would be good if the right answer came. Consider what I can offer you – for example, a concentration camp. At any time. No problem”.
Pabst’s reputation is such that he does indeed have some artistic control, as well as adequate resources, and is not obliged to make purely propaganda films. There is an obvious contrast here with the Nazis’ most favoured director – Leni Riefenstahl – who is consistently portrayed in the book as an arrogant and ghastly woman.
This takes us to the moral centre of the narrative, which Kehlmann (and the book’s translator Ross Benjamin) capture in an exchange between Pabst and his wife when they are walking in the Grunewald forest, near Berlin. When the director says “… all this will pass. But art remains”, Trude responds with “Even if that’s the case. Even if it remains, the… art. Doesn’t it remain soiled? Doesn’t it remain bloody and dirty”. …Her words struck him deeply. He looked hurt, battered, downright wounded.
For the reader, there is a clear sense of the oppressive conditions in which Pabst and his family are living, even in the sizeable country property that he owns. Their janitor is a local Nazi party official with an unpleasant wife and two daughters, who, as Pabst and Trude are fully aware, are continually eavesdropping on their discussions or the consultations they have with visitors in the film industry. When making his films, Pabst has an overriding sense of not knowing who else might be listening to – or passing on – his private conversations. One of his screenwriters is arrested by the Gestapo at Pabst’s dinner table. Another contact – a liaison officer with the Ministry – is picked up in the street one evening when walking with Pabst after a film premiere.
Within the family, all is also not well. Trude descends into a state of chronic alcoholic bewilderment, whilst Jakob, having been an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth, shocks his father by informing him that he cannot wait to join the Wehrmacht. We fear the worst.
The tide of the war turns against Germany. The resources for film-makers become less readily available, requiring Pabst to use all his imagination to realise some particular scenes. In one chilling episode when making a film in Prague – and whilst Pabst apparently appears oblivious to what is in front of him – it is left to his loyal assistant cameraman, Franz Wilzek, to work out where a large crowd of bedraggled and emaciated extras have come from. Shortly afterwards, Pabst and Franz have to flee to Vienna – a hair-raising experience – when the Czech resistance begins to take control of the city with summary acts of retribution.
At this point, I should note that the opening chapter of the book is set in the immediate post-war period, when Franz is chauffeur-driven to give a television interview with the preening Heinz Conrads on an Austrian Broadcasting Corporation Sunday-morning chat show. The description of this disastrous encounter is poignant and, at times, hilarious. Franz is in the early stages of dementia and his memory and attention-span are faulty. The interview ends with a heated argument about whether Pabst and Franz’s last film – The Molander Case – was ever made. The programme’s young editor, whose name Franz remembers as Rosenzweig (or Rosenblatt or Rosenkranz) – is summarily sacked by Conrads.
Daniel Kehlmann skilfully combines resolution and uncertainty in drawing his story to a close. The fates of Trude and Jakob are not what we expect. The mystery surrounding The Molander Case is resolved. As for Franz’s television interview – well, perhaps there is more to learn about that than we are initially led to believe.
JR Alexander 