Max Färberböck’s adaptation of Erica Fischer’s book ‘Aimée & Jaguar’ appears to be a conceptual film adaptation, meaning that the core of the story stayed more or less the same, although there are some significant changes to certain aspects of the original story. . The director of the film focused more on the relationship between two lesbian women as such, fulfilling more of his own private male fantasies regarding said relationship (see especially the passionate and almost pornographic film scene from minute 62 to 65 of the film! ) Than translating Fischer’s book on the German woman named Lilly (Elisabeth Wust, with the nickname Aimée) and the Jewish woman named Felice Schragenheim (with the nickname Jaguar) into the film medium. Thus, he excluded many elements from the book and revealed that his inventions in the film were aimed at reducing the tragic dimension of the Jewish journalist’s fate and constructing a somewhat troubled sentimental ending to the film with the German heroine confessing 1997 in the manner of a documentary film style that after Felice had no lovers, contrary to the fact in Fischer’s book about his second marriage after the war.

The director rightly excluded some elements from Fischer’s book that show inconsistency and miss the opportunity to balance the one-sided views of the German housewife on the entire love story. One of the biggest problems remains the dilemma referred to by Ms. Elenai Predski-Kramer, a witness at the time, Ms. Esther Dischereit and Ms. Katharina Sperber: Should Lilly (Aimée) be praised as a hero for harboring a Jewish friend of the Nazis or is she rather the one guilty of having indirectly handled her lover with the Gestapo (no one knows who gave the Nazi police the photo of Felice) and then indirectly sending her to her death after visiting her in the Theresienstadt concentration camp in September 1944? Supposedly, Lilly wanted to know if Felice was unfaithful to her there in the concentration camp and possibly indirectly wanted to prevent others from becoming Felice’s lovers. Wasn’t this visit (to bring him warm clothes) more an expression of narcissism than wisdom and willingness to save the lover’s life, especially if one knew that such visits regularly resulted in quicker executions? Could we also ask the question whether Lilly’s eventual conversion to Judaism and the ‘re-education’ of her children as Jews in postwar Germany could be interpreted as signs of a guilty conscience, as an attempt to make up for her own wrongdoings and beliefs? Nazis? (Even the conviction of being able to smell Jews!). After living with Hitler’s bust during the war, he decided to put a menorah in his apartment and wear the yellow Star of David when he faced the Soviet liberation / occupation forces, which his lover Felice never really wanted to wear! Or was all of Lilly’s behavior an expression of the simple urge to survive and the need to adapt to respective changing political situations in the course of history?

One of the most embarrassing circumstances of the so-called love story is the fact that Felice signed a deed of donation on July 28, 1944 and thus bequeathed the rest of her entire property to Lilly. But was it out of love or out of fear of betrayal? As early as August 21, 1944, after bathing together in the Havel River and taking photos, Felice was arrested by the Gestapo at Lilly’s apartment. His life ended on December 31, 1944 in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The film is silent on the fact that Lilly was not severely punished by the Gestapo for harboring a Jew at a time when the hunt for the Jews still in hiding became more fanatical the more desperate the war situation grew, and Jews were to blame for every bomb that was produced. fell on Germany. In addition, some witnesses claimed that after Felice’s arrest, Lilly went to take all of Felice’s belongings (furniture, the best silver, jewelry, furs) according to the signed deed of donation. Was greed then a motive for indirect betrayal? Or was the real motive made up of many conscious and unconscious emotional elements?

However, Felice’s death eliminated the possibility of looking at the entire personal history from another point of view, so there is no possibility of shedding an alternative light on the specific case. Does the film then portray a misinterpreted story with the case of lesbianism as a ‘charm’ to prevent due criticism and satisfy voyeuristic needs and possibly the ideology of the left making believe that lesbianism was some kind of resistance against the Nazis, while than just male homosexuality? Was he a real subject of punishment according to the notorious paragraph 175? On the other hand, how could this film be interpreted as a possible defense of lesbianism if the director changes the text of the original story turning Lilly’s husband into a German soldier who returns home unannounced and finds his wife with her lover lesbian in bed? , then smashes his car in disgust, makes comments about his wife’s homosexuality, and demands a divorce. The film’s director rewrote Fischer’s book in part creating sympathy for the poor, exhausted German soldier who was returning from the front lines and was furious after being pulled from his family nest. Is lesbianism presented here as a high treason of German military interests, like a stab in the back? Is the Jewish lesbian Felice in the film portrayed mildly but remarkably as a destroyer of the healthy German family, as an intrusive and ailing factor in converting the sexual orientation of a German housewife and mother of four children through hellish seduction and body manipulation? The director underlined and exaggerated in his film Lilly’s initial aversion to lesbian kissing. While the scene in the book contains Lilly’s outrage with Felice staying in the apartment, the movie scene contains Lilly’s nervous breakdown and hitting Felice leaving the apartment!

Is the movie a good cover story that proves there is no justice for the dead victims, offering the opportunity to portray the perpetrators, the Hitler supporters, as partly “good guys” at the same time? The Färberböcks film seems to also be an expression of the German need to make a more humane image of Germans during the Holocaust. In other words, not all Germans would be monsters during WWII. In addition, they suffered massive bombardments against the civilian population and against cities declared open. At the beginning of the film, the night sky over Berlin is full of bombers and bombs that destroy even 5000 apartments in one night of bombing. However, this sad fact must be seen against the background of the truth that the fire that the Germans opened on the attacked states, their citizens and their possessions returned like a boomerang with a ruthless exaggeration and a hatred even towards innocent German victims. who still ambivalently believed in the law. Wonder weapon to conquer the world and still proudly sang the national anthem ‘Germany above all’, at least on the radio.

Is this movie really a true love story? Or is it a mixture of passion and a drive to survive in a strange context with a fairly liberal bisexual war moral and a willingness to steal each other’s lovers and spouses, an extremely destiny-defying love affair? Is it at the same time some kind of spiritual misalignment between a narrow-minded housewife and a charming, cosmopolitan girl that couldn’t have lasted long in peacetime anyway? The best evidence for the assumption about this incompatibility might be the scene of celebrating Lilly’s birthday with dancing: Lilly wears her petit bourgeois blue dress, while Felice wears a tailcoat and a top hat. Is the whole story an example of unrequited love or of fake love with the mask of passion? Is the film, on the contrary, about a true love prevented by horrible circumstances, a love that blindly and reciprocally defied all reason and defied all dangers, wanting to consummate itself immediately, with extreme intensity, but a love too weak, too exhausted? ? to achieve a possible happy ending? Definitive and clear answers to these many questions could not be given, for all the reasons already mentioned. Therefore, let us leave the possibility that the film version of the ambivalent love story is really a monument to the human greatness and heroism of the German housewife Elisabeth Wust despite her human flaws. For a time he managed to save the life of the Jewish journalist Felice, who would not have died in the Holocaust had she escaped in time together with some of her friends and members of the resistance who survived the war. Unfortunately, Felice was somehow tragically blinded by his subversive love, by his hunt as a jaguar of the unhappy, simple and petty bourgeois married.