But I cannot believe that, just because one has a wife and children, a man is free to offend God.įranz Jägerstätter was beheaded by guillotine and cremated the next day.From visionary writer-director Terrence Malick comes this epic film and powerful true story about an unsung hero, Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who refused to fight for the Nazis in World War II.ĭespite pressure from the town Mayor and his farm neighbors, who increasingly ostracize him and his family, and also from the Bishop of Salzburg, Jägerstätter refuses to compromise his convictions about the evil of Nazism, and would not sign the required oath of allegiance to Hitler and the Third Reich. People worry about the obligations of conscience as they concern my wife and children. God gives so much strength that it is possible to bear any suffering….
Neither prison nor chains nor sentence of death can rob a man of the Faith and his free will. If I must write… with my hands in chains, I find that much better than if my will were in chains. On August 8th, the night before his execution, Franz solidified his faith in writing:
#A HIDDEN LIFE TRIAL#
While he maintained the ideology that he was only responsible for his own actions, and did not pass judgement onto others (a beautiful conversation between Diehl's character and a Nazi court official alludes to this state of mind), Jägerstätter faced a military trial where he was accused of Wehrkraftzersetzung – undermining of troop morale – and found guilty of sedition. While A Hidden Lifeportrays Franz as being a father, it is only to the three young girls he has with his wife Fani (Pachner).Īs seen in A Hidden Life, other people's attempts to convince Franz that he had a responsibility to his family saw no budge in his convictions. Not only was he the first young man in his town to own a motorcycle (paid for with the money he earned in Styrian ore mining), leading a rowdy group of delinquents and getting arrested several times, he also had his own daughter out of wedlock. With a fully-furnished family, Franz's teenage years were, more or less, like the other teenage boys in his town: wild and resilient. At age ten, Franz was adopted by his stepfather Heinrich Jägerstätter, who, in turn, gave the young boy his last name. When Franz was very young, his biological father Bachmeier was killed in World War I, freeing Rosalia up to be courted and pursued by other men. With no husband to help support her and her child, Rosalia and Franz moved back in with her mother and newly-ordained grandmother, Elizabeth Huber. The illegitimate child of chambermaid Rosalia Huber and farmer Franz Bachmeir, life in the small, religious town was difficult for the lovers, and without the money to afford a wedding, societal norms dictated that the two parents couldn't remain together. Radegund, Austria, a quiet and tiny village close to the Bavarian-German border. But who was Franz Jägerstätter when he was alive? And how much of his true story did Terrence Malick's A Hidden Life get right?įranz Jägerstätter was born in 1907 in St. The film itself was even given the rare privilege of being screened at the Vatican in December. His name was Franz Jägerstätter, and in 2007, he was not only declared a martyr by Pope Benedict XVI, but he was also beatified by the Catholic Church – who officially declared him a saint.
#A HIDDEN LIFE MOVIE#
Related: Togo True Story: What The Disney+ Movie Changed & Got Rightĭiehl's character was based on a real man.
This made him an outlier in a rapidly expanding sea of bigotry and his heroism – one that is hardly ever explored in cinema – who was defined not by what he did in his life, but what he didn't do. As the townsfolk, largely made up of wheat and cattle farmers, begin rallying around the rising Fuhrer and the growing war effort, one man was not only deeply troubled by the culture, vexed by the moral and spiritual repercussions taking part of it would cause, but also made the remarkably rare decision to be vocal about it. Radegund, Malick counterposes the insistent beauty of the surroundings with the increasing chaos betwixt it. Frolicking in the exquisite nature of the agricultural town St.
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