Nachforschungen über die Edelweißpiraten 1980

Release date

07/03/1980

The Cologne Edelweiss Pirates were one of those proletarian resistance groups against the Nazi regime that are easily forgotten to this day. They were adolescent urban Indians who threw sand in the gears, who sang forbidden songs like: ...what can Hitler's life give us, we want to be Bundish, we want to be free of Hitler. At night, they added Nazi slogans such as "Wheels roll for victory" with "Nazi heads roll after the war! They derailed a supply train for the front and stole food for Russian foreign workers. On November 10, 1944, thirteen of them were publicly hanged in Hüttenstraße in Cologne-Ehrenfeld without a court verdict. The youngest was 16 years old. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the Edelweiss Pirates were not recognized as resistance fighters for decades, but defamed as criminals. The film was the contribution of all those involved in the film to the rehabilitation of the thirteen murdered people from Hüttenstraße.