In Mädchen in Uniform, the apparently difficult Manuela von Meinhardis (‘you’re big for 14’ – ‘I’m 14 and a half’), whose mother died when she was young and whose father serves in the Prussian military, is enrolled by her aunt at an all-girls boarding school headed by strict disciplinarian Fräulein von Nordeck zur Nidden.
An emotional child, she is drawn to teacher Fräulein von Bernburg, who has a considerably kinder attitude toward the girls than the head and the rest of the teaching staff.
But while most of the girls have a crush on the teacher, for Manuela it becomes more serious, with hints too of the same from Fräulein von Bernburg.
While this is a film from Germany’s extraordinary Weimar era, you probably won’t guess at how it works itself out.
Written by Christa Winsloe (with FD Andam and based on Winsloe’s own play, Gestern und heute – Yesterday and Today), it’s set firmly at the start of the 20th century.
The themes are clear – from the head’s austere version of “Prussianism”, insisting that even if the school is struggling financially and the girls go hungry as a result, “poverty is not a sin; poverty enobles”; that the girls come from military and aristocratic stock and will, ‘God willing’, become mothers to more Prussian soldiers.
“Discipline and order” are paramount here.
None of this is far-fetched. I went to the state Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School in the late 1970s and into the 1980s – and the head in this film reminds me absolutely of our head then, Miss Owen (albeit the film version is infinitely thinner) with her deputy, Mrs Rigby, reminiscent of Fräulein von Kesten, a smarmy adjutant.
It is a remarkable film that I ‘discovered’ via a BFI list of 30 best LGBT+ films.
Directed by Leontine Sagan – her first film – and with an all-female cast, it’s astonishingly filmed, remarkably naturalistic – yet with nods to the visual look of German Expressionism – and wonderfully acted. The stand-out performances are from Hertha Thiele as Manuela, Dorothea Wieck as Fräulein von Bernburg and Emilia Unda as the headmistress.
A really powerful lesbian film for LGBT+ History Month.
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