Propaganda a prawda historyczna.
Propaganda versus historical truth.

Frederick II in the feature films of the Third Reich

Summary/Abstract: Since the beginning of cinematography the filmmakers have been using historical plots. But, as a rule, it has always been a mythologised version that was shown, and not the real one. That tendency has not changed, and therefore films have always been an important source for historians to do research into the state of social consciousness at the moment when the film in question was being created. This phenomenon is quite visible in the German cinema in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, i.e. in times of the socio-economic crisis and the triumph of the totalitarian state. Among all the Prussian characters in the films made in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich the favourite one was Frederick II. He was much more popular than – for example – Bismarck, another outstanding figure in the Prussian history.

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