Herrenkinder

Summary

The documentary film portrays two families whose fathers were educated at boarding schools in Nazi Germany called "Napola" (Nationalpolitische Erziehungsanstalt, National Political Institutes of Education). The students were supposed to become the nation’s future elite. Thus, they were systemically broken in the boarding school’s everyday life with the aim to form the members of the future "master race" from their shattered minds. Remarkably, many of the former Napola students still attained elite positions in the economy and society of post-war Germany. But today, their children and children’s children are struggling with the impact of this education. What has happened with their fathers and grand-fathers during their time at Napola? "Herrenkinder" is a filmic dossier about the "psychological heritage", about the fact that the inhuman education continues to have a hidden impact since the National Socialist ideology is still alive in the minds of next generations although Nazi Germany experienced its political downfall sixty years ago in the bombed-out cities of the Third Reich.