Umsonst gelebt - Walter Schwarze

A Life in Vain – Walter Schwarze

This film is part of a series of films on gay men who survived the Nazi era. I met Walter Schwarze when he was already in his eighties. My camera recorded his first public account of his five-year incarceration as a homosexual at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

He was in his fifties when he met Ali in his hometown of Leipzig; the two men became partners and remained close until his demise. And yet, Walter told me, he felt he had lived in vain, because he had not had the good fortune of today’s gays, who are able to grow up in freedom. Walter Schwarze died of cancer on 10 May, 1998.

Rosa von Praunheim

Source: 55. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin (Catalogue)