Let’s start with Plot 1, which begins with the slightly chubby-looking Attorney General Dr Bauer lying naked in his bathtub. He has just almost slipped under the water when the camera pans to the roll of pills and almost empty wine glass. The message is that the Attorney General has taken a cocktail of alcohol and pills. He is rescued at the last second and pulled out of the water, but the rumours can no longer be stopped. The “general” has ingested an “unfortunate mixture”, one might think he wanted to kill himself or was overwhelmed, a “kind of suicide attempt”, as it says right at the beginning of the film. Of course, the protagonist himself doesn’t want to talk about it. Bauer grumpily explains to his worried employer and Minister President Georg August Zinn that he hasn’t been able to sleep “without chemicals” for a long time, but he has a pistol and if he wants to kill himself, then there will certainly be no more rumours.

Hero or loser of post-war history, the film’s main conflict quickly becomes recognisable as a plot: Dr Bauer against the superiority of the former Nazis, who quickly regained their prestige and prosperity in the Adenauer era. “My own agency is enemy territory,” says Bauer, adding that no progress is being made in the search for Bormann, Mengele and Eichmann. He eyes his surroundings with deep suspicion. When the file of a Nazi perpetrator “disappears” from his desk while he is still in hospital, the depressed Nazi hunter makes all kinds of suspicions. In the end, it turns out that one of the prosecutors has taken the file from his desk for official use. So is there something wrong with the “enemy territory”? Bauer is embarrassed.

So Bauer coughs, smokes, snorts, rants and babbles his way through the film as a strangely toothless, white-haired old man. A highly unhappy, desperate “general” who has been declared a suicide candidate and who cannot come to terms with the world in which he lives or with himself.

Only when it comes to the Nazis does Dr Bauer come alive. He is constantly and fanatically on the lookout for old Nazis and, above all, for the one whose name stands for the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”: Adolf Eichmann. He is asked if he doesn’t like hunting, “Yes, but not animals!” Bauer snorts back. This is soon followed by another of those grotesque dialogues with his employer Zinn, a Social Democrat like Bauer, who tells us that he had Rosa Luxemburg’s picture taken down in his office. A left-wing social democrat like Fritz Bauer, that’s the message, naturally sees something like that immediately. Will Prime Minister Zinn also let him down? The state against Fritz Bauer and the betrayal of his comrades are in the air.

Bauer tells Zinn about his secret hunt for Eichmann, that he will call in the Israeli secret service Mossad, and so on and so forth. The whole Eichmann story takes its course, only for Bauer to finally state contritely and naively as well as pathetically: “My anger is accompanied by powerlessness and that makes me old.” After 1945, he thought “we had defeated evil”, but people didn’t want visions, they just wanted “Adenauer’s cursed reconciliation, the restoration defeated the revolution.” It could hardly have been more platitudinous; the Social Democrat Bauer, who wanted to defeat evil, was allegedly against reconciliation with Israel. It is suggested that Bauer had renounced his own Jewish family history, that he was a traitor to his fellow sufferers. What a grotesque historical misinterpretation.

The film takes its cue from National Socialist racial legislation, the reversal of the legal equality of Jews. Yes, it is true: Bauer was assimilated, he did not belong to any religious community. However, anyone who accuses Bauer of not having submitted to the Nuremberg racial laws is making a positive statement about the unjust National Socialist state and is treading on a dangerously populist slippery slope. Like Fritz Bauer Institute guest researcher Ronen Steinke, who accuses Bauer of replying “coolly” to the “innocent question” of a “young friend”: “Are you actually Jewish?”: “In the sense of the Nuremberg Laws: Yes.” The author adds that Bauer could not have said more clearly that he “sees this as an annoying external ascription”. (Steinke 2014: 32) What else, one wonders, should he see in it? And why “only cool”, why this distancing from Bauer? Why does Steinke think he has to play off Bauer’s grandfather, who fought for the legal equality of Jews, against his grandson? (ibid.) After all, Bauer followed in his grandfather’s footsteps and practised the very religious freedom that our law guarantees us. Does the author not trust his own interpretation?

This impression of self-doubt is also conveyed by the film “Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer”. The footsteps in which the main character is supposed to tread are too big for the authors of the story. They don’t dare to follow the path of Fritz Bauer and prefer to repeat the old chestnut about the futility of human endeavour rather than taking the side of the courageous Attorney General “In the fight for human rights”. As a result, one of the few pioneering personalities in 20th century German history has become a pathetic caricature of himself.

As if to emphasise this, their story becomes increasingly irrational. “Eichmann”, Bauer says to Zinn, that would be “a blow”. “Do you know how many people in Frankfurt won’t be able to sleep if we put him in the dock?” And there he is again, the avenging Jew who is only kept alive by the hunt for Eichmann, which seems pointless to him. He should not feel sorry for himself, film prime minister Zinn admonishes his “general” accordingly. And to involve Israel in the search for Eichmann: “That’s treason!” Zinn doesn’t think this is a wise decision, but he lets Bauer go ahead. Still outraged, Bauer leaves the ministry, not without telling Zinn: “There should be no doubt about my patriotism.”

Plot 1 is reaching its climax. The Federal Criminal Police Office catches Bauer on the trail of his secret search for Eichmann and, just in time to intervene and place Bauer under special surveillance, claims to have discovered: “The Jew is gay!”, as senior public prosecutor Kreidler states tellingly. It comes to a mocking oath: “If we catch him with some bloke, he’s finished. … Even a monk has to have a shag at some point.” The alien police file from Denmark is introduced in the film as confirmation of Bauer’s homosexuality, although, as mentioned at the beginning, it proves nothing except the suspicions with which the police put the political refugee under pressure.

From then on, against the backdrop of the well-known Eichmann story, in which the alleged love story of Eichmann’s son Nick with the daughter of a concentration camp survivor is not missing (although it is not true, the girl was actually twelve years old), the film heads towards the end and at the same time back to the beginning of the story.

Plot 2 determines the story from now on: Bauer, a Jew, was secretly gay. In his fanatical and equally secret search for Eichmann, he confides in his favourite handsome young prosecutor Angermann, who in turn is just discovering his own homosexuality. Bauer recognises this in the film even before Angermann himself, which he does with just a glance at Angermann’s checked socks when he invites the young man – confidentially, of course – to his private flat to talk about Adolf Eichmann. Tchaikovsky’s “Symphonie Pathétique” plays in the background. The course is set, or rather, the sex and Nazi crime story takes its course. A Jew who renounces all lust and is a “Nazi hunter” seduces an insecure young public prosecutor into joining him on the Nazi hunt.

In the film, however, Angermann is initially reticent: “We are committing treason,” he says. Bauer is outraged: “Do you want to do something for our country or a new kitchen? If we want to do something for our country, then we have to betray it in this case.” The stab-in-the-back legend sends its regards. A left-wing social democrat betrays the former Nazis to Israel. Angermann reproaches Bauer for his vindictiveness: “You sound more and more like your opponents…” Whereupon the key phrase is put into Bauer’s mouth himself: “You mean like a vengeful Jew!”

Angermann asks for time to think and it comes as it must (dramaturgically speaking). Bauer manages to win over the insecure young man, who is on the verge of coming out, to his side. Angermann soon reveals his sexual inclinations to him, whereupon Bauer also declares himself: “I’ve had the feeling for some time that we have similar interests. … My wife Anna-Maria and I have been living separately for many years, she in Copenhagen and I here. I think it’s one of the happiest marriages ever. If your wife is a good companion, then you don’t have to worry about bringing up children. I think you are a fantastic father.” (1) Prosecutor Angermann is married like Dr Bauer and on the day after his coming out, of all days, his wife reveals to him that she is pregnant, naturally. Bauer admonishes Angermann that he must no longer see his lover, they both have to renounce. Their friendship is soon put to the test.

But first, what still has to happen in Plot 1 happens. “I have to defend the living Jews of Israel, not the dead. … I have to use my people against our Arab enemies,” Israel’s secret service chief Isser Harel, who speaks Yiddish with Bauer, has just explained to Dr Bauer, who is pushing for Eichmann’s arrest, in the film. And on one of his trips to Jerusalem to capture Eichmann (these meetings actually took place in Tel Aviv, by the way), the “Nazi hunter” has just called out to Israeli Attorney General Haim Cohn: “If you have Eichmann, I will submit an extradition request to Israel. … Eichmann must stand trial in Frankfurt. We must confront the Germans with their past.”

But at the same time as Bauer receives the news of the successful Eichmann kidnapping, he sees Israeli Prime Minister Ben Gurion on television together with Chancellor Adenauer congratulating each other on the German-Israeli reconciliation (criticised by Bauer at the beginning of the film). Adenauer: “The German people are deeply satisfied that the reparations for victims of Nazism are a contribution to Israel’s reconstruction process.” Ben Gurion: “I said in the Knesset that the Germany of today is no longer the Germany of yesterday. I wish the Chancellor success in his endeavours to lead Germany on the path to democracy and international cooperation.” (2) Bauer switches off the television, exasperated. Apart from a short speech by Bauer about Eichmann as an intro to the film, this is the only longer historical film clip in “Der Staat gegen Fritz Bauer”. It is suggested that the “Nazi hunter”, social democrat and “gay Jew”, who allegedly does not want to acknowledge Jewish history, was indifferent to political developments and the state of Israel, that he only ever had his “Nazi hunt” on his mind. Fritz Bauer of all people, the fighter for human rights and equality before the law, who despite all opposition brought the genocide committed by the Nazis, crimes of the Wehrmacht and the Nazi “euthanasia” to court, who had the top members of his own guild investigated (the decision to discontinue the case was made soon after his death) – a “left-wing anti-Semite”?

The view of history is becoming increasingly confused and irrational, above all nationalistic. Israel’s state secret service does not hunt Nazis because it needs its people to destroy its Arab enemies, and the responsible state authorities in Germany do not hunt Nazis because the former persecutors of the Jews are back in office and doing business with Israel. This is more profitable, as Dr Bauer soon learns in the film. As if there had been no alternatives, history is disposed of and Israel and Germany sit obliviously in the same boat: the one wants to erase the Nazi past in order to become a “normal” democratic state again, the other the Arabs in order to defend Israel’s reconstruction process. It couldn’t be simpler.

The film’s plot completely unravels when Eichmann’s kidnapping allegedly loosens the “Nazi hunter’s” tongue. Is it alcohol (as already suggested at the beginning of the film) or victory drunkenness that once again drives Bauer to self-exposure? He celebrates Eichmann’s success with public prosecutor Angermann, his only confidant, in a pub with Äppelwoi and, in vino veritas, he now reveals the last of his three “secrets”: he himself has betrayed his comrades and submitted to the Nazis.

On the way home from the pub, he tells the astonished Angermann the story of how he was imprisoned in a concentration camp with Kurt Schumacher, a member of the Reichstag in Stuttgart, and admired his steadfastness, while he himself was faint-hearted: “But I, I submitted to the National Socialists in an open letter,” says the tired “General”, “they printed it in the newspaper, the socialist Bauer submits, that’s how I got out, I never forgave myself for that, Schumacher didn’t submit, you must never submit to tyranny, Karl, never. I have to go up now, I can’t take any more.” And with that, Dr Bauer disappears into his flat.

Is it naivety or intentional, once again the plot follows the logic of the Nazi regime, which played its opponents off against each other. Neither the confession of submission nor Bauer’s alleged confession of remorse exist, and those who would have us believe this have not presented a single original to date, but have only ever damaged Bauer’s life and work. There is an alleged confession of loyalty printed by the Nazis in their party newspaper (i.e. not a handwritten one!), under which, among other names, “Hauer” and not “Bauer” is written. There is no handwritten signature at all from one of the alleged SPD traitors.

What the troubled Attorney General doesn’t know at this point in the film is that his young friend Angermann has been exposed. To celebrate, he goes to his transsexual lover, who was bought by the BKA, who in turn had Bauer and Angermann watched the whole time. The BKA man holds the incriminating photos up to the young public prosecutor, one after the other, and blackmails him with them: Angermann should accuse Dr Bauer of treason because of his tip-off to the Mossad about Eichmann’s whereabouts. His only alternative was to go to prison himself for an offence against § 175.

A showdown ensues: First, Minister President Zinn informs the deeply disappointed “Nazi hunter” Dr Bauer that the German government will not be filing an extradition request for Eichmann. “Don’t you know why Ben Gurion and Adenauer met? Israel wants to buy German weapons, … the Israelis need German weapons.” An allusion to the secret diplomacy and agreements between Ben Gurion and Adenauer in New York, which led to German arms deliveries to Israel, which is often mixed up with “reparations” (a trivialising term) for both German and Israeli reasons of state. But Dr Bauer is said to have been indifferent to both anyway: “My success would have been if Eichmann had named all the Nazis in a court of law in Germany who today lead this republic as war profiteers.” Zinn: “There will be other opportunities.” Bauer: “But not for me anymore.” He is depressed.

On the way back in the car, he confesses to his young public prosecutor that he wants to resign. He’s not allowed to, says Angermann, but Bauer continues to ponder that the two prosecutors Vogel and Kügler are on to something: “We could bring Auschwitz to court, a cross-section of the entire camp, but I don’t believe in it anymore, they always find a way to stop us.” This ends plot 1, Bauer is the loser, everything that was foreshadowed at the beginning has come true: The Restoration has won.

But another bitter hour awaits the Attorney General. Angermann suddenly gets out of the official car and at the same time hands Bauer the incriminating photos that the BKA had taken of him and his lover. He turns himself in to the police and is taken away to Bauer’s horror, who realises at the same moment that his friend has been blackmailed but has not betrayed him.

Bauer returns to his office the next day with a clenched fist, where senior public prosecutor Kreidler (the man with the BKA contact) is already waiting for him. Bauer is asked whether he is biased in the case of public prosecutor Angermann. He answers in the negative. Once a traitor, always a traitor, is the message. Just as Bauer allegedly submitted to the Nazis, he now submits to the provisions of § 175. His last sentence, which concludes the film, is: “Do your job. But rest assured, I will do mine. As long as I live, no one will stop me.”

This closes the circle: Fritz Bauer, the alleged traitor to the Jews and social democrats, is also said to have become a traitor to homosexuals. That is the misguided and certainly not innocent message of this film. Everything that Bauer fought against all his life was supposed to have been him. He, who declared disobedience and resistance to state-sponsored violence to be a duty, who fought against the Nazis and risked his life in the process, who suffered imprisonment in a concentration camp and exile, is said to have been one of those law-abiding men of duty and lawyers when disobedience and resistance were necessary. The victims and survivors are lumped together with the perpetrators as if there had been no resistance and no help and, above all, as if after 1945 everyone had been victims and survivors – including the millions of convinced Nazis who miraculously became convinced democrats from one day to the next.

For those who know Bauer’s story, this film seems like a haunting, but unfortunately it is not. Why, instead of telling Fritz Bauer’s exemplary and courageous story, which truly offers enough exciting material for an epic film, is the privacy and honour of a man so questioned, even violated? After all, he can no longer defend himself! Why, with the support of the institute named after Bauer (Werner Renz and Raphael Gross, who was director there until recently, are named as advisors) and its guest researcher Ronen Steinke, on whom the entire film is based, is such an oblivious image of history being put into the world as if there had been no resistance and struggle for survival by the persecuted and victims during the Nazi regime? Should all this really be forgotten?