A beautiful spring day at the Trakehenen Stud near Konigsberg, East Prussia (now Kaliningrad). The storks are nesting, the foals gambol, and the narrator speaks of the nobility, beauty and character of the Trakehner horse.

The year is 1936. The film Das Paradies der Pferde (Paradise of the Horse) is written and directed by Wilhelm Prager for UFA, the German film company.

The first time through, I managed to enjoy the film and ignore the resemblance of the man in the white coat to Joseph Goebbels, Nazi propagandist extraordinaire. But I kept coming back to that face and his narrow body -- he had polio as a child, which stunted his growth, and he walked with a limp. Notice that the film strategically cuts from a standing shot to him taking a few steps and getting on a horse, a trick I have used myself to cover an actress with a broken foot.

Thanks to Goebbels, the Nazis appropriated the German film industry and made many such films, often about seemingly benign subjects. However, there is some serious cultural symbolism at play here - the Trakehner breed was a symbol of the Prussian Junkers, who formed the military elite around the imperial family who had ruled Germany until World War I. The Nazi party was decidedly not part of this elite - they were upstarts who the Prussian aristocrats thought they could use as a wedge in a power struggle. For Goebbels, the child of middle class Germans, to plant himself aboard one of their prized horses, would be a triumph. It is entirely possible I am wrong and this is the head groom of the Trakehnen stables. Either way, the film celebrates a paradise with a long shadow cast over it.

Eight years after this film was made, the disastrous rule of Adolph Hitler and his trio of powerful ministers, Goebbels, Himmler & Goering, was crumbling. Although orders were given to keep the citizens of East Prussia from fleeing Allied bombing and the approaching Russian army under penalty of death, the evacuation of the Trakehnen Stud was ordered in October of 1944. Too late - but that is another story. Soon Konigsberg and its environs lay in ruins, its legacy devastated, its people on the run.

The Trakehnen stud shown in this film still stands, although parts are in ruins and other are used to raise cattle. Konigsberg is now Kaliningrad, part of an area still under Russsian rule.

The Trakehner horse was reconstituted from the survivors of the flight to Western Germany, as well as through a separate stud book in Russia.

Wihelm Prager, who won a gold medal at the 1937 Exposition Internationale "Arts et Techniques" in Paris for Paradies der Pferde, was declared a "half-Jew" by the Gestapo in 1939.
He must have had a least one powerful ally (perhaps Goebbels) as he retained his standing as a member of the Reichsfilmkammer, making more films, including other about horses, a favorite subject of his. He formed his own film company after World War II , Willi-Prager-Films.

Joseph Goebbels was shot in the head at his own order, together with his wife Magda, after they had administered poison to their six children, during the final throes of the siege of Berlin in 1945. A wikipedia article includes his picture.

What do you think? Is it him?