Documentary filmmaker Bettina Renner
A Sioux in Saxony
What makes the grave of a chief of the Oglala in a cemetery in Dresden? The answer to this question led to a documentary filmmaker Bettina hit wide on a journey.
Transfigured Karlmaytum Edward Two Two and a tribal brother play for Hagenbeck Indians
No, Karl May has to do with this story, for once, nothing, although it has its origins 100 years ago. But this is about a "real" Indians: Sioux chief Edward Two Two lived from 1851 to 1914, or so it says on his grave stone in the middle of the new Catholic cemetery in Dresden and below like in the Lakota language the inscription "To Paradise Angels lead you. " It is a plain sandstone rimmed with green and overgrown grave in which - put a small American flag - with special permission of the cemetery.
That the director Bettina Renner was attentive, as she turned in 2007 to the cemetery a movie. The thirty-seven, in Dresden, Ohio and American studies, and once wrote her thesis on the role image of Indians in Indian films, was electrified. The question of why an Indian chief was far removed from the home and tradition of his people laid to rest, gave more answers ready, as she first thought.
The search took five years of files and archives up to America, to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where descendants of Edward Two Twos live. They knew that it was the wish of her famous ancestor, to be buried in Dresden, but just talk about times they would not. "They said, 'It is our history, and we decide who we tell them,'" says Bettina Renner, who was only stunned, but now understands this. "I realized this only as a matter of course, we serve our authors, often in the stories of others."
Time of the early break
By cooling the Two Twos then heated descendants but for the idea. A good six weeks living Bettina and her team finally hit with a trailer in the reserve, and they learned not only Two Two's history, but also how much the lives of Indians in Pine Ridge is still the equal of the white settlers their ancestors, the Native Americans, forcing some 100 years ago: In a state-dependent existence, and a constant struggle for land.
Far from home: The grave of "Chief" Edward Two Two
Edward Two Two was born in the time of the beginning of radical change in the prairie. He was one of the Oglala, a tribe of the Lakota Sioux, who was in the far reaches of the Midwest home. The men, warriors, protected, and fed their people that lived in tepees and not settled by buffaloes. The train of white settlers to the west and the first gold discoveries, but limited the tribal lands of the Indians so much that they fought, defeated and were persecuted. This period also characterized Two Two, whose family name was originally Nupalla what in the Lakota language means "One of two" means, and the whites in the registry, as they forced the Indians onto reservations, profane transferred into English.
Two Two, which his ancestors had taught the pride as a warrior and supporter tried to take his prescribed the sedentary life, he became a soldier and served in the reserve police, but fortunately it did not. Once a week, on "Ration Day" let the government spend food, the Indians now had to live in huts instead of tents and speak English. Lakota, their language was forbidden. The consequences of the radical and rapid change and re-education drowned many Sioux in alcohol, even today, despite or perhaps because of the strict ban by the Indian self-government is still one of the main problems on the reservation. If you are caught inebriated, has for eight hours in detention in the past year about the met about half of the nearly 30,000 residents.
The chance to be who he was
Two Two but tried to keep his dignity, and gave him an unexpected trip to Europe. Were in contrast to America across the Atlantic end of the nineteenth century idealized and romantic notions of the free and wild life indigenous economy. However, since very few were able to travel themselves, smart businessmen brought ado Indians to Europe. Legendary were the people look the Hamburg Zoo Hagenbeck, who sent one day an envoy to Pine Ridge in order to requisition Lakota Sioux for a show. The catastrophic bearing life but did not match his image of Indianertum, only a few people came to him at all in question, among them Two Two, the so arrived with his wife and granddaughter in 1910 first to Germany, where they are with a specially created fund Indian clothes and feathers were fitted.
Among Native Americans: For her second documentary traveled originally from Saxony to the director Bettina hit Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota
The contracts specified that the Indians lived on and off the stage in costume and played himself in tipis. The show was a sensation. "For Edward Two Two was far from his home despite staging a chance to be who he was: a Lakota Sioux," Bettina says Renner. "After his return, he wanted so quickly back to Germany." The opportunity was in when the circus Sarrasani Dresden along the lines of the white American William Frederick Cody, known as Buffalo Bill, Wild West shows, took to the program - and a fast-paced performances kind of forerunner of the later Western movies where Indians attacked stagecoaches and ultimately in the fight are subject to the whites.
Said Edward Two Two came a year later to Dresden, where he was quickly promoted to chief and moved as a circus act by Germany. Bettina Renner was previously unknown footage from that period on which he rides sublime, with its splendid plumage, accompanied by cheers from the audience through the center of Dresden, and not only that: In the Federal Archives, she discovered black and white photographs from 1913, in where cowboys and Indians deliver a chase through a birch forest Dresden. The scenes were shown during the renovation break at the circus, they are practically the first Western German.
The illusion of the audience
Two Two with his powerful physique and tanned face became the star of the production. When he is in 1914 a third time in Germany, again in Sarrasani him the stress of traveling around, however, is to be so hard that he falls ill and dies in late July on tour in Essen. The obituary in the "Dresdner Latest News" appears on the same day as the call for mobilization. His wife Helen and his daughter run away with a circus employees traveling to England and from there back to the United States. Dead Indians must also be transferred to the United States under the Treaty of the show organizers, but the zinc coffin with Two Two's corpse is transferred three days later by train to Dresden and buried.
Buried in Dresden, Edward Two Twos was the express wish, although the Lakota a very close relationship to the land of their ancestors have. In the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Bettina was hit, the original document with his will, authenticated by his wife and daughter to an American consul in food. Two Two in Dresden had willingly served the illusion of the audience, and with it his own: He was once a respected Indians, albeit in a circus, and that's why he wanted to be buried here.
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The grave stone was first erected in 1926, probably by Sarrasani, by that year, enlisted with reference to the resting place of the famous "chief" for a new edition of his Indian shows, which ran until 1937 and where a widow and daughter of Two Twos at first but once attended. Later in the grave of oblivion and in 2000 it took over Dresdner Hartmut Rietschel, and kept it so before leveling - just like a grave in Emden, where another Sarrasani Indians who died in 1932, was laid to rest. "So it remains in the minds of the people that were there such a thing once," said Rietschel. In the nineties, some descendants of Two Twos Dresden, but visited his granddaughter died in 1990 without ever having been back at his grave.
A trip to Europe is expensive for the family, most Indians at Pine Ridge live on state support, just as many white people who live around the reserve around. "Almost everyone there is very poor, and the racism in the area is extreme," says Bettina hit. A good 80 percent of reserve residents are unemployed, the suicide rate is particularly important for young people four times as high as in the rest of the country and the life expectancy is barely 50 years. Thus, since the death of Edward Two Twos to the situation of the Indians changed virtually nothing, at least any more than the idealized image of the still proud Indianertum in Germany, which then has to do well but also with Karl May.
