The film was shot at Pirna-Sonnestein sanitarium outside Dresden.
Today, the sanitarium is used as a memorial for the 13,720 people who were murdered there between 1940 and 1941, mostly mentally ill or retarded, as part of the National Socialists' policy of euthanasia as manifested in programme 'Aktion T4'.
In 1900, a patient in the sanitarium, Daniel Paul Schreber, wrote 'Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken' while being hospitalised there as a result of a severe Paranoid Schizophrenia. These notes were later analysed by Sigmund Freud on the theoretical basis of psychoanalysis. Schreber's father, Moritz Schreber, a famous physician, writer and educator published many books advocating both his "systematic remedial exercises" and countryside exercise for urban youth. One of Schreber's convictions was that when babies cry they should be made to desist by the use of spanking, assuring his readers that "such a procedure is only necessary once, or at the most twice, and then one is master of the child for all time. From then on, one look, one single gesture will suffice." Above all, these books counseled that the newborn child should be forced from the very first day to obey and to refrain from crying. He also devised a method for correcting postures and body positions among children and youth through straps, wooden devises and contraptions.
The film was shot 'on it's side' and is projected in the usual landscape mode. That way the viewers are forced to twist their heads to correct for the rotated image.
The CDA's archives are operating with the support of the Ostrovsky Family Fund and Artis
