Various - Schlager Immenhof - Für immer Immenhof - Originalmusik (CD)

1-CD DigiPac (6-page) with 48-page booklet, 58 individual titles, playing time 73:12 minutes. 

- Always loved by the Immenhof fan: The soundtracks of Hans-Martin Majewski and Norbert Schultze to the three films from the fifties.

- with Heidi Brühl and Angelika Meissner 

Forever: Immenhof

Immenhof - the word alone is enough to inspire the imagination. Even those who have never seen a film of the same name will inevitably think of summer, sun and holidays. Imagine the scenery of a romantic estate and ponies on a lush green meadow. And imagine the people around the Immenhof: a resolute grandmother, an old country veterinarian of the likes of Dr. Pudlich and two exuberant 'bait fish' living a carefree youth in the midst of this rural idyll.

Clever film producers in such a constellation sense the steep template for a box-office success. And so the Berlin Arca film by producer Gero Wecker took up the challenge courageously when the film rights to the children's novel 'Dick und Dalli und die Ponys', written in 1952 by Ursula Bruns, were up for sale. It is no coincidence that the Icelandic ponies, which were hardly known in Germany until then, play such a central role in the book: it was the writer and horse expert Ursula Bruns herself who made the first ponies home in Germany around 1950. A short time later, a wave of pony enthusiasm among Germany's teenagers, which continues to this day, broke out - a development in which Immenhof films played a decisive role.

I got to know and love the Immenhof films at the beginning of the 80s on the occasion of their umpteenth television repetition. Just as the Julie Andrews musical 'The Sound Of Music' (1965) - a US remake of the German box-office hit 'Die Trapp-Familie' (1956) - is on the programme every year at Christmas time in England, Immenhof films have established themselves here as a festival hit. The titles of the film trilogy alone made me curious: 'Die Mädels vom Immenhof' (1955), 'Hochzeit auf Immenhof' (1956) and 'Ferien auf Immenhof' (1957) - that promised romance, heart and pain, a journey back in time to the 50s. And my expectations were not disappointed!

Although the Immenhof films are essentially about the pony passion of the two girls Dick and Dalli, I soon concentrated on other things. I was particularly impressed by the performances of the actors for the film series, above all by Paul Klinger as an experienced owner of a riding stable and fatherly friend of the Immenhof clan. Or Matthias Fuchs, a blasphemous cousin of Ethelbert, who is going through a development from an arrogant city dweller and hothead to a patenten guy. Not to forget Paul Henckels as the cheerful, relaxed animal doctor Pudlich or Hans Nielsen as the quirky hereditary uncle Pankraz in the second part 'Wedding at Immenhof'.

And the Immenhof girls? It's hard to tell which one I find the most attractive. It changes. Sometimes the dreamy brunette Dick (Angelika Meissner-Voelkner) speaks to me more, sometimes the pert blonde Dalli (Heidi Brühl). I've taken them both to my heart.

Undoubtedly, the first love crushes and innocent charms of both Immenhof girls contributed significantly to the success of the film series - a 'Backfisch' flair that Gero Wecker was to bring back shortly afterwards to 'Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald' (1956). But for all its idyll: the Immenhof films were never old-fashioned Heimatfilme. Although the cinema audience, worn down by war and deprivation, fled to the unspoilt cinema world of Holstein Switzerland in 1955 with preference. But everyday problems were not lacking there either: the over-indebted Immenhof family around grandma Jantzen (Margarete Haagen) was threatened by the forced auction of the estate, the equestrian farm operator Jochen von Roth (Paul Klinger) was painstakingly building up a new existence after his late return from captivity as a prisoner of war, and soon the first 'wave of travel' rolled over the Immenhof, which had been converted into a pony hotel.

The fact that the Immenhof clan meets all these challenges as a conspired community and with the optimism of the reconstruction years is another reason for the popularity of the film series, then as now.

The three Immenhof films were shot in the summer months of 1955 - 57 in Malente-Gremsmühlen, Eutin and near Plön (Schleswig-Holstein). Even today, visitors can walk in the footsteps of Dick and Dalli and will find some locations from back then as if the film work had taken place only recently. Only the Rothensande estate in Malente, which depicts the Immenhof in the film, is privately owned and not accessible to Immenhof fans.

Successes can rarely be repeated; this is especially true in the film business. An experience that Gero Wecker also had to make almost 20 years after the release of the 'Mädels vom Immenhof': Apart from leading actress Heidi Brühl, his newly released films 'Die Zwillinge vom Immenhof' (1973) and 'Frühling auf Immenhof' (1974) had nothing in common with the 50s trilogy - true fans only swear by the first three parts of Immenhof anyway. Not only the times, production conditions and viewing habits had changed. Even a reactivation of the cast of former actors was out of the question, since Margarete Haagen, Paul Henckels, Paul Klinger and Josef Sieber (unforgotten as Gutshof-Faktotum Hein Daddel) had died in the meantime as essential pillars of the ensemble. Anyone who knows the two late films from the 70s knows how much these great actors are missing, how much their presence has contributed to the Immenhof feeling.

Tragic that hardly any of the young actors of the past are alive anymore: Heidi Brühl died in June 1991 after a serious illness, just 49 years old. Matthias Fuchs, a busy theater actor to the end, died in December 2001 at the age of 62 from a prolonged illness. And Raidar Müller-Elmau, who became a member of the Immenhof Clan as Ethelbert's clarinet-playing friend Ralf, died unexpectedly in early 2003 at the age of 69. Only Angelika Meissner, who said goodbye to film work at the end of the 1950s, worked as an architect in Canada at times and still lives her withdrawal from film and the public consistently to this day, has remained from the inner circle of Immenhof teenagers.

How often have I watched the Immenhof films? I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Even today I sometimes gain new facets from the family saga I know well. From the beginning I fell in love with the film music of Norbert Schultze ('Die Mädels vom Immenhof') by Hans-Martin Majewski ('Hochzeit auf Immenhof', 'Ferien auf Immenhof'). For what would the romantic-nostalgic magic of the three Immenhof films be without the lively tender melodies of both composers?