Girls in Uniform

The English phonetic version of “Maedchen in Uniform,” the great German picture of life in a girl’s boarding school had its premier at the Criterion Theatre the other evening, under the auspices of John Krimsky and Gifford Cochran. The film used was the same as the original version but instead of Enlish captions and German dialogue, the language that came from the sound apparatus was our own native tongue. In turning this sensitively acted. superlative produced picture into English, nothing of the original beauty has been lost. It is still the same moving drama. Miss Eleanor Phelps is the English voice for the German of Dorothea Wieck and Adele Ronson provides the voice of Hertha Thiele.

“Girls in Uniform,” since the rise of Herr Hitler has a new significance. That fellow’s ranting about nationalism and militarism makes this picture a typical example of what educators in Germany are now trying to do.

When “Maedchen in Uniform” first appeared in this country, people thought the period portrayed was Germany under Bismarck. People thought it impossible that such a school could exist today, but the school pictured in “Girls in Uniform” is more probably the rule, “Maedchen in Uniform” was received throughout the world as a work of art. But “Girls in Uniform” has social and political significance. It is not only that many schools in Germany are conducted in the spirit of this school but “Girls in Uniform” is a symbol of the whole present day Prussian spirit.

There was a time when the word “German” brought to mind a culture to which the world is eternally in debt. But there was also the spirit inculcated by Frederick, King of Prussia. He happened to be a man with an appreciation for all the arts, but he ruled a poor, spare country, Prussia, which had little time for cultural pursuits.