Toxi |
DEFA Film Library
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
1952
85 minutes, b/w (English subtitles)
West Germany
Robert A. Stemmle, Director
A five-year-old girl suddenly appears on the doorstep of a well-to-do Hamburg family. The members of the multi-generational, white household react differently to the arrival of Toxi, who is black, the daughter of an African-American G.I. and a white German woman who has died. Eventually Toxi works her way into the hearts of this German family, but then her father returns, hoping to take Toxi back to America with him.
In West Germany at the time of the film’s release, there were nearly 100,000 children of Allied paternity born since WWII; of these, fewer than 5,000 were of colored paternity. Toxi was the first feature-length film to explore the subject of “black occupation children” in postwar Germany. It premiered in 1952 as part of a plan to raise public awareness, as these children began entering German schools. Known for his unique blend of social realism and melodrama, Robert A. Stemmle—one of in West Germany’s most popular directors—brought together an exceptionally renowned group of classic German actors with very diverse experiences of the Nazi era, including Paul Bildt, Johanna Hofer and Elisabeth Flickenschildt.
Special Features
- Biographies & Filmographies
- Audio commentary, by film scholars Angelika Fenner & Tobias Nagel
- “Toxi and the Story of Race after Nazism,” by historian Heide Fehrenbach
- Trailer: Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story (2011, Dir. Regina Griffin)
- Original film flyer, with English translation
- Books on the movie