Warning: This article contains SPOILERS for A Hidden Life.
What is the true story behind the hero of A Hidden Life, Terrence Malick’s powerful and spiritual film about a conscientious objector in the face of Nazi tyranny? The first feature-length movie The Tree of Life director has put out since 2015’s Knight of Cups, the movie follows an Austrian farmer who, as Hitler’s reign over Germany grows stronger and stronger, doesn’t allow government and societal pressure to overrule his commitment to his faith, nor his sense of right and wrong. It stars August Diehl – ironically most known for his role as an intensive and intrusive SS officer in a critical scene of Quentin Tarantino’s World War II fantasy Inglorious Basterds – in the main role, headlining a cast that also includes Valerie Pachner and Maria Simon, among others.
Frolicking in the exquisite nature of the agricultural town St. Radegund, Malick counterposes the insistent beauty of the surroundings with the increasing chaos betwixt it. As the townsfolk, largely made up of wheat and cattle farmers, begin rallying around the rising Fuhrer and the growing war effort, one man was not only deeply troubled by the culture, vexed by the moral and spiritual repercussions taking part of it would cause, but also made the remarkably rare decision to be vocal about it. This made him an outlier in a rapidly expanding sea of bigotry and his heroism – one that is hardly ever explored in cinema – who was defined not by what he did in his life, but what he didn’t do.
Diehl’s character was based on a real man. His name was Franz Jägerstätter, and in 2007, he was not only declared a martyr by Pope Benedict XVI, but he was also beatified by the Catholic Church – who officially declared him a saint. The film itself was even given the rare privilege of being screened at the Vatican in December. But who was Franz Jägerstätter when he was alive? And how much of his true story did Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life get right?
Franz’s Early Life
Franz Jägerstätter was born in 1907 in St. Radegund, Austria, a quiet and tiny village close to the Bavarian-German border. The illegitimate child of chambermaid Rosalia Huber and farmer Franz Bachmeir, life in the small, religious town was difficult for the lovers, and without the money to afford a wedding, societal norms dictated that the two parents couldn’t remain together. With no husband to help support her and her child, Rosalia and Franz moved back in with her mother and newly-ordained grandmother, Elizabeth Huber.
When Franz was very young, his biological father Bachmeier was killed in World War I, freeing Rosalia up to be courted and pursued by other men. At age ten, Franz was adopted by his stepfather Heinrich Jägerstätter, who, in turn, gave the young boy his last name. With a fully-furnished family, Franz’s teenage years were, more or less, like the other teenage boys in his town: wild and resilient. Not only was he the first young man in his town to own a motorcycle (paid for with the money he earned in Styrian ore mining), leading a rowdy group of delinquents and getting arrested several times, he also had his own daughter out of wedlock. While A Hidden Life portrays Franz as being a father, it is only to the three young girls he has with his wife Fani (Pachner).
Early in his life, as was suggested in the film, there was a time in Franz’s life where religion was not a pressing matter in his mind. According to his biographer (via Esquire), Franz questioned his faith during his time working in the iron ore industry. All of that changed, however, once he met his bride-to-be, Franziska Schwaninger.
Franz’s Marriage And Early Resilience
Franz and Franziska married in 1936, and for their honeymoon they conducted perhaps the first pilgrimage of its kind by venturing all the way to and from Rome on Franz’s motorcycle. In doing so, Franz’s sense of faith in Catholicism had strongly began to manifest itself, and soon after he would regularly consider the troubles of obedience to man over that to God. Though he was not a revolutionary in his nature, nor was he a part of any major resistance movements, in 1938 Franz was the only local citizen to vote against the territorial joining of Austria and Germany – otherwise known as the “Anschluss” – in the wake of the Nazi party’s massive propaganda campaign.
But even so, Franz was called for military service in the summer of 1940. And, as was depicted in A Hidden Life, while he never experienced battle on the front lines himself, the exposure he did receive to the Nazi war effort deeply disturbed him. After seven months of training, Jägerstätter was sent back to St. Radegund under a special exemption because the town was in need of farmers.
For the next few years, Franz remained openly anti-Nazi, putting his complete trust in his God and his religion. Meanwhile, the suppression of the church by the National Socialist Party had further disturbed him, and, despite the recommendation of the bishop of Linz, he considered any sort of involvement in the Nazi war effort to be a sin.
Franz’s Imprisonment
While those close to him had suggested that he ease up on his discontent with the Nazis, Franz instead found ways to squirm out of the German’s sights. In December, 1940, he began work at the local parish church and his military service was deferred four more times. He was finally called to active duty, however, in February 1943. At this time, though he and his wife were the parents of three girls, Franz refused once again to swear loyalty to Hitler, offering to be used as a paramedic instead. The initial offer was rejected, and when he refused once again to take the Hitler oath, he was imprisoned in Linz for two months and was then transferred to Berlin-Tegel.
As seen in A Hidden Life, other people’s attempts to convince Franz that he had a responsibility to his family saw no budge in his convictions. While he maintained the ideology that he was only responsible for his own actions, and did not pass judgement onto others (a beautiful conversation between Diehl’s character and a Nazi court official alludes to this state of mind), Jägerstätter faced a military trial where he was accused of Wehrkraftzersetzung – undermining of troop morale – and found guilty of sedition. He was sentenced to death.
On August 8th, the night before his execution, Franz solidified his faith in writing:
Franz Jägerstätter was beheaded by guillotine and cremated the next day.
If I must write… with my hands in chains, I find that much better than if my will were in chains. Neither prison nor chains nor sentence of death can rob a man of the Faith and his free will. God gives so much strength that it is possible to bear any suffering…. People worry about the obligations of conscience as they concern my wife and children. But I cannot believe that, just because one has a wife and children, a man is free to offend God.
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