1948 Wyk auf Föhr, Germany

Fritz Erichsen
Born 1937
First movie memory in Wyk auf Föhr, Germany
Interviewed on September 11, 2019
By Greta Browne

I don’t remember the titles of many movies I’ve seen. It was a long time ago, and I’ve seen so many since then. I know the first movie I ever saw was on Föhr, though, back in Germany. Föhr is a really small island up next to Denmark, not that many people on it at all, and we were so excited to have our first movie theater in the late 40s. Most people there lived on farms like I did, so even going into town was a big deal for us.

I know the movie was a Western, but I don’t remember the title. I do remember it was a rainy day but we still really wanted to go, and we rode our bikes from the farm about five miles to get to town where the theater was. I went with my cousin, Fritz Clausen. We were ten, maybe twelve years old, so it probably was 1948 or 49. We were very, very excited to go. It was all new for us. 

There was only the one movie theater on the island. They’ve always had just the one theater, and I think they still do. It was in Wyk, the city, or I guess it’s more like a town. From the outside the theater looked like a house, not like a real movie theater, and there was no upstairs or downstairs, only the one room with the movie screen. It was very small. Not that many people at once could fit. There weren’t that many people on Föhr though. Definitely not any ushers there. You just walked in and sat down. No food or snacks either; no concessions. Nothing fancy like they have today. Föhr didn’t have much, barely a movie theatre at all. I remember the movie theater more than the movie we saw that day because we went to the theater many times after that. Not that often, because it was far, and you know we didn’t have a car, but we did go back once in a while. 

I don’t remember much about the movie. I remember there were cowboys and ranchers fighting, and you know those stagecoaches with horses? They transported people and gold, back then. There were, what do you call them, bandits or robbers or something, trying to steal gold off of the stagecoach. That’s all I remember. Actually a lot of the Westerns I’ve seen had the same stuff in them. I thought the movie was really exciting, lots of action. It was good. I didn’t pay much attention to the acting or anything, no. We were so focused on seeing something on the screen for the first time so we didn’t notice any of that, or think about the meaning that deeply. I really liked Westerns back then though. I still really like them, actually. On Fohr before movies we didn’t get to see any of that, of America. You know, we lived on a farm, we weren’t even that close to town. 

We also saw a lot of romances, love stories at that movie theater. I don’t remember most of the titles, but I remember maybe a little later, 1955 or something, right before I came here, a new movie with Romy Schneider came out, and we were all excited for that. I don’t remember the title but I think it was about Queen Victoria, or some other British queen. There was also a movie with this girl from Sweden, Ulla Jacobsson. I didn’t like those romances as much as the westerns but they showed a lot of them. I think it was just westerns and romances I saw, no drama, action movies, anything like that. They just didn’t have them that much there. And then I moved to America, and it was all different, movie theaters everywhere, you could see whatever you wanted.

[note: My interview subject could not remember the film he saw, so I selected an image from ‘The Treasure of the Sierra Madre’, a well-known Western released in 1948, possibly the one my subject viewed. The image is representative of Westerns from that time period.]