Meeting up in the Epicentre of the First World War: Berlin
Christian X, King of Denmark, in: “Kongeligt Budskab” [A Royal Message], Statstidende, 3 August 1914:
“Our country has friendly relations with all nations.
We are confident that the strict and unbiased neutrality that has always been the foreign policy of our country and that will still be followed without hesitation will be appreciated by everyone”
Wilhelm II, German Emperor, in: Verhandlungen des Reichstags. Stenographische Berichte, Berlin 1914/16, Bd. 306, 1f. (4 August 1914):
It is with a heavy heart that I have had to mobilise my army
against a neighbour at whose side it has fought on so many battlefields.
[…]
The present situation is not the result of passing conflicts
of interest or diplomatic combinations,
it results from an ill-will that has been at work for years against the power and prosperity of the German Reich”
Two different foreign policies from two different capitals. Berlin and Copenhagen are contrasting cities. Copenhagen focuses on water and light, it is home to artificial lakes, coastal views and a thriving maritime life on its canals. The streets are broad, airy and make great use of natural light. Berlin is rawer, the spaces are wide but darker buildings make them feel close and more intimate. Berlin also bears the scars of its history far more than Copenhagen, Soviet concrete stands next to gothic townhouses and the prescence of a glass-fronted modernist building is a sure fire sign of an old bomb crater. We have two contrasting stories for two contrasting capitals.
The history of Denmark through the First World War is a neglected one. Most research concentrates on the warring countries and the past of small and neutral Denmark is continually overlooked. In addition many incorrectly see Denmark’s neutrality as equivalent to inactivity. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. It was the opposite. Denmark had to play an almost impossible game of balancing between the interests of the Central Powers of Germany & Austria-Hungary and the Entente.
After our trip to Copenhagen we finalized our plan to create an interactive film. Now, the object of our trip to Berlin was to bring it to life. We had to write a plausible and historically accurate storyline to inform our audience concerning the difficulties of staying neutral for Denmark between 1914–1918.
At first we thought it would be an easy task: Create some films, put them in a logical line, integrate questions and decisions for the recipient, upload it, voila! But soon our storyline began to grow and the number of required videos exploded as our narrative branched out more and more! At one point we were looking at uploading 4421 videos! We had to solve a key question: how could we produce a video that felt interactive and unique without overproducing videos?
It took countless sticky-notes, hecto-litres of coffee, a broken laptop-keyboard, an almost break-up of the group itself, and lot of nerves until we found the solutions. Our (hopefully) final story line has ten major questions on a central track, and we allow ourselves to break from this setup to create subplots, giving a feeling of interactivity before returning to the central thread to limit the exponential growth problems of our previous drafts. In the end we will have to produce (again, hopefully) around 100 different films. This is still ambitious but it is more do-able.
The next few months are packed with pre-producing: writing the scripts for the sublots, doing research on images and historical facts, proving the games‘ plausibility. We will have to dig through pages of pages of books but it seems like we‘re on track. We fought despair and exhaustion but have been left with enthusiasm and the thrill of anticipation.
