Lili Marleen (film) Lili Marleen (film) Lili Marleen is a 1981 West German drama film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and starring Hanna Schygulla. The screenplay was produced using the autobiographical novel "Der Himmel hat viele Farben" ("The Heavens Have Many Colors") by Lale Andersen. However, according to Lale Andersen's last husband, Arthur Beul, the film's plot bore little relation to her real life. The film is set during the Third Reich and is about the forbidden love between the German singer Willie (Hanna Schygulla) and the Swiss Jewish composer Robert Mendelssohn (a character based on Rolf Liebermann), who actively seeks to help
Hanna Schygulla Both the names Schygulla (also spelled Szyguła) and Mzyk are of Polish/Silesian origin, indicating a mixed heritage and/or the process of teutonisation of Slavs as was very common in Silesia in the 19th century. Her father, a timber merchant by profession, was drafted as an infantryman in the German Army and was captured by American forces in Italy, subsequently being held as a prisoner of war until 1948. In 1945, Schygulla and her mother arrived as refugees in Munich, following the expulsion of the majority German-speaking population of Königshütte by Communist Poland. Much later, in the 1960s, Schygulla studied Romance