Walter Kranz (Kurt Raab) is a poet who got famous by his early revolutionary communist work. However, since a couple of years, he suffers from being blocked to continue writing. Since his savings are coming to an end, he borrows money from everyone without being able to pay it back. When even his furniture is impounded , he remembers an old admirer of his who writes him since years. He invites her to his apartment, where his insane brother and his foolish wife live, lets her pay his living and abuses her wherever he can, since he feels that she admirers him for doing that. Inspired to his more and more fascist behavior, one day, he writes a poem, until he finds out that it is from Stefan George, one of the spiritual precursors of National Socialism. He also re-detects the work of Schopenhauer whose central conception of "Will" becomes an obsession for Walter Kranz. From here, it is only a short step until Walter Kranz turns into "Stefan George". He hires a few cheap actors and a male prostitute (played by film-director R.W. Fassbinder's boy-friend Armin Meier) and celebrates week for week George-sessions like the real Stefan George did, imploring the prostitute as the divine "Maximin".
As a matter of fact, the further development of Walter Kranz is not only that he finally realizes that he is not Stefan George and that one cannot "learn" to become homosexual, but he simply discovers that with right-extreme poetry he can earn much more money and get much more fame than with his left-extreme early work. So, suddenly hit by a "genial" inspiration, he writes in a short time a whole new book, entitled "No funeral for the dead dog of the Führer". The most interesting part of the movie, not so shocking, however, for Fassbinder-connoisseurs, is that all of Kranz's former socialist friends give his new fascist poetry a splendid reception. His publisher gives him a long-awaited advancement, his unloved wife dies, his beautiful girlfriend (played by Fassbinder's wife Ingrid Caven) moves into his generous flat, the shot whore awakes back to life, and everybody is convinced that "fascism will be winning".
R.W. Fassbinder has given to this rather arcane work of his and his only "comedy" a hint for a possible interpretation: He showed at the beginning and at the end the French original and the German translation of a quotation by Antonin Artaud according to which the pagans are much closer to Creation and God because they do not start with the humans. Everybody who was convinced having seen for once an "understandable" and "light" Fassbinder is cheated. Rightly so.
As a matter of fact, the further development of Walter Kranz is not only that he finally realizes that he is not Stefan George and that one cannot "learn" to become homosexual, but he simply discovers that with right-extreme poetry he can earn much more money and get much more fame than with his left-extreme early work. So, suddenly hit by a "genial" inspiration, he writes in a short time a whole new book, entitled "No funeral for the dead dog of the Führer". The most interesting part of the movie, not so shocking, however, for Fassbinder-connoisseurs, is that all of Kranz's former socialist friends give his new fascist poetry a splendid reception. His publisher gives him a long-awaited advancement, his unloved wife dies, his beautiful girlfriend (played by Fassbinder's wife Ingrid Caven) moves into his generous flat, the shot whore awakes back to life, and everybody is convinced that "fascism will be winning".
R.W. Fassbinder has given to this rather arcane work of his and his only "comedy" a hint for a possible interpretation: He showed at the beginning and at the end the French original and the German translation of a quotation by Antonin Artaud according to which the pagans are much closer to Creation and God because they do not start with the humans. Everybody who was convinced having seen for once an "understandable" and "light" Fassbinder is cheated. Rightly so.