Death Is My Trade

Death is My Trade (German: Aus einem deutschen Leben) is a 1977 German film, which is based on the script of director Theodor Kotulla starring Götz George in the leading role. The realisation of the script is based on the French novel La mort est mon métier by Robert Merle, which was published in 1952 (English edition: Death Is My Trade). Like the novel, the film is partly based on interrogation records of the trial against Rudolf Höß, SS-officer and commander of the Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, as well as on his autobiographical notes. He made these notes first during his time as British POW, then, after he was extradited, as Polish prisoner in 1946/47, before he was executed as a convicted war criminal. Instead of using the name Rudolf Höß, whose life was the model for the film, the pseudonym Franz Lang is used, in order that he remain anonymous. The real Rudolf Höß had gone into hiding allegedly working as a boatman after World War II using this (fake) name until he was unmasked and arrested in 1946. The film is divided into 14 different episodes, which describe fragmentary and important scenes of Franz Lang´s (alias Rudolf Höss) life.