The Black Hussar (1932 film)
1932 film by Gerhard Lamprecht

The Black Hussar (German: Der schwarze Husar) is a 1932 German historical drama film directed by Gerhard Lamprecht and starring Bernhard Goetzke, Conrad Veidt, Mady Christians, and Wolf Albach-Retty. It premièred at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo on 12 October 1932, part of a whole string of 'patriotic' movies released in the late days of the Weimar Republic.
The film's sets were designed by the art directors Robert Herlth and Walter Röhrig. It was shot at the Babelsberg Studios and on location around Schwedt in Brandenburg.
Plot
In 1812, during the French period, large parts of Germany are occupied by Napoleon's troops. Several paramilitary Freikorps units battle the French forces, among them the Black Brunswickers led by the 'Black Duke' Frederick William of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. After the War of the Fifth Coalition, the Black Hussars are pursued by Napoleon throughout the country, but frequently take refuge with noble-minded Germans.
While the Duke has taken a passage to the Isle of Wight, his cavalry officer (Rittmeister) Hansgeorg von Hochberg and his friend Lieutenant Aribert von Blome hide away in an inn with two young women. They hear of the plans by the French governor Darmont to abduct Duke Frederick William's bride, Princess Marie of Baden, to marry her to the Polish prince Potovski. They set about trying to foil the plans.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “The Black Hussar (1932 film)” is 1932 film by Gerhard Lamprecht. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Black, Hussar and film, not as a finished interpretation.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1199572. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932 and 1812.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Black Hussar (1932 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.