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Toxi

Screening on Film
Directed by Robert A. Stemmle.
With Elfie Fiegert, Paul Bildt, Johanna Hofer.
West Germany, 1952, 35mm, black & white, 88 min.
German with English subtitles.

A well-to-do Hamburg family finds a five-year-old girl abandoned at the door of its villa. Toxi is black, the daughter of a now deceased German girl and an American G.I. who has returned to the States. Director Robert A. Stemmle effectively details then-current attitudes toward interracial relationships and multi-racial children, presenting German positions on race and racism with remarkable honesty and candor. Just as young Toxi has worked her way into the hearts of this German family, a resolution of sorts appears: her American father returns, hoping to take Toxi with him back to the States. The film premiered at the moment when the first generation of children created by liaisons between German women and American soldiers—many of whom were African American—began entering German schools, creating a public awareness of this situation.

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