Ib Melchior

The Brandenburg Quest: a True Story - the Unproduced Screenplay Ib Melchior

Publisher Marketing: This was Ib's final screenplay. "When in 1987 I was contacted by a young German citizen who wanted me to write a book about his exploits while looking into Germany's Nazi past, to learn the truth, I declined. I have my own stories to tell, but I did consent to talk with him. And-after listening to him for a while-I said, "When do we start?" His investigations, taped interviews, narrow escapes and photographs were startling-but, were they true? Were they factual? Before I became involved I had to know. I contacted two men Frank had mentioned as being helpful to him. One was Eugene K. Bird, Col. US Army (Ret) former US Commandant, Spandau Allied Prison, West Berlin, where all the top Nazi war criminals were interred, and the second was Robert M. W. Kempner, A prominent US prosecutor in the 1945-46 Nuremberg Trials of the top Nazi war criminals. Both these men fully and unhesitatingly corroborated Frank's accounts. I wrote the book, which I called Quest, with the detailed input of Frank... ... At the time there was a certain interest in such subject matters in the film world, but "Quest" did not really lend itself to make a motion picture. A storyline had to be created without jeopardizing the original material. It took me a while to write such a script based on the tales of Frank but with a definite storyline." - from "Introduction to the Film Manuscript The Brandenburg Quest" by Ib Melchior