The Edelweiss Pirates

A film by Georg Wellmann & Ingolf Gritschneder | ARTE | 2023

It took 60 years after the end of WWII, that the Edelweiss Pirates were officially rehabilitated and the remaining former members were honored.

For decades they were branded a criminal anarchist gang and eventually largely forgotten. New research now paints a more nuanced picture of the Edelweiss Pirates, a group of youth, aged 16 – 18, from the Cologne working-class neighborhood Ehrenfeld, who became increasingly radicalized towards the end of the war and did not shy away from political violence.