Some years ago, I was one of a number of writers approached to do a treatment for a biographical drama based on the life of German artist Johannes Koelz. It was a great opportunity to get immersed in research, about the artist and about Nazi Germany, and I thoroughly enjoyed developing my treatment. I was lucky enough to make it through the first round and was then paid to develop a more detailed treatment and script samples. Sadly, that’s where the projects stopped for me, and I’ve heard nothing of it since. Anyway, I remain proud of the initial treatment I did, which follows:

FRACTURE (working title)

A whirlwind of activity as Claire Koelz (late 30s) frantically packs her family’s possessions with help from neighbours. Her husband Johannes (40) is more concerned about what to do with a huge painting, saying he needs a day to deal with it. Claire screams that they have less than 48 hours to leave the country: Johannes retorts that the painting has consumed him for more than a decade now.

Johannes is driven to a timber mill. His triptych’s antiwar sentiments are clearly at odds with the Nazi regime. The mill owner saws the picture into pieces. Johannes instructs him to distribute them to a few trusted people, and takes one particularly treasured piece for himself.

The artist returns to find soldiers at his house. He joins his family, who have been hidden by neighbours. When the soldiers go, they ready to leave. Son Andreas (18) says he’d rather stay with relatives. Johannes insists that all the family will be going to England.

Johannes, Claire and daughter Ava (10) board without Andreas. Claire and Ava are clearly distraught. Johannes shows no emotion until the ship sounds its horn…

…which becomes the noise of a train. It passes, revealing teenage boys either side of the tracks, clutching portfolios and paint boxes. Young Johannes, and Adolf Hitler. They’re both nervous on their first day at art college, introducing themselves (first names only) when they reach the college gates, each trying to overtake the other on the way.

Johannes is a promising artist, Adolf less sure of himself, influenced by the charisma of others more than what they say. The students circulate an incoherent mix of isms: communism, nationalism, mysticism and anti-semitism. Adolf is bullied, until Johannes intervenes.

The art course ends with a lively party. During it, the bully who attacked Hitler is brutally beaten by Adolf’s new cronies. Johannes is horrified. Adolf says his mind is made up: what use is art now they’re old enough to serve in the Great War? Fireworks explode…

…becoming bombshells. Johannes is one of his unit’s few survivors. He risks death by getting out of the trench to save a Corporal, Muller, who loses a leg. The two sing…

…a drinking song performed raucously by students in a cellar bar. They discuss Germany’s future: to Johannes their naïve talk sounds empty. The students taunt a younger Claire, who works there. Johannes, in army uniform, watches. He’s about to act, but she handles the louts perfectly well on her own.Johannes comes to the bar next day in civilian clothes. Claire comes in to pick up her wages: she has a young son, Andreas. His father died in the war. Claire directs Johannes to the street he’s heading for a job interview.

Claire next sees Johannes dressed as a policeman, bloodied in an anti-Jewish riot. Johannes arrests the art college bully – now a fanatical Hitler supporter. Claire tends to Johannes’ wounds, asking if he is soldier, or policeman? I am an artist, he says. And artists have to pay to do their work. Adolf is led away, cheered by admirers.

Claire visits Johannes in his apartment with a photo of her son’s father. She wants Johannes to make a portrait to remember him by. The sketch is never finished: instead, they make love.

Now living together, Johannes starts to sell his paintings. It’s Claire who keeps the household functioning. Johannes comes in excited: a commission big enough that he can quit the police job. Claire too has news: she’s pregnant.

By the time of Ava’s birth, Johannes is earning just enough to keep the family together. He paints for those he’d rather avoid, and funnels his guilt and self-hate into painting his satirical triptych. The time he devotes to the triptych is time he’s also not spending with his wife or children, causing growing tensions between himself and Claire.

There’s dissent too with Andreas as he enters his teens, his adolescence mirrored in the rising power of the Nazis. That threat makes itself felt among the family’s radically minded friends. Some capitulate, others suffer for their beliefs, or plan to escape.

A messenger calls for Johannes. Chancellor Hitler welcomes his old friend, and commissions him to paint his portrait. He will be required to wear a Nazi uniform while he paints. It’s a career-defining opportunity. A chance for security. And a refutation of everything Johannes believes in.

Adolf turns up for his first sitting. Johannes doesn’t. He makes his way home to discover Andreas wearing the uniform of the Hitler Youth.

Johannes knows that the only course left open to him is to flee. To travel, he needs his papers in order. The official he meets shows Johannes the warrant he has received for his arrest, and burns it in front of him. ‘They will send another. It will take 48 hours.’ Johannes now sees that the official has one leg: it’s Muller. Johannes runs home, causing birds to spiral into flight…

…they’re gulls, seen from the ship as it docks in England. Claire finds work, Johannes does portraits for people he despises just as much as his former patrons, and for a brief while it seems that their new lives will be peaceful, even if separated from Andreas. That peace is fragile though, threatened every time they open their mouths and speak with a German accent in a country that’s learning to hate Germans.

Uniformed men - British police officers - hammer at the door as Johannes hangs his sole fragment of the triptych. He is taken, and put onto a train with other German men. He protests that he will do anything to fight Hitler, but in vain. He and the other unwilling travelers are abused and have their personal items confiscated as the train steams into a tunnel…

…and another emerges from a tunnel in Germany. Andreas is on board, one of the train crew, numbed by what he sees. The people it carries wear yellow stars and pink triangles. In contrast to the Germans on the English train, the Jews and homosexuals are quiet, resigned to their fates.

In England, Ava comes home from school. Claire asks what she’s done today. Ava produces a picture from her bag: all of them, Johannes and Andreas included, together as a family. Claire pins it up next to the postcards Johannes has been sending them from an internment camp in Australia, and the fragment of his triptych. Close in on that fragment and pull back to see all of ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’. Stay with that image, exploring different details during the end titles.

Those are the beats of the story. What’s trickier to convey is its style and feel. My model is ‘Cabaret’, which brilliantly and beautifully portrays Germany in the same period, concentrating on its characters and their relationships. That is my intent in telling the story of Johannes and Claire, whose relationship is shaped by and exists within an extraordinary time. That period is central to the story, but I believe we only do it justice to a contemporary audience by concentrating on the characters rather than adhering to facts. The choice of Hitler as a character is problematic, but those obstacles can be overcome. Alternatively, another character could be used, who grows up with Johannes and becomes a Nazi official. Similarly, because of understandable sensitivities on the part of Ava and Siegfried, I have created a different son – Andreas – for Johannes and Claire.

After all that thought-provoking and sensitive stuff about dealing with the Nazi era, it was refreshing to be told by a friend that I should take another route entirely. Inspired by the similarly titled American comedy, he reckoned my treatment should be a knockabout farce called Dude, Where’s My Portrait?