Both Filmportal and Wikipedia give the date of the opening as April 7, 1945. This makes Noltenius Brothers quite special - as the last of the twelve German films which received its premiere between January 1 and the capitulation of Germany on May 7, 1945. To be precise, another film - Via Mala - received it's first public showing on the same day (in the small town of Mayrhofen, where the filming took place, but no longer made it to the cinemas until 1948). So, exactly one month before Day Zero, there was a good day for German cinema.
The Noltenius Brothers is exactly what you would imagine it to be: very serious, sombre, dignified; a story about honor and duty and responsibility. Everything is played out indoors (as it was, by the late 1944, rather difficult to film anything outdoors and still try to hide the fact there's a war on), in an old patrician household, which serves as a reminder of an era that would be gone forever any moment. It's a "modern" film (meaning the action supposedly takes place in the present), but the whole story-line would have worked better, had the setting been changed to say, late 1800s - we get a bunch of very dignified gentlemen of the town council having very dignified meetings; at home there is a rather boring mousey little hausfrau, supposedly torn by some inner emotions when meeting again 'the other brother' whom she did not marry some twenty years ago. What makes it interesting, is, of course, the fact that we are seeing 1945 - but a warped, fun-house mirror version of that year, where there is no war, people are dancing and lingering in deep thoughts at the grand pianos, as if in a frozen dream. The atmosphere is similar to Opfergang (1944), in itself a much more interesting film (and in color).
This poor film only managed to stay in cinemas (those, that were still standing) for a week or so, as the battle for Berlin with it's brutal door-to-door combat began the very next week. So I believe that for many warn-torn people in Berlin, who were never sure if they would live to see the next morning, this must have been their final escape room from the grim realities outside.
