Tom Cruise receives second film-site ban 03/07/2007 00:00

3 July 2007

Berlin (dpa) - Tom Cruise, still smarting from a rejection by the German Defense Ministry, has now had his film crew barred from an ornate red-brick Berlin police station, capital-city police confirmed Monday.

While German politicians have said that Cruise, 44, is unwelcome because of his promotion of Scientology beliefs, the police said it was purely concerned that a film crew on the pre-war site would hamper police coming and going.

Cruise's German film team applied to film on location at the police station and yard for Precinct 52 in the city's Kreuzberg neighborhood. But police said this would obstruct the various departments working on the site.

Cruise is directing a movie, Valkyrie, about a true plot to blow up Adolf Hitler in 1944. The time-bomb exploded in the dictator's Wolf's Liar dugout, but a table deflected the blast and Hitler was only injured.

Cruise will play Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, an aristocratic German officer who led the plot, was instantly executed and hailed later as a hero.

Defence chiefs earlier said a military office building, the Bendler Block, where Stauffenberg was executed, was a secure site. They denied Cruise's beliefs were an issue in barring him.

But government property officials later said filming would lower the dignity of the Stauffenberg memorial there.

Scientology has been monitored by anti-subversive agencies in Germany for fear its activities are "directed against the free democratic order" in the country.

DPA

Subject German news