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Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy SHEILA JOHNSON U NIVERSITY OF T EXAS AT S AN A NTONIO What qualities does a literary text need to elevate it beyond being just a good read, a popular novel, even a best-seller? What is required for a novel to become a lasting, a classical work of literature? These questions underlie this essay, in which I contrast two German novelists who wrote about the times in which they lived, in particular about life as exiles escaping Fascism in WW II Europe. One, Erich Maria Remarque, wrote immensely popular novels, the other, Anna Seghers, at least one great one. 1 A great novel is a book that can - indeed, must - be read more than once, with each reading discovering new depths and nuances of meaning, association and pleasure. Lasting literature opens the reader to a greater understanding of life. This essay focuses on a specific example of the rewards waiting to be gleaned by the close reader of a multifaceted novel. Anna Seghers’ Transit is such a novel; it is, to use her own words, «die sogenannte Widerspieglung der Wirklichkeit, nie ein braves Spiegelbild.» 2 To date no one else has written about - seemingly no one has even noticed - the connection between Anna Seghers and Erich Maria Remarque. This essay proposes to rectify that oversight and, along the way, to offer insight into Seghers as an author, particularly with respect to Transit. It is my thesis that in the course of her novel she takes jabs at Remarque and what he represented, more precisely, at what his writing failed to represent, i.e., the «Widerspieglung der Wirklichkeit.» In contrast to Seghers, Remarque remained an author whose best works constitute «ein braves Spiegelbild» of reality. In demonstrating how greater awareness of the extent of Seghers’ satire adds a further level of pleasure to reading Transit, I begin with the «when,» «where,» «what» and «how» of her parody of Remarque and then proceed to the question of «why» she did it. Regarding the rather redundant Remarque, who made bundles of money by writing what his public expected, 3 I include Seghers’ prescient, inadvertent yet uncanny projections about Remarque’s literary legacy. This extensive comparison leads to my conclusion concerning the role of ethics in literature as reflected in Seghers’ writing. The connection between Seghers and Remarque starts, naturally enough, with their proximate birth dates. Contemporaries, they were both born at the turn of the twentieth century: Seghers in 1900, and Remarque in 1898. Each died with renown well established, especially on their respective sides of the 2 Sheila Johnson Iron Curtain. Seghers, in the perverse way of women, outlived Remarque by more than a decade: her death in 1983, to his in 1970. In 1933, Remarque’s books were burned and Seghers’ were put on the Nazi blacklist. Both immediately fled Germany via Switzerland and then eventually via France to America; neither returned to Europe until after the war. It is the middle years of their lives as writers in exile which I examine here, and my argument is grounded in differentiating these lives and their writing. Transit demonstrates how Seghers, who was to become the GDR’s «classic» author of «socialist realism,» responded with uncommon literary verve and stylistic variety to the crises perpetrated by the Fascists and their bellum magnum. 4 Along with Heinrich Böll, 5 Peter Härtling 6 and others - including my students in a recent honors course on European emigration/ immigration - I consider this novel, Transit, Seghers’ «schönster» and «spannendster.» 7 My rereading of this more than sixty-year-old novel with my students revealed two things of concern in this essay. First, Transit remains relevant and engaging for a contemporary readership. The second factor, however, is even more germane here, i.e., one particular character seemed oddly familiar - Achselroth, a writer of popular plays. He reminded me of what I knew about Erich Maria Remarque. Indeed, Transit is the key to the Seghers-Remarque connection. Specifically, I argue that in her refugee novel, Transit, first published in English and Spanish in 1944, Anna Seghers pillories Erich Maria Remarque by creating a character resembling the «Hollywood-style» glamour boy Remarque was for much of his life (see illustrations 1, 2 and 3 - photos of Remarque in Hollywood [1930], Paris [1940] and Berlin [1956]). (1) 1930 (2) 1940 Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy 3 Did Anna Seghers and Erich Maria Remarque know each other? Not personally; there’s no evidence they ever met. But certainly each was familiar with the other’s considerable professional accomplishments as German authors. Seghers’ novels and short stories had been critically well received since 1928, i.e., before she fled from Germany in 1933, then from France to Mexico in 1941. As for Remarque, already by 1930, the royalties from Im Westen nichts Neues plus the Hollywood film of the book had made him a very rich man with a villa in Switzerland, one filled with Van Goghs, Cézannes, Picassos and other paintings bought primarily as aesthetically pleasing investments. 8 This is the Remarque whom Seghers, a committed and involved member of the Communist Party since 1928, pillories in Transit. As an expression of her own priorities, Seghers, with a PhD in Art History, covered her walls not with expensive paintings, but rather with books. Her Bildung stands in marked contrast to Remarque’s scant Ausbildung as an elementary school teacher, and the difference is obvious throughout their respective oeuvres. Their lifestyles differed even more. Seghers’ was characterized by her quietly steady marriage to the Hungarian social scientist Laszlo Radvanyi, her modest home environment, and being a mother to her two children (illustration 4), while remaining an active socialist. Remarque was, in contrast, a lover of fast cars and beautiful women, of luxurious living and glamour in seemingly equal measure, a man responsible principally to his own pleasures, known for his very public and multifaceted love life. 9 He consistently denied intending to make any political statement, even in Im Westen nichts Neues, praised by the world and condemned by the Nazis as an «antiwar» novel. 10 Although the subject matter of these two Nazi-refugee authors not infrequently bears striking re- (3) 1956 (4) 1933 4 Sheila Johnson semblance - more about this intersection later - their writing styles were as disparate as their lifestyles. Relevant to my argument, Remarque evidenced neither talent nor inclination for caricature, 11 but, at least in Transit, Seghers certainly did. In Transit, Seghers creates a minor but pivotal character, Herrmann Achselroth, fleshed out with many of Remarque’s notorious traits. The Anna Seghers I had gotten to know in the 1970s and 1980s was the dour doyen of DDR antifascism and socialist realism (see illustration 5, a grim-faced Seghers near the end of her life). But it is another Anna Seghers who takes aim - with Brechtian humor (see illustrations 6 and 7) - at Achselroth. He, like Remarque, is a handsome, wealthy, debonair German author on his way to exile in the US at the beginning of WW II. Seghers plays freely with the Achselroth figure with respect to historical fact because he is clearly a representative rather than a real figure. He stands for those privileged refugees who, like Remarque, used their money to smooth the way into exile. 12 In the course of Seghers’ novel, Achselroth progressively takes on more of Remarque’s distinguishing peculiarities, most obviously that of the flam- (5) 1980 (6) 1944 (7) Caricature (Herbert Sandberg) Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy 5 boyant lover of many beautiful women. Among the more famous actresses in Remarque’s gallery of conquests were, for instance, Delores del Rio, Lupe Velez, Tarzan’s Maureen O’Sullivan, two-time Oscar winner Luise Rainer, Paulette Goddard, whom he married in 1958, and Greta Garbo. However, it is another two of Remarque’s special beauties who are recognizable as part of Achselroth’s entourage in Transit. One is Jutta Zambona (illustration 8), Remarque’s first wife (1925-1930) whom he later remarried (1938-1957) to help her get to America, having left her behind in Switzerland when his Hollywood life began with the filming of Im Westen nichts Neues (1930). 13 The other is Marlene Dietrich, with whom he had a complex, on-going relationship until he died (see illustration 9). 14 Indeed, when Remarque took the final prewar voyage of the Queen Mary from Cherbourg on June 2, 1940, Dietrich charged him with looking out for her only child, the teenager Maria Riva, né Sieber, a fellow passenger. Seghers makes literary plays only on these last two women, Jutta Zambona and Dietrich. In Transit, while the character based on Jutta is significant for the novel’s plot, the part the young «Dietrich» character plays relevant to Achselroth is minor but recognizable, providing opportunity for extra parody. Seghers’ pure, but subtle persiflage of Remarque shows Achselroth in schematic involvements reminiscent of Remarque’s. These entanglements not only offer Seghers opportunities to demonstrate a witty ability to caricature, but at the same time she makes these colorful figures essential to her narrative. Certainly, the process of analyzing Achselroth has left me with another, radically different image of Anna Seghers (see illustration 10 - a mature Seghers laughing). In the course of Achselroth’s four appearances in Transit, he evi- (8) 1925 (9) 1939 6 Sheila Johnson dences not only striking similarities to what was generally known about Remarque, but, more significantly, he functions as a polar opposite of Seghers’ protagonist who corresponds generally to her own literary and intellectual awareness as well as her political principles, although, as Walter states, Transit is not to be read as autobiographical. First, I’ll establish some of the more amusing Achselroth/ Remarque parallels, similarities that are indisputably too numerous to be coincidences. In Chapter 1 of Transit, for instance, Seghers introduces Achselroth as «[e]in ausnehmend schöner Bursche, der besser in eine Offiziersuniform gepaßt hätte.» In Nov. 1918, a photograph of the «faux-Leutenant» Remarque, «who had never risen above the rank of private,» appeared in his hometown newspaper, the Osnabrücker Tageblatt, because he had been «strutting around» Osnabrück (Tims 23) 15 wearing not only the Iron Cross First Class, which he actually had been awarded, but also the Second Class medal and the Verwundetenabzeichen, neither of which he had earned (see illustration 11). Remarque had added the Schäferhund, at least in part, as a further fashion statement. 16 The canine accouterment also enhanced the man-abouttown image the 21-year old Remarque cultivated pretty much from the start. «Ein schöner Bursche,» to be sure. Among numerous other Remarque-related leitmotifs Seghers gives «dem schönen Burschen» Achselroth is «Geld.» A mutual acquaintance of Achselroth and Transit’s nameless narrator tells what happened after he, together with another German inmate and Achselroth had escaped a work camp in occupied Northern France. To facilitate the trip to Marseille, Achselroth buys, at great cost, an in-service Militärauto. Although the source of his money remains unspecified - «Wir hatten keine Ahnung, daß Ach- (10) 1960 (11) 1918 Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy 7 selroth soviel Geld in der Tasche hatte» (13) - Achselroth’s supply of money remains inexhaustable throughout the novel, as did Remarque’s after Im Westen nicht Neues. Early in Transit, the reader learns how utterly ruthless Achselroth is: «[Mit dem Militärauto] sei [er einfach] abgerauscht, er habe ihnen nicht mal zugewinkt» (13). The leitmotif of «Abrauschen» develops into a major theme of Seghers’ novel: «Imstichlasserei.» She repeatedly condemns various characters, not just Achselroth, characters who, out of individualistic motives, leave their comrades in the lurch. 17 From early on Remarque, too, made sure all his assets and personal safety were secure, patriotic and personal loyalties being of as little consequence to him as they are to Achselroth. The second time Achselroth appears is in Chapter 6, i.e., at the center of Seghers’ novel. Here his rakish womanizing is the focus. In the «Café Rotonde» in Marseille, the narrator encounters Achselroth with entourage: «Es gab [an seinem Tisch] eine junge Person, die so schön war, daß ich sie noch und noch einmal ansehn mußte, ob sie wirklich so schön war mit ihrem zarten Hals, ihrem goldenen Haar, ihren langen Wimpern. […] Sie war auch völlig reglos» (104; cf. illustration 8). Although the «junge Person» remains unnamed, the woman Remarque wed twice, Jutta Zambona, has been described as a «Nordic blond, slim, with the statuesque poise of a mannequin, delicate, almost fragile features […] and an innate sense of style in dress» [emphasis added]. 18 Jutta was a celebrated model whose life centered around her clothes, a detail that Seghers makes integral to her plot in a way that will become clear subsequently. In the same café scene, Achselroth is described as «ein ausnehmend prächtiger, großgewachsener, aufrechter Bursche» (104) - no longer «schön» but at least still «prächtig» (cf. illustration 2 of Remarque in Paris in 1940). In addition to linking him to the leitmotifs «Abhauen» or alternately «Abrauschen» and «Imstichlasserei» among others (104), the narrator describes Achselroth as an arrogant man, «der über uns wegsah mit einem dünnen Lächeln von Macht und Hochmut» (104). Owing to Achselroth’s «Macht und Hochmut,» the delicate beauty sitting at his table had been de facto demoted, but, nevertheless, kept in reserve. She is referred to as Achselroth’s «Freundin bis vor kurzem» (105). Achselroth had jettisoned his «former» love but didn’t really let her go. Remarque had behaved similarly with Jutta. The rationale Seghers attributes to Achselroth’s behavior is wickedly sarcastic: «Auf einmal erklärte [Achselroth], daß er es satt hat, noch länger ‹schönste Paar an der Cote d’Azur mit ihr zu spielen» (104). Like Remarque, Achselroth had found a new favorite. This replacement is «ein strichdünnes, aber zähes Mädchen mit großem frechem Mund» (104; cf. illustration 12). Seghers’ description of Achselroth’s second enamorada recalls the vamp/ femme 8 Sheila Johnson fatale Marlene Dietrich of 1930s films such as Morroco, Dishonored, Blond Venus, The Devil Is a Woman and Desire. Dietrich had made these films in the US, where actresses were expected to be much thinner than the voluptous Lola of Der Blaue Engel. And indeed, Remarque had begun his long, open affair with Marlene Dietrich in 1937 in Europe, to which she frequently returned. 19 In relating how Achselroth and his train of attendants had finally gotten to Marseille from Paris, Seghers plays on another wellknown attribute of Remarque’s - his lifelong love of fast cars, particularly Lancias - one figures prominently in Der Himmel kennt keine Günstlinge (1961). 20 Seghers uses this trait to emphasize Achselroth’s superficiality, and superficial is a term German critics have used from the outset to characterize Remarque’s novels. The fast car trip south in Transit is described by a nameless man who writes music for Achselroth’s plays. He is referred to as the Musiker and he, like other associates of the writer, speaks sarcastically when talking about Achselroth. Referring to himself as «wir,» that is, as part of Achselroth’s coterie, the Musiker mentions a man named Weidel in his cynical account of the trip: «Herr Achselroth hat uns bereits in Paris herausgefischt und in besagtes Auto verstaut, zuammen mit dieser Dame und ihren Koffern, so daß kein Platz mehr für Weidel war» (106). The «Dame» is, of course, the swan-necked beauty who has by Marseilles become «die Freundin bis vor kurzem.» Weidel, another Achselroth reject, is, however, a key figure in Seghers’ novel. He is modeled on the writer Ernst Weiß, whom Seghers knew and respected. Left alone in June 1940, in a Paris filling rapidly with German troops, Weidel, like Weiß, committed suicide. In Transit, Achselroth’s «Imstichlasserei» - his not taking Weidel along to Marseilles despite his promise to do so, i.e., his taking the clothes instead of the man - was thus partly to blame for Weidel’s death. From the outset of the novel, Weidel - introduced as «ein großer Dichter» (15) - has played an essential role in the narrator’s life. It starts when the latter ends up with the dead Weidel’s Handkoffer containing an almost finished manuscript and two letters. These texts prove instrumental in the narrator’s ethical transformation into a responsible member of society. And so the chain reaction to Achselroth’s Imstichlasserei grows, simultaneously furthering Seghers’ plot. Achselroth’s insensitive self-centeredness is the source of the Musiker’s cynicism: «Uns aber brauchte er [Achselroth], für uns war Platz [im Auto], (12) 1932 Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy 9 wir schrieben ihm die Musik für sein neues Stück, er fuhr wie der Teufel selbst vor den Deutschen her, er rettete uns mitsamt der Musik für sein Stück. Kein Mensch kam so rasch hier unten an wie er mit uns» (106). With this snide travel report, the Musiker exposes more of Achselroth’s ruthlessly selfish opportunism. Seghers’ pillorying is proceeding apace. The third time Achselroth appears is in Chapter 9, his Remarque-like leitmotifs now firmly established. The narrator encounters him and his party in another Marseille café, the Café Source. He describes the group as consisting of Achselroth, «der Imstichlasser, das dünne Mädchen, um dessentwillen er jenes andere Mädchen im Stich gelassen hatte [und] das im Stich gelassene Mädchen» (154). Seghers develops her leitmotifs to the point that they resemble a recurring musical chorus, thereby adding a satiric lilt to her negative images. Transit’s narrator-protagonist and Seghers’ surrogate then adds disparagingly, «Sie waren sich selbst genug und keineswegs glücklich über meine Begrüßung.» 21 By now, Achselroth, whose «schönes Gesicht ein wenig verhärtete» (154), has chosen Weidel’s widow, Marie, the woman the narrator is in love with, to become the next member of his harem of beauties. At this point the narrator describes Achselroth’s relationship with Marie, observing that she is his newest object of interest and «daß dieser Mensch [Achselroth] in seinem Gedächtnis ein klares Bild von Marie bewahrt hatte, so wie sie in Wirklichkeit beinahe war. Wahrscheinlich war das Gehirn dieses Menschen so angelegt, daß es alles ganz klar verzeichnete, auch das Zarteste und Stillste, so daß er es später aufschreiben konnte» (155; emphasis added). 22 Like Remarque, Achselroth lives with an eye toward utilizing his human contacts as grist for his literary mill. Seghers’ narrator has only disdain for the way Achselroth collects people and their experiences in order to use - to exploit - them as subjects to write about: «[Achselroth] hatte sicher […] die unwahrscheinlichsten und geheimsten Vorgänge registriert. Er würde in seine unermeßliche Leere hinein immer neue Menschen ziehen und anlocken und nie, nie ein Opfer finden, über dem sich sein eigener Abgrund schließen würde» (155).These observations amount to impressive literary insight on the part of a narrator who starts out as a book-hating mechanic (Monteur, 12). But when he read Weidel’s manuscript, he saw how truly experienced and artistically shaped «realism» in literature made all the difference and he was won over by it, a work by a «Dichter,» who wrote about people whose «Handlung» the narrator «begriff» (19). 23 Seghers thus sets Weidel up against Achselroth and Achselroth loses. With eerie prescience, in Transit Seghers wrote about the type of writer embodied by Achselroth, which is the type of writer Remarque remained throughout his career, regardless of where he lived and regardless of the historical times he 10 Sheila Johnson experienced. As fine and principled an author as Edgar Hilsenrath praises Remarque for his abilities to create «Handlung, […] genau eingefangene Atmosphäre, […] Dialoge und […] erzählerische Spannung» (3), but he concedes Remarque’s own lack of character, which, I contend, marks the lack of substance in Remarque’s writing. Historically, Seghers criticized literature lacking in experienced truth. This was her concern in two letters she wrote to Georg Lukács in 1938 and 1939 deliniating her position in the «Realismus-Debatte.» The 1938 letter is especially relevant to the narrator’s assessment of Achselroth as one who writes about others’ experiences. Germane to the Achselroth/ Remarque parallel is Seghers’ criticism of authors, who, in times of crisis, write only about what they have observed and not about what they have experienced themselves and transformed into literature. 24 For Seghers the essential ingredient of realism in literature is that «was, auf die Künstler einwirkt.» She cites Lukács’ definition of the writer’s «doppelte Aufgabe» in times of crisis, when the philosopher maintains: «Diese Realität der Krisenzeit, der Kriege usw. muß also erstens ertragen, es muß ihr ins Auge gesehen und zweitens muß sie gestaltet werden» (34). The criticism of Achselroth’s observed but not lived approach to writing echoes the generally negative criticism Remarque’s writing has consistently had in Germany, where his work is recognized mainly for its historical documentation and melodrama. 25 Seghers’ Transit brings the historical context to life, a fact to which Peter Härtling unequivocally attests: «In manchen Büchern habe ich gelebt, lebe ich [noch…]. Eines von ihnen ist der Roman Transit der Anna Seghers.» (8) But even great novels that live on in the reader come to an end. Late in the last chapter of Transit, Achselroth appears a final time, ensconced in his now-familiar leitmotifs of «im Stich lassen,» «einen Haufen Geld» und «sang- und klanglos abziehen» (183). The novel’s frame begins with the sentence «Die ‹Montreal› soll untergegangen sein zwischen Dakar und Martinique» (5). And it closes with a variation of this introductory image by stating that rumor has it that «die ‹Montreal› sei untergegangen» (186). 26 By now we know that Achselroth has bought passage on the «Montreal» in order to sail with Marie. For his part, Remarque had comfortably made it back to Hollywood before the Nazis marched on Paris. By the time Transit was published in 1944, Seghers would have been aware that Remarque was safely ensconced in the United States, where he continued publishing and making movies throughout the war. But targeting an individual fate, be it Achselroth’s or Remarque’s, was never Seghers’ point in Transit. What she could do in her novel, however, is satirically to imagine a fateful end to refugee writers of Remarque’s opportunistic Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy 11 ilk, especially those ostensibly representing German literature outside Germany. She could imagine that their ship had sunk. 27 Furthermore, in Transit, Seghers plays with the alternative possibility that it was the Dichter Weidel/ Ernst Weiß, and not the Boulevardautor Achselroth/ Remarque, who actually lived on, at least in Marie. 28 Weidel comes to embody for Transit’s narrator the humanistic values of social, indeed of socialist responsibility that Seghers esteemed in realistic literature as in real life. In describing Weidel’s ethical consequence, she implies parallels with her own fate, sitting in Mexico City completing her novel Transit in 1943. 29 His/ her values are respectfully conveyed to the narrator by Achselroth’s «im Stich gelassener» Musiker, ironically left behind when the «Montreal» sailed because he was of no more use to the playwright. The Musiker cogently contrasts Achselroth with Weidel, and the words he uses describe Seghers, as well: [Weidel] hat um Besseres gekämpft. […] Um jeden Satz, um jedes Wort seiner Muttersprache, damit seine kleinen, manchmal ein wenig verrückten Geschichten so fein wurden und so einfach, daß jeder sich an ihnen freuen konnte, ein Kind und ein ausgewachsener Mann. Heißt das nicht auch, etwas für sein Volk tun? Auch wenn er zeitweilig, von den Seinen getrennt, in diesem Kampf unterliegt, seine Schuld ist das nicht. Er zeiht sich zurück mit seinen Geschichten, die warten können wie er [wie Seghers] -, zehn Jahre, hundert Jahre. (184) It appears that in Transit not only is Achselroth decked out with Erich Maria Remarque’s attributes, but that Weidel is actually Anna Seghers’ surrogate, as well as Ernst Weiß’. That, however, would be another essay. 30 The conclusion I have reached about Transit is, in summary, that Achselroth’s four appearances are in effect crucial points on which not only the narrative structure of the novel turns, but they also bring into focus Seghers’ ethical and literary theoretical principles. 31 As Hans-Albert Walter has so ably demonstrated, Seghers’ novel contains all that and so much more. The novel’s open ending constitutes another of its strengths. In the preface to the 1950 Czech translation of Transit, Seghers wrote of the narrator’s undecided «Schicksal,» «Das soll der Leser entscheiden, wenn er diesen Roman gelesen hat» (quoted in Fehervary 287). Therein lies perhaps the novel’s greatest strength, i.e., that the author involves the reader’s mind and concern/ interest. While Unterhaltungsliteratur, such as Remarque’s novels, spoon-feeds the reader, in Transit Seghers engages and challenges as well as informs and entertains. These qualities were perceived and esteemed by my recent class, as they read Transit. Great and lasting literature elicits such response. In addition to Seghers’ ability to challenge new generations of readers, she clearly had considerable fun weaving her complex tapestry. Walter emphasiz- 12 Sheila Johnson es this aspect of Transit, as I have, ending his book on Seghers’ novel with the following observations: «Eine Begabung für Feinmechanik hat der [namenlose Erzähler] an sich entdeckt. Wie wahr. Und Anna Seghers? Das Ganze sei an ‹eine einfache, klare Handlung geknüpft›, hat sie Lew Kopelew wissen lassen.» Full of admiration, Walter remarks, «Welch eine Humoristin» (137). 32 Finally, I return to my introductory premise that an essential attribute which distinguishes a great work of literature is that it must be read again and again and that it offers new layers of discovery at each reading. I trust that my rereading of Anna Seghers’ Transit has demonstrated this premise. My aim has been to depict and analyze one nuance Walter overlooked, but it is one which complements his fine analysis of Transit. I’ve given a face to Achselroth, this minor, but pivotal character, this «ausnehmend schönen Burschen,» «dessen Gesicht am Ende verhärtete.» And I hope you’ll join me and Anna in having a last laugh (see illustrations 13 and 14). Notes 1 Seghers’ Das siebte Kreuz, her most famous novel (Härtling 8), was published 1942 in German by «El libro libre,» an exile publisher in Mexico and the same year in English. In translation, it was a book of the Month Club selection and was filmed in 1944 in Hollywood by Fred Zinnemann, starring Spencer Tracy and Helene Weigel (Roos 171). Despite this recognition attesting to the book’s accessibility as well as its high quality as a novel about vital subject matter, I contend that it is not as richly complex as Transit. (13) 1970 (14) 1970 Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy 13 Sonja Hilzinger notes the novel’s complexities and explains the complications of how Transit finally reached a German readership: «Die Vielschichtigkeit dieses Romans […] ermöglicht eine Vielzahl von Lesearten […]. Die Ablehnung der Publikation von Transit durch den mexikanischen Exilverlag El libro libre […] führte dazu, dass […] der Roman 1948 in Konstanz schließlich in deutscher Sprache erstveröffentlicht wurde. Motive des Romans wurden unter dem Titel Fluchtweg Marseille (1977) verfilmt, eine Mischung aus Dokumentar- und Spielszenen (Transit Marseille 1985) und eine weitere Verfilmung durch den französischen Regisseur René Allio (Transit 1992) liegen vor» (183-84). 2 Early in Transit, the narrator describes his spontaneous reaction to reading a literary text that was, in Seghers’ words, a «Widerspieglung der Wirklichkeit, nie ein braves Spiegelbild» Seghers (Briefe 42): «Das war nun wieder für mich etwas Neues. […] All diese Menschen ärgerten mich nicht durch ihre Vertracktheit, wie sie’s im Leben getan hätten, durch ihr blödes Auf-den Leim-Gehen, durch ihr Hineinschlittern in ein Schicksal. Ich begriff ihre Handlungen, weil ich sie endlich einmal verfolgen konnte von dem ersten Gedanken ab bis zu dem Punkt, wo alles kam, wie es kommen musste» (19). Quotations from Transit are taken from the Luchterhand collected works. 3 Charles Hoffmann summarizes: «His books have appeal on several counts. They are generally well-crafted novels with clear plot lines; they are easy to read; and they mix adventure, suspense, social comment, and some violence with a central love story. At the same time, they were clearly intended as documents of their age, telling in presumably realistic fashion what was happening to Germans […]» (223). Hans Wagener also speaks to the accessibility and allure of Remarque’s novels: «The episodic structure and the prominence of dialogue in his novels render the adaptation to film relatively easy. In addition to these stylistic qualities, all his books are not only action-packed but also feature a love story […]» (121). More recent writers on Remarque particularly Thomas F. Schneider, but also Tilman Westphalen who writes the «Nachworte» for the Kiepenheuer & Witsch paperback reissues of Remarque’s novels, might be said to be making a cottage industry based on Remarque and therefore predictably try to cast his writing in a more serious light. 4 The use of the term for «great war» refers to World War II and the various factors in Germany, Spain and Italy leading up to it. 5 «[D]ieser […] Roman [ist], nach meiner Meinung der schönste, den die Seghers geschrieben hat […]» (Böll 114). 6 Härtling writes of Seghers’ novel: «In manchen Büchern habe ich gelebt, lebe ich. […] eines von ihnen ist der Roman Transit der Anna Seghers» (8). (see also p. 10 of this essay) 7 Hans-Albert Walter writes that Transit belongs «zu den spannendsten der deutschen Literatur.» (120-21. Klaus Sauer refers to Transit as «das Buch der Seghers […], das die meisten Rätsel aufgibt» (115). 8 An autodidact in matters of art, Remarque used his paintings to impress his girlfriends and others, although he is reputed to have enjoyed them himself as well and eventually to have become something of a connisseur. Hilton Tims writes that in 1930 «when the art market was depressed [Ruth Albu] introduced him to Walter Feilchenfeldt, the Berlin dealer who became instrumental in assembling Remarque’s art collection, one of the finest in private hands. With no serious judgement of his own, merely an aesthetic appreciation, he relied on Feilchenfeldt’s» (65). 9 For much greater detail about Remarque’s life as a playboy, see Tims. 10 Generally speaking «for Remarque [political] ideology was the enemy and not a solution» (Hoffmann 240). Wagener notes that Remarque’s works do «not deal with post-1945 14 Sheila Johnson events in any of his works, except in terms of [appending] mere warnings» (8), adding that «[c]learly Remarque is not a political person» (16). In a short-lived abberation to his apolitical stance, in the 1950s Remarque made a brief foray into the American «Auseinandersetzung mit der nationalsozialistischen deutschen Vergangenheit,» writing a Denkschrift for the American secret service, OSS, Praktische Erziehungsarbeit in Deutschland nach dem Krieg, followed by two essays in 1956 and 1957 as «Beispiele der Verwirklichung dieses Programms» and «zugleich auch Zeugnisse seines Scheiterns» (Schneider 312). 11 Wagener writes that Remarque’s «point of view does not yield many insights, but rather enumerates the usual clichés.» However, he adds that, commensurate with Remarque’s tendency to take the part of the isolated individual, his «satire extends to the American business world in general» (108). 12 Walter makes the case that Seghers freely «verfährt » with her historical «Vorlagen,» that she subjects them to «Metamorphose,» and that she presents the facts «in doppeldeutiger Ironie, in Scherz, Satire und in tiefere Bedeutung miteinander verwoben […] kein ‹braves Spiegelbild,› ein Vexierbild vielmehr» (98-99), but he nevertheless failed to notice the delicious way Seghers fleshed out Achselroth with Remarque’s foibles. 13 Because a major theme of Transit is the value of faithfully sticking with one’s friends, not to mention to one’s principles, Remarque, who left for Hollywood in 1939, only to return briefly to Europe in 1940, then to take US citizenship in 1941, did not fit into Seghers’ value system. Therefore he was a perfect target for her satire. 14 Remarque’s relationship with Dietrich is documented in, among other sources, Fuld and Schneider’s book «Sag’ mir, dass du mich liebst …» 15 Further, Rob Ruggenberg, a Dutch journalist-historian writes that in January 1918, Remarque «has his photo taken together with his dear dog Wolf […]. He visits his old comrades. One of them, the one-legged Christian Kranzbühler - […] the same fellow-soldier he once rescued from No Man’s Land-reports him to the military police. He accuses Remark of falsely wearing an officers [sic] uniform and not-earned decorations. Remark is arrested, but he escapes legal action because Germany in this after-war period is in turmoil and chaos. In a police-station he signs a statement wherein he admits that he is not allowed to wear an officers [sic] uniform» (9). A second photograph of a seated, uniformed Remark/ Remarque with dog appears in many biographies, adding to the farce of the young Remark’s self-agrandizement. 16 «The dog [Wolf] was a coded statement in itself, although Erich’s love of animals was genuine. […] Wolf, then was the perfect fashion accessory for a veteran of the trenches cutting a dash on the streets of Osnabrück» (Tims 24). 17 Walter makes numerous references to Achselroth’s «Imstichlasserei» (40, 61, 155). The first time he uses the term, he links the Remarque surrogate to Seghers’ sense of humor: «Denn auch die überaus komische Geschichte, die den ‹Imstichlasser› Achselroth zum betrogenen Betrüger machen, gehört hierher» (40). Böll mistakenly refers to Paul Strobel, a second refugee writer in Transit, as Seghers’ only «Imstichlasser.» «Paulchen» however, is one of two «opportunistischen» writers (Sauer 17) in Transit. He shares Achselroth’s character flaws - egotism, selfishness, superficiality, «Imstichlasserei,» but is himself less well defined and ends in a fatal refugee’s Teufelskreis, not being allowed to stay in France, but also forbidden to leave. 18 Tims 40. 19 Dietrich became a US citizin in 1937, a status which allowed her to travel freely. After Remarque’s death, Dietrich remembered him sentimentally as «the last of the romantics» (Tims 95). Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy 15 20 Before he published Im Westen nichts Neues Remarque wrote articles for the magazine Continental Echo, which «enabled him to indulge his growing passion for cars - the more powerful the better. Cars and motor racing would become a recurring motif in his novels. […] Beautiful women, fine wines and automobiles would form an enduring triumvirate of hedonism in his life» (Tims 37, see also 60). Wagner tells of a novel by Remarque, published only in serialized form in Sport im Bild (1927-28), which is about a race driver (94). See also Hoffmann 230. 21 (Transit 154). Typical of Walter’s insights into Transit is his interpretation of the narrator: «Der Erzähler ist, was Literaturwissenschaftler eine ‹Kunstfigur› nennen. Wie tauschend echt die Autorin diese eigentlich miteinander nicht vereinbaren Einzelteile zu einem geschlossen wirkenden Ganzen zusammengefügt hat, erhellt schon daraus, dass man der hochgradigen Kunstlichkeit dieses Gebildes weder beim ersten noch beim zweiten Lesen […] unbedingt gewahr wird […]. Sie hat die lediglich mit einem Gestus ‹realistischen› Erzählens künstlich verdunkelt oder vernebelt. Die Undurchsichtigkeit der Transit-Gestalt war zugleich Teil der erzählerischen Absichten und das bewusst und planvoll benutzte Mittel, um diese Absichten zu verwirklichen. Denn worauf kam es ihr an? Gewiss nicht darauf, einen Schlüsselroman zu schreiben. […] Ich wage vielmehr die Behauptung, dass es ihr bei Transit auf ein frei deutendes Verhältnis zur Realität angekommen ist und somit auf einen Roman, der mit dem der sozusagen historisch aktenkundigen Wirklichkeit entnommenen Stoff völlig frei und souverän schaltet und waltet» (89-90). What Walter does not mention is what must have been in part Segher’s intention to have her narrator also embody her own social values. Achselroth functions as a counterpoint, a strawman, setting the narrator’s values in high, positive contrast. With Sauer, I consider it a «Mißverständnis» to call Transit «ein verdecktes autobiographisches Werk» (116). That does not, however, preclude the fact that the novel conveys Seghers’ convictions. 22 The emphasized passages are typical of Seghers’ subtle use of qualifiers to convey her satiric condemnation of Achselroth, as well as other characters in Transit, e.g., the second writer, Paul Strobel. See also Note 17. 23 For the narrator Weidel’s text constitutes a revelation: «Meine Welt ist das nicht. Ich meine aber, der Mann, der das geschrieben hat, der hat seine Kunst verstanden. […] Nur dadurch, dass sie [die Menschen in Weidels Text] der Mann [der Dichter Weidel] beschrieben hatte, erschienen sie mir schon weniger übel, sogar der, der mir selbst aufs Haar glich. Sie waren schon alle klar und lauter, als hätten sie alle schon abgebüsst, als wären sie schon durch ein Fegefeuerchen durchgegangen, durch einen kleinen Brand, durch das Gehirn dieses toten Mannes» (18-19). 24 Walter writes that Frank Wagner had correctly pointed «auf den ursächlich engen Zusammenhang zwischen dem Imstichlassen Achselroths und seinem ‹Nicht-Realismus›» (130). 25 In the Preface to Charlotte Brontë’s The Professor (first published post-humously in 1857), the author self-reflexively writes of how in this first novel she had recomposed her drafts to the point where she «had got over any such taste as I might once have had for ornamental and redundant composition, and come to prefer what was plain and homely. At the same time I had adopted a set of principles […] such as would be generally approved in theory, but the result of which, when carried out into practice, often procures for an author more surprise than pleasure. […] I find that publishers in general scarcely approved of this system, but would have liked something more imaginative and poetical - something more consonant with a highly wrought fancy, with a taste for pathos» 16 Sheila Johnson [viz. Remarque]. Significantly Brontë adds that she «had adopted a set of principles» with regard to her writing: «[M]y hero should work his way through life as I had seen real living men work theirs» (5). This focus on the importance of principle combined with realism is reminiscent of the contrast between Seghers’ writing and Remarque’s with his consistent avoidance of principle and his tendency to recycle parts of his popular novels in preference to growing through new experience. The early nineteenth-century British author Brontë might well have been contrasting Seghers’ ideas about writing with Remarque’s, the best-selling favorite of publishers. He is a writer who demands little of his readers, one who satisfied the desire for escape, a style so elegantly rejected by Charlotte Brontë. 26 The «Montreal» is a ship invented by Seghers. 27 Walter sets this ending in the larger perspective of Seghers’ novel as a whole: «Die Handlung changierend zwischen Tragödie und Komödie; die Erzählweise ständig umschlagend von Satire in Ernst, wobei das Grausig-Böse scheinbar lustig, das Komische scheinbar ernsthaft und würdig daherkommt; weshalb schließlich die Bauformen dieses Erzählens gleichermassen in Tragödie und Komödie beheimatet sind» (136). 28 The final sentence in Transit plays on the ineradicable quality of Weidel - the wahre Dichter - represented by Marie’s unshakable belief that he lives on: «Ich [the narrator] werde eher des Wartens [auf Marie] müde als sie des Suchens [in allen Städten Europas … selbst in den phantastischen Städten fremder Erdteile] nach dem unauffindbaren Toten» (187). 29 Seghers relates the circumstances of Transit’s genesis as follows: «Der Roman ‹Transit› […] ist im ersten Kriegsjahr in Frankreich begonnen worden. Er wurde mitten in der Situation geschrieben, die darin beschrieben ist. Ein paar Seiten entstanden in Hotelzimmern und Cafés von Marseille, ein paar in den Pyrenäen, als unsere Männer dort im Lager eingesperrt waren, ein paar auf dem Schiff, das aus Marseille an der spanischen Kueste entlang, um das kuenstlich vernebelte Fort von Gibraltar herum, in endloser, erschoepfender Fahrt auf die Insel Martinique zufuhr» (quoted in Fehervary 286). Walter quotes Seghers’ letter to an Aufbau reader: «Das Buch ist in Marseille entstanden, in den erwähnten Cafés, wahrscheinlich sogar, wenn ich zu lange warten musste, in Wartezimmern von Konsulaten, dann auf Schiffen, auch interniert auf Inseln, in Ellis Island in USA, der Schluss in Mexiko» (29). For greater detail see also Fehervary 311ff. 30 Remarque copies Seghers’ frame structure in Transit in his 1963 novel, Die Nacht von Lissabon, which also includes many other examples of his looking over her shoulder twenty years later in his penultimate work. His use even of some of her terminology (e.g., Völkerwanderung) in his wonted recycling manner, is hardly astonishing. 31 Walter ties Seghers’ life with Transit as follows: «Da «ihre Position und ihre Deutung der ‹Realität› von so großer Brisanz waren, daß sie sie nur verdeckt und verschlüsselt darzustellen gewagt hat - aus Gründen, die aufs Engste mit ihrer Lebensgeschichte, ihren politischen Auffassungen und ihrem Selbstverständnis als Künstlerin zusammenhingen, nicht zuletzt auch mit ihrer unästhetischen Arbeitspraxis, [konnte man] gleich auf den ersten Seite der Doppelbödigkeit und Vieldimensionalität des Geschehens gewahr werden» ( 91). 32 Throughout his book on Transit, Walter emphasizes that the «Komik der Situation und Überlegenheitsgefühl [des Erzählers] lassen ihn, der zäh sein kann, wenn er nur will […], Lust an Maskeraden, ein stark ausgeprägter Sinn für Groteskes und Absurdes [zeigen,] denn wenn er eines besitzt, dann Humor (47). Seghers Pillories a Hollywood Glamour Boy 17 Works Cited Böll, Heinrich. «Anna Seghers: ‹Transit.› Gefahr unter falschen Brüdern.» Der Spiegel 16 (1964): 114. Brontë, Charlotte. Preface to The Professor. London: Penguine, 1995. Fehervary, Helen & Bernhard Spiess, eds., Seghers Werkausgabe, Das erzählerische Werk I/ 5. Bandbearbeitung Silvia Schlenstedt. Berlin: Aufbau, 2001. Fuld, Werner und Thomas F. Schneider. «Sag mir, daß du mich liebst …» Erich Maria Remarque - Marlene Dietrich. Zeugnisse einer Leidenschaft. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2001. Härtling, Peter. Anna Seghers. Materialienbuch. Ed. Peter Roos & F.J. Haussauer- Roos. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1977. Hilsenrath, Edgar. «Lesen Sie mal den ‹Arc de Triumph.› Erinnerung an Erich Maria Remarque.» Erich Maria Remarque. Ed. Heinz Ludwig Arnold. Heft 149. München: Text + Kritik, 2001. Hilzinger, Sonja. Anna Seghers. Literaturstudium. Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000. Hoffmann, Charles W. «Erich Maria Remarque.» German fiction writers, 1914-1945. v. 56. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Ann Arbor: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1987. Roos, Peter & F.J. Haussauer Roos, eds. Anna Seghers. Materialienbuch. Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1977. Ruggenberg, Rob. «Adolf Hitler and Erich Maria Remarque Fighting Together: Extremes in No Man’s Land.» 9. http: / / www.greatwar.nl/ remarque/ remarque-eng. html. Sauer, Karl. Anna Seghers. Autorenbücher. v. 9. Heinz Ludwig Arnold & Ernst-Peter Wieckenberg, eds. München: Beck, text + kritik, 1978. Schneider, Thomas F. Nachwort to Erich Maria Remarque. Herbstfahrt eines Phantasten. Erzählungen und Essays. Köln: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 2001. Seghers, Anna. Briefe an Leser. Berlin & Weimar: Aufbau, 1970. -. Transit. Band 4. Darmstadt und Neuweid: Luchterhand, 1963, 1977. Tims, Hilton. Erich Maria Remarque. The Last Romantic. NY: Carroll & Graf, 2003. Wagener, Hans. Understanding Erich Maria Remarque. Understanding Modern European and Latin American Literature. Ed. James Hardin. Columbia: South Carolina UP, 1991. Walter, Hans-Albert. Anna Seghers’ Metamorphosen. Transit - Erkundungsversuche in einem Labyrinth. Frankfurt am M.: Büchergilde Gutenberg, 1984. Sources of Illustrations 1. Dictionary of Literary Biography (Vol. 56). 2. akg-images 3. Landesarchiv Berlin 4. Archiv Ruth Radvanyi, Aufbau Verlag 5. Hermann Luchterhand Verlag 6. Archiv Ruth Radvanyi, Aufbau Verlag 7. Rödeberg Verlag 8. Erich Maria Remarque Papers. Fales Library, NYU 18 Sheila Johnson 9. Deutsche Kinemathek-Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin 10. Helmut Raddatz 11. www.greatwar.nl/ remarque/ remarque-eng.html 12. Peter Riva 13. Rödeberg Verlag 14. Fotograf Paul Swiridoff, Archiv/ Museum Würth, Künzelsau Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film: Resistance and the Third Wave HANS-BERNHARD MOELLER U NIVERSITY OF T EXAS , A USTIN Identifying where a film as emotionally gripping as Marc Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage (2005) fits into the larger framework of German national cinema history is a challenge. 1 It follows the renewed focus of German cinema since 2000 on national themes, a phenomenon not seen with such verve since the New German Cinema of the mid-1960s to mid-1980s. I would position Rothemund’s film in what I would term the third wave of post-WW II films that reexamine the fascist German past of the years 1933- 45. It constitutes an adjunct to defining a new German national identity. Earlier waves of such films emerged in the late 1940s continuing into the 1950s and in the period around 1980 respectively. Such temporal delimitations often represent mere categorical constructs, particularly for the definition-denying second half of the twentieth and early twenty-first century, yet - like the meridian circles of latitude and longitude in seafaring - they can aid in objectively navigating a complex historical reality. The first wave encompassed such films as Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us, 1947), Lizzy (1956), Falk Harnack’s Der 20. Juli (The Plot to Assassinate Hitler, 1955), and G.W. Pabst’s Es geschah am 20. Juli (It Happened on July 20), of the same year. The majority of these were produced by what would become the DEFA East German state cinema, though at the outset, with communist cultural policy still oriented toward the «United Front» antifascist agenda, ideological lines were not yet firmly drawn. Wolfgang Staudte, for instance, began as a major contributor to this wave in Babelsberg but later tried to continue his work in West Germany. Harnack’s and Pabst’s work, and especially Helmut Käutner’s Des Teufels General (The Devil’s General, 1955), represent the more conservative West German contributions to this wave, that focused more characteristically on members of the political and military classes. In an attempt to illustrate the three waves, I doubtlessly need to proceed rather selectively; space does not allow me to treat West German war movies such as the 08/ 15 trilogy (1955), films that tended to project early on an image of Germans as victims. The second wave revolved around the younger generation New German Cinema of the mid-1960s to mid-1980s. As early as 1966 Schlöndorff’s Der 20 Hans-Bernhard Moeller junge Törless (Young Törless) and Alexander Kluge’s Abschied von gestern (Yesterday Girl) confronted the past of the Third Reich in metaphorical, indirect fashion. But a film like Theodor Kotulla’s Aus einem deutschen Leben (Death Is My Trade/ Commandant Hoess, 1977) openly examined the Holocaust and identified Germans as perpetrators. The wave peaked after the American TV mini-series Holocaust (1978) was broadcast on German TV and prepared a broader public acceptance of films such as Peter Lilienthal’s David (1979). The third and current wave documents an awakening to the German past of a new generation born well after the Third Reich, with filmmakers such as Marc Rothemund, Dennis Gansel (Napola, 2004), and Oliver Hirschbiegel Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004). This wave that began around the turn of the new millennium, however, still has established New German Cinema directors contributing to it, e.g., Michael Verhoeven (Mutters Courage/ Mother’s Courage, 1996, and Der unbekannte Soldat/ The Unknown Soldier, 2006), Volker Schlöndorff (Der Unhold/ The Ogre, 1996, and Der neunte Tag/ The Ninth Day, 2004), Werner Herzog (Unbesiegbar/ Invincible, 2001), and Margarethe von Trotta (Rosenstrasse, 2003). If one detects in the first wave an underlying tendency to equate Germans with victims of history, and in the second an inclination to emphasize German guilt, how does the third wave cast the image of the Germans? Should one - in keeping with the «normalization» discourse 2 - expect a return to the victim image? This essay examines that very question. It proposes that rather than a redux to the victim role of the 1940s and 1950s, followed by a clear New German Cinema rupture projecting Germans as perpetrators, the German selfimage just before 2000 and since yields more complex shadings. To illuminate the issue, I will undertake a comparison/ contrast of three feature films about the «White Rose» resistance to the Third Reich. Marc Rothemund of the third wave is not the first to deal with the title figure of his Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage; this courageous German student had already been a focus of two films of the second-wave. We know from Michael Verhoeven that Schlöndorff had made an even earlier attempt to realize a film about the White Rose right after completing his Young Törless in the mid-60s. 3 Verhoeven himself was the first to succeed in bringing Sophie to the screen in his 1982 film Die Weiße Rose (The White Rose). The same year, within a month, Percy Adlon’s Fünf letzte Tage (The Five Last Days) also premiered. Examining the three White Rose feature films from the 1980s to the present helps clarify German attitudes regarding resistance. It is telling to study the different emphases and perspectives of the three films about the character of Sophie Scholl. Verhoeven’s Die Weiße Rose rep- Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film 21 resents the historian’s dream: it offers context by establishing why the Nazi rulers perceived the bantam Munich resistance group as indicator of a genuine crisis. The regime considered the White Rose a «große Gefahr für den […] Durchhaltewillen» or German people’s stick-to-itiveness with the Nazis in the environment of the Munich students’ revolt of mid-January 1943 and the German military collapse at Stalingrad toward the end of the same month. 4 On January 13, 1943, Nazi prefect, «Gauleiter» Paul Giesler, had challenged coeds at an obligatory university convocation at the Deutsches Museum in Munich to trade academe for motherhood. In addition, he had offered them the sexual «assistance» of his junior officers, an invitation that ultimately led to rioting, with students battling Nazi student leaders and the police, as well. In the wake of this incident and the traumatization of the German population associated with the Stalingrad fiasco, the Nazi regime considered the increasing resistance from the White Rose grounds for setting up a «Großfahndung,» a dragnet for the group, and later for instituting special ad-hoc court proceedings. The Reich’s head prosecutor, Roland Freisler, twice moved his infamous «People’s Court» from Berlin to Munich, first for no other reason than to provide an object lesson for the populace at large using the example of a paltry trio of Munich students. Step by step, Verhoeven recreates in his film this historical context for the audience. In the way of further contextualization, he also chronicles the medical corps service of the White Rose male ringleaders at the Russian front, where they witness a massacre of Russian POWs. A central Verhoeven sequence can serve to demonstrate how its approach, too, helps establish the wider historical background. Two thirds into the picture, Verhoeven’s portrayal of a conference held at the Munich Gestapo headquarters reveals that White Rose political flyers are now reaching beyond southern German cities to Austrian urban centers. The chief exhorts his staff to redouble its effort to apprehend the responsible parties, ordering that a reward of several thousand Marks be promised to university staff for tips leading to the arrest of underground resistors. A cut takes the viewer from the medium close-up of the Gestapo head engulfed in a haze of tobacco smoke to a two-shot of Professor Huber and his wife in his study. The professor is a role model, mentor, sympathizer, and, ultimately, an activist amid the White Rose. The Huber couple, spatially separated by his desk to imply his wife’s reservation about any political activism, intently listens to state radio announcing that the German 6th army has been annihilated at Stalingrad despite its heroic stand. The shot lasts but nine seconds. Continuing with the radio news as a backdrop, Verhoeven leads into a mid-shot of three students entering the stylized, double-winged door to the university lobby, where they begin to climb the stairs. Another cut, to an extreme long shot from the far upper level 22 Hans-Bernhard Moeller of the same building, captures student groups and individuals on different stairs and levels of the central hall. The incoming student trio continues toward the middle ground of the frame as the camera tilts downward, revealing the spacious atrium filled with pockets and threads of students listening, via the public address system, to the very same battle news as the Hubers. A further cut shrinks the image to a medium long shot with a student group that has Sophie Scholl (Lena Stolze) and her brother Hans (Wulf Kessler) posed center left, Hans now exchanging glances with Willi Graf (Ulrich Tukur), one of the arriving three students. Returning to the Huber study, Verhoeven has Frau Huber in the two-shot turning off the radio, with both adults now bowing their heads in grief. A further cut again portrays the White Rose students who now ring Sophie, as the radio announcer’s voice pathetically intones the memory of the vanquished German forces: «Sie starben, damit Deutschland lebe.» Hans, his left arm around his sister’s shoulder, consoles her concerning the fate of her boyfriend, Fritz, at the Eastern front: «Das sagt noch gar nichts. Deswegen kann der Fritz trotzdem durchkommen.» (See illustration 1.) This sequence, lasting less than two minutes, illustrates Verhoeven’s scope and integration of shots and at least three plot strands. The scenes hang tightly together, their cohesion enhanced by the Gestapo’s focus on the White Rose group within their academic milieu and a couple, the Hubers, and the group Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film 23 impacted, at one and the same time, by the turn of the events at Stalingrad. The film conveys: 1. parallel action, 2. simultaneity, and 3. historical truths augmented by the continuing droning and depressing war news. If Verhoeven’s film arguably qualifies amongst the three White Rose feature films as the one with the most visual variety, historical backdrop, and action, Adlon’s, by comparison, offers the least. Fünf letzte Tage, as the title implies, in its brief span has little time to develop historical context, dealing only tangentially with White Rose group members other than Sophie. It nearly evolves into a bio picture. It does, however, place Sophie into a specific two-person relationship because she is viewed from the perspective of Else Gebel. (See illustration 2.) The Gestapo historically quartered this communist prisoner with Sophie supposedly to keep Scholl from committing suicide, but Else quickly became Sophie’s confidant. Their relationship had to be unique, trust and friendship at first sight. By coincidence, Susanne Hirzel, a close family friend and schoolmate of Sophie’s, historically soon thereafter shared Else Gebel’s cell and slept in the very bed that had housed Sophie during her arrest. Susanne had placed hundreds of copies of the fifth White Rose pamphlet into Stuttgart mailboxes and was arrested on February 22. But the new inmate and Else remained distant. 5 Plot-wise and visually, Fünf letzte Tage qualifies as the most minimalist of the three films. Visually, it is reminiscent of the early Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Casting recognizable Fassbinder 24 Hans-Bernhard Moeller stock actors Irm Hermand as Else Gebel and Hans Hirschmüller as Gestapo inspector Mahr, Adlon provokes this impression, and the rectangular lines of the mise-en-scene reinforce it. For a suitable sequence representative of Adlon’s cinematic style in Fünf letzte Tage, I turn to a scene three quarters into the film. It is the fourth of Sophie’s last five days, Sunday, February 21. In her cell, Sophie (again, as in Verhoeven’s film, played by Lena Stolze 6 ) has just received her indictment. She feels relief that her attempts to limit the Nazi capture of White Rose members to her brother Hans, Christoph Probst, and herself appear to have succeeded. Sophie studies the indictment with her cellmate, Else. Turning the actresses’ backs to the audience while Sophie reads the indictment aloud discourages spectator identification, especially when the text and the take stretch to more than one minute in length. Additionally, Else’s voiceover of dates and even hours throughout the film further undermines suture between spectator and events and characters. A similar distancing effect results from an insert soon afterwards, following a brief visit of Gestapo inspector Mahr (the interrogator Mohr in Rothemund’s picture). He advises Sophie - not in his official function but strictly privately - at once to write farewell messages to her loved ones. Subsequently, Adlon has Mahr give an account of her farewell letters to her parents, surviving sisters and brother, and her boyfriend, as the official speaks impassively into camera from an office desk. This includes her justification for her own political actions and her vision for Germany’s future, as well. Mahr supplements these remarks on Sophie’s personal concerns with comments on the official report due the Central Office for the Security of the Reich and on its reaction thereto. The office ordered Sophie’s letters to be filed away without delivery for fear of «propagandistic» exploitation. The film presents this entire episode almost uninterruptedly as a long take in medium shot, the only visual change being a slight shrinking of the frame to a medium close-shot of Mahr as he turns from the personal to the official elements of the report. The scene stands outside chronology and narrative flow of the film and strikes one almost as a Brechtian «epic» commentary. The footage demonstrates that Adlon’s film, favoring medium shots to medium long shots, is optically almost claustrophobic. The frame design, with planes paralleling the foreground, through simple, rectangular lines creates static scenes within a shallow depth of field. The bench that accommodates the two women illustrates this pattern, as does their cell table against the wall, or the Gestapo staff’s desks. Of the three White Rose film directors, Adlon dramatizes his screen story the least, A particularly cogent example is the way he handles his potentially most suspenseful action, Sophie and Hans Scholl’s Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film 25 capture at the university. Adlon represents this key event as a telephone report to a mid-level Gestapo clerk. The film frequently appears more word-based rather than image-based. The director thus creates a slow, almost theatrically posed, low-budget portrayal of Sophie that, at times, approaches TV aesthetics, yet this film is too deliberately understated and stylized to be close to conventional television. Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage, by its very title parallels Adlon’s film in its concentration both on Sophie and the short time span preceding her execution. Each of the two films has introductory scenes, but these differ considerably in character. The extreme long shot opening Adlon’s film reveals a bare field thinly covered by light snow with silhouettes of three people emerging at the upper border of the frame. As they race across the field toward the foreground, the viewer gradually identifies two young men and a young woman, apparently Hans and Sophie Scholl and Christoph Probst. Intercut into their movements are brief full shots of the three lying face-down on the ground, their heads shrouded by clothes, their bodies strangely anonymous and, in the last such downward full shot, intertwined. There is also a medium long shot with the three standing still, the woman symbolically «washing» her face, and one of the men engaged in some sort of breathing exercise; all three seem to be «craning» their necks and heads skyward. When they begin moving again, the audience still has no clues as to where the trio is heading, except toward the foreground. The scene concludes with the young woman walking straight toward the camera, ending in a medium close-up of her face. At first there is no music, only the barely audible drifting of the wind, then after a pregnant silence, a heavy cello classical piece can be heard. This entire opening is extremely abstract, symbolic, and foreboding. Very little concrete information is provided, and the credits are limited to the title and the names of the two actresses and the director. An abrupt cut switches to the Munich Gestapo headquarters at the Wittelsbacher Palais, and the voiceover of the Else Gebel character announces the date as «Donnerstag, 18. Februar 1943.» (In the English version the subtitles additionally mark the date.) Adlon’s film now closes in on the «Erster Tag» of the five Sophie still has to live, and even the time of day is specified: «10 Uhr.» Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage opens with two scenes that are more filmically traditional than Adlon’s title sequence. They are realistic but, at the same time, subversive. When the equally sparse title credits appear, the voice of Billie Holliday intones the swing number «Sugar.» Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) and a girlfriend are enjoying the program from an Anglo-American radio broadcast; their knowledge of the text and ability to sing along reveals that they have obviously been regular listeners to what the Nazi 26 Hans-Bernhard Moeller regime deemed as «enemy broadcasts.» Following this very brief opening, Sophie walks to an artist’s studio nearby, the one that has become the site of the White Rose underground activity. Hans Scholl (Fabian Hinrichs), Willi Graf (Maximilian Brückner), and Alexander Schmorell (Johannes Suhm) are shown printing political pamphlets. Sophie joins them in their clandestine work. They lack sufficient envelopes to mail out all of the flyers. At this point, Hans makes the fateful decision personally to take the remaining pamphlets to the university the following morning. This errand will deliver him and Sophie - who insists on accompanying him - to the Gestapo, and thus begins Rothemund’s chronicling of her last days. Thus the two Last Days movies share not only a common title focus and inside locations, but they are also similarly devoid of natural and outside settings - although in both Sophie dreams of freedom within nature, and when soliloquizing from her cell window she reveals her poignant longing for the outside world. The closest either director comes to an outside shot is that eerie, nightmarish opening referenced in Adlon’s film. Both treatments then reveal a tendency toward the chamber film. Like Adlon, Rothemund, a filmmaker of the younger generation, stays close to historical sources. Where Adlon relied on Else Gelen as a major source, Rothemund is able to draw on the additional Gestapo interrogation notes, which in 1982 had not been as publicly accessible because they were in East German Stasi security collections opened to research only after the fall of the Wall. 7 The Scholl notes, to which we will return, were the record Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film 27 of Sophie’s interrogation by Gestapo commissar Robert Mohr. (See illustration 3.) In some sense, Rothemund’s spectator is thus also provided with another character’s perspective of Sophie. Here, too, Adlon’s and Rothemund’s films resemble one another in that they position Sophie dramaturgically into a close relationship with a second character. With Adlon, this is Else Gebel, with Rothemund, the Gestapo agent Robert Mohr. The essential difference in these juxtapositions is that Else Gebel sympathizes with Sophie; Mohr, by contrast, is her opponent. Somewhat like Adlon’s film, Rothemund’s approaches the semi-documentary. But unlike Adlon, Rothemund strives for an emotional, intimate, psychologically complex, and involving portrayal of Sophie (actress Jentsch realizes this involvement to perfection). Rothemund’s film occasionally goes beyond the «bio picture» genre form in the interest of dramatic action, taking advantage of the Scholl siblings’ arrest at the university and Freisler’s People’s Court trial for grand visualization and suspense. In these instances, Sophie Scholl more closely resembles Die Weiße Rose than it does Adlon’s film. 8 To illustrate how effectively Rothemund mines his sources in order to evoke strong feelings, I will briefly turn to two sequences. The first takes place during the night between Friday and Saturday, following the second of Sophie’s interrogations. Sophie and Else Gebel are asleep in their cell when screams of tortured prisoners awaken them. Quiet finally returns. Sophie, shown in a medium close shot, is sitting on her cell bed, wearing a sweater of deep red. Positioned in a medium shot on the right side of the frame, she also begins to turn her head to the right, away from the foreground, lying back down so that the viewer notes how her left arm, her back, and part of her mid-torso are positioned under a blanket. She turns further, her body now lying diagonally in the frame from the lower left to upper right where the back of her head is now in the dark. The entire frame signals that she is in a private space of her own. As her left hand and arm start to move in the direction of her head, the director cuts to a close up, showing Sophie’s profile now resting against the blue of her pillow. Her folded hands emerge from behind the blanket and her lips move in audible prayer. Until she ends her prayer with an «Amen,» the entire scene is almost devoid of music. Finally, the visible eyelid closes and her head, still in profile, tilts downward to suggest sleep. One line of her prayer is heard: «Nichts anderes kann ich als Dir mein Herz hinhalten.» That is of course the essence of this 30-second scene. With it the filmmaker admits the spectator into Sophie’s most intimate space and being, employing toward this end mise-en-scene, shot selection, lighting and color combination. Here as well as in my next scene selection, Sophie’s deeply religious convictions become manifest. This later scene, the third interrogation of Sophie, 28 Hans-Bernhard Moeller constitutes the intellectual centerpiece of Rothemund’s film. 9 The debate between Gestapo commissar Mohr and Sophie touches on the themes of democratic law vs. national socialist «law and order,» on the freedom of modern religious faith vs. the enforced Nazi ideology, and on the genocide against Jews vs. the pretense that they are voluntarily emigrating. Sophie attacks the official for the Nazi euthanasia of mentally ill children, when she details how trucks rounded them up from mental institutions with the lie that they were departing for heaven. When Mohr contends that this was only an action against the lives of undesirables (unwertes Leben), Sophie counters «dass kein Mensch … berechtigt ist, ein Urteil zu fällen, das allein Gott vorbehalten ist.» Mohr urges Sophie to realize that a new era has dawned and that her arguments bear no relation to reality. In further contrast, she insists that her view of conditions is grounded in conscience, morals and God. Emotionally, the commissar blurts out that God doesn’t exist. Visually, in this scene the filmmaker places Sophie in the left center of the frame in a medium close-up. The shot originates from over the opponent’s left shoulder; his dark contours hovering at the right border of the frame. A cut shows Mohr in right center position, with the shadow of Sophie’s head and shoulder now at his left. Alternating shot-reverse-shots in medium closeshot format now accompany their dispute. At times, the camera retreats to display, in a more distanced medium shot, more of the antagonists together, as well as of the surface of the desk separating the two speakers. The entirety of the third interrogation is also devoid of music, as the filmmaker relies on the simple dramaturgy of the dispute and trusts solely in the power of words. Where there’s a potential of lapsing into «overdialoguing,» the filmmaker uses the clash of forces within the frame of the dispute to evolve into the film’s forte. In order to achieve this strength, Rothemund, in his characterization, had to present Mohr’s qualities as simultaneously diabolical and, in the Gestapo official’s unique way, even caring. Both Mohr and Sophie share their own conviction, dedication, and intensity. When, for a second time, Sophie confronts Mohr with the topic of God he appears visibly agitated and stands up behind his desk. A cut now shows a side view of the desk, with Mohr still in the process of rising to his feet. The adversaries are backlit by the natural light of the dawning new day as it filters through two office windows. In the same take, Mohr walks to the right window and stands in front of it, with his back to the spectator. Another cut returns the viewer to a medium shot of Sophie still sitting at the desk, defiantly looking in the direction of the Gestapo commissar. Mohr turns to her, and after an exchange of mutual glances, he endeavors to persuade her to sign an affidavit that would attribute her participation in the White Rose group Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film 29 solely to the heavy influence of her older brother, Hans. But Sophie will have none of this temptation; she insists on her truth, taking full responsibility for her actions. In the adversaries’ discourse, Rothemund places Sophie’s bearing and disposition center frame, even in the metaphysical disputes with Gestapo investigator Mohr. She functions as the system’s victim and its critic who battles it with mere strength of certitude, intellect, and faith, becoming the three White Rose films’ most idealized central character. She can, however, also be the most vivacious one, such as in Sophie Scholl’s opening scene when she enthusiastically sings along with Billie Holiday. In terms of the contrast between the two generations responding to the White Rose resistance, Verhoeven’s and Adlon’s response during the 1980s on the one hand, and Rothemund’s more recent one on the other, I find that all three want to revive the memory of the students’ opposition to the Nazis. All three directors accomplish their goal with hard-hitting films and strong actors, above all Lena Stolze and Julia Jentsch in the role of Sophie Scholl. Notably, different perspectives characterize the films: Verhoeven’s film in its historical and narrative complexity provides a powerful introduction to the background and interaction of the resistance group. Adlon and Rothemund focus on Sophie Scholl and just her last five days, mainly via the faceto-face relationships with another individual, the sympathizing Else Gebel in Adlon’s case, and the Gestapo adversary, Mohr, in Rothemund’s. In his portrayal, Adlon favors a more materialist, direct, understated, even detached style; Rothemund, in contrast, a more personalizing one. Characteristics here are the heroine’s individual sensibility, deep religious conviction, and private space, even for one under such Gestapo pressure as Sophie. A significant element of Rothemund’s personalizing approach is, however, also a partial humanization of Sophie’s interrogator. Underlying all three films, and unmistakably foregrounded in Rothemund’s dispute between Sophie and Mohr, is the perpetrator/ victim issue so dominant in German coming-to-terms-with-the-past narratives. The image of the German official is clearly that of the perpetrator, seen most unambiguously in Verhoeven’s and Rothemund’s portrayals of Roland Freisler, the infamous top Nazi State Prosecutor. Compared to him, Rothemund’s Mohr almost shows rare shades of pity, e.g., when he suggests almost a plea bargain and its benefits to Sophie. Adlon, depicting more of the lower-level Gestapo clerks and staff than the Nazi big fish, appears to make the persuasive point that the Mitläufer/ -täter, as cogs in the brutal Nazi system, are no less oppressive. Insofar as they project Germans as inflictors of harm, Verhoeven’s and Adlon’s White Rose films concur with the majority of New German Cinema 30 Hans-Bernhard Moeller films. In this respect, they differ from the national screen image of the German as the victim in the movies of the 1940s and 50s. Moreover, these films from the late phase of the New German Cinema period, like Rothemund’s, also feature the victim, Sophie, even though one that is not passive but, rather, in active opposition. Might this coupling of Germans as perpetrators and Germans as fighting victim explain the relative box office success of two of the three Sophie Scholl films? Both Verhoeven’s and Rothemund’s motion pictures achieved a relatively broad reception in Germany. (See illustration 4.) The response of moviegoers to Rothemund’s Sophie Scholl is perhaps most easily explained. In addition to its emotional pull, it also touches on issues of self-identity dealing with the very concept of a Federal Republic of Germany and its citizenry, even six decades after the end of WW II. The dispute between Sophie and Mohr evokes topics which even today dominate political and moral debate. That discourse, for instance, intersects at critical points with core aspects of the historians’ controversy (Historikerstreit), raging in the Federal Republic during the mid-1980s and revived to a degree in the mid-1990s. Three major topics of this controversy are the Nazi genocide, the Reich’s armed conflict with Stalin’s USSR, and the German resistance against the Hitler regime. Above all, the historical, patriotic, and ethical prioritizing of any of these issues over the others in political philosophy creates inescapable questions involving vic- Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film 31 tims and perpetrators. All three films about the White Rose by choice of their subject matter and specific portrayals of Sophie Scholl in particular legitimate political resistance. Shifts in the German political climate or prioritizing of these three political issues from Germany’s post-WW II period to the beginning of this century as well as in the filmmakers’ generations become apparent if one inspects the emphasis or genre orientation of Verhoeven’s and Rothemund’s films. The audience’s receptivity was, after all, regulated by attitudes such as whether defense of the Reich against the Red Army was a value superior to the one of undermining the Nazi regime. As Thomas Assheuer reminds us, «Nach dem Krieg dauerte es lange, bis die Öffentlichkeit die Mitglieder der Weißen Rose nicht mehr als Landesverräter verachtete, sondern als Widerstandskämpfer ehrte.» 10 As late as 1981, Verhoeven’s experience confirms this public perception. When his actors on location at the Munich Feldherrnhalle stenciled the slogans «Freiheit» and «Nieder mit Hitler» on a wall, they were repeatedly reported to the police who began to arrest them. One sturdy man insisted that they be arrested and attempted to prevent them from continuing, even though the producer showed the police a filming permit. When the police hesitated, the man insulted everyone and finally left shouting: «Der Hitler hätt’ euch alle aufgehängt! » 11 The cultural climate in Germany around 1980 thus forced Verhoeven to develop a historical context for the initial film treating Die Weiße Rose. After Verhoeven’s and Adlon’s films, 12 after Daniel Goldhagen 13 and the 1996 and 2002 exhibits on the German military’s atrocities in the East, 14 Rothemund has now been able to «update» the motif to the new awareness level of his own audience. He also is of a generation of Germans far removed from the Third Reich. Hence, he was able to focus on «die menschliche Seite des Widerstands,» on Sophie. 15 Verhoeven, by contrast, in 1982 created Die Weiße Rose with a different awareness - «Damals musste man das Ganze zeigen» - although privately he had already seen the Gestapo protocols of Mohr’s interrogation of Sophie to which historians and Rothemund and his scenarist did not gain access until after the fall of the Wall. 16 What the three films have in common is that they essentially highlight the story of unique historical antifascist students in the Third Reich. Have they thus distorted the big picture and contributed to the «normalization discourse»? Daniela Berghahn in her article «Post-1990 Screen Memories» reminds us that «Narratives of Miraculous Jewish Survival» are anomalies «that construct an ambiguous memory of Jewish suffering that allows us to forget while ostensibly inviting us to remember.» 17 By analogy, some detractors might want to critique the White Rose films. There may, however, have been more complex issues at play, such as the effect the Allies may have had in the 32 Hans-Bernhard Moeller slow change of the German public’s attitude. The Allies at the end of the war may have screened or filtered out awareness of any German resistance to play upon the public’s sense of collective guilt. As cited by Uwe Siemon-Netto in «The Legacy of a Philanthropist,» Robert Lochner, who was U.S. post-WW II Chief Control Officer for Radio Frankfurt, in November 1948 referred to this sort of censorship: «an ordinance that July 20 […] must not be mentioned […] if one mentions July 20, people might get the idea that there were a few who were not Nazis, and that is not permissible.» 18 Moreover, soon thereafter, during the Cold War, Germans in both East and West of the divided nation were dissuaded from examining their own lives and history openly and in public. It was the generation of 1968 within Germany that persistently confronted (West) Germans with their past. And it was a movement in film, the New German Cinema, that was central to this process of confrontation; Verhoeven was part of just this movement. A recent cultural controversy alerts us to the significance of who controls memory; it reminds us that it is not just German film that contributed to «normalization» tendencies. Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, as early as 1993, portrayed both brutal Nazis and Oskar Schindler, the «better German.» Will Tom Cruise along with director Bryan Singer now follow along those lines? Almost a year and a half after the Scholls, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg likewise was executed for his resistance against the Nazis. He attempted to assassinate the Führer in the plot code-named «Operation Walküre.» Cruise will reenact Stauffenberg’s role in «Valkyrie» (aka «Rubicon») set for shooting in Berlin during late Summer 2007. The heated public debate following the announcement of the Cruise project ranged from Berlin cabinet members to local police, and all across the political and media spectrums. Oscar-decorated filmmaker Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck pleaded on behalf of letting Cruise «cast his Superstar light on this rare resplendent moment in the most gloomy chapter of our history.» 19 By contrast, Stauffenberg’s son Berthold objected strenuously against Cruise playing his father’s role. 20 Berlin authorities refused the use of Bendlerstraße, site of Stauffenberg’s execution, and another Kreuzberg site as locations. Ultimately, the film will start shooting elsewhere in Berlin and receive more than 5 million dollars of German DFFF state film subsidy. 21 Memory and its sites are contested. Can there be a benefit in restoring to memory, as the three films have attempted, German resistance such as that of the White Rose? Exiles from the Third Reich evidently thought so. In a cautious way, German victims of Hitler such as Douglas Sirk with his 1958 Remarque adaptation A Time to Love and a Time to Die and Konrad Wolf with his 1959 Stars projected a «better German.» In their films, these film exiles, like their literary fellow artists, 22 pointed Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film 33 to a political ideal, a model for a new German identity, as do the three White Rose screen renditions. Modern neuroscience suggests that man’s dreams are a form of learning. Movies are sometimes interpreted as collective dreams. Can the White Rose films enhance historical learning on the part of German citizens? The narrow treatment of so rare a historical phenomenon such as German resistance to Hitler and of the motif of the «better German» during the fascist period retains its relevance. Sophie Scholl’s bearing and disposition occupy center stage of the powerful Rothemund film. International White Rose societies now actively espouse her cause. 23 Owing to her courage, her intellect, and her fearless political commitment, this one woman has become a model not only for young, activist German and American women to identify with, but also for politically committed, idealistic students in general. Notes 1 I am indebted to my colleagues George Lellis, Laurence A. Gretsky, and Sheila Johnson for constructive criticism and suggestions. Acknowledgement is also due to Percy Adlon and Michael Verhoeven for generous help with illustrations. 2 Cf. Bill Niven, ed. Germans As Victims (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), especially with its discussion of Jörg Friedrich’s The Fire and Sites of Fire, and Joachim Perels, Wider die Normalisierung des Nationalsozialismus. Interventionen wider die Verdrängung, 2nd. ed. (Hannover: Offizin, 1996). 3 Michael Verhoeven, «Annäherung,» Die Weiße Rose, ed. Michael Verhoeven and Mario Krebs (Frankfurt/ M.: Fischer Tb. 1983) 189-211, here 190. 4 Gerd Ueberschär, «Die Vernehmungsprotokolle von Mitgliedern der Weißen Rose.» Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage, ed. Fred Breinersdorfer, 2nd. ed. (Frankfurt/ M.: Fischer, 2005) 339-51, here 347. 5 Sibylle Bassler, Die Weiße Rose. Zeitzeugen erinnern sich (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2006) 208-09. 6 Indeed, in «Speak, I’m listening,» his account of the origin of his The Last Five Days, Percy Adlon relates actress Lena Stolze’s describing to him «how almost surreal it was to her to be offered the part a second time in another movie before she had finished the first one.» Süddeutsche Zeitung 3 Oct. 1982. Online English version: www.percyadlon. com/ second_pages/ five_last_days_pg3.htm. 7 Scenarist and director question «ob wir es uns zugetraut hätten, die Geschichte von Sophie Scholl so verdichtet und emotional zu erzählen, wie wir es getan haben, wenn nicht noch zusätzlich die neue Faktenlage, hauptsächlich die unterschiedlichen Protokolle, so spannend und detailreich geweisen wäre.» «Inspiration durch Fakten.» Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage, ed. Fred Breinersdorfer, 316-30, here 322. This book reprints Gestapo official Mohr’s narrative record of his interrogation of Sophie (359-89). Cf. also Rothemund, «Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage: Ein Gespräch mit Regisseur Marc Rothemund,» Interview des Internet-Portals kino-zeit.de. www.kino-zeit.de/ filme/ artikel/ 2513_sophie-scholl---die-letzten-tage-ein-gesprach-mit-regisseur-marc-rothemund.html. 34 Hans-Bernhard Moeller 8 In their internet press kit, the filmmakers of Sophie Scholl - Die letzten Tage state that «Verhoeven’s film […] ends with the arrest of Sophie Scholl.» http: / / www.zeitgeistfilms. com/ films/ sophiescholl/ sophiescholl.presskit.pdf. [p. 5]. Captured 7/ 12/ 2007. This claim overlooks and overly plays down the fact that The White Rose also portrays Sophie’s interrogation, the Freisler trial, and the guillotine killing of Sophie. 9 The dispute between Sophie and Gestapo agent Mohr in its intensity and structure is reminiscent of Schlöndorff’s intellectual centerpiece in his 2004 The Ninth Day. There Abbé Henri Kremer also has his part-diabolical, part-sympathetic nemesis, Gestapo agent Gebhardt (August Diehl), and the adversaries’ debate drives the discourse on Nazi ideology. 10 Die Zeit 24 Feb. 2005. Compare also Frank Schirrmacher, editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, «Erst nachdem ein Großteil der Kriegsgeneration abgetreten ist, hat die Gesellschaft [of the German Federal Republic] ihren Frieden mit den Attentätern des 20. Juli [1944] gemacht.» www.faz.net/ s/ RubCF3AEB154CE64960822FA5429A182360/ Doc~ EF9345612FFA444F4866EFDFF4CC3FB15~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontext: html captured Jul7 7 2007. Also www.spiegel.de/ kultur/ kino/ 0,1815,493153,00.html, captured July 16, 2007. 11 Michael Verhoeven and Mario Krebs, Die Weiße Rose (Frankfurt/ M.: Fischer Tb., 1982) 202. 12 Historians like Joachim Perels regard Verhoeven’s White Rose movie as a key mover for the unanimous 1985 resolution of the lower house of the German parliament «daß der Volksgerichtshof ‹kein Gericht im rechtsstaatlichen Sinne, sondern ein Terrorinstrument zur Durchsetzung der nationalsozialistischen Willkürherrschaft war›» (Wider die Normalisierung des Nationalsozialismus 76). As late as July 1, 1998, the Bundestag again sees the need to invalidate by law «alle noch bestehenden Unrechtsurteile aus der Zeit der nationalsozialistischen Herrschaft.» The German federal legislature makes specific reference to «Urteile des Volksgerichtshofes.» «NS-Unrechtsurteile per Gesetz aufgehoben,» Blickpunkt Bundestag. Juni 1998, Nr. 1/ 98, 21. See www.bundestag.de/ bp/ 1998/ bp9801/ 9801021b.html. 13 Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Vintage Books, 1997). In addition to publishing the German translation Hitlers willige Vollstrecker (Berlin: Siedler, 1996), the author involved himself in a book tour and debates in Germany which found an eager audience, especially with younger Germans. 14 Cf. Michael Verhoeven’s 2006 documentary Der unbekannte Soldat. 15 Marc Rothemund, «Warum erneut ein Film über Sophie Scholl? » Interview with Margret Köhler for kinofenster.de on 20 Apr. 2005. www.bpb.de/ themen/ 18NZBK,0,0,Warum_ erneut_ein_Film_über_Sophie_Scholl.html. 16 Telephone interview with the filmmaker on 18 Sept. 2007. According to Verhoeven, Anneliese [Knoop-]Graf, the sister of White Rose member Willi Graf, as a citizen of Saarbrücken was given special access to the papers by fellow Saarbrückenite Erich Honecker, the head of the GDR from 1976 until 1989. In turn, she made the material available to the filmmaker before he created Die Weiße Rose. 17 «Post-1990 Screen Memories: How East and West German Cinema Remembers the Third Reich and the Holocaust,» GL & L 59 (2006): 294-308, here 302. 18 The Atlantic Times July 2007: 20. 19 «Deutschlands Hoffnung heißt Tom Cruise,» Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 3 July 2007: 33, 35, here 33. Sophie Scholl and Post-WW II German Film 35 20 «Interview» with Martin Zips. Süddeutsche Zeitung 22 June 2007. Online version: www. sueddeutsche.de/ kultur/ artikel/ 18/ 119870/ 9/ . Captured 17 July 2007. 21 «Deutsche Millionen für Cruise-Film,» FAZ.NET Kino-Feuilleton 7 July 2007. www. faz.net/ s/ Rub8A25A66CA9514B9892E0074EDE4E5AFA/ Doc~E281F694531… Also «Cruisekriegtdeutsche Fördergelder,» Spiegelonline 5 July2007.www.spiegel.de/ kultur/ kino/ 0,1518,492511,00.html. German filmmakers like Volker Schlöndorff, Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, and Jo Baier like von Donnersmarck also voiced opposition against the official refusal of permission to shoot at historical Berlin sites. Cf. Andreas Kilb. «Posse peinlichster Art,» Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 4 July 2007: 38. 22 Beginning in 1943 with Thomas Mann’s «Brave, magnificient young people! » Politische Schriften und Reden, ed. Hans Bürgin, vol 3 (Frankfurt/ M.: Fischer Bücherei Moderne Klassiker, 1968) 254-56, here 256, and continuing with Alfred Neumann’s novel Es waren ihrer sechs (Stockholm: Neuer Verlag, 1944, Berlin: Habel 1947, engl. transl., New York: MacMillan, 1946). Carl Zuckmayer also reportedly pondered writing about the group in the late 1940s but did not consider German culture of the time ready to appreciate the sacrifice of the White Rose group. Detlef Bald, Die Weiße Rose. Von der Front in den Widerstand (Berlin: Aufbau, 2003) 10. 23 At the University of Texas, Austin, a student group started an organization under this name in 2003. It considers itself a legacy of the Munich resistance group, espousing activism against repression and persecution in general and against specific current political genocidal practices, such as in Darfur. Cf. also «Wofür würde Sophie kämpfen? … 13 junge Frauen machen Vorschläge.» Emma März/ April 2005, and www.deheap.com/ white%20Rose%20Studies.htm. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Postfach 25 60 · D-72015 Tübingen · Fax (0 7071) 97 97-11 Internet: www.narr.de · E-Mail: info@narr.de Wie erleben mehrsprachige Menschen ihre Sprachen? Wie erleben sie sich selbst, wenn sie sich in unterschiedlichen Sprachen ausdrücken? Welche Bedeutungen und Funktionen messen Mehrsprachige ihren Sprachen im Laufe ihres Lebens bei? Welche ihrer Lebenserfahrungen sind von Relevanz für ihren Selbstbezug zu Sprachen? Mit Hilfe der Methode der biographischen Fallrekonstruktion von Gabriele Rosenthal und der Metaphernanalyse nach Michael B. Buchholz untersucht die Arbeit das Wechselverhältnis zwischen Spracherfahrungen und Biographie bei den mehrsprachigen Schriftstellern Peter Weiss und Georges- Arthur Goldschmidt. Simone Hein-Khatib Mehrsprachigkeit und Biographie Zum Sprach-Erleben der Schriftsteller Peter Weiss und Georges-Arthur Goldschmidt 2007, 323 Seiten, €[D] 68,00/ Sfr 107,00 ISBN 978-3-8233-6344-6 «Das ist die Mauer, die quer durchgeht. Dahinter liegt die Stadt und das Glück.» DEFA Directors and their Criticism of the Berlin Wall SEBASTIAN HEIDUSCHKE M ONTANA S TATE U NIVERSITY This article examines the strategies used by directors of the East German film monopoly Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) to voice their disapproval of the Berlin Wall. 1 My aim is to show how it was possible, despite universal censorship in East Germany, to create films that addressed the wall as an inhumane means to imprison the East German people. Although many DEFA films adhered to socialist law and reiterated the official doctrine of the «antifascist protection rampart» on the silver screen, an analysis of three DEFA films will demonstrate how the representation of human crisis was used as a means to criticize the wall. 2 The films Das Kleid (Konrad Petzold, 1961), Der geteilte Himmel (Konrad Wolf, 1964), and Die Architekten (Peter Kahane, 1990) address walls in a variety of functions and appearances as representations, symbols, and metaphors of the barrier between East and West Germany. Interest in DEFA has certainly increased during the last decade, and many scholars have introduced a meaningful variety of topics regarding the history of East Germany’s film company and its films. In addition to book-length works that deal exclusively with the cinema of East Germany, many articles have looked at DEFA’s film genres, provided case studies of single DEFA films, and engaged in sociological or historical analyses of East German society and its films. 3 In order to expand the current discussion of DEFA, this article applies a sociocultural reading to the three DEFA films Das Kleid, Der geteilte Himmel, and Die Architekten with the goal of introducing the new subtopic of roles and functions of the Berlin Wall in East German film to the field of DEFA studies. Surprisingly, this topic has yet to be discovered in English language scholarship on DEFA. In their study of Konrad Wolf’s films, Thomas Elsaesser and Michael Wedel interpret Der geteilte Himmel by looking at its «mode of narration,» speculating that official objections to the film were not due to it tackling the «hot topics of flight from the GDR [Republikflucht] or the 38 Sebastian Heiduschke ‹protective barrier› that divided the German nation» (17). Although they refer to Erika Richter’s article on DEFA films about the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1965, Elsaesser and Wedel do not take into account the reference to the concrete barrier and its implications for life in East Germany in the film’s title. Similarly, Seán Allan accounts for Peter Kahane’s 1990 feature film Die Architekten as primus inter pares of the so-called Wendefilme of 1989/ 90. Allan compares this film with two other examples of the Wendefilm, Egon Günther’s Stein (1991) and Jörg Foth’s Letztes aus der Da Da eR (1990), to show the struggles of individuals in the waning days of East Germany. Yet, there seems to be an additional layer of meaning missing from his analysis, as Kahane’s film combines the monotony of East Germany’s architecture with the psychological state of his protagonists. Walls in concrete, psychological, or allegorical appearance are more than prevalent in Die Architekten, in their role as a focal point of human crisis. Thus this article aims to encourage a closer look at the correlations between DEFA directors, their films, and the depiction of the Berlin Wall in their films. On a more global level, this study may help one to see beyond the surface of East German cultural products. Books, films, and other art forms about everyday life in the «other» Germany are often difficult to understand for outsiders and nonexperts of this culture. They require either insider knowledge of East German culture or an ability to read «between the lines» of a work of art and decode its meaning. As a result, these cultural products may be seen as unattractive, boring and alien to current audiences, whereas - with some guidance - they could offer alternative views and a more complete picture of German history and culture. This analysis of three DEFA films seeks to model the first steps of such a decoding process, which may eventually allow a nonexpert to see the «hidden agenda» of a DEFA filmmaker. Generally, censorship, restrictions and requests for significant changes to their films by state censors made the work of DEFA directors difficult. Regardless of the time period in which a film was produced, official party politics in East Germany demanded the strict regulation of art to ensure the proper endorsement and undivided support of socialism. At times, severe restrictions discouraged any kind of autonomous creativity in favor of a statesanctioned East German filmmaking. Films were supposed to promote the political ideals of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), the ruling party, and DEFA directors were forced to adhere to the guidelines of official cultural policy, to constantly verify the political compatibility of film and politics, and to make decisions regarding the message of their films. 4 However, many directors were not willing to forfeit their artistic freedom completely, despite strict control mechanisms. They looked for ways to voice «Das ist die Mauer, die quer durchgeht. Dahinter liegt die Stadt …» 39 critical positions in their films, to make political statements, or to comment on living conditions in East Germany. One of the hottest topics was the Berlin Wall, a subject matter that could be approached only with utmost care if one did not want to risk one’s further career as a filmmaker. Yet how could a director make films that conformed to official doctrine and yet comment critically on the Wall? There are at least three possible approaches to answering this question: first, the historical situation at the time of the film release proves to be illuminating; second, a translation of the film’s metaphors can reveal the director’s intended message; and third, decoding the dialogues and events within the film can reveal whether a director followed a «hidden agenda.» By and large, DEFA directors were unable to voice criticism openly in their films if they wanted to avoid a direct confrontation with party officials. Instead, they chose alternative approaches to veil their criticism by establishing other central elements to distract censors from their original intention, as for example using human crisis in the case of the three films dealing with the Berlin Wall. Here, literary critic Paul de Man’s theory about the correlation of crisis and criticism proves useful as a theoretical framework for an analysis of the link between crisis in DEFA films and a director’s criticism of the Berlin Wall. De Man suggests in the first chapter of his work Blindness and Insight that crisis and criticism may be redundant terms. While crisis is usually considered to be a difficult situation, or even the turning point of a dangerous development, it also contains positive effects and is neither positive nor negative per se. A crisis, for example, might foster a stronger bond between the subjects involved in it, and may act as a launch pad for extraordinary efforts. In fact, de Man emphasizes that crises are an important part of criticism, since «in periods that are not periods of crisis, or in individuals bent on avoiding crisis at all cost […] there can be no criticism» (8). Thus DEFA directors depicting crisis in their films were in fact challenging East Germany’s political, social, and economic system as an unorganized group united by the common motive to improve life in their home country. Even more, they would not even need to have been aware of their intentions for two reasons: first, since criticism in de Man’s view is recognized as a preconceived notion in which the critic is judged by «a certain degree of conformity to an original intent called artistic» (8), the lack of such standards for DEFA films, coupled with official guidelines and film censorship, forced directors to test the official boundaries anew each time they finished another film. Second, the critic may even have employed subconscious knowledge to construct a crisis as a critical reflection of reality. Nevertheless, de Man believes that «genuine criticism seems to flow from crisis, even as critics remain unaware of the source of their insights» (10). In other words, the depiction of the Berlin Wall in a film alongside human 40 Sebastian Heiduschke crisis could therefore evoke a comparative reading of this crisis and criticism of the Wall, regardless of a director’s intentionality. Konrad Petzold’s film Das Kleid is perhaps the most striking example of a DEFA director’s unintentional account of the construction of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent consequences for East Germans. Petzold finished his film on August 15, 1961, exactly two days after East German border troops had begun cordoning off the demarcation line between the Soviet-occupied sector and the three Western sectors of Berlin. Within a few hours, barbed wire, followed by the preliminary construction of a brick wall, indicated that East Germany’s government had made the decision to close its borders to West Germany permanently. Overnight, Petzold’s modern fairytale for adults, relating the events in a medieval city contained by a large wall, turned from a cynical comment about the relationship of East and West Germany into a dire political reality. While it is obvious that Petzold could not have anticipated his film becoming the center of political debate due to an eponymous wall’s symbolic centrality in the film, he nevertheless risked confrontation with the censors by deploying a variety of provocations throughout the film. Das Kleid opens with a panoramic shot of a rural environment: fields, trees and wide open spaces. The opening shots are disrupted by a mocking comment, «Das ist die Mauer, die quer durchgeht. Dahinter liegt die Stadt und das Glück.» Despite the heavy fortifications around the city, the film’s protagonists, the weavers Hans and Kumpan, manage to trick their way into a city rumored to be a haven of wealth and carefree living. They are captured, thrown in jail, and are to be executed unless they create new garments for the emperor to wear at a festive parade. In order to save their heads, Hans and Kumpan pretend to make clothes out of a fabric visible only to intelligent observers. During the parade, both weavers take advantage of the tumult and escape when the emperor presents himself stark naked to a laughing crowd that derides the risible gullibility and narrow-mindedness of their ruler. The film closes with a shot reminiscent of the opening scene: Hans and Kumpan leave the city and its wall behind them, walking into the wide open spaces, visibly embracing their new-found freedom with relaxed postures and smiling faces. Timing could not have been worse for Konrad Petzold. His film was flagged immediately for the prominent use of a concrete wall and became the subject of twelve meetings with East Germany’s censors to discuss further edits. Petzold’s decision to create a film full of ambiguities and double entendres, such as the use of a cartoon cloud resembling Soviet leader Khrushchev, or a guard with Stalin’s features, resulted in the eventual banning of the film until its release in 1990. The censors were especially critical of the way Petzold employed a city wall at a time when East Germany required the support «Das ist die Mauer, die quer durchgeht. Dahinter liegt die Stadt …» 41 of the arts to justify the erection of the barrier to West Germany. While Petzold probably would have been asked to edit some questionable scenes before 1961, the entire production became too problematic after the construction of the actual wall. DEFA’s former general director, Jochen Mückenberger, realized that it was absolutely impossible to show this film - not because it didn’t meet artistic demands or because the screenwriter, director, or cameraman had failed, but because it didn’t at all go in line with the heated-up political situation after the building of the Wall […] About 40% of this film takes place before, on or behind a wall […] of which neither the screenwriter nor the director had had the faintest idea when the shooting started. 5 Konrad Petzold’s filmic critique of the strained relationship between East and West Germany reflected the status quo of 1961 by using a wall to establish a playful crisis. The events of August 13, however, redefined his project as no longer possible within the changed political situation. Before the border to the West was permanently closed, it could be crossed rather easily. 6 Suddenly, the signs marking the GDR border were replaced by a physical structure of brick walls, concrete blocks, strings of barbed wire and armed border guards. Building the wall sent a signal for separation to the West; East Germany was no longer willing to accept the strong influence of Western money and the temptation of higher standards of living that had lured many East Germans permanently into West Berlin and the Federal Republic. 7 A permanent barrier was the only way to prevent the masses from leaving East Germany. Konrad Petzold and his screenwriter, Egon Günther, used the same premise of an impenetrable wall to shield an entire society. The tall rampart in their film separates the outside world from the city and ensures the economic integrity of the society inside. It protects the wealth of the emperor and its citizens from outside merchants, who are only allowed in by invitation and after thorough searches. Guards poke the haystacks on carriages with their spears, the city gates remain closed and well secured, and the high walls are protected by patrolling soldiers. Similar to the wall of Petzold’s time, the city wall also prevents the escape of citizens and ensures their loyalty to the despotic emperor. While appearing happy to the outside world, the population is not at all what one of the soldiers tells turned-away visitors: «Ein Haufen reicher Leute,Wohlhabende, Arbeiter, aber alles ruhige und zuverlässige Menschen. Kein Groll im Herzen, zufrieden, und gesund.» Instead, many strive to escape the city, which is only wealthy on the surface, but are stopped by the city’s fortifications and the border guards. When filming for Das Kleid began, there were no signs of the real wall, which would be constructed only a few months later. Yet it is uncanny to see 42 Sebastian Heiduschke how the building in Petzold’s film is an auspice of the real edifice about to be erected. Aside from the film’s wall, designed to maintain homogeneity in matters of wealth, foreign cultural influence, population size and structure, and subdued inhabitants, other events in the film may urge a viewer to date the release of this film after 1961. The film’s wall and its influence on the city’s domestic politics is almost too real to be only a product of Petzold’s imagination, who intended to launch a critical public discussion about the political direction of East Germany in the early 1960s. 8 Even departure from the city is restricted, as Hans and Kumpan experience when they realize the true nature of the city and plan their escape. A guard foils their breakout and, while returning them to prison, comments, «Sie möchten weg, ist ja klar. Sie sind der Versuchung erlegen. […] Einerseits verstehe ich ja gut, dass einer flüchten möchte. […] Das ganze Gefliehe fällt bei mir unter die verständlichen menschlichen Schwächen.» The concrete wall is also represented as a death trap in a later scene, when one of the ministers attempts suicide by climbing the fortification and preparing to jump to the other side, choosing serious injury or death over a life within the narrow confines of the city. Its society is strictly regulated in a manner eerily similar to East Germany, and the slightest deviation from official norms results in a severe reprimand, either by K-9 special units «for persecutions of any kind,» leaving the kind of persecution and punishment to the imagination of the viewer, or by the military, which ensures public attendance and proper enthusiasm during the emperor’s parade through the city streets. While the K-9 units foreshadow the dog-patrolled areas that were part of the Berlin Wall’s fortifications, the military procedures evoke the official East German military parades that celebrated official anniversaries. Another official institution in the city is a group of well-dressed men who are introduced as snipers to eliminate any potential threat, rounded out by a group called «Police.» The police, a carbon copy of the East German secret police Stasi, answer anonymous tips from the people, arresting critical thinkers and outspoken citizens. At the end of the film, when the citizens erupt in laughter after watching the emperor parade naked through the city, Petzold anticipates East German cultural politics after the Biermann affair of the late 1970s. Following outspoken public criticism, songwriter Wolf Biermann was exiled from East Germany in 1976, a fate shared by other artists who supported Biermann in his stand against official politics. Petzold’s film shows citizens who are to be «sent away for good» as a result of their laughter during the parade. In response to the emperor’s inquiry about how many had derided him, a minister estimates a number of approximately «Achtzig Prozent der Bevölkerung […] «Das ist die Mauer, die quer durchgeht. Dahinter liegt die Stadt …» 43 Die restlichen zwanzig Prozent sind aber Kinder von unter zwei Jahren, […] dazu kommen zwei Blinde, die besoffen vor einer Kneipe saßen.» Das Kleid reflects on the crises of its protagonists and the population affected by living their lives confined by a wall. The film’s vision of an oppressed society translates real life into the realm of the walled city, and the ironic reduction of this experience with socialism in East Germany to simple dichotomies of rich and poor, illusion and reality, oppressor and oppressed, and concepts of security and restriction of basic human rights in the film. The wall, in this instance a physical barrier of separation, serves as a permanent visual marker of oppression in the film, inviting the viewers to look behind the façade, question certain concepts of authority, and exert their right to civil insubordination to rectify injustice. It is perhaps not only the wall as part of the film’s mise-en-scene, but its allegorical association with human crisis in Das Kleid, that constitute Petzold’s criticism. Essentially, the film’s coincidence with the events of August 13 rendered it too critical in the judgment of the censors. This was not the case with our second example. In 1964, three years after the Berlin Wall had been completed, Konrad Wolf’s film Der geteilte Himmel was released, quickly becoming a hot discussion topic in East and West Germany. 9 The film is a faithful adaptation of Christa Wolf’s novel of the same title, and she wrote the screenplay as well. The story centers on the relationship between the chemical engineer Manfred Herrfurth and the secretary Rita Seidl from the beginning of their affair in August 1959 until August 1961, when Rita suffers a mental breakdown, is admitted to the hospital, and recapitulates the events leading to her hospital stay. Her admission in mid-August 1961 coincides with the building of the Berlin Wall; when she is released after three months in October 1961, East Germany celebrates its 12th anniversary as an independent state, and its first anniversary as a state protected behind the «antifascist protection rampart,» the official East German euphemism for the Berlin Wall. Der geteilte Himmel examines two figures who, despite their mutual love for each other, do not share the same ideological views. The protagonists, Manfred and Rita, are set up as antagonists that represent the opposing political ideals of East and West Germany, respectively. Manfred, a successful chemical engineer, is disappointed by the limits of his research in East Germany. He feels unable to reach his potential due to the lack of support by his superiors, and he believes that his contribution to his field is curbed deliberately for political reasons. Manfred travels frequently to West Germany and decides, one week before the Berlin Wall is built, not to return to East Germany, but to work in what he believes to be a more productive environment 44 Sebastian Heiduschke in the West. Rita, a 20-year-old secretary and Manfred’s girlfriend, is a strong supporter of socialism. She views herself as a crucial element in the construction of East Germany who needs to sacrifice some of her own individual desires to build and develop socialist society. Despite this ideological incompatibility, or perhaps because of it, Manfred and Rita fall in love and become a couple that works hard to create a functioning relationship largely unaffected by their political views. The couple’s relationship serves as an allegory for the political developments and the progressing alienation of East and West Germany as a result of the Cold War. At first, the mutual ideological coexistence seems to succeed; both Manfred and Rita make the necessary concessions to maintain their relationship against rising political tensions. Over the course of two years, from August 1959 to August 1961, Rita and Manfred manage to stay together, until Manfred decides to leave East Germany to pursue his career in the West. Rita follows him, but is unable to adapt to the different political mentality and cannot overcome the feeling of loss. When the division of East and West Berlin is complete, Rita is faced with the difficult decision to either choose love and live in an antagonistic society, or select happiness and leave Manfred without a chance to ever return to him. When she returns to East Germany and realizes the enormity of her decision, she suffers a mental breakdown, from which she slowly recovers, later reintegrating slowly into socialist society. Both a psychological and a metaphorical barrier stop her from reversing her decision as the concrete wall prevents East and West Germany to reunite at this point in history. By setting the plot in the time before the wall was built, Wolf shifts the focus away from a physical reality and towards the psychological interaction of the two protagonists. During the entire development of their love story, however, the title Der geteilte Himmel foreshadows the destiny of the couple and points at separation and breakup in their future. 10 The concept of division or impediment by walls is in itself not unusual as the remnants of fortifications around many European cities attest; nevertheless, «[d]er Rückgriff einer modernen Staatsgewalt auf das Mittel der Mauer, mit dem sie ihr Staatsvolk am Verlassen des Staatsterritoriums hindern will, stellt einen absurden, gleichwohl aber bitteren und blutigen Anachronismus dar.» 11 Wolf, on the other hand, uses the metaphor of the divided sky to expand the picture of separation into the realm of something that seems to be indivisible. His choice of this metaphor immediately raises the question if such a division is possible at all, and, if so, how it would be accomplished. By posing this challenge to the viewer, along with the introduction of Manfred and Rita, the title demands the association of the two protagonists and their failed relationship as a divided sky. As the plot thickens and the audience learns about the couple’s ideologi- «Das ist die Mauer, die quer durchgeht. Dahinter liegt die Stadt …» 45 cal and personal struggles, the metaphorical puzzle is solved: the psychological wall that separates the two lovers is more significant (and impenetrable) than the actual physical barrier. At least at the beginning of the story, the psychological wall is a signifier of the dialectic between Manfred and Rita’s love and their ideological reality. The erection of the real Berlin Wall concludes what the abstract, psychological wall initiated: true, irreversible separation. Rita’s and Manfred’s crisis is more than a symbol of divided Germany; it is Wolf’s critical comment on the political situation in East Germany that led to the mass exodus of the late 1950s. Second, the psychological wall establishes human crisis as a timeless construct independent from historical events such as the construction of the wall. At the same time, the intended message of Der geteilte Himmel remains ambivalent, justifying the dividing structure as the appropriate reaction of a young nation. The film supports the wall as a necessary means to respond to the disturbances of domestic politics. Wolf seems to claim that, without these disruptions, it will be easier to build socialism. However, despite the supportive message for the Berlin Wall conveyed in the film, some irregularities remain. The fact that Wolf contrasts his protagonists as lovers and political antagonists, convinced individualist and progressive socialist, West-embracing rebel and West-despising visionary, appears too banal. Repeated allusions to the division of East and West Germany, which culminate towards the end of the film with Rita and Manfred’s separation, correspond to the construction of the wall, warranting another reading. Rita’s nervous breakdown, a consequence of her irreversible decision, is implicitly compared with the eventual outcome: instead of creating an attractive socialist society that safeguards freedom, the wall perverts the concept by forcing socialism onto society without allowing this freedom at all. 12 In contrast to Das Kleid and Der geteilte Himmel, in which walls play a central role in the progression of the plot, Peter Kahane’s film Die Architekten is concerned with crisis from within East German society. The wall as physical structure is featured only indirectly during most of the film, and yet, the further the plot progresses, the more the audience understands that Kahane’s story tells more about the Berlin Wall than the eye is able to see. Die Architekten reminds the viewer of daily life in the East at a time and place where life was at its worst: in an East German Trabantenstadt of the late 1980s. Kahane replaces the concrete wall, a familiar sight after 25 years, with the environment of gray highrises seemingly in the middle of nowhere on the fringes of Berlin. As a result of this rearrangement, the few scenes of the film actually featuring the Berlin Wall seem to define the 1961 construction as a precursor to everyday life in a dystopian society of monolithic steel and concrete architecture. 46 Sebastian Heiduschke Film critic Stephen Holden’s New York Times review of Die Architekten contains a telling description of the new city under construction. His portrayal of the city suburb could serve equally well as a depiction of the divider of East and West Berlin: «These views of block after block of anonymous rectangular buildings evoke a joyless environment in which the imagination is systematically stifled and where people live in a state of chronic, low-grade depression.» 13 The suburb is the final result of young architect Daniel Naumann’s first large project after the implementation of many changes. Naumann, in his late thirties, has only designed two bus stop shelters and other minor structures, but is hired to design and build a cultural center for a new suburb. He begins with enthusiasm to assemble a design team, and creates an ambitious layout mixing nature with art: green rooftops, a movie theater, open plazas to stroll through in the evening, an ice cream store for the children and a Vietnamese restaurant for their parents are only some of their ideas Daniel envisions for the future. However, his progressive plans meet the resistance of the East German ruling party’s planning commission. After multiple changes requested by party officials, Daniel is forced to accept failure. Instead of using radical new ideas to craft a habitable space, the finished suburb resembles previous East German housing projects, with the monument «Family in Socialism» at its center. Yet Daniel loses more than his mistaken faith in a progressive East German society that wants to adapt to modern times. His wife, Wanda, and his daughter recognize the futility of his endeavors early on. When they see how Daniel alienates himself from his family to dedicate his zeal to the architectural project, Wanda decides that she wants out. Kahane anticipates the events of the autumn of 1989, as he shows how Wanda leaves not only Daniel, but also the dreariness of East Germany. She becomes a symbolic figure, representing the many discontented East Germans who resignedly voiced their dissatisfaction by leaving the German Democratic Republic. Unlike his predecessors, who had to struggle with the censor’s editing cuts, Peter Kahane was challenged by the pace of historical events. What began as a radically critical film project questioning the state of East German politics and society in the late 1980s ended as a historical obituary, assessing a society’s final years. Die Architekten opened in theaters almost unnoticed as Germany was preparing for unification, while only one year before this critical film would have sold out East German movie theaters. It challenges power constellations within the structure of East German society in a manner that would have been unthinkable when Konrad Wolf filmed Der geteilte Himmel. The film Die Architekten contains a multitude of references to East German architectural history and political ideology, ranging from a bird’seye shot of East Berlin’s representative Karl-Marx-Allee, the restoration of «Das ist die Mauer, die quer durchgeht. Dahinter liegt die Stadt …» 47 Potsdam’s Schloss Lindstedt, and the suggestion of Daniel’s friend, Max, to build structures that «would make the GDR’s modern Palace of the Republic look like a miserable shack.» 14 One striking feature in Kahane’s film is that the Berlin Wall is not the origin of the crisis between Daniel and Wanda. The best-known East German architectural structure is set up as a symbol for human crisis and a directional pointer for ways out of it; the crisis itself, however, is caused by the setting of the new buildings Daniel works on. Instead of improving living conditions, the new suburb looks oppressive and threatening. The Plattenbauten, high rises assembled from gray concrete elements similar to the ones used in 1961 to erect the border fortifications, are the manifestation of a nightmare: horizontal and vertical walls are combined to form a threatening structure that seems to act as a visual replacement for the Berlin Wall. Towards the end of the film, however, Kahane employs the German border in two key scenes of the film as a symbol of human crisis. The first time the actual structure is used to signal a permanent break is when Wanda and their daughter leave Daniel and East Germany to begin a new life in the West. Daniel is shown in front of the Friedrichstraße sign at the S-Bahn station, embracing his daughter, before she disappears into the building carrying her suitcase. This scene is more than a depiction of the separation of a family. Although the wall is not visible, it is implied that Daniel will not be able to see his daughter on a regular basis, since the Friedrichstraße station used to be the border crossing to West Berlin. Entering the S-Bahn at this point stands for the permanent, irreversible departure from East Germany, which is confirmed in the following panoramic shot when we see the S-Bahn leave the station towards West Berlin. Kahane’s condemnation of the physical wall along with its redefinition as a psychological barrier becomes apparent in the final sequence of the film. The plot culminates at the Brandenburg Gate when Daniel tries in vain to catch a glimpse of his daughter through the border fortifications. Cordoned off from access to it on both East and West German sides, the Brandenburg Gate is no longer a gateway but a mocking symbol of German division that only appears open, although it is a monument with the purpose of segregation. In the few instances of its appearance on screen, the physical structure of the Berlin Wall in Kahane’s film becomes the «visual evidence» of hope in the West and agony in the East. 15 Daniel’s failures, the loss of his utopist vision and his values all come together in this showdown at the wall to illustrate the magnitude of human crisis. Criticism was not taken lightly in East Germany as heavy censorship of DEFA films proved again and again. Yet, as my discussion of these films has 48 Sebastian Heiduschke suggested, it was possible to make critical films despite the repercussions. To avoid direct confrontation with the regime, directors used metaphors in their films that alluded to obvious problems in society without pointing them out directly. However, while it was necessary to use indirect means of criticism, since DEFA was controlled by East German party politics, understanding the nuances of a film and decoding its intended message nowadays requires taking into account historical events, social tendencies, and the personal experiences of the people involved in the making of a film. The examples of links between human crisis and the Berlin Wall is but one paradigm of criticism in DEFA film; other possibilities might be to look at the construction of gender roles, views of West Germany, or the use of dialogue as a means of criticism. DEFA’s films go well beyond mere propagandistic works; in fact, many show surprisingly open criticism of East Germany’s problems if one looks beyond the surface of these films. DEFA films are demanding and require the audience’s use of imagination to draw its own conclusions as well as its dedication to think critically beyond what the eye sees on the screen, and stamina to sit through films that - much like an Entwicklungsroman - focus on the psychology and inner development of their protagonists instead of an actionfilled plot. The depth and meticulous structure of all three films is a reflection of the overall canon of DEFA productions. It was precisely this structure that helped DEFA directors construct critical films and get them past the censors. Many directors used the interaction of protagonists at the center of their films and employed human crisis as a disguise for their criticism. Regardless of the amount or depth, it is important to note that East German films contain criticism, and DEFA directors presented critical comments to their audiences. Notes 1 This article is based on a paper presented at the 2007 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. I would like to thank the audience for their comments and questions. My thanks also go to Lee Holt for his valuable feedback during various stages of the manuscript revision. 2 Films reiterating the need for the Berlin Wall in the years following the building of the Wall include, for example, For Eyes Only - Streng geheim (János Veiczi, 1961), … und deine Liebe auch (Frank Vogel, 1962), Der Kinnhaken (Heinz Thiel, 1962), and Die Glatzkopfbande (Richard Groschopp, 1963). 3 The first and to date most diverse publication is Seán Allan’s and John Stanford’s edited collection DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946-1992. Other book-length studies exclusively about DEFA films are Joshua Feinstein’s The Triumph of the Ordinary and Daniela Berghahn’s Hollywood behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany. «Das ist die Mauer, die quer durchgeht. Dahinter liegt die Stadt …» 49 4 The most severe restrictions took place in 1965 after the Eleventh Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee, when the entire film production of 1965 was banned. Stefan Soldovieri provides a good account of the politics of censorship in his essay «Censorship and the Law. The Case of ‹Das Kaninchen bin ich (I am the Rabbit).›» 5 Qt. from the web site accompanying the DEFA permanent exhibit at the Filmmuseum Potsdam <http: / / www.filmmuseum-potsdam.de/ en/ 446-1484.htm>. 6 A West German film visualizing these border crossings is, for example, Helmut Käutner’s Himmel ohne Sterne (1955). It tells the love story of a West German border patrol officer and an East German woman who illegally leaves the GDR to reunite with her son in the West. 7 East Germany’s government was forced to react in some way to the ever increasing numbers leaving for West Germany. According to West Germany’s Bundesministerium für gesamtdeutsche Fragen, more than 2.6 million East Germans had left since 1949. 8 Petzold chose the banning of his film over a radical editing into a harmless fairytale suggested to him. See also <www.mdr.de/ DL/ 3457396.pdf>. 9 See Klaus Finke, «Entscheidung für die ‹Heimat des Neuen›. Das Beispiel ‹Der geteilte Himmel›». 10 The film’s English title is translated as either The Divided Heaven or The Divided Sky. The translation of Himmel as ‹heaven› invites religious interpretations, which has been the case with the reception of Christa Wolf’s novel. To my knowledge, film scholars have so far abstained from these readings and focused on more secular approaches, although the multilayered meaning of the German word Himmel certainly leaves these options open. 11 Finke 27. 12 Cf. Walter Ulbricht’s closing remarks at the 1965 Eleventh Plenary Meeting of the SED’s Central Committee: «Ist jetzt allen Genossen klar, frage ich, daß es nicht um Literatur geht und auch nicht um höhere Philosophie, sondern um einen politischen Kampf zwischen zwei Systemen. [...] Also worum geht es? Um die Gewährung von Freiheiten in der DDR, die in der bürgerlichen Gesellschaft des Westens üblich sind. - Aber wir haben viel weitergehende Freiheiten; wir haben nur keine Freiheit für Verrückte, sonst haben wir absolute Freiheiten überall» (Qt. in Günter Agde, Kahlschlag 350). 13 Qt. from <http: / / movies.nytimes.com> from 27 Oct. 1993. 14 Cf. Ralph Stern’s observations of the correlation between architecture and ideology in his essay The Architects - Socialist Family in Stress. <http: / / www.umass.edu/ defa/ films/ architects.shtml>. 15 Cf. Klaus Finke, «Utopie und Heimat. Peter Kahanes Film ‹Die Architekten›.» Works Cited Agde, Günter, ed. Kahlschlag. Das 11. Plenum des ZK der SED 1965. Studien und Dokumente. Aufbau: Berlin, 1991. Allan, Seán. «1989 and the Wende in East German Cinema: Peter Kahane’s Die Architekten (1990), Egon Günther’s Stein (1991) and Jörg Foth’s Letztes aus der Da Da eR (1990).» 1949/ 1989: Cultural Perspectives on Division and Unity in East and West. Ed. Clare Flanagan and Stuart Taberner. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. 231-44. Allan, Seán, and John Sandford, ed. DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946-1992. New York: Berghahn Books, 1999. 50 Sebastian Heiduschke Berghahn, Daniela. Hollywood behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. Bundesministerium für gesamtdeutsche Fragen. Die Flucht aus der Sowjetzone und die Sperrmaßnahmen des kommunistischen Regimes vom 13. August 1961. Bonn, 1961. De Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1971. Elsaesser, Thomas and Michael Wedel. «Defining DEFA’s Historical Imaginary: The Films of Konrad Wolf.» New German Critique 82 (2001): 3-24. Feinstein, Joshua. The Triumph of the Ordinary. Depictions of Daily Life in East German Cinema 1949-1989. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002. Finke, Klaus «Entscheidung für die ‹Heimat des Neuen›. Das Beispiel ‹Der geteilte Himmel.›» Heimat in DDR-Medien. Ed. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Bonn, 1998. 26-37. -, ed. DEFA-Film als nationales Kulturerbe? Vistas: Berlin, 2001. 53-60. Richter, Erika. «Zwischen Mauerbau und Kahlschlag: 1961-65.» Das zweite Leben der Filmstadt Babelsberg. Ed. Ralf Schenk. Berlin: Henschel, 1994. 164-68. Soldovieri, Stefan. «Censorship and the Law. The Case of ‹Das Kaninchen bin ich (I am the Rabbit).›» Ed. Seán Allan and John Sandford. DEFA. East German Cinema, 1946-1992. New York: Berghahn, 1999. 146-63. How Do We Tell Stories of What We Could Never Imagine? First East-West Encounters in German Feature Films from the Early 1990s by Andreas Dresen, Andreas Kleinert and Peter Kahane LAURA G. MCGEE W ESTERN K ENTUCKY U NIVERSITY It is hard to believe at the time of this writing in December 2007 that the fall of the Berlin Wall lies nearly two decades back. If you teach at the college level as I do, you must remind yourself that today’s undergraduates do not remember the amazement, the excitement, and the optimism of this historic event. For most of them it is the kind of history one reads about in books. They are too young to remember it. A recent Spiegel issue dedicated its title story to the «Generation Wende,» because the first baby born after the fall of the Wall turned 18 years old in October of 2007. 1 The complexity of unification and the process of coming to terms with the GDR have left their mark on film history, with a response that is still emerging. The search for «the definitive» Wendefilm and Wenderoman has continued in vain. Among the various cinematic treatments, several German productions that reckon with the end of the GDR from an East German perspective have received substantial acclaim even beyond the German market, among them Goodbye, Lenin! (2003) and the 2007 Best Foreign Film Oscar winner Das Leben der Anderen. German film expert Ralf Schenk suggests in an essay for Filmportal.de that it is more likely that a number of different films will present parts of a unification story, which taken together contribute to the rendering of a more complete picture over time. 2 The analysis that follows treats three films from the early end of the spectrum of filmic reactions to the end of the GDR: Andreas Dresen’s Stilles Land, Peter Kahane’s Cosimas Lexikon, and Andreas Kleinert’s Verlorene Landschaft. All three present elements of a uniquely East German experience of the early 1990s and contribute to the process of coming to terms with German unification. My analysis of these films in the context of their creation indicates that they present images of resistance, of (self-) estrangement, and of reorientation. All three films discussed in this paper were shown in cinemas in 1992. They are treated here in chronological order of the phases of East 52 Laura G. McGee German experience they present. Stilles Land describes the resignation and later the hope of East Germans in a small town before and during the fall of the Wall. Cosimas Lexikon takes up property issues and questions of community in the immediate post-Wall period in Berlin. Verlorene Landschaft tells the story of one man’s reconciliation with the past, in a narrative framed by an unspecified time after the end of the GDR. Its location is near the German-German border, a choice symbolic of the experiences of division and reunification it treats. Before moving to a discussion of the films themselves, I find it essential to make a few remarks about how the period of upheaval in the wake of the fall of the Wall and ensuing German unification affected both film production and reception, particularly for directors from the former East Germany. Filmmaking became complicated for East German directors for a number of reasons. First, film funding mechanisms in the former East changed from the planned production apparatus of the DEFA studios to a film subsidy system as existed in the former West. 3 This shift added new tasks to the job of directors who, in addition to providing the creative mind behind the film, now also had to apply for funding from various sources, identify a production company, win over a distributor, etc. This required that East German directors learn an entirely different culture of funding to which their West German competitors were already accustomed. Second, East German directors were confronted with the challenge of making films for a society undergoing radical change (hence the title of this article). In other words, how could one keep up with the rapid developments from the late 1980s to the early 1990s - and how could one know what life would be like tomorrow? How could one even have a reliable sense of what would be relevant by the time the film reached cinemas? The difficulty of making films relevant for audiences was further exacerbated by a plain disinterest in East German experience, even on the part of East German viewers themselves. After forty years of limited access to the material culture and media of the West, many East Germans had a strong Nachholbedarf - a desire to catch up - and thus the interest in American and in West German productions increased. At the same time, overall cinema ticket sales in the entirety of Germany experienced a record drop in 1992 (for the period 1967 to 2000), likely in part because cable television was introduced the same year. 4 A number of cinematic treasures by East German directors were hardly heard of - were not shown, not reviewed, and not distributed. One could say of such films, «sie sind ins Wendeloch gefallen» - they disappeared into the gap or abyss created by unification. 5 These circumstances were most acute for those East German directors of roughly the birth year 1949 - as old as the GDR itself - and who, as the 1980s How Do We Tell Stories of What We Could Never Imagine? 53 passed, were still trying to achieve the status of DEFA director, a process slowed by the requirement of multiple debuts imposed on them by the studio direction. The experience of this so-called Nachwuchsgeneration is documented in interviews, correspondence, essays and film evaluations selected for publication in Dietmar Hochmuth’s 1993 volume DEFA NOVA - nach wie vor? Versuch einer Spurensicherung. 6 Interviewed for the volume by Hochmuth in 1993, Peter Kahane described the challenge of filmmaking in the transition phase as follows: «Ich habe noch nie in meinem Leben zuvor erlebt, daß mein Verstand mich so hilflos gelassen hat, - die Erlebnisse, die ich in den Jahren ’87, ’88, ’89, ’90 hatte, waren einfach so massiv, vor allen Dingen ’89, daß ich kaum hinterhergekommen bin, sie intellektuell und emotional zu verarbeiten.» 7 Jörg Foth, who made the film Letztes aus der DaDaeR (1990), underscored the almost insurmountable difficulties for his generation - on the one hand the stifled creativity due to the immense amount of waiting required of this generation during the 1980s - «das Nichtstun ist eben der Härtetest für unsere Generation» 8 Foth wrote - and then the rapid shift to a completely new film production system at age forty, a double burden, as he called it. 9 Of the some dozen future feature film directors who trained at the Academy for Film and Television «Konrad Wolf» in the 1980s, only a few still make movies today, perhaps most productive among them is Peter Kahane (b. 1949). It is the very last generation of Academy graduates who have made the transition to filmmaking in a unified Germany most successfully. Besides Andreas Dresen (b. 1963), Andreas Kleinert (b. 1962) also has a lengthy filmography to his credit. Strictly speaking, Dresen and Kleinert trained in East Germany but finished film school after the fall of the Wall and debuted in the very early 1990s. They made their student films during a period of liberalization at the Academy that began in the late 1980s with the rectorship of Lothar Bisky. 10 Dresen and Kleinert thus constitute a later generation than the ‹last› or ‹lost› generation of filmmakers from the GDR, from which Kahane comes. Although he is perhaps best known for his feature films, Dresen’s lengthy creative résumé reveals that he has also made short films, documentaries, film segments for insertion into operas, TV movies, and childrens’ films. 11 He has also directed five theater productions and one opera. Stilles Land (1992) was his first feature length film. The work in various genres has been productive for Dresen. It is evident that he has allowed activity in one genre to inspire another. During months of intensive work on the documentary film Kuckuckskinder (1994), he met individuals who became the models for the characters in his later feature film Nachtgestalten, completed in 1998. Documentary film training was an essential part of the education of all feature film directors 54 Laura G. McGee in the former East Germany and influenced his later experimentation. The documentary character of some of Dresen’s feature films adds authenticity, immediacy and uncomfortable edginess that can be thrilling to watch. Independently of the Danish DOGMA movement that began in the mid-1990s, Dresen experimented with progressively improvisational methods, so that although the cast of Nachtgestalten worked from a script, several scenes resulted from asking the actors to develop dialogue and action based on the characters and a given situation. Die Polizistin that followed in 2000 expands on these methods, and Halbe Treppe (2001) used no script at all. Stark colors and a grittiness in the film quality of Nachtgestalten and Die Polizistin show that Dresen is not afraid to put his aesthetic signature on his films. 12 Dresen’s experimentation with genres continued with the widely acclaimed documentary and Berlinale prizewinner Herr Wichmann von der CDU (2003) and the feature Sommer vorm Balkon (2006), based on a screenplay by Wolfgang Kohlhaase. 13 After a time away from cinema to direct theater productions in Berlin and in Basel in 2006, Dresen made two films in 2007, Whisky mit Vodka and Wolke Neun, both of which are expected to premiere some time in 2008. Stilles Land is one of three movies Dresen has made with specifically East German themes, the other two being Das andere Leben des Herrn Kreins (1994) and Raus aus der Haut (1997). The press reviews of Stilles Land in the year of its issue warrant a closer look because they give a sense of the interest in filmic treatment of East German experience so soon after the end of the GDR. An article appearing in the Berliner Zeitung in the summer of 1992 called Dresen, then recently graduated from the Academy for Film and Television «Konrad Wolf,» «einer der talentestierten deutschen Nachwuchsregisseure.» 14 The article praised Dresen for Stilles Land, his first feature length production, and described it as «die große Entdeckung» at the Film Festival in Schwerin. The film ran as the only German film selected for competition at the International Film Festival at Karlovy Vary (Karlsbad) and later won the Hessian Film Prize and the German Film Critics’ Prize. It showed at festivals in Cologne and Hamburg, and finally opened in cinemas on October 8, 1992. Of the nearly twenty reviews of Stilles Land that appeared in the press that year, the majority assess the film positively, and point out the challenges presented by the subject matter. Writing for the Tagesspiegel early in 1992, Gisela Lieven praised Dresen’s undertaking so soon after the end of the GDR by saying, «er stellt sich mit seinem Ost-West-Thema der deutschen Situation, auch wenn manch einer davon nichts mehr wissen möchte.» 15 Dresen’s film was also viewed positively because it did not paint the East German past in black and white strokes. Paul Lennart asserted in the Tagesspiegel later in 1992 that the film countered the tendency to think in narrow categories. The How Do We Tell Stories of What We Could Never Imagine? 55 article quotes Dresen in reference to many portrayals of East German experience of that time: «Entweder war die DDR ein einziger Stasi-Knast, oder die Menschen erzählen in larmoyant-wehmütigem Ton von der guten alten Zeit.» 16 While the Western press showed general appreciation for the sensitive and differentiated treatment of this part of German history, the press of the former East went further. A number of reviews were euphoric about Stilles Land, and about the opportunity to see a thoughtful treatment of East German experience on the big screen. Writing for Neues Deutschland, 17 Horst Knietzsch focused on the authentic portrayal of East German perspectives: «Fragt dich einer in zehn Jahren, wie das so war im Osten Deutschlands, damals im Herbst 1989, sieh zu, dass du irgendwo mit ihm den Film Stilles Land sehen kannst. […] Jeder Zuschauer aus dem Osten Deutschlands wird in diesem Film ein Stück Eigenes entdecken können. Lautes Rufen: «So war ich nicht,» hilft wenig.» 18 Similarly, the Ostsee-Zeitung found in the film «die schwierige Wandlung zur Mündigkeit aufgezeigt, mit Ironie und Betroffenheit und manchmal auch mit Überzeichnung.» 19 Only a few reviews assessed the film negatively, the most condemning of which were two that appeared in July and October 1992, respectively, in the Neue Zeit, the successor paper to the central organ of the CDU in the GDR, defunct as of 1994. 20 Despite the overall positive press, the film has to date been seen by just 15,000 viewers. However, a 2007 double DVD 21 issue of the film along with early shorts by Dresen attests to its lasting value for cinema history, and suggests that in 1992 the time was not yet ripe for such a complex treatment of East German experience. Dresen’s reputation as an outstanding German filmmaker continues today. On December 14, 2007, at a small service that took place at his alma mater, he was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit) in recognition of his creative work and his service. In Stilles Land, Dresen presents themes of resistance, (self-) estrangement and reorientation. As the film opens, Dresen carefully establishes a microcosm of the GDR in a theater in the town of Anklam. Members of the theater ensemble there are tired, frustrated, resigned and even cynical about their artistic work and their abilities to reach an audience. Resources are limited, and the facilities are in need of new investment. Nothing works as it should. Actors do not make it to rehearsal on time because an alarm is broken or there is no hot water. Such excuses are symptomatic of the lowered expectations the cast has of rehearsals, should they actually take place as announced. A large sign posted on the theater manager’s office wall reads «Und find’ ich gleich nicht alles wie es sein soll, ich freue mich, wenn es erträglich ist.» It is hardly necessary to state that the actors have become jaded about the leadership of their theater manager, Walz. They have learned to tolerate circum- 56 Laura G. McGee stances that are far from ideal, but they are not happy about it. A sense that change is brewing under the surface adds to the already strained atmosphere, as news has reached even this remote town about the East German citizens leaving via Hungary. It is fall 1989. Enter Kai Finke, a young, energetic director who resists the leaden passivity of the ensemble. In his youthful naiveté he - perhaps like Dresen himself - is willing to make neither aesthetic nor political compromises. He has fresh ideas for directing a piece that reflects the times. His plan: to stage Waiting for Godot - although he can hardly answer the questions from his ensemble about whether the hopelessness in the piece is found in the heads of its characters or in the prevailing conditions. He works to overcome the ingrained stubbornness of the ensemble and to respond to political developments elsewhere in the land. Protest letters posted to the Wandzeitung are mysteriously removed and reposted. Manager Walz does not mail the protest letter from the ensemble until the political consequences no longer threaten his position. Kai finds himself challenged in his artistic adaptation of the drama. Due to the changing times, he overhauls his design for the staging not once, but twice in an effort to keep up. He is confronted with the difficulty of making art in a time of political upheaval. Despite his best efforts, his production becomes inadvertently historical. The Wall falls just a few days before the premiere, and though his production is highly up-to-date, it is no longer of interest to audiences. The action is happening outside the theater, far away in Berlin, and the hoped-for audience is absent. Although his production is lost on viewers, the end of the film finds Kai choosing a new orientation. He remains at the theater in Anklam - instead of abandoning it - with an optimistic view of the landscape and creative visions for the potential of the theater. He has by no means given up. What was an end to the GDR is for him the continuation of a dream, even if it is a step into the unknown. His commitment remains firm as he dedicates himself to remaining in Anklam and directing theater there. This is just one of many ways in which the film presents a story similar to Dresen’s own. His 1989 essay Warum ich immer noch hier bin, reprinted in Hochmuth’s DEFA NOVA volume, presents and defends his commitment to stay put and create relevant film art, in a time when many were choosing to leave the former East Germany. Peter Kahane will be familiar to some because of his bitter reckoning with cultural politics in the GDR, Die Architekten (1990) - sometimes called the last DEFA film, and sometimes called the first film completed after the fall of the Wall. Die Architekten presents an interesting case because the script was approved and filming began immediately before the fall of the Wall, but How Do We Tell Stories of What We Could Never Imagine? 57 the project was completed afterwards, so that it was indeed one of the first films no longer subject to the censorship of its predecessors. After the Wall fell, changes were made to the script that would not have previously been allowed. In recent years, it has been widely shown and effectively marketed by Icestorm, 22 though its reception suffered at the time it premiered in the summer of 1990 because its target audience was thoroughly distracted by the process of unification. Die Architekten became inadvertently historical during its completion, because the GDR it portrayed no longer existed by the time it was finished. 23 Born in 1949 and involved in filmmaking as an intern, student and director in Babelsberg since 1973, Kahane already had a number of credits to his name when unification occurred. Among these are Weiberwirtschaft (1984), an endearing 50-minute film in chamber-play-style which deals with gender issues. His 1985 road movie Ete und Ali is available in the US and Germany on DVD. After making Die Architekten and Cosimas Lexikon, Kahane went on to direct the 1999 feature Bis zum Horizont und weiter, a kind of East German road movie with some similarities to Thelma and Louise. From the mid- 1990s onwards he directed or wrote screenplays for the detective film series starring Wolfgang Stumph, Stubbe - von Fall zu Fall and for Polizeiruf 110. With the exception of the tragedy Die Architekten, which illustrates the impossibility of continuing a system that stifled the creativity of its best minds, Kahane’s films often do not fit genre definitions precisely. Cosimas Lexikon is one of those, combining melancholic, comedic and tragic elements as it portrays the high hopes and human limitations of a community that tries to solve a problem. As of this writing in late 2007, his most recent productions were Liebeslieder and Die rote Zora. Kahane was fortunate enough to find in the West Berlin production company Rialto-Film an enthusiastic partner. Company head Susan Nielebock supported the project and Kahane made his film in the Scheunenviertel (Jewish Quarter) neighborhood of the Berlin Mitte district in just 34 days - compared to the 55 days he might have been allowed for the same film in the former DEFA studios. Cosimas Lexikon started in cinemas on April 9, 1992, with what the Leipziger Volkszeitung called a respectable 25 copies - for a German director. 24 A number of reviews appeared, primarily in the press of the former East. With the exception of a damning assessment from Neues Deutschland, 25 the reviews and interviews indicated an openness and enthusiasm for the film, while noting its contemporary nature, its exploration of recent issues for easterners in particular, and its east-west cast. The latter was apparently a source of conflict during the filming, and may be indicative of the social and cultural divide between east and west at the time. 26 58 Laura G. McGee Cosimas Lexikon stars the West German TV actress Iris Berben as Cosima, a woman who has withdrawn from life to write a lexicon in the quiet of her apartment during the immediate post-unification period. Cosima is an attractive woman approaching middle age. She lives in a run-down apartment building in the former East among a motley crew of apartment dwellers who - as the film opens - are brought together by indications that their building is to be renovated. The other dwellers of her building - with whom she has had little to do until then - call upon Cosima’s rhetorical skills to help them resist the impending renovations in written form. They fear that after the building receives structural and cosmetic updates, rents will no longer be affordable and many will be forced to move away. Before Cosima can do her work, the building’s owner must be located. This unlikely band of collaborators teams up to locate the «Penner,» a homeless man named Klaus Borgmann played by Ralf Richter, who is apparently the absentee landlord of their building and who has been tempted into a sustained alcoholic fog by regular high-proof gifts from his conniving brother. The residents of the apartment building first lock him in their cellar until they decide how to proceed. This scene is not without an air of violence, as several male residents subdue Klaus physically. Desperation and fear of change on the part of the residents lead some of them to suggest that they soundproof the cellar and leave the landlord there. He is manhandled. The hard-line behavior of some of the residents is suggestive of the forceful tactics of the Stasi, the State Security Police of the former GDR. It is the eloquent writer Cosima who emerges from her withdrawn state and suggests a course of action for the group: they should work together to make Klaus into the landlord they desire to have. In allusion to the myth that is the basis for George Bernard Shaw’s drama Pygmalion (1912) and the popular film adaptation My Fair Lady (1956), the residents form a collective for the purpose of making over and retraining their landlord. They create a kind of new society with a collective array of talents. Some are strong, others intellectual. Some have mechanical or persuasive skills, and some the right connections. Together they work to transform Klaus in appearance and behavior into a businessman who can outsmart his brother’s attempts to sell the building in his name. They collaborate to educate and to shape a new capitalist hero, in the hopes that he will do the right thing for them. Though still captive in his own building, Klaus gets a bath, haircut, dental work, new clothes, as well as training in pronunciation, music appreciation and even in dining etiquette at a formal dinner staged in the gray and peeling courtyard. Despite substantial initial resistance and some backsliding into his alcoholic ways, Klaus exceeds their expectations, becoming not just a capitalist, but a tricky one who outsmarts his would-be deceivers and surprises his How Do We Tell Stories of What We Could Never Imagine? 59 trainers by showing up for the critical business transaction in the cowboy garb of a Texas-style businessman and speaking with an American accent. Indeed, the western motif appears throughout the film - in Klaus’ desire for a tacky singer in a western bar, from which he is repeatedly ejected until he finally dresses properly, in the climactic business exchange, and in the final backdrop - a kitschy western landscape into which Cosima disappears in her minivan in the final shot. Kahane seems to want to impress upon his viewers the tragic news that the West has come to the East, and that its presence is undeniable. Further, the transformation of Klaus cannot lead to a win-win situation for Cosima and her neighbors, because it is not possible to create a «good» capitalist. The end result will necessarily be a monster like that created by Dr. Frankenstein, because if the residents are successful with their experiment, they will also lose control of it. In the conclusion of the film, Klaus reaches his personal goal of outsmarting his brother, but sells the house nevertheless to the top bidder and disappears, leaving the residents of the apartment building to be evicted for renovations by its new absentee owner. The penultimate shot shows Cosima, who stands alone in the courtyard and has an imaginary encounter with the original owner of the building, a gentle Jewish man who lost his property when the Nazis rose to power. It is apparently her dream that the building be returned to its original owner. Cosimas Lexikon is about the experience of change and the hope for alternatives after German unification. Resistance to change unites the residents of Cosima’s building, who were merely a collection of individuals before embarking upon their Pygmalion project. They are brought together by a common desire to change their landlord from a homeless alcoholic to a successful businessman. They hope that if their landlord can regain control of his building, their existence can be maintained without change. They may have imbued their landlord with many improvements to his appearance and behavior, but they cannot instill in him with a heart that prevails over the profit motive. But they fail to realize the principle familiar to every child who plays Monopoly: the property will be worth more to its owner if upgraded. Instead, they seem to have hoped for a kind of third way - capitalism with a human face - the best of capitalism and socialism. The group disbands in anger, dreams dashed and resentful that their utopia could not be realized. Each packs his worldly belongings and departs in a different direction. Their project can be seen as a metaphor for the socialist experiment in East Germany. The exaggeratedly bright Western sunset into which Cosima disappears at the end might be interpreted as the bright lights and superficial appeal of capitalism. Cosimas Lexikon presents a variety of experiences and dreams from the immediate 60 Laura G. McGee postunification period. As such, it gives an accurate if somewhat mixed message about East German experience of the time. Andreas Kleinert and Andreas Dresen both studied at the Academy for Film and Television in the second half of the 1980s. Kleinert completed his studies with the prizewinning diploma film Leb wohl, Joseph in 1989. 27 In 1992 he made Verlorene Landschaft and in 1995 Neben der Zeit, followed by Im Namen der Unschuld in 1997. A substantial number of productions for television followed, among them the seven part series Klemperer - Ein Leben in Deutschland in 1999 and a number of Schimanski and Polizeiruf 110 episodes. Kleinert is perhaps best known among German Studies scholars in the United States for his 1999 black-and-white feature film Wege in die Nacht, a dark urban narrative starring the theater actor Hilmar Thate. Wege in die Nacht enjoyed many showings at festivals in 1999 and 2000, was featured at the Berlinale in 2000, is currently listed for distribution with Ö-Film 28 and was issued on video with Filmgalerie 451. Much of Kleinert’s directing and scriptwriting work since then has been for television, and a majority of his films are either based on historical narratives or on scripts written by the director himself. 29 Many of his films in the 1990s are set in the former East Germany, and yet offer a «placelessness» that lends universality to their content. This is true of Verlorene Landschaft as well, his first full length feature film made after graduation, which the newspaper Junge Welt described in 1992 as «den bis heute wohl wesentlichsten Nachwendefilm.» 30 It showed at San Sebastian in 1992 and won a prize at the Film Festival in Schwerin, as well as the Adolf Grimme Prize in Silver for Script and Directing in 1993. It is not available commercially, but can be borrowed for noncommercial showings. 31 The framed narrative of Verlorene Landschaft begins with a politician who receives a phone message that his parents have died and that he should return home to help bury them. Despite his wife’s objections, saying «die Zeit hast du nicht» and «das mit dem Haus kann man später regeln,» the man decides to take a week away from work to take care of things. The story that unfolds during the next 106 minutes shows him being chauffeured in his large black car to a run-down village in the former East Germany, where he checks into a hotel with a crumbling, grey facade. He then visits his boyhood home nearby to discover that his parents are not deceased after all, but had placed the call or had it placed so that he would finally return home to visit. In the scenes that follow, the man revisits the years growing up there through flashbacks, interspersed with present-day conversations and encounters with his aging parents. After several days and many flashbacks, the man becomes more comfortable in his childhood home, and moves from the hotel back into his How Do We Tell Stories of What We Could Never Imagine? 61 own bedroom at his parents’ home. However, the man’s one-week visit to his parents’ home ends with their death, apparently a suicide designed to coincide with the last day of his week-long visit. Parents and son have come closer to one another in their time together. The man reaches a point - if not of reconciliation - at least of greater understanding and acceptance of his parents. The final scene closes the frame again as he returns to the sterile «glass house» where he lives as an adult, a home in obvious contrast to the rustic farmhouse of his origins. Like the other films treated in this paper, Verlorene Landschaft presents themes of resistance, (self-) estrangement, and reorientation. Resistance is foremost among these and evident in both narrative levels and in the experience of both generations whose stories are told. The film opens with scenes that clearly define the generation from which the protagonist emerges. Among the ruins of a war-torn Germany, a young couple makes love desperately as air raid sirens scream and bombs fall around them. The lovemaking itself - feverish and even violent - seems an affirmation of life directed against the destruction all around them. What begins in resistance to a war-ravaged Germany continues in resistance as the couple builds a life for themselves and their small son in a farmhouse in the woods, around which they erect a high wall to shut out the rest of the world. The farm lies on property near a river on the East German side of the border that divides postwar Germany. They hope to establish a utopia undisturbed by the political developments around them. They reject a system imposed from outside by the state, preferring instead to create their own society of three persons cut off from the outside. To maintain their isolation, they keep their growing son ignorant of the outside world. As long as he is small and needy, and happily submits to the will of his parents, theirs is a harmonious community. As he grows older, they censor what he reads, twist the truth about the geography beyond the farm’s borders, and deny him the freedom to travel so that their hermetically sealed system continues to function. This approach presents clear parallels to the former East Germany. Also like East Germany, the tiny unit of three is not economically self-sustaining. The parents’ subsequent employment inside their home as telephone switchboard operators both proves they cannot exist as separate from the outside world and exposes their son to its undeniable existence. The boy finally runs away and discovers playmates in the woods beyond the walls of the family compound. He is torn on the one hand by his loyalty to his parents and on the other by his resentment that he is being kept ignorant and has become dependent. The boy returns from his adventures, and his father promises not to lock the gate, but extracts from him an agreement not to leave. In response to the boy’s claim that those outside the compound refer to the small 62 Laura G. McGee family as «Staatsfeinde,» the father tells his son, «jeder vernünftige Mensch ist ein Staatsfeind.» When state authorities arrest and imprison the father for the failure to send his son to school, the boy and his mother remain in the home, living an incestuously symbiotic relationship that is interrupted by the return of the father roughly 10 years later, when the small boy has clearly become a young man. His spot in the maternal bed now reclaimed by the father, the young man runs away for good. His final resistance to his parents takes several forms. First, he escapes across the river to West Germany and begins a new life. Second, he cuts himself off from his parents and his past completely, claiming that he is an orphan from the East. Finally, as the grown man of the narrative frame, he chooses the career of politician - a decision likely distasteful to his parents, given their complete rejection of political and social organization. In the years that follow his departure from home, he is seen embracing the material trappings of capitalism. The film concludes with a scene in which the politician watches videos of his own campaign speeches, fast-forwarding and repeating phrases to create a mélange that appears ridiculous due to the repetitiveness and emptiness of the slogans. In the past he has said in speeches, among other things, «wir müssen nicht nur staatliche Grenzen abschaffen, sondern auch innere Grenzen …» The final scene shows the politician on the floor of his living room laughing hysterically at his own image on television. His reaction in this final scene indicates that he recognizes his own hypocrisy and rejects it. None of the extremes in the film offer workable situations: neither the isolation chosen by his parents (the self-isolation of East Germany), nor his complete rejection of his origins (ignorance of history). In the end of the film, the politician must confess that his life is based on lies, and has thus lost its meaning. A middle way - and an earlier reconciliation with his parents and with his past - would have led to a more authentic life in the present. The open ending of the film suggests that the politician has learned from his journey, and will make changes in his life. The East German experience of the fall of the Wall and/ or of unification lies at the heart of the conflict in each film treated above. The protagonist in each film resists the circumstances presented him or her, and must find his or her way on new territory. All three films illustrate a country in flux, with protagonists who have a limited ability to influence their environment. What the protagonists share is an engagement with the very specific problems of the early phase of German unification. In Stilles Land it is the challenge of making art in East Germany, and the artist’s choice to continue making art in the same location even after the fall of the Wall. In Cosimas Lexikon questions of place and ownership stand in for the search for a workable societal and eco- How Do We Tell Stories of What We Could Never Imagine? 63 nomic model. At the film’s end, the protagonist embraces the opportunities presented by the end of an era. In Verlorene Landschaft, a critical examination of place and of history leads the protagonist to reject abrupt divisions and seek continuities on the personal level as metaphor for the needs of the reunified nation. All three films, despite sometimes dreary East German settings, offer an optimism and a forward-looking attitude. Unlike Das Leben der Anderen, with its historical angle on the Stasi chapter of East German history, or Goodbye, Lenin! with its fantastical idea of recreating a happier GDR than actually existed, these films document aspects of a transitional phase in which so much was possible. They place the choices and struggles of ordinary individuals at the center of events as a way of telling parts of the history of German unification. 32 Notes 1 Alexander Osang, «Die Früchte der Revolution,» Spiegel 45 (2007): 72-94. 2 For a quick overview of the search for the Wendefilm, see Ralf Schenk, «Go, Trabi, Go - DDR-Vergangenheit, Wende und Nachwende in deutschen Kinofilmen zwischen 1990 und 2005,» Filmportal (http: / / www.filmportal.de, accessed December 9, 2007) in the rubric «Aktuelle Tendenzen im deutschen Film.» 3 DEFA stands for Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft, the state-run film studios of the German Democratic Republic, located in Potsdam-Babelsberg. 4 Ticket sales experienced a record drop of 11.7% for all of Germany (12.6% in the former West, 5.1% in the former East), according to the FFA (German Federal Film Board). See http: / / www.filmfoerderungsanstalt.de/ downloads/ marktdaten/ 3_Besucher_Umsatz_ Preise/ 3.2_bundesw_alteundneue_BL/ Uebersicht_67_bis_01.pdf (accessed December 21, 2007). Cable television was introduced the same year, according to the Spitzenorganisation der deutschen Filmwirtschaft at http: / / www.spio.de/ media_content/ 610.pdf (accessed December 21, 2007). 5 Discovering these will require talking with eyewitnesses and exploring archives as well as the collections of Progress, which assumed ownership of the DEFA film inventory. A personal favorite of mine that met this fate is Evelyn Schmidt’s feminist comedy Der Hut, from the year 1990, now in the collection of Progress Filmverleih. 6 Often called the «Last» or «Lost» generation, the term Nachwuchsgeneration is virtually a misnomer, as many of these directors were in the their mid to late 30s and still attempting to reach directorial maturity, a long and frustrating process impeded by East German cultural politics of the 1980s. For more about the political engagement that defines this generation see my «Revolution in the Studio? The DEFA’s Fourth Generation of Film Directors and their Reform Efforts in the Last Decade of the GDR,» Film History: An International Journal 15 (2003): 444-64. 7 In Dietmar Hochmuth, ed., DEFA NOVA - nach wie vor? Versuch einer Spurensicherung (Berlin: Freunde der deutschen Kinemathek, 1993) 117. 8 Jörg Foth, in Hochmuth 24. 9 Jörg Foth, in Hochmuth 53. 64 Laura G. McGee 10 Lothar Bisky recounts his reform efforts at the Academy in chapter 7 of his autobiography So viele Träume (Berlin: Rowohlt, 2005). 11 See http: / / www.filmportal.de for a selected filmography and an interview. 12 I treat all of Dresen’s films in greater depth in a monograph in progress. 13 For more information, see the official homepages at http: / / www.herrwichmann.de/ and http: / / www.sommervormbalkon.de/ (accessed December 21, 2007). 14 (Dpa.) «Stilles Land in Karlsbad,» Berliner Zeitung July 9, 1992: 33. 15 Gisela Lieven, «Suche nach dem verlorenen Land: Die Dreharbeiten zu Andreas Dresenes erstem Spielfilm,» Der Tagesspiegel January 12, 1992: X (Sonntagsbeilage Weltspiegel). 16 Paul Lennart, «Die Angst des Regisseurs vor dem ersten Drehtag. Der Osten ist tot: Kinodebütant Andreas Dresen über sich und sein Stilles Land,» Der Tagesspiegel October 10, 1992: 15. 17 The daily newspaper Neues Deutschland was the former official party organ of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (Socialist Unity Party, or SED) of the GDR, and as such represented the point of view of the party. After unification, it was run by a LLC, with primary ownership in the hands of the Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Party of Democratic Socialism, or PDS), the successor party to the SED. With a current readership of 150,000, it is the single most widely read daily paper in the states of the former East Germany. http: / / www.neues-deutschland.de/ kontakt/ 9 (accessed December 19, 2007). 18 Horst Knietzsch, «Bekenntnis zu einer heimlichen Liebe,» Neues Deutschland October 8, 1992: 13. 19 Reinhard Wosniak, «Ein großartiger Film dank der Eigenart Ost,» Ostsee-Zeitung (Rostock) October 10, 1992: 7. 20 Michael Hanisch, «Die Theaterwende auf dem flachen Land,» Neue Zeit (Berlin) October 12, 1992: 12. Ulrich Gregor, «Warten auf Godot in den Wochen vor der Wende,» Neue Zeit (Berlin) July 17, 1992: 12. For background information, see http: / / de.wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Neue_Zeit (accessed December 21, 2007). 21 Filmgalerie 451 issued the DVD in Germany in its series Debütfilme. See http: / / www. filmgalerie451.de/ (accessed December 21, 2007). The same DVD is available in the US through the DEFA Film Library at http: / / www.umass.edu/ defa/ (accessed December 21, 2007). 22 See http: / / www.icestorm.de/ for information on Icestorm Entertainment GmbH, which was founded in 1997 and controls the rights to market the entirety of films produced by the DEFA. Icestorm International, Inc., was founded in 1998 and works closely with the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts to reach US-American markets. See http: / / www.umass.edu/ defa/ . 23 For a treatment of three such films that were in progress in the immediate Wende period, see my «Ich wollte ewig einen richtigen Film machen! Und als es soweit war, konnte ich’s nicht! : The End Phase of the GDR in three films by DEFA Nachwuchsregisseure,» German Studies Review 26 (2003): 315-32. 24 Anonymous, «Cosima aus dem Berliner Scheunenviertel,« Leipziger Volkszeitung April 10, 1992: 8. 25 Klaus Renke, «Ach ja, das Leben kann so traurig sein,« Neues Deutschland April 15, 1992: 6. 26 In a conversation with me in Berlin on November 12, 2007, Kahane noted, «Es gab große Auseinandersetzungen unter den Kollegen aus dem Osten und dem Westen. Es ging auch um mich. Sehr ernst und sehr bitter.» How Do We Tell Stories of What We Could Never Imagine? 65 27 Heinz Kersten, «Ein Mann im freien Fall,» Freitag 48 November 26, 1999: 13. http: / / www.freitag.de/ 1999/ 48/ 99481301.htm (accessed December 9, 2007). 28 See http: / / www.oefilm.de/ film_kurz.php? film_id=134 (accessed Dec. 9, 2007). 29 Internet Movie Database offers a fairly comprehensive listing: http: / / german.imdb.com/ name/ nm0459080/ (accessed December 12, 2007). 30 Junge Welt December 8,1992. 31 Available on loan through the Goethe Institute or through the Film Museum Berlin - Deutsche Kinemathek. 32 I wish to thank Jackie Collins, Brooke Shafar and Paul Werner Wagner for their helpful comments in the preparation of this manuscript for publication. Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Postfach 25 60 · D-72015 Tübingen · Fax (0 7071) 97 97-11 Internet: www.francke.de · E-Mail: info@francke.de Peter C. Pfeiffer entstaubt in diesem Buch die berühmteste österreichische Autorin des 19. Jahrhunder ts und macht das überraschend Unkonventionelle und noch heute Provozierende in einem Querschnitt ihrer Werke deutlich. Neben selten behandelten Werken wie der historischen Tragödie Marie Roland und der Erzählung Agave werden hier auch bekanntere Werke wie Das Gemeindekind und „Die Freiherren von Gemperlein“ behandelt. Die trivialisierende Aufnahme Ebner-Eschenbachs in der Nachkriegszeit wird anhand der bildlichen Darstellungen der Autorin ebenso deutlich gemacht wie die Nachwirkung in verschiedenen Heimatfilmen der 50er, 60er und 70er Jahre. Das Buch verbindet in textnahen Interpretationen bewusst Ergebnisse der anglo-amerikanischen Ebner-Forschung mit der des deutschsprachigen Raums, wobei die Lesefreude, die man mit Ebners Schriften haben kann, im Mittelpunkt steht. Peter C. Pfeiffer Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Tragödie, Erzählung, Heimatfilm 2008, 189 Seiten, 7 Abb., €[D] 39,90/ Sfr 67,00 ISBN 978-3-7720-8268-9 Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice in Tom Tykwer’s Der Krieger und die Kaiserin MARGARET SETJE-EILERS V ANDERBILT U NIVERSITY Inspired by the implicit critique of Nazi occupation in Jean Anouilh’s adaptation of Antigone in 1944 Paris, a number of literary works and films began to associate Antigone’s resistance and determined mourning with postwar history in Germany. Many aspects of Sophocles’ Antigone also inhabit Tom Tykwer’s Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (The Princess and the Warrior, 2000), but his film quickly develops into a heady contest between Greek tragedy and a most unlikely partner, fairy tale. Released in the shadow of Tykwer’s mesmerizing, techno-driven Lola rennt (Run Lola Run, 1998), Der Krieger und die Kaiserin has been comparatively neglected. Admittedly, it does not have the same pulsating appeal to pop culture. The setting is Wuppertal, not Berlin, and most of the action occurs at a trance-like pace in the estranged, closed environment of a mental asylum. But Franka Potente stars here again, now as Simone Schmidt, a psychiatric nurse who buries her own past, and whose steadfast resolution and power to mourn recall Sophocles’ Antigone. Within this framework of resistance and memory, themes from fairy tales vie for attention, and although tragedy and fairy tale contend for recognition as interpretive modes, the notion of destiny in both genres loses to a storyline marked by chance and choice. To argue that the film privileges the accidental over fate, the following discussion examines Tykwer’s cinematic narrative first in terms of the fairy tales Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty and the film’s references to the fairy-tale scenarios of Heimatfilm, idyllic romances whose widespread popularity in the 1950s provoked young filmmakers to break with this type of filmmaking and found the New German Cinema in 1962. Next, this essay situates Der Krieger und die Kaiserin within the tradition of the Antigone tragedy, and considers how the film engages themes of resistance and mourning. In critically reassessing these notions, Tykwer’s film extends beyond the narratives of many films of the New German Cinema. Released a decade after reunification, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin both acknowledges and takes leave of somber and tragic issues that preoccupied a great number of German films of the 1970s and 1980s, from concerned mourning over the Holocaust to the history of the 68 Margaret Setje-Eilers Rote Armee Fraktion. Lastly, this inquiry considers accident and random occurrence, notions that ultimately outrank the foreseeable and foreseen in the two other forms of storytelling. Commenting on German filmmaking since the Second World War in terms of tragedy and fairy tale, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin embarks into a new landscape of chance and risk. The film neither «tells» time as fate-driven tragedy, nor as fairy tale in which good is predestined to win over evil, but instead, reconsiders the significance of coincidence and individual choice. Elements of fairy tale and classical tragedy not only compete for precedence as explanatory models in the film, but also influence the spectator’s hermeneutic processes. Events indicate that the plot will develop along the lines of predestined events; sometimes hinting at tragic resolution, and at other times promising a happy end. Consequently, spectators trying to make sense of the film’s storyline adopt the same types of narrative strategies that its characters use to deal with their situations. Because the film repeatedly undermines the paradigms of tragedy and fairy tales by anticipating and disappointing established devices, it alerts viewers to their own tendencies to base private and public histories on certain underlying models. In contrast to its absorbed focus on mourning and the more subtle underlying conceptual foundation of Antigone, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin hardly bothers to disguise motifs from Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Even the film’s title suggests this genre, and conventions of fairy tale quickly become obvious in a storyline about a heroine who lives a humdrum life without desire, a handsome prince who comes to her rescue, and the pursuit of a lengthy quest. Simone Schmidt (Franka Potente), known as Sissi, falls in love with Bodo Riemer (Benno Fürmann) under unusual circumstances. She rebels against a life devoted to psychiatric patients at Birkenhof Asylum, manages to leave the institution with this man, and buries the past behind her. The lead characters meet because Sissi receives a letter from a friend. The first establishing shot gives a view of a remote and bedazzling castle-like house on the sea that creates a once-upon-a-time atmosphere, and establishes the source of the letter. The initial extreme long shot of the isolated oceanside house abruptly cuts to a woman writing a letter inside the magnificent dwelling, but one’s gaze automatically moves past her into the vast and empty coast that recalls the solitude of Caspar David Friedrich’s nineteenth-century Romantic landscapes. When she finishes writing and the opening credits start in unobtrusively small print, the importance of the letter takes precedence. After a long walk, she drops the letter into a mailbox. We suddenly enter the peculiar space inside the box and learn in this way that the letter is going to Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 69 Germany from France. In choosing an idyllic natural setting, as well as using the snail’s pace of the postal service rather than telephone or E-mail, Tykwer removes the story from pop culture. Following the title, painstaking closeups follow the steps from letter sorting to transport in images that resemble the old-school, predigital machinery of filmmaking, and thus establish a subliminal self-reflective framework. But because potentially any part of any step can go wrong, an element of chance lurks behind each precision-like process. As a result, the actual delivery of a letter approaches the miraculous. Despite the myriad possible mishaps, the postman delivers the letter to the colossal, ominous castle-like Birkenhof Asylum, and it arrives in Sissi’s hands. We discover later that we have seen Sissi’s old friend Meike writing about the death of her mother who has left her daughter something in a safe deposit box. In her letter, Meike announces that she will not return for the funeral, and she asks Sissi to retrieve the inheritance, but the actual contents of the treasure remain secret until near the end of the film. Sissi soon leaves Birkenhof, her dungeon-like home and workplace, with blind patient Otto, but on the way to the bank she is run over by a truck. At that very moment, Bodo, who is not looking for a princess, but who soon becomes the man of Sissi’s dreams, flees frantically from pursuers after a minor theft. He dives under the same truck to hide, discovers her flat on her back gasping for air, and brings his Sleeping Beauty back to life, not by a kiss, but by the emergency tracheotomy he performs. Thus, the mysterious man saves the beautiful woman, whose life and work in the clinical ward at Birkenhof have already become death-like. Aside from the anticipated romance, even his astonishing presence revives her, and although she dimly feels drawn to him, she is left with only a vivid memory of his peppermint breath and a button that comes off his shirt on the way to the emergency room. After what doctors call a «miracle» recovery, she sets off to find him with the button, her only clue. Her quest reverses the Cinderella story, for here of course, it is not a prince who identifies the girl he loves by means of a lost slipper, but instead a girl who takes action and locates the prince based on her evidence. Ironically, Sissi’s own determined yearning for fairy-tale happiness moves the action forward after her release from the hospital. Spectator memory of Meike’s castle-like home on the sea also helps to frame Sissi’s nascent desire, reinforcing the Never-Never-Land feeling of her first other-worldly meeting with Bodo. Before her traffic accident, her patients’ demands and isolated quarters prevent her from establishing a personal life, and she exists as one of fairy tale’s persecuted heroines, to use Maria Tatar’s term (150). At the same time, she considers herself the benumbed victim of a tragic chain of events that has confined her life to the asylum. Meeting Bodo jolts her into thinking 70 Margaret Setje-Eilers of her life no longer in terms of tragic fate, but as the equally unchangeable destiny of fairy tales. After Sissi’s accident, Tykwer reinforces the notion of fate and fairy tale by having Sissi watch a clip from Vittorio De Sica’s Miracolo a Milano (Miracle in Milan, 1951), an Italian neo-realist retelling of Cinderella (De Sica). Sissi sits primly on her bed, next to a poster of a large white seagull, viewing the film on the television in her room at Birkenhof. Although we see only a few seconds of De Sica’s film, it is integrally tied to Tykwer’s, and contains elements of the Heimatfilm, a genre that existed in the Nazi years in Germany, but reached its culmination after the war in the 1950s. Miracolo a Milano begins with the familiar phrase «Once upon a time» boldly superimposed onto an establishing shot of pastoral bliss. Drawing from conventions of fairy tale, the film tells of a compassionate old woman who discovers an abandoned infant in a countryside cabbage patch, and affectionately raises the boy she calls Toto. He continues to radiate love and humor long after her death, inspiring the homeless and unemployed of postwar Milan to assemble a shanty town from rubble scattered at the edge of the city. When events indicate that the squatters will be evicted, the old woman appears in the sky and gives him something to grant all his wishes, a white dove apparently borrowed from the Grimms’ version of the tale. In the clip shown on Sissi’s old television, Toto asks the girl he loves if she would like the sun, and seconds later they ecstatically witness the sun rise. Sissi’s face lights up as she watches the love scene. Unfortunately, we do not see the remarkable ending of De Sica’s film, in which the dove’s magic enables Toto and his friends to soar into the sky on broomsticks behind the final superimposed message, «to a better future.» (A similar closing sequence in Heaven [2002] underscores De Sica’s strong influence on Tykwer’s filmmaking.) De Sica’s and Tykwer’s films engage Cinderella by synthesizing realism and fantasy into storylines of empowerment and liberation, but the utopian endings of both films contain bittersweet messages. Despite the squatters’ confidence that they will find a better place to live, one does not forget De Sica’s grimly realistic postwar Milan, or the complicated turns in the lives of Tykwer’s Bodo and Sissi. By choosing the nickname «Sissi» for Simone, Tykwer calls up another set of ties to the Heimatfilm. Ernst Marischka’s Sissi trilogy popularized the historical «Sissi,» Princess of Bavaria and Empress of Austria. She became ensconced in postwar cinematic memory as the heroine of three popular 1950s films that told history as a fairy tale, inviting viewers eager to sidestep the task of mourning and enter an evasively distant prewar period. Consequently, the associations of Sissi’s name recall widespread disinterest in dealing with trauma in German history during the early postwar years. Beginning with a Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 71 typically cheerful sequence of life in the countryside, Marischka’s versions of the Heimatfilm fascinated spectators by retelling the story of a «poor» provincial Bavarian princess who is swept off her feet by Austrian emperor Franz Joseph. Their marriage immerses her at first in a life of romance, splendor, and frilly gowns in Vienna, but her impetuous personality eventually leads her to resist court protocol, risk an affair with Hungarian Count Andrássy, and yearn for the mountains, lakes, and family life of her Bavarian childhood (Marischka Sissi, Junge Kaiserin, Schicksalsjahre). The German title of Tykwer’s film, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin, and its English release title, The Princess and the Warrior, both establish undeniable links between Sissi, Princess of Bavaria, later the beloved Empress of Austria, and Simone Schmidt. Like Empress Sissi, she is ironically idolized by her demanding patients, but she can only long for fairy-tale romance to brighten her uneventful life. We therefore join Sissi in envisioning her second encounter with Bodo as a moment of bliss. Physically healed and propelled by an inexplicable desire to see him again, she returns to the scene of the accident with Otto, who vividly remembers the sounds of the event, and with his help, she is able to locate her rescuer. Bodo, however, rejects her forcefully and repeatedly until she finally attends the decisive event, not a dance but a bank robbery, and her sure footing in a moment of crisis wins his admiration. While she is claiming Meike’s secret remembrance from the safe deposit box, she becomes entangled in the violent bank theft that Bodo and his older brother Walter consider necessary to secure funds for a new life in Australia. Unwittingly, she becomes an accomplice and helps Bodo escape with Walter, mortally wounded by a guard. To Sissi’s dismay, even after she actually connects with Bodo in the bank, her prince is not only unwilling, but unable to return her affection. Disappointing Sissi’s fairy tale expectations and viewer hopes for a love story, Bodo’s own unprocessed trauma, marked by seemingly unmotivated and profuse weeping, holds him back until the final sequences, long after they escape together from the asylum. By the time Sissi and Bodo leave, her devoted Otto has become suicidal over her intense affection for Bodo, and another jealous patient, Steinkohl (Steini), has tried to electrocute him. Moments before his murder attempt, Steini has notified police that Bodo is hiding in the asylum, but when they arrive, eager to capture Bodo, new events distract them. As everyone congregates on the rooftop, it now seems that Steini’s failed murder attempt will cause him to jump from the roof. Spectators forget fairy tale and imagine any number of tragic endings. Held captive not only by the authority of the institution, but by yet another attempt of her demanding and needy patients, Sissi remains resolute despite Steini’s dangerously fragile emotional state. In wordless agreement with Bodo, she takes his hand and 72 Margaret Setje-Eilers they leap from the roof in a running jump. Christine Haase suggests in recent articles that Tykwer’s films synthesize national and global filmmaking by playing with various paradigms, in particular by appropriating structural elements of Hollywood action thrillers and romance in films such as Lola rennt and Heaven («Transcultural Filmmaking» 406; «From ‹Lola›» 37). Bodo and Sissi’s spontaneous and dramatic leap is undoubtedly one of these moments. Viewers expect that the jump will end as a tragedy, since earlier shots indicate a driveway in front of the building. Moreover, drawn out in an extreme slow motion shot, the jump elicits spectator memory of the tragic closing freeze frame of Ridley Scott’s Thelma and Louise (1991). Unexpectedly, however, Bodo and Sissi land in a deep pool of water, and drive off the next day in a car borrowed from Sissi’s colleague. The anticipated tragic suicidal ending thus becomes a surprising baptismal rebirth. Not only do Sissi and Bodo survive their leap from the building, but the final frames also reestablish the feel of fairy tale. The couple arrives at the grand castle on the sea that we recognize as Meike’s house, and the exceedingly slow, lingering aerial zoom out of the last shot hints of the inevitable. In this sense, the storyline seems to follow many structural «actions» that Vladimir Propp famously isolated in his Morphology of the Folk Tale. Sister-like Meike asks Sissi to carry out a task («absent family member» [26]), Sissi finally retrieves the remembrance from Meike’s mother («task is revolved» [62]), and they arrive at Meike’s castle-like home as hesitant but potential lovers («hero marries and ascends throne» [63]). Yet despite the ambiance of a happy end, events have complicated and undermined the fragile closure. Sissi and Bodo feel the tentative nature of their emerging relationship, and they also know that his brother Walter died after the bank robbery. Furthermore, Bodo is wanted by the police, and she has been identified as an accomplice. The technique of presenting and subverting the same notion in a single image, here tragedy and fairy tale, resounds in many of Tykwer’s films. As Heidi Schlipphacke’s article on entrapment and escape suggests, particularly Tykwer’s final utopian images tend to construct and deconstruct simple narratives (108-09). While Sissi’s story flirts with destiny and predetermined happy ends in fairy tales by establishing and frustrating these expectations, it simultaneously raises questions of tragic fate, female resistance, and mourning, familiar themes since Sophocles’ Antigone. In her resolution to leave the asylum, Sissi buries her dead, in other words, her past life, by withstanding and freeing herself from the controlling authority of the asylum and its patients, the only world she knows. Likewise, Bodo is finally able to abandon his weeping alter ego after his jump. We have seen him reliving his wife’s death in dreams, hallucina- Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 73 tions, and tearful responses to the traumatic gas station fire in which she died. Although Bodo and Sissi’s emancipatory acts recall Sophocles’ play, they resist the concept of fate embodied in Antigone. Der Krieger und die Kaiserin overlays Antigone’s story about mourning and burying the dead onto the structures of fairy tale in a delicate and cautious tale about trauma processing that enables its characters to survive and reach states of empowerment. Unlike Sophocles’ heroine who takes her own life after standing firm against authority, Sissi’s escape to Meike’s house means entering a precarious future whose open-endedness does not suggest the deaths and suicides that mark the conclusion of Sophocles’ tragedy. Recall that in his drama, Antigone disobeys orders issued by Creon, her uncle and ruler of Thebes, against burying her brother Polynices, who has been killed in a battle against his native city. In reworking Antigone’s fascinatingly courageous but futilely defiant resistance to institutional authority, Tykwer takes up a theme that not only defined conflict between state and moral law for centuries, but also influenced modes of thinking and writing about the tragic collision of ethical principles. Antigone manages to perform the customary burial rites and carry out her act of mourning for Polynices, but she sacrifices her life. Creon relents too late, at first deaf to pleas from blind seer Tiresias, Antigone’s fiancé and Creon’s son, Haemon, as well as members of the chorus, who beg him to free her and bury the dead warrior. He changes his mind only after Antigone, Haemon, and Creon’s wife, Eurydice, end their own lives, leaving Ismene, the sister who initially refuses to help bury her brother as the sole survivor of the next generation. Creon loses his power and family, and thus the curse on Oedipus’ family is fulfilled. In Tykwer’s film, however, everyone except Bodo’s brother Walter survives. Unlike Antigone, who commits suicide in her tomb, Sissi only seems to be jumping to her death, and she revives her «brother» Bodo instead of burying him. In recreating Sophocles’ Antigone in the figure of Sissi, Tykwer’s film implicitly acknowledges the story’s wide reception in German storytelling. His film responds to reworkings of writers and filmmakers in postwar and post-Wall Germany, such as Bertolt Brecht’s play (1948), Rolf Hochhuth’s narrative Berlin Antigone (1968), and landmark films of the New German Cinema about female resistance and mourning from Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, 1975), co-directed by Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta, to the weighty collaborative venture of Deutschland im Herbst (Germany in Autumn, 1978), made by a large group of filmmakers, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, and Volker Schlöndorff. Themes from Antigone reverberate particularly in Deutschland im Herbst, a film that powerfully reveals 74 Margaret Setje-Eilers to what extent Sophocles’ classical tragedy preoccupied German imagination about mourning and profoundly inspired its retelling ever since Hegel’s nineteenth-century tribute to the play. Even contemporary works for the stage reflect the story’s substantial influence, including George Tabori’s adaptation of Brecht’s Antigone (2006) in terms of youth wasted by senseless wars. Shortly after the Second World War, Brecht’s pacifist staging was quick to reflect critically on what Hegel regarded as the master narrative for German literature. In unconditional praise for the text he considered deeply significant, Hegel had written, «Von allem Herrlichen der alten und modernen Welt […] erscheint mir nach dieser Seite die Antigone als das vortrefflichste, befriedigendste Kunstwerk» (Ästhetik III 550). Turning from the Bible (and Judaism) toward the Grecian cultural model, Hegel called Antigone the «für mich absolute[s] Exempel der Tragödie» (Religion 557), «[eins] der allererhabensten, in jeder Rücksicht vortrefflichsten Kunstwerke aller Zeiten» (Ästhetik II 60). Hegel’s tribute stimulated thought about the confrontation of two concepts of law, localized in the figures of Creon and Antigone, a woman whose understanding of what is right conflicts with that of established authority. Despite her critique and individual action, Antigone’s entombment as decreed by Creon is determined by fate, and she remains a victim. Tykwer’s Sissi, however, manages to escape from the restraints of her life at Birkenhof. And by extension, as will be pursued below, her act also suggests another kind of resistance. Taking into account how the entire film comments on other institutional models of cinema by rethinking many paradigms of the Heimatfilm and the New German Cinema, it too stands out as a gesture of resistance. But first, on the level of spectatorship, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin also challenges any latent tendencies its spectators might still have to privilege tragedy, Greek tragedy and Antigone in particular, to interpret critical and even limit events. Tykwer’s film echoes the skeptical view of destiny that explicitly characterizes Brecht’s early postwar adaptation, designed to speak out against the concept of fate: «Die Änderungen […] sind gemacht, um die griechische «moira» (das Schicksalhafte) herauszuschneiden» (Brecht 440). As the strategies of tragedy and fairy tale play out against each other in the film, Tykwer’s cinematic narration distances itself from reading histories of many kinds, personal and by implication also national history, in terms of fated tragedy. Tykwer’s film is not set in a palace in Thebes, but in a closed psychiatric ward at Birkenhof Asylum in Germany, where Sissi was born, raised, and works as the beloved nurse of schizophrenic patients. In setting a film that tells of estrangement, murder, and escape in his own native city of Wuppertal, Tykwer naturally comments ironically on the expectations of Heimatfilm. Until Sissi meets Bodo, the interior of Birkenhof Asylum has been her en- Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 75 tire environment, her home, her Heimat, and the source of all her memories. Although she yearns for fairy tale, she accepts her anesthetized life as destiny. She performs her professional tasks mechanically under the controlling power of these memories and the institution, not only under the guardianship and authority of its staff, but also of its patients, who attempt to restrain subversive action, as Creon tries to hold back Antigone. Casting the hospital and patients as a collective form of state law, the film also refashions the figure of Tiresias as Otto, a blind boy who tells the past, not the future, and who helps Sissi find Bodo by remembering the sounds of the accident. In the changing perspectives of the admiring, demanding, and finally critically possessive patients, one recognizes the vacillating positions of Sophocles’ citizen chorus. More fundamental than the correspondences between the characters and events in Antigone and Der Krieger und die Kaiserin, the film’s emphasis on mourning for the dead is its strongest and most obvious tie to Sophocles’ tragedy and many works of the New German Cinema. Tykwer presents a wide variety of responses to death. By the end of the film, most of Tykwer’s figures develop strategies of remembering and overcoming the past that simultaneously recall and challenge events in Antigone. Sissi’s friend Meike, for instance, whose mother succumbs to old age, appears untraumatized. Bringing to mind Antigone’s sister Ismene, Meike is strangely uninterested in attending her mother’s funeral, and simply explains in her letter to Sissi that her mother was quite old and her death is not hard to accept. Meike’s relationship with Sissi remains mysterious; we speculate that if Meike is one of Birkenhof’s former nurses, since Sissi’s colleague Maria Blum also knows her, she has freed herself from its institutional grasp. Sissi lives in a state similar to Meike’s lack of mourning, practically devoid of emotional responses until her encounter with Bodo, and she does not begin to process her own mother’s traumatic death until near the end of the film, when she has reason to question her lifelong belief that her mother died in an accident caused by a hairdryer falling into the bathtub. Events finally lead her to conclude that it was not a random event or suicide, but in fact murder, and the insight intensifies her desire to change her life abruptly by leaving the asylum with Bodo. With his help, she is able to confront her latent mourning over her mother’s death, and she not only overcomes, or «buries,» the shock over her discovery, but also her entire past history in the psychiatric hospital. Sissi’s resistance conflates responses to many issues, including her existence in the oppressive environment of the institution and her violent physical abuse by patient Werner Strack, who is supposedly her father. Sissi is unwilling to reflect either on the traumatic elements in her life or her entrapment at Birkenhof before she meets Bodo. While he dwells on the 76 Margaret Setje-Eilers trauma of his wife’s death, she exists in a preconscious state, and seems to accept her life as the unalterable conclusion of a tragedy. But after she encounters Bodo, instead of regarding her life at the asylum as a fateful and predetermined conclusion to events, Sissi sees herself enacting a fairy tale in which he is destined to be her prince. She tries to find out if it means something that he was under the truck or if it was only by chance: «Ich will wissen, ob sich mein Leben ändern muss und ob du der Grund dafür bist.» She follows Bodo determinedly in the spirit of Heinrich von Kleist’s Käthchen, who relentlessly pursues Graf vom Strahl in the play Das Käthchen von Heilbronn oder Die Feuerprobe (1808). Similar to Kleist’s pair, Sissi and Bodo share several dreams, and as sleepwalkers interred in a present that simply seems to rewind the past, they both move at the slow dream-like pace of Sleeping Beauty. Initially, Sissi’s life is as metaphorically catatonic as suggested by the extreme close-up of her choking, voiceless face under the truck after her accident. Here, our insight into her yearning for a personal relationship comes only through her voiced-over thoughts. During the film, however, Sissi gradually becomes able to articulate her desire and can distance herself from thinking of her life as predestined, either as tragedy or fairy tale. One of Tykwer’s complex sequences of gaze initiates an important decision in Sissi’s life. Steini happens to be watching the nightly newscast when her description comes up, and unseen by him, Sissi learns at the same moment that she is wanted by the police. She knows that Steini has this information as well. Aware of the tenuous situation, she promptly confronts Bodo and announces a decision that challenges any earlier conceptions of her life and actions as determined by fate of whatever sort, tragedy or fairy tale. Her choice casts her neither as an immobilized victim at Birkenhof, nor as a mistreated princess looking for a happy end in a fairy tale, but as open and willing to take a risk. She will leave the asylum, she says, and leaves it up to him to decide if he will come with her. She then recounts a dream that begins like a fairy tale, in which they are brother and sister, mother and father, man and wife, a constellation that seemed like happiness to her. Before he can decide to join Sissi, his imagination replays the trauma of his wife’s death. Meike’s lack of mourning and Sissi’s initial denial of her need to work through trauma stand distinctly apart from Bodo’s incessant preoccupation with the death that still causes nightmares. Caught in this loop, he sees images from the conflagration that he views as a tragedy. This time, instead of only seeing him respond in a kind of hallucinatory sleepwalk, we enter his memory and view the flashback as he imagines it: an argument in the car, a stop for gas, and an explosion while he is in the restroom, caused, as he visualizes it, by the lit cigarette his wife drops at the pump. He takes the blame for the event, admit- Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 77 ting to Sissi that it was not an accident. We never learn exactly how the accident was caused at the gas station. To a lesser extent, Sissi’s memory also replays her traffic accident and her mother’s death. We see a flashback of her mother explaining that men disappear and do not come back. But Bodo comes back to Sissi under the truck, bringing a straw to administer the tracheotomy. If we recognize that Bodo and Sissi are ensnared in the narrative structures of their recurring memories, we can ask whether one can remember or tell personal and even national history without images, how cinematically structured images affect memory and trauma, and if one can redirect memory from repeating these visual playbacks. This leads one to wonder, aside from its love-hate relationship with Hollywood paradigms, to what extent many important films of the New German Cinema influence the kinds of questions we ask about the Nazi era, reconstruction under Adenauer, and the 1970s Rote Armee Fraktion. In this regard, one would consider Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum, 1975), Volker Schlöndorff’s Die Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum, 1979), Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun (The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979), Helma Sanders-Brahms’ Deutschland bleiche Mutter (Germany Pale Mother, 1979), and Edgar Reitz’s Heimat (1984). Anton Kaes asks in From Hitler to Heimat, «As the Hitler era slowly passes from the realm of experience and personal memory into the realm of images, will it also become a mere movie myth? » (198). Tykwer seems interested in moving on, and as suggested below, his film is not only about mourning that happens within the film, but also about the need to bury and mourn for the end of an era of German filmmaking. In connection with Bodo’s fixation on his wife’s death, Freud’s essay Trauer und Melancholie (Mourning and Melancholia, 1917) suggests that Bodo is a melancholic. Freud explains that the real loss of a beloved person, object, or an abstraction can result either in natural mourning that will eventually reach a conclusion, or pathological melancholia that persists over a prolonged period. For the mourner, Freud maintains, loss is conscious, while the melancholic does not consciously grasp what is lost. While both states lead to depression, inhibited performance, lost interest in the outside world, and inability to love, the melancholic also suffers from low self-esteem (205). He has trouble functioning in the world and feels such extensive self-reproach for his ambivalent feelings about the lost object that his ego and conscience split. As Otto Kernberg recently observed, Freud’s observations on melancholia still inform psychoanalysis (304). They also find their way into the representations of mourning in Tykwer’s film. The warrior Polynices-Bodo is trapped in melancholia, generally fighting with himself and everyone else. His world is overturned like Georg Baselitz’s 78 Margaret Setje-Eilers paintings; even the first shot of Bodo shows him upside down and suicidal, leaning over a highway bridge. He rejects Sissi, redirecting his self-aggressive violence toward her and at the same time transferring to her the anger he feels toward his wife. Finally, in an extreme display of relocated self-approach, he demolishes the television set that has just broadcast the news of his brother’s death. Similarly, feeling that he has lost Sissi’s affection, blind Otto turns his rage inward and attempts suicide by eating glass from a lamp. Steini, in contrast, acts out feelings of violent jealousy toward Bodo. Although no one suspects Steini, often mistaken as Sissi’s father, of having murdered her mother, he begins to reenact his crime immediately after seeing the newscast of the bank robbery. Bodo refuses the role of victim, catches the toaster before it lands in the water, and in a powerful gesture tosses the guilt back to Steini. When Bodo tells Sissi about the incident, she concludes that Steini murdered her mother in a similar way. In the revolutionary leap from the asylum roof, she begins to work through her trauma and life of confinement. Sissi is also able to help Bodo overcome the losses of his wife and his brother. The day after Sissi and Bodo jump from the roof and drive away from Birkenhof, they need to stop for gas, and turn in, by chance perhaps, at the gas station where Bodo’s wife died. Here, with the help of digital filmmaking techniques, his personality suddenly manifests itself as two identical figures. A tearful Bodo gets behind the wheel, and a cautiously self-assured Bodo climbs into the back seat. The newly composed Bodo soon stops the teary driver, takes the driver’s seat, and leaves his alter ego behind. With Sissi’s help, Bodo revisits and works through his trauma, and he is able to process the vivid memories of these two violent deaths. Although to my knowledge Tykwer has not discussed the film’s implications of personal trauma and mourning, it has subliminal connections with trauma on a national level. The institution’s name, Birkenhof, uncannily resembles Birkenau, also known as Auschwitz II, and the film does not obfuscate associations to large-scale euthanasia of the supposedly mentally handicapped, for example at the infamous institution of Hartheim Castle in Upper Austria, a building that incidentally resembles the one chosen to represent Birkenhof. Patient Kramer’s name obliquely summons up Joseph Kramer, notorious overseer of the gas chambers in Birkenau. Bodo wakes up after Sissi has hidden him at the asylum after the bank robbery, and asks a patient where he is. This patient announces «Krematorium,» and later, «Wir werden alle sterben.» As the film’s characters try to interpret events by choosing certain narrative paradigms, Tykwer suggests that we tend to select from a variety of structures to fashion chains of events into stories with particular types of closure, on Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 79 personal and national scales. In this way, the film evokes Hayden White’s notions of storytelling in history (24). Although Tykwer’s film displays little interest in moralizing, it does concern itself with modes of acting out and working through trauma. In Writing History, Writing Trauma, Dominick LaCapra distinguishes between «writing about» trauma, a process that aims to reconstruct the past with absolute objectivity, and «writing trauma,» or working through trauma by giving it a voice in various cultural and aesthetic media such as writing and film (186-87). On a meta-level, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin suggests dealing with trauma in a way that breaks with traditional narrative structures and similar strategies of cultural memory, namely by rewriting previously constructed narratives. In the film’s diegesis, Bodo visualizes the story of his wife’s death as two different narratives in nightmares and flashbacks, tragedy and fairy tale. In the tragedy, events are inevitable. In a recurring fairy-tale dream, he imagines his wife as a witch-like woman who casts a spell on him. The hallucination routinely ends when Walter wakes up and discovers him holding the warm, womb-like oven in his arms. Near the end of the film, when he acknowledges that the fire followed an argument with his wife, the blame he takes for her death casts doubt onto the first stories. He trusts Sissi in their jump from the roof, and later abandons his obsessively traumatized self in an event that only he seems to witness at the gas station. With the help of Sissi’s confidence in him, he is able to revisit and rethink his explanatory models, and to work through his trauma, leaving the melancholic Bodo behind. The oblique references to the Third Reich and the recurrence of Bodo’s personal trauma, the violent fiery explosion, point together to many kinds of national and global trauma, ranging from survivorship of the Holocaust, now passing from second to third generation, to smaller-scale RAF terrorism of the 1970s in Germany, to the disaster and aftermath of the international trauma of 9/ 11. Sissi and Bodo come to terms with their trauma in a process of recognition, and achieve a level of awareness. LaCapra connects this act with the possibility of ethical and political agency (144). Distancing himself from therapeutic objectives of psychoanalysis, he sees the forces of acting out and working through as interdependent processes constitutive of agency: In working through, the person tries to gain critical distance on a problem and to distinguish between past, present, and future. To put the point in drastically oversimplified terms: for the victim, this means the ability to say to oneself: «Yes, that happened to me back then. It was distressing, overwhelming, perhaps I can’t entirely disengage myself from it, but I’m existing here and now, and this is different from back then.» (143-44) 80 Margaret Setje-Eilers Working through trauma, LaCapra argues, enables victims to form and maintain relationships. In Tykwer’s film, Bodo is able to approach Sissi cautiously and the storyline seems to promise they will reach an understanding and be able to interact meaningfully with mutual trust. In 1962, the New German Cinema was founded in Oberhausen as an act of resistance and recognition that film needed to enter a new era cognizant of the need to mourn: «The old cinema is dead. We believe in the new» (qtd. in Elsaesser 21). Critical film artists resolved to challenge the type of filmmaking that produced films such as the Sissi trilogy. After RAF terrorist activities of the 1970s culminated in the murder of ex-Nazi and Daimler-Benz executive Hanns Martin Schleyer, a large group of young filmmakers released their critical assessment of the government’s selective mourning in Germany in Autumn (1978). The film includes news footage of two provocatively different funerals in 1977. Schleyer’s ceremony is a state event, while the burial of three members of the RAF is a simple affair that takes place under heavy police surveillance. One section of this film shows clips from a proposed version of Antigone (with Angela Winkler) that is deemed too incendiary for broadcast on television because it is too easy to connect the story with the supposed suicides of the three RAF members (Elsaesser 111). Several years earlier and also relevant to Antigone, Tykwer’s film, and the topic of mourning the dead, Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum (1975) had ended with the prison «entombment» of Katharina Blum (Angela Winkler), an Antigone-like figure who mourns over many losses, and violently resists the sexual advances of the journalist who has destroyed her existence by shooting him. At the journalist’s elaborate funeral, similar to the ceremony for Schleyer in Deutschland im Herbst, the Creon-like head of «the» newspaper, a clear allusion to the tabloid Bild Zeitung, pleads for freedom of speech. Tykwer’s film raises many of the questions of Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum and Deutschland im Herbst, but it also points to newly relevant issues ten years after German reunification. In an interview with Sight & Sound (2006), Tykwer comments, «Unification had a much deeper impact than we ever imagined […] We have the same conflicts as most other western societies but in a very specific way because we have a reunited country that has to reinvent an identity» (Grosskopf et al. 30). By the end of the 1980s, the New German Cinema had itself become somewhat of an institution that strongly influenced themes and modes of German filmmaking. In this sense, Tykwer’s film, released ten years after reunification, expresses a need to move on from the recurrent themes of the Nazi past evident in so many of the New German Cinema films. The new perspective does not ask us to forget, but instead to incorporate the past in facing new problems, social awareness, and agency. Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 81 Arriving at Meike’s seaside house, Tykwer’s couple faces a problematic situation, but they look to the future. As Heidi Schlipphacke points out, Tykwer both repeats and reassesses the New German Cinema’s obsessive critique of the Nazi past (128). To sum up the argument so far, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin retells Antigone in terms of German history, reflecting on death and strategies of mourning as do many films of the New German Cinema, founded largely in response to the postwar fairy tales of the Heimatfilm. However, in recalling these two groups of films, Tykwer suggests that it is time to reassess both eras of filmmaking and take a new direction that neither denies nor erases the past, nor sees the Holocaust as a predestined endpoint, but opens itself to the problematic present of reunified Germany with its pressing issues. Moreover, he sees in 2006 an overarching need to rethink and redefine identity: «We have the same conflicts as most other western societies but in a very specific way because we have a reunited country that has to reinvent an identity. I think this has been a big influence on film-makers’ desire to express the reality we live in» (Grosskopf et al. 30). Der Krieger und die Kaiserin clears the way, and while Tykwer does not address ethnic conflict, right-wing extremism, and new notions of a multicultural Heimat in this film, a number of more recent post-Wall films do center on these concerns, to name a few, Gegen die Wand (Head-On, Fatih Akin, 2003), Alles auf Zucker (Go for Zucker, Dani Levy, 2004); Kombat Sechzehn (Mirko Borscht, 2005); Kebab Connection (Anno Saul, 2005), and Knallhart (Detlev Buck, 2006). One step in reinventing German identity is to look skeptically at its narrations and the ways stories are told. As suggested, in this particular film Tykwer critically reconsiders the modes of tragedy and fairy tale. In questioning narrative structures that characters and spectators fabricate to deal with an accumulation of events, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin asks whether one can legitimately interpret incidents such as Sissi’s traffic accident, her mother’s electrocution, and Bodo’s wife’s death as predestined conclusions. As the film revises the storyline of the Antigone tragedy, it lures spectators into joining its characters in hoping for the fairy tale endings of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. Tykwer’s film anticipates and disappoints the hermeneutic directions of both tragedy and fairy tale by refashioning both Sophocles’ tragedy of burying the dead and fairy tale’s rescues and true love, and in this way prompts spectators to reflect on the notion of cause. The process of shaping a story from the events on screen suggests a related urge to organize events into a causally connected, narratable series of happenings on a larger scale. The film’s play with and disappointment of anticipa- 82 Margaret Setje-Eilers tions keeps reminding us of our inclination to respond to the viewing process by arranging events into beginning and end. Because Tykwer unsettles these mechanisms, we are led at least to question, if not resist, the kinds of conventional structures of storytelling outlined in Frank Kermode’s work on narrative, The Sense of an Ending (45). If we continue to tell stories of trauma in particular on either personal or national scales, Tykwer prompts us to wonder what narrative techniques or frames they might call for. And if we choose to imagine events with the structures of fairy tales, Jack Zipes also asks us to consider how these stories will be interpreted and by whom (190). As an option to the causal linearity of classical tragedy and fairy tales, Tykwer inquires whether any of the filmic incidents might even be unrelated or randomly connected. We are not likely to wonder how the story of Cinderella unfolds so that she can attend the balls where she attracts the prince’s attention, loses her slipper, and can become his bride. Looking at the death of Cinderella’s mother, we are led to believe that she is destined to die so that the events of the story can take place. Whether the coordinating force is understood as a fairy godmother in Perrault’s tale, or a white dove as an agent of the dead mother in the Grimms’ version, the intervention is conventionally understood as destiny. But one could also ask if Cinderella’s mother just happens to die, leading to her father’s remarriage, and if Cinderella’s shoe merely slips off her foot by accident. On a similar note, one could question whether it is destiny or coincidence that the princess in Grimms’ Sleeping Beauty spends her critical fifteenth birthday unattended and free to discover the witch-like woman in the tower with the spinning wheel. Anticipating how filmic events might be represented in ways that differ from causally structured and unchangeable sequences, the film teases spectators into unraveling what takes place before Sissi embarks on her search for Bodo. Tykwer inquires if one can also read the storyline, and by extension fairy tales as well, as a series of randomly connected coincidences. Although at first the film’s characters interpret events as fate, a number of clues destabilize the notion of destiny. Some incidents, for example do not seem to make any difference in the narrative, while others appear to initiate involved chains of events. To hide from his pursuers, Bodo suddenly dives under the truck that has just run over Sissi on her way to the bank, and this action significantly influences the next events. Similarly, Sissi’s accident occurs exactly at the moment he flees from his pursuers, and Bodo loses a button. Are these events to be read as fate? Conversely, he gets a job at the cemetery burying Meike’s mother, but it does not change the storyline. He simply recognizes her photo on the locket Sissi has retrieved from the bank. Does he help bury Meike’s mother merely by chance? Along these lines, one also needs to ask if the ex- Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 83 plosion at the gas station is actually an accident, and unrelated to his behavior, or if his wife commits suicide. In addition to these notions of randomness and destiny, a third element comes into play in reading events, namely the role of choice and accountability. Sissi’s story is also readable as a chain of unrelated events that interweaves personal decisions and coincidence. Tykwer not only unsettles our inclination to give events certain structures instead of considering them as chance occurrences, but also inquires to what extent one should consider agency. When Bodo finds Sissi, he decides to emerge from under the truck, although he needs to hide to save himself after his theft. Nevertheless, he grabs a straw from Otto who stands nearby, and can save her with his knife. Are these acts to be interpreted as choice? If we construct a predetermined fairy tale as Sissi does for much of the film, she appears to be destined to help Bodo escape from the bank because he saved her first, but this case excludes agency. We reach a similar conclusion if we accept Bodo’s fairy-tale image of his wife as a witch. When Sissi and Bodo interpret their lives as tragedy, they are also immobilized. She lives life-as-death in the asylum, and he is entrapped in the trauma of his wife’s death. As in Sissi’s dream, «both» characters believe in «both» modes of interpretation, sometimes reading events as fairy tale and at other times as tragedy. The ways in which they assess their situations reflect onto spectators. Der Krieger und die Kaiserin is not the only one of Tykwer’s films to examine the ways his characters understand what is happening, and how spectators connect events. Tykwer’s cult film Lola rennt also famously examines fate, chance, and choice. This story in triplicate teased viewers in 1998 by providing three alternative storylines: two tragedies and one fairy tale. As Maurice Yacowar points out, Lola rewrites her own script (556). From the perspective of pop culture, Jamie Skye Bianco calls the film a posthumanist programmed game that is rebooted three times (Bianco 377). The three versions are clearly defined. In the first, Lola fails to find the necessary money to save her partner Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu) from his crime bosses in Berlin, and she is killed. In the second, she gets the money, but Manni dies. Lola rejects these two tragic endings, and launches a third possibility, a fairy tale in which they both get the required money. It seems that they will live happily ever after, since even after Manni turns over his bag of money, they still have the cash Lola managed to win for him at a casino. In a study that connects Run Lola Run with Jean-Pierre Jenet’s Le fabuleux destin d’Ámelie Poulain (2001), Guido Rings calls both films modern fairy tales (197). Because Lola rennt experiments with the genres of fairy tale and tragedy, Tykwer’s viewing public is prepared two years later for the open-endedness of Der Krieger und die Kaiserin. 84 Margaret Setje-Eilers Even though Lola rennt and Der Krieger und die Kaiserin both simulate happy ends, they tackle the concept of timing from two different angles. Of course timing crucially influences the succession of events, and how we interpret cause and effect, particularly in accidents. Ingeborg Majer O’Sickey notes that in each of the three storylines, Lola needs to take instantaneous action in the breathtaking span of twenty minutes (123). Each of the first two versions ends with a traffic accident, a metaphorical stand-in for the infinite possibility of chance events. But whereas Lola rennt compresses time in a frantically fast-forwarded pace, Der Krieger und die Kaiserin stretches it to the breaking point of extreme slow motion, and in their slowness, everyday events appear with an air of miracle. Sissi’s captivity in a passionless life of drudgery at the mental asylum is cinematically exaggerated by slow-moving scenes and long pauses until it seems to stop after she is hit by the truck. Despite these two conceptualizations of time, chance occurrences are key factors, and Tykwer’s films overflow with intersections of events that trigger other significant sequences. The relation between timing and accident dominates Tykwer’s work, and even an early film, Winterschläfer (Winter Sleepers, 1997), begins with an automobile collision on a snowy road in the Alps. Two years after Der Krieger und die Kaiserin, in Heaven (2002) a bomb accidentally detonates in an elevator, not as anticipated in a police executive’s office, and the film explores the notion of randomness until its end suggests escape in a helicopter that happens to be at hand. Tykwer joins a number of other post-Wall filmmakers in playing with spectator expectations. Fatih Akin’s Im Juli (In July, 2000), for instance confuses coincidence, destiny, and agency. One never knows whether lead character Juli (Christiane Paul) ensnares the man she desires by writing her own myth, or whether one can attribute the events in the storyline to chance. Tykwer coaxes us to consider that timing and coincidence can sometimes provoke choice, and that working through trauma creates the possibility for agency and ethical responsibility. When Bodo decides to stop reading his past as fairy tale, and overcomes the images of his deceased wife as a haunting witch, he is able to abandon his melancholic self. Instead of seeing himself as victim of a tragedy, he keeps the promise he made to his brother Walter shortly before he died, and finally steps «heraus aus dem Klo.» He gets off the «toilet» of acting out, in other words using the same explanatory structures to replay traumatic scenarios. Are Tykwer’s viewers able to relinquish urges to stay on the «toilet» of fashioning events into structured narratives with beginnings and ends that particularly privilege the notion of destiny? Der Krieger und die Kaiserin questions both of its alternative closures. When Bodo and Sissi leap from the Princess Antigone, or Fairy Tale, Tragedy, Chance, and Choice … 85 roof of the asylum building, the film prepares the viewer for the first ending, a tragic double suicide that hints of Romeo and Juliet. However, the rooftop jump actually enables Sissi and Bodo to rewrite their stories of victimhood. As Antigone, she defies the institution holding her back. She survives with her Bodo-Polynices-Haemon. Both Sissi and Bodo are able to bury their dead, captive selves, and when they land, perhaps by chance, in a deep pool and surface after an enormous splash, their supposed deaths turn into a new start that frustrates any residual urges we might have to look for rigid, one-directional causal structure. Although the film seems to refashion the potential tragedy into a fairy tale, in which Bodo and Sissi arrive at what looks like a magical castle, we suspect that at some point they might still have to deal with the law of the state. Similar to the closing sequence of De Sica’s Italian neorealist Miracolo a Milano, the final scene of Der Krieger und die Kaiserin subverts expectations for a conventional fairy tale ending. However we imagine their story continuing, as tragedy, fairy tale, or a combination of accident and individual choice, we may now be aware to what extent our underlying interpretive inclinations frame our narratives, and sense that it is time to move on. Works Cited Bianco, Jamie Skye. «Techno-Cinema.» Comparative Literature Studies 41 (2004): 377-403. Brecht, Bertolt. «Brief #1279 an Stefan S. Brecht, Zürich Feldmeilen, Mitte-Ende Dezember 1947.» Werke: Grosse kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe. Ed. Werner Hecht et al. Vol. 29: Briefe 2. Frankfurt a.M.: Aufbau, Suhrkamp, 1994. 440-41. De Sica, Vittorio. Miracle in Milan (Miracolo a Milano). Voyager Co.: Janus Films, 1951. Elsaesser, Thomas. New German Cinema: A History. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers UP, 1989. Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, and Filmverlag der Autoren. Deutschland im Herbst. Kinowelt Home Entertainment, 2004. Freud, Sigmund. «Mourning and Melancholia.» On Murder, Mourning, and Melancholia. London: Penguin Books, 2005. 201-18. Grosskopf, Birgit, et al. «New Mix New Rules.» Sight and Sound 16.12 (2006): 28-31. Haase, Christine. «From ‹Lola› to ‹Heaven: › Tom Tykwer Goes Global.» Moderna Sprak 99.1 (2005): 32-43. -. «You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide: Transcultural Filmmaking in «Run Lola Run (1998).» Light Motives: German Popular Film in Perspective. Ed. Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2003. 395-415. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. «Die alten Götter im Unterschiede zu den neuen.» Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik II. Ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. 4th ed. Vol. 14. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996. 52-62. 86 Margaret Setje-Eilers -. «Die konkrete Entwicklung der dramatischen Poesie und ihrer Arten.» Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik III. Ed. Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel. 4th ed. Vol. 15. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1996. 538-74. -. «Die Religion der Schönheit oder die griechische Religion.» Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Religion: Teil 2. Ed. Walter Jaeschke. Vol. 4a. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 1985. 534-60. Kaes, Anton. From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989. Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. London: Oxford UP, 1968. Kernberg, Otto F. «‹Trauer und Melancholie,› 80 Jahre später.» Forum der Psychoanalyse 15 (1999): 304-11. LaCapra, Dominick. Writing History, Writing Trauma. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2001. Marischka, Ernst. Sissi. Kinowelt Home Entertainment, 1955. -. Sissi, die Junge Kaiserin. Kinowelt Home Entertainment, 1956. -. Sissi, Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin. Kinowelt Home Entertainment, 1957. O’Sickey, Ingeborg Majer. «Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets (Or Does She? ): Time and Desire in Tom Tykwer’s «Run Lola Run.» Quarterly Review of Film and Video 19.2 (2002): 123-31. Propp, Vladimir I.A. Morphology of the Folktale. 2nd ed. Austin: UP Texas, 1968. Rings, Guido. «Zum Gesellschaftsbild zweier zeitgenössischer Märchen: Emotionale und kognitive Leitmotive in Tykwers ‹Lola rennt› und Jeunets ‹Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain›.» Fabula: Zeitschrift für Erzählforschung/ Journal of Folktale Studies/ Revue d’Études sur le Conte Populaire 46 (2005): 197-216. Schlipphacke, Heidi. «Melodrama’s Other: Entrapment and Escape in the Films of Tom Tykwer.» Camera Obscura: A Journal of Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 62 (2006): 108-43. Tatar, Maria M. The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Expanded 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2003. Tykwer, Tom, et al. Der Krieger und die Kaiserin. X Verleih AG, 2001. White, Hayden V. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore, London: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990. Yacowar, Maurice. «Run Lola Run: Renn for Your Life.» Queen’s Quarterly 106 (1999): 556-65. Zipes, Jack David. Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion: The Classical Genre for Children and the Process of Civilization. New York: Methuen, 1988. Kebab Connection: Tragic and Comedic Explorations of Contemporary German-Turkish Relations REIKA EBERT AND ANN BECK M URRAY S TATE U NIVERSITY What does Shakespeare have to do with filmmaking in Hamburg? In this essay, we explore how and why the filmmakers of Kebab Connection (2005) 1 use Shakespearean references, elements, and sequences to create connections between contemporary film and historical literature, traditional and popular cultures, and tragedy as well as comedy. We argue that director Anno Saul and co-writer Fatih Akin use the traditionally integrative dynamics of comedy and tragedy in an innovative way; and we examine how this move offers social pathways that promote multiculturalism in contemporary Germany. Kebab Connection is one of the first films to approach the topic of Turkish immigrant integration into Germany through the genre of comedy. It presents a playful, high-energy, entertaining, and thoughtfully crafted example of successful Turkish-German integration in a multiethnic neighborhood of the city of Hamburg. Perhaps because of current high levels of apprehension and tension among Germans about Muslims and Turkey’s aspirations to join the EU, Anno Saul and Fatih Akin draw on humor to demonstrate that people with diverse cultural backgrounds are able to build productive relationships despite miscommunication, fear, and doubt. We suggest that the film Kebab Connection attempts to facilitate new cultural perspectives by first bridging tragic and comedic structures and then upending both. In the film, Ibo, a young Turkish-German man, pursues his creative dream to make the first, full-length German Kung-Fu movie. His German girlfriend, Titzi, who is preparing for her audition for acting school, becomes pregnant with their child. Ibo’s father, a more traditional Turk, disowns Ibo because the expected baby will be half-German. When Ibo expresses his qualms about becoming a father, he is banished by Titzi until he can prove his willingness to be a father and partner. The story unfolds within a multicultural neighborhood in Hamburg, where competing and feuding restaurant owners - one Turkish, the other Greek - vie for customers. Ibo, Titzi, their friends, and enemies are all members of modern, urban pop culture who live, dream, communicate, and miscommunicate with each other in both actual and virtual space. 88 Reika Ebert and Ann Beck Although no academic article about Kebab Connection has been published, there were a variety of critical reviews written when the film was first released in April 2005. Some critics found the film to be a shallow and clichéd comedy because of its use of slapstick, idyllic and quick treatment of a variety of conflicts, and a typical happy ending. 2 Other reviewers saw the film as insightful about contemporary cultural differences. 3 The film’s strong parallels to Shakespeare’s works in both comedy and tragedy were not noted in these reviews. However, what we found most intriguing about the film is its rootedness in an international dramatic literary and film tradition. Within the classic structure of comedy, Kebab Connection takes on city ethnic rivalries, conflicts of fathers and sons, and, above all, love and the pursuit of happiness in an intercultural love story of a young German woman, Titzi, and her Turkish boyfriend, Ibo. The film examines issues of trust, faithfulness, and tradition. Inherently comedic, the film has a happy ending linked to Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it unfolds against the backdrop of the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet. In so doing, the film explores the potential for creativity, procreation, and catastrophe in human relations. As with most tragedies, contradictions based on ethical principles clashing with mundane self-interest are central to advancing the plot. This is also true for Kebab Connection. One innovative element regarding how such contradictions are disclosed in the film is the use of principled conversations in the virtual public spheres on the importance of love. These scenes are juxtaposed with the mundane conversations in the «real» lives of the protagonists within the film. In her virtual reality as Juliet and in his virtual reality as the hero of the kung-fu film shorts, Titzi and Ibo act from principled positions. However, when Ibo and Titzi engage each other in their «real» lives within the film, their interactions are often self-interested and selfish. Another tragic element reflected in the film is the miscommunication between the protagonists. As is true in Shakespeare’s plays, throughout the film the main characters engage each other, delay any engagement, fail to engage when it seems to matter most, and speak to each other in virtual, rather than actual time and space. These engaged, delayed, unspoken, and cross-purposed patterns of communication exemplify the literary form of tragedy. These patterns also typify the nature of contemporary intercultural communication about the familial, cultural, and urban conflicts portrayed in the film. Recitations of passages from Romeo and Juliet occur repeatedly throughout the film. The context for their recitation are practice sessions for Titzi and her female roommate as the two prepare an audition for entry into the School of Performing Art. In the second scene of the film, just after the credits, we Kebab Connection 89 hear the two women practicing sections of the play that express Juliet’s longing for Romeo: Komm Nacht, verhülle mit dem schwarzen Mantel mir das wilde Blut. Komm Romeo … (III.ii) We also hear passages that reflect loss in Juliet’s final words when she finds Romeo dead and desires death, rather than life without him: Ach, hält mein Romeo noch ein Glas in seiner Hand … Ich küsse deine Lippen in der Hoffnung, dass noch ein wenig Gift daran, So dass ich an dieser Ladung sterben kann. (V.iv) The first lines are a declaration of passionate love and desire. The second phrase is the harbinger of doom and destruction. The juxtaposition of Turks and Germans in urban proximity creates both feelings of attraction and revulsion - the consequence of powerful emotions between differently conceived, but bonded, identities. Just as Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet come from two warring families, so, too, do Titzi and Ibo come from two families that do not speak with each other. The families are opposed on principle based on their view of the differences in their respective cultures. When Ibo’s father is told that his son’s girlfriend is pregnant, he is most upset about her nationality as a German - the other. In a comedic flashback we see the father shaking his finger at the five-year old Ibo telling the young child «NEVER» to get a German girl pregnant. The camera shot is taken from the perspective of the young child, tilted upward at the agitated face of the looming father. By impregnating a German woman, Ibo has broken a fundamental family rule. In a heated argument following the flashback scene, the father disowns his son and Ibo immediately moves out of the family home. The father clarifies his reason for disowning his son when he laments to a neighbor that his son is having a child with an «infidel.» At the same time, Titzi’s mother hears of the pregnancy from her daughter. The mother expresses her opposition to Ibo’s ethnicity and worthiness by poignantly asking her daughter: Hast du schon einmal einen Türken einen Kinderwagen schieben sehen? 4 The immediate cut from the scene before any response is uttered by Titzi makes the implied negative response from her all the more obvious. By common stereotype, it is understood that a Turkish man will not participate in child rearing and is, therefore, not acceptable as a son-in-law to Titzi’s mother. In addition to the underlying theme of warring families, the film draws heavily on the sequence of plots, subplots, and characters in Romeo and Ju- 90 Reika Ebert and Ann Beck liet. The film is interwoven with a sequence of Kung-Fu video stories shown as oneto threeminute advertisements. These Kung-Fu ads are integral to and a prequel to the overall storyline of the «actual» reality of the film that centers on the problems of the star-crossed lovers. The short videos have been created by the actual reality character, Ibo, as movie-house advertisements for his uncle’s «King of Kebab» restaurant. They represent Ibo’s creative voice and they follow the same plotlines as the fights in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: an initial clash and subsequent clashes of arms among various individuals and «gangs» in the city; declarations of love between protagonists; the downfall, banishment and death of the tragic hero; and the marriage of the lovers. In the first video subplot shown in the film - the opening scene of the film - we see a Kung-Fu fight between two men using long pizza spatulas as swords over something that is not initially clear or fully understood. This is similar to the opening scene in Romeo and Juliet (I.i), where Capulet servants insult and then embattle Montagues and their allies. The source of the insults and battle are long forgotten, an «ancient grudge» (Prologue 2). Other physical clashes between opponents occur throughout the Kung-Fu videos as they do in Romeo and Juliet (III,i). Alongside the images of clashing families, there are also declarations of love in both Kebab Connection and Romeo and Juliet. Through the protagonist characters in these video ads, Ibo indirectly declares his love for Titzi; and Titzi hears these declarations when she watches the advertisements at the local movie house. In more than one of the videos, the hero of the video is seriously rejected, injured, or killed. At the presentation of Ibo’s second commercial in a movie theatre, Titzi watches the video clip unseen by him. The narrative and visuals of his advertising video are based on 1950s Humphrey Bogart films in which the hero - played by Ibo himself - fights three gang members who all die and who also kill him. Blood dripping from their faces, one of them says, Alles nur wegen einer verdammten Braut. Ich hoffe, sie war es wert, Joey. While dying, Bogart/ Shanghai Joey/ Ibo responds, Das hoffe ich auch. 5 The camera then focuses on Titzi who has tears running down her cheek. In the scene immediately following, Titzi justifies calling Ibo and thus breaking the silence between them. In reference to Ibo’s video clip that she had just watched, she tells her roommate, Ich ruf ihn [Ibo] jetzt an, bevor er sich auch noch umbringt. 6 Kebab Connection 91 She interprets Ibo’s film as a message to her and she initiates the actual (rather than virtual) reaching out to him. While the «virtual reality» of filmmaking is Ibo’s creative voice, the creative voice of Titzi is represented in the literary and virtual Romeo and Juliet plotline interspersed throughout the «actual reality» scenes. Like Ibo, Titzi is unable to speak directly to Ibo about her love for him. She, too, tells Ibo of her love indirectly as she practices for and delivers passages from Romeo and Juliet for her audition. At Titzi’s examination and audition for the theater arts school near the end of her pregnancy, Ibo, who has not communicated with Titzi in months, sneaks into the theatre and watches as she recites Juliet’s passionate longing for Romeo. He, too, hears her speech as a message to him and acts in response. He runs outside and pulls two shiny rings out of a candy machine. Ibo had hand-crafted a dragon-shaped baby stroller for the newborn. He is pushing the baby cart through the street to show it to Titzi, but just before they meet, Titzi goes into labor and is taken to the hospital - incidentally by Ibo’s father, who is a taxi driver. Ibo races on foot and skateboard into the hospital and birthing room where he recites the same monologue of love that Romeo spoke to Juliet under Juliet’s balcony. By entering Titzi’s realm of virtual reality and expertise, he demonstrates his appreciation and understanding of her messages and her perspectives on life. In the final Kung-Fu video story that seems, at first, to be an actual reality scene of the movie, Ibo and Titzi are married at the «King of Kebab» restaurant and overcome all obstacles and objections. In the plots of the Kung-Fu ads and in the scenes about acting, the immaturity and hastiness of both Ibo and Titzi are made clear - similar to Romeo’s and Juliet’s own immaturity and hastiness. Titzi and Ibo’s «real world» communications are often awkward, distrustful, and insufficient. These insufficiencies can lead to tragedies both interpersonally and culturally. Neither character - as with both Romeo and Juliet - has the maturity to risk rejection that comes with open and direct declaration of emotions; both characters use their virtual art forms to help them deliver their feelings to the other. As with cultural differences, the indirect and immature personal communication patterns create the need for messengers or interpreters and increase the possibility of tragic misunderstanding. Both narratives, Kebab Connection and Romeo and Juliet, use a messenger character to help the young lovers reach across an apparent unbridgeable gap. The messenger creates the miscommunication that leads to tragedy as well. In Shakespeare’s play, Juliet’s messenger first helps the two lovers unite by arranging the secret wedding (II,vi). Later, however, the messenger fails to de- 92 Reika Ebert and Ann Beck liver to Romeo a second message that exposes Juliet’s apparent death as a pretense. Ultimately, this undelivered message is the reason for the death of both lovers. In Kebab Connection, Ibo’s little sister has a similar role to play. After a period of angry separation between Titzi and Ibo, the messenger/ Ibo’s sister arrives at Titzi’s apartment in order to invite her to a big birthday celebration for Ibo’s uncle, the Kebab restaurant owner. The girl confides to Titzi that her brother, Ibo, has improved and that she has taught him how to cook. 7 The message gives a new opening for reunification of the couple. This message, even though well intended and successfully delivered, leads to the dramatic nadir of the film. Titzi attends the party at the family’s brightly lit restaurant and waits for Ibo. He, however, has fallen prey to a sexy, table dancing waitress/ temptress in the Greek restaurant across the street. The owner of this Greek restaurant is the arch competitor of Ibo’s uncle. Ibo, unsure of whether he can commit to Titzi, gets thoroughly drunk on Ouzo in the rival’s establishment and later crashes through the plate glass window. The noise of shattering glass across the street draws all of Ibo’s family members and Titzi into the street. Titzi sees the totally inebriated Ibo with the young Greek woman. Ibo shouts in his stupor «Ich bin Julius Cäsar,» 8 that is, I am a hero and cut out for more than being a father raising children. He then throws up and passes out in front of all his family and Titzi. One by one, each family member, including Titzi, turns away from him in disgust. So falls the hero as typical in the tragedy. This fall from grace is typical of the principles of classic Aristotelian tragedy where the plot must take place in the class of royalty or aristocracy in order to present the steepest fall of the hero from the heights in society to the greatest depth. Even though Ibo in Kebab Connection is merely the nephew of a man who owns a fast food Döner shop, his shout «Ich bin Julius Cäsar» as well as the name of his uncle’s Turkish restaurant, «King of Kebab,» represent remnants of this element of a classic tragedy and a further reference to Shakespeare’s plays. In the same vein, Titzi’s name - her mother calls her by her full name «Patrizia» 9 - also identifies her as aristocracy: she is a «patrician» - a person from a noble family in medieval and renaissance Italy. The film also evokes feelings of compassion and fear - two essential reactions to classic tragedies. We can feel compassion for Ibo’s desires to maintain his individual freedom and pursue a fulfilling career rather than become a «mundane» father. At the same moment, we also fear that by neglecting personal responsibilities for his own baby, he will lose the respect of family, society, and tradition. In tragic fashion, there is a moral to the story that is imprinted through fear. Ibo’s disregard of family matters and his repulsive behavior on the night of his uncle’s birthday party create the cathartic moment Kebab Connection 93 for the audience to cleanse itself of selfish desires and actions. We can reject our own selfish desires, and reform ourselves as «heroes» through our fear to act as Ibo does. We become morally «good» by rejecting the «bad» behavior that might be a part of ourselves. Although the allusions to tragedy and tragic elements are significant in this film, its essence is that of comedy. As in classical comedy, the cast roles are those of commoners (in spite of their patrician names). Titzi’s mother manages a warehouse, Ibo’s father is a taxi driver, and his uncle owns a small Turkish restaurant. The conflicts are family-centered rather than focused on government or a matter of state. All conflicts are dealt with in a lighthearted manner; and, by the end, there is the reunification of the clashing elements. We are shown that all conflict is not destined to end in tragedy and death. Optimism and humor overcome fatalism and tragic loss. Conflicts can be addressed, and warring factions can reconcile. Three major pathways to overcome or contain powerful cultural, interpersonal, and modernity conflicts are developed in the film. These arenas of reconciliation and reaffirmation include a) heterosexual coupling and procreation; b) family and patrilineal bonding; and c) friendship/ kinship rooted in commonly shared experiences, places, or tastes. The first reconciliation among persons of different personalities and cultural backgrounds is portrayed in the joyous wedding celebration for Titzi and Ibo. The other young, single persons in the film find partners as well: Titzi’s female roommate finds a partner; and in pleasing symmetry so does Ibo’s male German friend pair up with an Italian woman. The power of attraction and the fear of isolation are shown to be more powerful than our fear of the Other. In the second vein of conflicts involving fathers and sons, the reconciliation of modernity and tradition comes through the reaffirmation of intergenerational and male bonds. Both the Turkish and the Greek fathers react similarly to discord with their sons. Both sons challenge their fathers’ fundamental outlooks on life and traditions. Each father disowns his son and later walks unannounced into his son’s workplace to have a fierce argument with the son. Ibo is shunned for having a child with an infidel and then failing to live up to his responsibilities as a man and father. Despite the clear generational and modernity differences between the father (a traditional father and taxi driver) and son (a thoroughly modern, independent man and kung-fu filmmaker), Ibo and his father reunite and bond in front of the delivery room in the hospital while Titzi is giving birth. The two men smoke a cigarette together, discuss being a good father, and give each other an emotional hug at the birth of the new baby girl. Male virility has been reaffirmed in their intimacy as men with offspring. The powerful struggle between the creation and the creator is con- 94 Reika Ebert and Ann Beck tained through repeating the pattern of creation in the children of the creator. It is procreation that allows old wounds to be healed and previous divisions to be reunited in a new, integrated flesh. Similarly, Ibo’s Greek friend, the son of the restaurant owner across the street from the «King of Kebab,» is disowned for having become a political vegetarian. The son has opened his own meatless falafel restaurant instead of working in his father’s traditional Greek restaurant. Yet, the Greek father and son reunite at the wedding where we view the Greek father gazing at his son with fatherly pride. Again, as with all comedies, intergenerational differences are overcome by genetic and fatherly love. The third important reconciliation is between bitter historical rivals - the Greeks and Turks. Throughout the film the two restaurant owners, Greek and Turk, sling ethnic barbs and insults at each other in a slapstick style. They compete for Ibo’s attention to their marketing needs in the highly competitive restaurant industry. At the wedding feast, though, the Turkish and Greek owner make up in a symbolic duel with food as the weapon of choice. They compete on the quality of taste with the opponent being the judge. Both men face each other in a stand-off while each presents a tray of beautifully arranged stuffed grape leaves to the other. Ceremoniously and simultaneously each offers his opponent a taste. Each tentatively reaches across and takes a bite. Both comment with respectful recognition: «gar nicht schlecht» and «kann man essen.» 10 At this moment each recognizes their compatible values and the feud dissolves into congeniality. Apparently, the differences between these two competing cultures are surface phenomena only as each is simply a variation of the «same dish,» both based on grape leaves. Just as the film Kebab Connection pays homage to a Shakespearean tragedy, the film also pays tribute to a Shakespearean comedy - Midsummer Night’s Dream - as some of the structural elements in that comedy are seen in this film. Both the play and the film end with a marriage banquet and three new couples. Both productions incorporate a play within a play. In Midsummer Night’s Dream it is Peter Quince and his friends who rehearse their play «Pyramus and Thisbe» for their performance at the royal wedding just as Titzi and her roommate prepare for their roles as Juliet for their on-stage audition. Interestingly, Ovid’s «Pyramus and Thisbe» is an older version of the Romeo and Juliet material. It tells the story about two young lovers who overcome their family’s feud but as a result of a misunderstanding of their beloveds’ deaths each of them kills himself or herself. Shakespeare, in Midsummer Night’s Dream, refers to Ovid, a Roman poet, whose tale of «Pyramus and Thisbe» is set in old Babylon (now in modern Iraq). Fatih Akin and Kebab Connection 95 Anno Saul in turn borrow from Shakespeare’s play. The filmmaker’s intertextual citations thus reach back to antiquity. This places the film within a literary tradition based on inspiration from stories of Middle Eastern, Greek, and Roman cultures whose modern day people now also populate Germany and who are the simultaneously different and same subjects in this film. The various narratives within narratives and films within films ponder the healing of feuds. Like Midsummer Night’s Dream, the filmmaker uses the characters and contexts to point to the mechanisms that might be used to overcome the tragic elements of absurdly making the «other» into the enemy. At the same time the film points to the most important source of possible tragedy - a lack of real or virtual communication. In Midsummer Night’s Dream Shakespeare sets up a magical world into which the quarreling people enter. He uses this device to circumnavigate or avoid the destruction of relationships. In the different dimension created, the characters can experience their personal desires under different perspectives. Oberon, king of the fairies, has a love potion administered to aid people in finding their deeply felt love for the person destined to be their match. The realm of the fairies is an altered state in which the individuals are free of their habitual restraints and can, therefore, find the truth within themselves. Similarly, in Kebab Connection Titzi and Ibo are shown as having much difficulty in communicating satisfactorily in the «real» world. For example, when Titzi becomes unexpectedly pregnant, both partners fight over the decision to keep «it» or not. 11 They are young and each is planning her or his career; yet, the thought of having a baby is also exciting. Titzi wants the child, but as Ibo communicates his hesitancy, Titzi rebuffs him and the two lovers separate. Later, they make a date to meet at a restaurant after Ibo calls her. On his way to meet Titzi, Ibo is delayed through a chain of unforeseen events (or unimportant stops depending on the two separate versions of events shown in flashbacks) and arrives at the restaurant more than one hour late. Ibo explains that he tried his utmost to meet her - and her expectations - but Titzi (ever the German) thinks that the lateness is a sign of his pattern of careless neglect of his responsibilities and she dismisses him again. 12 Ibo may have been really trying to be on time or he may have been falsely representing what actually did happen in order to avoid Titzi’s ire. The audience is left to decide whose side of the argument is most supported depending on which version of the two flashbacks about the reasons for the delay is believed. In this case, the truth is presented as difficult to come by for either or both of the parties to the communication. It is the lack of trust, as much as the content of the message, as to why Ibo is late, that continues the estrangement. 96 Reika Ebert and Ann Beck Other comic elements that place the filmmakers alongside some of the great names in film direction also add to the film’s enjoyment. The title of the film itself is a play on the title of an earlier film by Kung-Fu artist Bruce Lee, called Chinese Connection or Fist of Fury (1972). Bruce Lee even makes a virtual cameo appearance in the film. After having smoked a water pipe with hashish or marijuana, Ibo becomes enlightened upon looking into the refrigerator where Bruce Lee jumps out of a fire spout in a parking garage that looks like an arena and tells Ibo to get into a breathing course. Du brauchst eine Erleuchtung. Oder warum bist du nicht bei deiner Freundin? - Ich weiß nicht, ob ich ein guter Vater sein kann. Was soll ich tun, Meister? - Jeder Schritt auf steilem Pfad verkleinert den Berg. Jeder Schritt auf den Gipfel bringt den Berg zum Verschwinden. Geh in einen Hechelkurs. 13 As with Midsummer Night’s Dream, Ibo enters a dream state and there finds truth from his imaginary hero, Bruce Lee, that allows him to do what he subconsciously wishes to do - support Titzi in giving birth. Another reference to classic movies was also noted by early reviewers such as Weissberg and Rebhandl. The scene about the out-of-control baby carriage bumping down a long flight of outdoor stairs 14 is a comic jab at a classic scene with the Tsar’s soldiers coming down the stairs to massacre the Odessans from Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) and is amazingly similar to a scene in de Palma’s Untouchables (1987). In both the Potemkin and Untouchables films, the scenes are meant to demonstrate the tragedy of class conflicts and gang violence. In Kebab Connection, however, the baby ride is a fun flight of fancy that foretells the potential for happy, heterosexual families. In this scene, Ibo, after taking a big fall on the stairs, gets hit and kicked not by the Tsar’s militia but rather by the furious Italian mother of the baby for inadvertently stealing her child. In comic fashion, Ibo’s German friend becomes the baby-saving hero who is adored by the single Italian mother and will later start another intercultural nuclear family. Through the virtual world of literature and fiction the two main characters connect on an intimate level. In the final scene of the movie, we see the wedding of the two protagonists, or so we think. What we also see is the shooting of the final scene from the newest video ad where the two are united in air, through unseen wires, in their wedding attire. We, the audience, are left unsure whether the two are at their actual wedding or whether they are only virtually being wedded. The film ends in the same «fairy space» that Midsummer Night’s Dream had created to resolve conflicts among humans. In this «fairy space» of «virtual reality» the film creates a new way of looking at all relationships within the film. Just as the Turkish and Greek grape leaves are Kebab Connection 97 essentially the same dish, so, too, does the «virtual reality» help us see that persons from different ethnic backgrounds hold similar dreams and desires. Finally, the filmmakers of Kebab Connection use slapstick as the mechanism to turn the violence of tragedy into a source of laughter and comedy. Despite its predictability, slapstick helps the viewer laugh at difficulties that could otherwise have tragic consequences. This way, potential tragic events are rendered bearable, not catastrophic or deadly. Most of the slapstick scenes in the movie take place in three arenas of urban living and modern life - transportation, childcare, and gang violence. For instance, Ibo’s father and Ibo both have comedic traffic accidents that are the result of their separate preoccupations. Neither Ibo nor his father is hurt although both characters’ vehicles become temporarily unusable. Ibo’s slapstick baby diaper changes, Lamaze breathing lessons, and the saving of the bumping baby carriage all make the hazards of child-rearing in urban life seem less frightening. The gang members and their violence are reminiscent of the Three Stooges. Their bad behavior, conveyed through slapstick, often makes us laugh because they fulfill our own violent fantasies. For instance, they slam a car door on someone’s hand and then calmly pick up the marijuana joint from the crushed hand. 15 In another instance, they wreak property havoc at the «King of Kebab» restaurant and slowly saunter out of the place. 16 These scenes, albeit presented in standard slapstick techniques, allow for comic relief as viewers will recognize these common opportunities for urban violence. The happy ending in the virtual reality of Kebab Connection solves the problem of violence that fuels the chain of deadly events in Romeo and Juliet. The protagonists use their dreams and creative activities to counsel themselves and allow themselves to do what is necessary; they create new ways to communicate with each other when all seems hopeless; and they discover signs that help them reaffirm common values. Throughout the journey, humor plays a critical role in reducing the level of difficulty and tension. By the end of the film’s journey, they have found the methods to turn potential tragedy into the beginning of a shared life with their creation. This film deeply roots itself in the history and traditions of classic literature, yet it uses the virtual reality of film to suggest a new order of intercultural connection. It is the shared, common pop culture that tends to unite all of the younger characters, regardless of familial or cultural/ ethnic background. Their ability to use the new and old media to communicate positive feelings for each other and as a motivation to «act» positively toward each other in the real world creates new arenas for reconciliation and reaffirmation. It is the common aspirations of Titzi and Ibo that make them able to recognize and act on their shared fate in this modern world that has created them and that they 98 Reika Ebert and Ann Beck in turn create. In the end, the filmmakers believe that it is this act of multicultural creation and procreation that allows our collective, potential tragedy to be turned on its head and made into comedy. Notes 1 Kebab Connection (2005). Director: Anno Saul; Script: Anno Saul, Fatih Akin, Ruth Toma, Jan Berger; protagonists: Nora Tschirner and Denis Moschitto. 2 See Atanasov, Mazassek, and Rebhandl. 3 See Huston, van Hoeij, and Bax. 4 DVD section 4. Entscheidungen. 5 DVD section 7. Liebeskummer. 6 ibid. 7 DVD section 10. Einladung. 8 ibid. 9 DVD section 4. Entscheidungen. 10 DVD section 12. Feierlichkeiten. 11 DVD section 3. Neuigkeiten. 12 DVD section 8. Titzi wartet. 13 DVD section 9. Die Erleuchtung. 14 DVD section 5. Kinderwagen. 15 DVD section 2. Erste Erfolge. 16 DVD section 10. Die Einladung. Works Cited Atanasov, Svet. Web-based review of Kebab Connection, dir. Sinnan Akus and Anno Saul. Posted December 7, 2006 at website «DVD Talk.» http: / / www.dvdtalk.com/ reviews/ read.php? id=25497 Bax, Daniel. «Quatsch mit Sosse; So viel Witz steckt im multikulturellen Alltag: Anno Sauls Komödie ‹Kebab Connection› erzählt von einem Hamburger Nachwuchsregisseur türkischer Herkunft, der von der großen Karriere träumt.» Review of Kebab Connection, dir. Sinnan Akus and Anno Saul. die tageszeitung 21 April 2005: 16. Houston, Shaun. Web-based Review of Kebab Connection, dir. Anno Saul. Posted January 27, 2006 at website «PopMatters.» http: / / www.popmatters.com/ pm/ film/ reviews/ 10044/ kebab-connection-2005/ Mazassek, M. «‹Kebab Connection›; Zwischen Kung-Fu und Kinderwagen.» Review of Kebab Connection, dir. Sinnan Akus and Anno Saul. Frankfurter Rundschau 21 April 2005: 8. Rebhandl, Bert. «‹Kebab Connection›, eine idyllische Filmkomödie.» Review of Kebab Connection, dir. Sinnan Akus and Anno Saul. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 23 April 2005: 22. van Hoeij, Boyd. Web-based Review of Kebab Connection, dir. Sinnan Akus and Anno Saul. Posted at website «EuropeanFilms.» http: / / europeanfilms.net/ content/ view/ 190/ 5/ Weissberg, Jay. Review of Kebab Connection, dir. Sinnan Akus and Anno Saul. Variety 7 March 2005: 40-41. Besprechungen / Reviews K ARL E RNST L AAGE : Theodor Storm: Neue Dokumente, neue Perspektiven. Husumer Beiträge zur Storm-Forschung 6. Berlin: E. Schmidt, 2007. 139 pp. € 34.80 Laage, langjähriges führendes Mitglied der Storm-Gesellschaft - als Sekretär und später Präsident - hat seit 1967 neben seiner Herausgebertätigkeit in rund zwanzig selbständig erschienenen Schriften und über hundert Aufsätzen das Werk des Dichters Storm-Forschern und -Freunden näher gebracht. Seine weitreichende Vertrautheit mit dem gegenwärtigen Wissensstand spiegelt sich in der hohen Genauigkeit der eigenen Darstellung. Die jetzt vorgelegten Dokumente, Gedichte, Briefe und Aufzeichnungen in insgesamt siebzehn kurzen Beiträgen bringt er jeweils in sinnvolle Verbindung mit bisher Bekanntem und ergänzt sie mit nötigen Erläuterungen. Es handelt sich bei den Beiträgen um eine Art Nachlese, denn manches war längst bekannt, wird hier jedoch durch inzwischen verfügbare Handschriften ergänzt. Andere Texte sind neu, z.B. der Erstdruck von Storms Gedicht-Zyklus «Ein Buch der rothen Rose» von 1848 im ersten Abschnitt. Unter bisher unveröffentlichten Briefen von Storm finden sich drei an H. Esmarch (Abschnitt 4) und einer an die Zeitschrift Daheim (Abschnitt 9). Verehrerpost (von Olga Angermann) mit Storms Entgegnungen bietet Abschnitt 10. In Abschnitten 3, 5 und 7 findet man Briefe Dritter mit Äußerungen über Theodor Storm. Abschnitt 8 mit Akten zu Storms Tätigkeit als Untersuchungsrichter auf Nordstrand bietet Einblick in zwei Vorfälle seiner hauptberuflichen Tätigkeit - Prüfung einer Auflehnung gegen einen dänenfreundlichen Landvogt und ein Verhör zu Anschuldigungen wegen sexueller Belästigung einer Siebzehnjährigen durch einen Pastor. Ein paar neue Perspektiven zu Novellen zeigen die Abschnitte 12 («Im Brauer-Hause»), 14 (Entwurf zu einer beabsichtigten «Sylter Novelle») und Abschnitt 15 («Der Schmimmelreiter»). Im Abschnitt 13 behauptet Laage, der Makler Jaspers aus «Carsten Curator» sei Vorbild für Thomas Mann’s Makler Gosch in den Buddenbrooks gewesen. Andere Abschnitte enthalten biografische Mitteilungen. Laages akribische Anmerkungen zu Zitaten oder Anspielungen auf vorhergehende Veröffentlichungen binden die hier neu vorgelegten Texte wünschenswert in den gesamten Stand des Wissens ein. Die Anmerkungen, als Fußnoten leicht unmittelbar mit dem Text lesbar, bieten bei Personen Lebensdaten und wichtige Einzelheiten, bei sonstigen Notizen Hinweise auf Quellen oder verwandte Texte. Wo trotz Mühe nicht mehr geboten werden konnte, gibt Laage das ehrlich zu, z.B. enthält Anm. 5, S. 28 die Mutmaßung: «Münster ist wohl der Kutscher des Kaufmanns Simon Woldsen (sonst nicht bekannt).» An diesem Band ist also viel zu loben und wenig zu bemängeln. Allerdings hat auch dieses Buch seine, teils lustigen, Druckfehler. Auf S. 27, Z. 3 wird Storms Großmutter Magdalena Woldsen (1766-18554) ein recht langes Leben nachgesagt! S. 32, Anm. 6 steht «Herrn» statt Herr Hagendorf. S. 114 bringt «mit … einer ‹etwas kränklicher Stimme›» statt «und ‹etwas kränklicher Stimme›.» 100 Besprechungen / Reviews Wünschenswert wäre es gewesen, ein so ungewöhnliches Wort wie «Oblomowerei» (S. 60, Anm. 27) kurz zu erläutern statt auf einen Aufsatz (noch dazu einen eigenen) hinzuweisen. Ein paar weitere kleine Beanstandungen seien erlaubt. S. 20, Anm. 4 nennt «Pastor Ohlhues» nur mit Titel, obwohl der volle Name Johann Peter Ohlhues in Laage’s Th. Storm Biographie (Heide, 1999) erscheint. Auf S. 127 gibt es eine Anm. 1, ohne eine Hinweisnummer im Text. Petersens Aufsatz (S. 130, Anm. 1) wurde übrigens auch nicht am 26.5.1825 gedruckt, sondern genau hundert Jahre später. Diese und ein paar ähnliche Flüchtigkeitsfehler stören aber den Leser kaum erheblich weil sie sofort durchschaubar sind. Laage gibt im Fall des Verehrerbriefwechsels mit Olga Angermann zu, er enthielte «kaum neue Fakten für die Storm-Forschung» (80). Es sei dem Rezensenten erlaubt, dasselbe von Laage’s Aufsatz «Das ‹Wirtshaus‹ in Storms Novelle ‹Der Schimmelreiter›: Poetische Fiktion und Wirklichkeit» zu behaupten. Darin berichtet Laage nämlich ausführlich darüber, dass zwei heimatkundlich interessierte Publizisten (F. Schmeißer und A. Busch) bereits 1952 erhärtet hatten, die «Albertsensche Gastwirtschaft bei Sterdebüll in der Hattstedter Marsch» sei Vorbild für das Wirtshaus im Schimmelreiter gewesen. Das Haus, die Anordnung der Räumlichkeiten, der «Akt» vom Deich herab zu dem Gebäude usw. stimmten mit der Novelle überein und seien durch neuerdings aufgefundene Unterlagen «in wesentlichen Punkten bestätigt.» Sogar ein Foto ist mitgegeben (117). Dann aber argumentiert Laage lang und breit, dieses Gasthaus liege im Süden einer dem Hauke-Haien-Projekt ähnlichen Deichanlage. Er zitiert dann aus der Novelle, wo der nächtliche Besucher aus Nordwesten auf die Raststätte zukommt, bezieht sich auf einen Chronikbericht der Sturmflut von 1634 und kommt zu dem Schluß: «Der heutige ‹Schimmelreiterkrug› bei Sterdebüll ist also nur bedingt ein Schauplatz der Novelle …» denn obwohl er «in seinem äußeren Bild überraschend genau dem in der Novelle geschilderten» entspreche, befinde sich das Wirtshaus der Novelle an der «Nordwestecke des Kooges … und ist also nur zum Teil Wirklichkeit, zum anderen Teil ist das ‹Wirtshaus› poetische Fiktion» (120). Jede Quelle oder Anregung aus der Wirklichkeit wird durch Aufnahme in ein Literaturwerk «poetische Fiktion.» Das ist eine Binsenwahrheit. Warum also mühsam Eulen nach Athen tragen oder - wie der Engländer sagt - «coal to Newcastle»? Dieser Rezensent ist ferner der Meinung, dass Laage auch das wirklich unästhetische Foto aus der Storm-Woldsen Gruft (132) hätte weglassen können. Dass Särge zerfallen und Tote verwesen ist ebenfalls allgemein bekannt. Wollte man «den toten Dichter ruhen lassen» (133), hätte man dieses pietätlose Bild, wenn man es überhaupt brauchte, in einem Archiv von der Öffentlichkeit fernhalten sollen. Trotz der vorgebrachten Einwände ist Laages neues Buch, wegen der darin eingebrachten Splitter zum Mosaik von Storms Leben und Werk beachtenswert. Die Akribie der wissenschaftlichen Beiträge zu Storm-Texten und die Klarheit von Laages eigenen Erläuterungen stellen eine hervorragende Ergänzung unserer Kenntnis des Dichters dar. Auch vom Äußeren her bietet sich der Band - sauber gedruckt und in ansprechendem Leineneinband - Bibliotheken, Forschern und Privatsammlern an. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign U. Henry Gerlach Besprechungen / Reviews 101 K ATHRIN M AURER : Discursive Interaction: Literary Realism and Academic Historiography in Nineteenth-Century Germany. Heidelberg: Synchron, 2006. 178 pp. € 29,80. «What is the relationship between history and literature? » asks Kathrin Maurer, as it occurred in German culture in the nineteenth century. The question is never fully answered, even as her acute eye offers solid evidence of the reciprocal influences between the two. A sound answer to her question requires the «why» of the relationship, not solely a descriptive account of the «what,» or even «how» the narratives mutually enforce one another. One of the authorities in nineteenth century historiography Maurer initially cites to connect the reciprocity of literature and historical writing, and who could have helped her towards the «why,» is Leopold von Ranke. The artistry of the historian requires, according to Ranke, a poetic discourse of human intention, an eye and ear for the rhythm of human praxis. Ranke was a historical writer in the line of German historiographical thinkers whose thinking created «historicism,» which is always aware of the «why» of historical periodicity in its expressions. As Georg Iggers has pointed out, Ranke stressed that the historian find in the particulars of an event «its course and spirit.» Ranke, like other German historians, thought always of «periods» of historical temporality, the Zeitgeists that cohered the coexisting expressions of a culture’s spirit. Maurer is familiar with both contemporary historiographical and literary-critical perspectives, and in her introduction she orients the reader to the cultural-historical issues which the correspondence of literature and historical writing in nineteenthcentury Germany bring to the surface. Her bias is postmodern and post-structural, preferring F.R. Ankersmit to Hayden White, who in their separate ways examine the coexistence of literary and historiographical narratives in periods of cultural-historical life. However, Maurer’s antipathy towards a cultural-historical connection between disciplines weakens the full argument of her text, leading to an absence of «why» the many facts she exhibits for the reader are expressions of a time. Again and again, Maurer’s knowledge of the many contemporary thinkers who treat literature and the other arts and sciences of a time in their effort to comprehend shared cultural causation leads the reader to the threshold of the «why,» but she retreats. For example, Stephen Greenblatt is discussed in regard to «social energy.» Yet Maurer dismisses Greenblatt as someone who «conflates» the literary with the non-literary. «Conflation» is a misguided term for dismissing Greenblatt in that it enables Maurer to avoid the critical perspective Greenblatt represents. Why bring him into the discussion simply to dismiss the relevance of «social energy» as a helpful concept? The «social energy» or energeia of a cultural time, of a Zeitgeist, is a commonplace with all German historians after Herder. The stylistics of inquiry into the art of literature, history, as well as the plastic arts, from Humboldt through Leo Weisgerber took up the undergirding structure of social meaning among the cultural expressions of a period. Maurer is on more comfortable and effective ground in her several intensive analyses of the correspondence of historiography and literature where her descriptive findings will be of lasting value. The «what» and the «how» of the historiographical and creative literary narratives that she analyzes are incisively delineated. She dis- 102 Besprechungen / Reviews cusses the rhetorical functions of the narrative prose of the historians and authors with convincing clarity as she shows the possible influences of one upon another. Her first chapter establishes the historiographical focus of the mid-nineteenth century in an examination of Leopold von Ranke’s narrative technique of creating «objectivity» through a «catalogue» of archival facts or narrated images. This method, and other tropic rhetorical ploys which create the appearance of an in-common objective world that subsumes persons and actions to a larger, determining reality are then brought to the second chapter, which studies two writers contemporary to Ranke, Joseph Victor von Scheffel and Adalbert Stifter. Scheffel’s historical novel Ekkehard: Eine Geschichte aus dem zehnten Jahrhundert is discussed as relying upon the «archival effect» for generating the appearance of reality «as it really was» (Ranke). It is Scheffel’s use of footnotes, with reference to Latin sources, and her expansion of the factual details of persons and events of that time, that help her generate this mid-nineteenth-century purview. Maurer illustrates how Adalbert Stifter’s collection of stories Bunte Steine (1853), especially the tale Granit, correspond in its rhetorical strategies to Scheffel’s. Stifter’s narrative technique for generating a literary realism include «collecting, naming, cataloguing, and archive effects, which are used in the discourse of scholarly historiography.» Yet it is in her treatment of Stifter that the weakness of her critical analyses is ironically highlighted. Maurer dismisses the critical view of Martin Selge that Stifter sought to show the structural correspondence between the narratives that were each titled according to a geological form of rock and the human events of the story. One sees in this dismissal Maurer’s aversion to any structural underpinning of lines of thought or collections of evidence that require inquiry into the complex intention of a historian or author, and to going beyond an accounting of the grammatical and rhetorical facts at hand. It is in this probing of intention that one can find through the Germanic heuristic of Verstehen the thought-processes that enable one to articulate the social energy of a period. Stifter was a schooled geologist who won the «Golden Medal for Art and Science» in 1850 in his pursuit of physics, astronomy, botany, and geology, as well as painting and literature. The stories in Bunte Steine, such as Granit, illustrate the correspondence between human nature and physical nature for the discerning reader. Stifter’s intention was not hidden. In his foreword to Bunte Steine, where he spoke of the «soft law,» he saw that human and physical nature are linked. The subsuming of the person to a determined nature was the «why» of the deeper strata of thought that linked Ranke, Scheffel, and Stifter, as well as other thinkers in the middle third of the nineteenth century. Maurer moves in her study to the final third of the nineteenth century, indicating narrative characteristics shared between the historiography of that time and novels. Wilhelm Raabe’s novel Stopfkuchen (1890) and Heinrich Schliemann’s archaeological writings on Troy (1881) are examined in the mutual narrative techniques of their time. These are people linked by their time. As Maurer points out, Schliemann brought a passion and liveliness to his prose that reflected the demand Nietzsche made to philologists, writers, musicians, and historians. Raabe joins Schliemann in bringing the passion of his narrative protagonists into the foreground, using first-person narrative while eschewing the «archival effect» of a neutral, in-common objectivity of the Besprechungen / Reviews 103 previous age. Their respective interests in archaeology contain a new orientation to the past, as well as to older academic archaeology. This was an age of the individual changing the culture, rather than an age that determined the individual by its laws of nature. Maurer might have reflected upon the change in rhetorical strategies as the hallmark of a change in Zeitgeist. Her insight that Schliemann and Raabe were concerned with the «how» of inquiry into the past, rather than just «what,» was discovered, in itself, is an idea to be pursued in a Kuhnian manner to indicate a change of age by a change in methods of inquiry and explanatory paradigms. Maurer refers to Thomas Kuhn in passing, but does not take up his ideas. To comprehend the mutual reinforcement of disciplinary paradigms is to comprehend the metaparadigm of an age as well. In her Introduction, Maurer has provided not only the reader, but also herself with a program for future thought. The «why» of the periodicity of rhetorical correspondences between disciplines can be addressed with more attention to Stephen Greenblatt’s «social energy,» but even more finely with Hayden White’s theory of tropes. White’s Metahistory, The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe examines three periods of the century in its language of ideas, bringing with it the sensitive, stylistic analysis that Wilhelm Dilthey would applaud, the «why» of each period in its Zeitgeist. White offers a historicist comprehension of how and why one period gave way to another, a necessity in cultural-historical understanding that Maurer must bring to the incisive accuracy of her stylistic descriptions. University of Louisville Mark E. Blum Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KG Postfach 25 60 · D-72015 Tübingen · Fax (0 7071) 97 97-11 Internet: www.francke.de · E-Mail: info@francke.de Als im Januar 1927 in Köln Harry Domela verhaftet wird, der als vermeintlicher Prinz von Preußen zwei Jahre lang durch verschiedene deutsche Städte gereist war, stand der immer noch jungen Republik schlaglichtartig vor Augen, wie groß die Sehnsucht nach der verloren gegangenen Monarchie in fast allen gesellschaftlichen Schichten noch war. In der Maske des Hochstaplers aber wurden auch die Züge bürgerlicher Selbstinszenierung deutlich: Im Gefüge einer Gesellschaft, die sich durch Binnenmigration und sprunghafte Urbanisierung in ihren Grundfesten änderte, nahmen symbolische Selbstdarstellungen auf der Bühne, aber auch im ‚wirklichen Leben‘ einen zentralen Platz ein. Die vorliegende Arbeit untersucht die unterschiedlichen Formen dieser Selbstinszenierungen, die schwanken zwischen der Sehnsucht nach ländlicher Ursprünglichkeit und weltstädtischer Weitläufigkeit. Vom „Weissen Rössel“ über „Wilhelm Tell“ bis hin zu Phänomenen wie der Revue und dem Warenhaus als sozialer Bühne wird so die kulturelle Ökonomie des Spektakels als Mittel der Selbstdarstellung und Selbsterfindung erkennbar. Peter W. Marx Ein theatralisches Zeitalter Bürgerliche Selbstinszenierungen um 1900 2008, 420 Seiten, €[D] 29,90/ SFr 48,50 ISBN 978-3-7720-8220-7