Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe 9781789203448

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Legacy of Film Europe: DEFA’s Coproductions with France
Chapter 2. Film Exchange beyond the Ban: Erich Mehl’s Partnership with DEFA
Chapter 3. Competing with the West, Running with the East: Creating Utopia in DEFA Artistic Production Units
Chapter 4. Writing Together: DEFA’s Biopics in the Context of European Cinema
Epilogue. Heritage, Continuity, and Collaboration
Select Bibliography
Select Filmography
Index

Citation preview

Cinema of Collaboration

Film Europa: German Cinema in an International Context Series Editors: Hans-Michael Bock (CineGraph Hamburg); Tim Bergfelder (University of Southampton); Barbara Mennel (University of Florida) German cinema is normally seen as a distinct form, but this series emphasizes connections, influences, and exchanges of German cinema across national borders, as well as its links with other media and art forms. Individual titles present traditional historical research (archival work, industry studies) as well as new critical approaches in film and media studies (theories of the transnational), with a special emphasis on the continuities associated with popular traditions and local perspectives. Recent volumes: Volume 21 Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe Mariana Ivanova

Volume 15 Homemade Men in Postwar Austrian Cinema: Nationhood, Genre and Masculinity Maria Fritsche

Volume 20 Screening Art: Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema Seán Allan

Volume 14 Postwall German Cinema: History, Film History and Cinephilia Mattias Frey

Volume 19 German Television: Historical and Theoretical Pespectives Edited by Larson Powell and Robert R. Shandley

Volume 13 Turkish German Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens Edited by Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennel

Volume 18 Cinema in Service of the State: Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1960 Edited by Lars Karl and Pavel Skopal Volume 17 Imperial Projections: Screening the German Colonies Wolfgang Fuhrmann Volume 16 The Emergence of Film Culture: Knowledge Production, Institution Building, and the Fate of the Avant-garde in Europe, 1919–1945 Edited by Malte Hagener

Volume 12 Peter Lorre: Face Maker Constructing Stardom and Performance in Hollywood and Europe Sarah Thomas Volume 11 Screening the East: Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989 Nick Hodgin

For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/series/film-europa

CINEMA OF COLLABORATION

DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe

Mariana Ivanova

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2020 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2020, 2022 Mariana Ivanova First paperback edition published in 2022 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of Berghahn Books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Ivanova, Mariana, author. Title: Cinema of Collaboration: DEFA Coproductions and International Exchange in Cold War Europe / Mariana Ivanova. Description: First edition. | New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. | Series: Film Europa: German Cinema in an International Context vol 21 | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019031859 (print) | LCCN 2019031860 (ebook) | ISBN 9781789203431 (hardback) | ISBN 9781789203448 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: DEFA—History. | Coproduction (Motion pictures, television, etc.)—Germany (East) —History. | Coproduction (Motion pictures, television, etc.)—Europe—History. | Motion picture industry—Germany (East)—History. | Motion picture industry—Europe—History. | Motion pictures—Political aspects— Germany (East)—History. | Motion pictures—Political aspects— Europe—History. Classification: LCC PN1999.D4 I93 2020 (print) | LCC PN1999.D4 (ebook) | DDC 384/.809431—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031859 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031860 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78920-343-1 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-208-7 paperback ISBN 978-1-78920-344-8 ebook

For my parents, Nikolinka and Zahari, and in loving memory of Dr. Klaus-Dieter Post, who taught me what collaboration means.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

viii

Acknowledgments

x

Introduction

1

Chapter 1. The Legacy of Film Europe: DEFA’s Coproductions with France

34

Chapter 2. Film Exchange beyond the Ban: Erich Mehl’s Partnership with DEFA

80

Chapter 3. Competing with the West, Running with the East: Creating Utopia in DEFA Artistic Production Units

123

Chapter 4. Writing Together: DEFA’s Biopics in the Context of European Cinema

178

Epilogue. Heritage, Continuity, and Collaboration

233

Select Bibliography

242

Select Filmography

262

Index

265

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 1.1. Erich Pommer (1889–1966), UFA’s most famous producer.

44

1.2. From left to right: Joris Ivens, Erwin Geschonneck, Elfriede Florin, Gérard Phillipe, Marga Legal, and Jean Vilar on the set of Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel (1956).

59

1.3. Jean Gabin as Jean Valjean in Die Elenden (1957).

65

1.4. The bodies of Eponine, Gavroche, and Mabeuf under the banner “Égalité de l’homme et de la femme” (Equality for men and women) in Die Elenden (1957).

67

2.1. Erich Mehl (1918–2010), West German film financier, independent producer, and DEFA coproducer.

85

2.2. Pandora manager Johannes Röhr welcomes Henny Porten on her arrival to Stockholm to work on Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1955). From left to right: production manager Werner Dau, Henny Porten, Erich Mehl, director Eugen York, Johannes Röhr, set designer Erich Zander, and costume designer Vera Mügge.

101

2.3. Erich Mehl’s documentation of Pandora.

102

2.4. Spielbank-Affäre (1957). Dr. Busch supplies Sybille with bogus chips at Gallinger’s casino.

105

3.1. Der schweigende Stern (1960). An international team of astronauts exploring Venus.

133

3.2. Gojko Mitić in Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970).

147

Illustrations

ix

3.3. Innovative set design in Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970).

149

3.4. Chief Tokei-ihto in Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966).

160

3.5. Director Josef Mach in conversation with an actor in Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966).

162

4.1. Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (1971). The Grand Inquisitor condemning the painter in the last sequence of the film.

180

4.2. The painter listening to the people in Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (1971).

192

4.3. Moscow, 1971. From left to right: director Konrad Wolf, DEFA dramaturge Walter Janka, Charlotte Janka, and Marta Feuchtwanger.

195

4.4. Moscow, 1971, press conference on Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis. From left to right: Marta Feuchtwanger, Donatas Banionis, and Konrad Wolf.

207

4.5. Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1989). Director Rainer Simon in conversation with lead actor Jan Josef Liefers.

213

4.6. Film crew and film critics involved in the making of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1989).

217

4.7. Actors Luis Miguel Campos (Carlos Mantúfar) and Jan Josef Liefers (Alexander von Humboldt) among indigenous people in Peru on the set of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1989).

221

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book often seems a solitary project involving patience and perseverance in researching, structuring, and editing every chapter, while harnessing ideas like puzzle pieces. At the same time, not unlike composing a film script or producing a movie, the process of writing opens spaces for discussion of the big picture in formal and informal settings. The conceptualization of my project spans more than a decade of research and writing in Potsdam, Berlin, Munich, and Frankfurt (Germany); London (United Kingdom); and Austin, Texas and Oxford, Ohio (United States). During this time and in every place, I enjoyed rich conversations with fellow scholars, colleagues at several institutions, librarians, filmmakers, friends, and family. I would like, therefore, to thank my mentors and colleagues who helped to develop my research and ideas as they come together in this book. Ever since we met in 2001, Sabine Hake has generously shared her tremendous expertise in cinema, history, and culture theory. She has provided me with timely support, savvy advice, and unwavering enthusiasm for this project from its inception. At Miami University, Mila Ganeva’s steady encouragement, critical reading, and always open door have aided me at every step of my work on this manuscript. I am grateful for our friendship and the rare intellectual connection that we enjoy. Ralf Schenk, the current director of the DEFA Foundation in Berlin, has been an abundant source of ideas, contacts to filmmakers, and inspiration throughout the years. He spurred my interest in Erich Mehl as a cultural mediator and in the scope of DEFA coproductions and exchange. I am especially indebted to Barton Byg, the founder of the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts, as well as Sky Arndt-Briggs and Hiltrud Schulz for their time, creativity, and care on so many levels. Our discussions at the DEFA Film Library summer institutes and various panels on East German cinema were eye-opening. I am also grateful to Randall Halle who has

Acknowledgments

xi

been a thoughtful Gesprächspartner on everything related to European cinemas and industries and his work on transnational filmmaking continues to inspire me. Cinema of Collaboration would not be possible without the generous support by several institutions in the United States and Germany that enabled me to travel to the archives and to conduct research so vital to this study. Throughout the years, I received grants from the DEFA Foundation and the DEFA Film Library (2007, 2009), the University of Texas at Austin (2008–9), the Filmuniversität Konrad Wolf in Potsdam (2011), Rice University (2012), the Max Kade Foundation (2013), Screen Industries in Central Europe (2014), and the German Studies Association of America (2018). I am most grateful to Gabriele Ott and Thomas Summerer at the Erich Mehl archive for their continuous encouragement of my scholarly endeavors from 2015 until today. Miami University provided excellent working conditions, steady research funding, and countless opportunities for discussions with great friends and colleagues, which made writing a pleasure. Grants from the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of German, Russian, Asian, and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the Humanities Center, as well as course releases and a sabbatical leave helped me to successfully finish my work. I owe a particular dept of gratitude to the department chair, Margaret Ziolkowski, for always listening to me and finding a way no matter what the challenge. I would have not been able to complete this book without the encouragement and collegiality by Irina Anissimova, Sascha Gerhards, Catherine Grimm, Kazue Harada, John Jeep, Erik Jenson, Wesley Lim, Oliver Knabe, Denise McCoskey, Noriko Reider, and Nicole Thesz. Daniel Meyer has been most wonderful in helping me with anything related to film clips and images. The Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, and especially Venelin Ganev, Stephen Norris, Benjamin Sutcliffe, and Zara Torlone have welcomed me into one of the most intellectually engaging environments I have ever been part of. I have immensely benefited from our exchanges, lecture and film series, and reading groups. I am fortunate to be part of a vibrant community of scholars who watch and write on DEFA film, as well as of academic networks in German, European, and Eastern European cinemas. I am indebted to Seán Allan, Sebastian Heiduschke, Larson Powell, Juliane Scholz, Marsha Siefert, Qinna Shen, Pavel Skopal, and Philipp Stiasny, who have offered their kind support and have collaborated with me on various projects related to this book over the past years. Daniela Berghahn,

xii

Acknowledgments

Oksana Bulgakowa, Tobias Ebbrecht, Ralf Forster, Sonja Fritzsche, Gerd Gemünden, Thomas Haakenson, Andy Räder, Marc Silberman, Robert Shandley, Stefan Soldovieri, Rosemary Stott, Evan Torner, and Michael Wedel have offered a sounding board for many of this book’s ideas, as well as important feedback. Studying DEFA as a cinema of collaboration would be impossible without the support and efficiency of numerous private and state archives, as well as individuals who were excited to share their stories. I have had the honor of interviewing many a DEFA employees and business partners who shed new light on my view of the Babelsberg studio. Günter Agde, Andreas Dresen, Egon Günther (1927–2017), Rudolf Jürschik, Tatyana Lolova, Günter Reisch (1927–2014), Reiner Simon, and Angel Wagenstein graciously shared with me their insight into the cinematic industry. Thomas Summerer has wholeheartedly encouraged my work in the private archive of Erich Mehl and Gabriele Ott. This book and further projects of mine will preserve the legacy of film financier Mehl and others who bridged Cold War divisions in order to make Eastern European films accessible in the West. The Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in Berlin and the Pressedokumentation at the Filmuniversität Konrad Wolf in Potsdam allowed me to view films onsite and research production-related documents and press releases. Sincere thanks are due to Renate Göthe, Michael Müller, and Tim Storch at these institutions who helped me enormously. I have spent countless hours in the library at the Deutsche Kinemathek/Museum für Film und Fernsehen in Berlin, where several of the chapters of this book were conceptualized. I want to warmly thank Cordula Döhrer, a dear friend and assistant in retrieving material from film journals; I can’t wait for more hour-long conversations, Berlinale visits, and tours of Berlin museums, galleries, and cafés. Special thanks go also to Ingo Büyükoktay, Anett Sawall, Michael Skowronski, Tarek Strauch, Gerrit Thies, and Birgit Umathum, at the Deutsche Kinemathek for their hospitality and prompt answers to any inquiry I had, as well as to Julia Riedel for help in finding images. Nicky Rittmeyer at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin has offered important guidance for a decade and pointed me to hidden treasures in Konrad Wolf’s and Kurt Maetzig’s collections. The DEFA Foundation staff, including Manja Meister, Konstanze Schiller, and Sabine Söhner were also instrumental in unearthing important documents and images. At the Deutsches Filminstitut FilmmuseumFassbinder Center in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, I want to thank Julia Mücke, Hans-Peter Reichmann, and Eleonore Emsbach for aiding me in my research in the Artur Brauner collection. Similarly, Michaela

Acknowledgments

xiii

Ullmann at the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library (University of Southern California) offered her expertise in understanding and defining Marta Feuchtwanger’s relationship to DEFA and the GDR. Finally, Jiří Horníček at the National Film Archive in Prague, as well as Antonia Kovacheva at the Bulgarian National Film Archive in Sofia helped me gain understanding of the interconnectedness of Eastern European cinematic industries during the Cold War. At Berghahn Books, I am grateful to the editors of the Film Europa series—Tim Bergfelder, Hans-Michael Bock, and Barbara Mennel— who have wholeheartedly embraced my project. I would also like to thank Marion Berghahn and Chris Chappell for their personal engagement throughout the publication of this book. Soyolmaa Lkhagvadorj and Elizabeth Martinez at Berghahn have shepherded this book through production. Initial drafts have been read and edited by Mila Ganeva and Gene McGarry to whom I am grateful for the critical eye, well-taken suggestions, and help with clarifying my argument and improving the final manuscript. Sebastian Heiduschke and Maria Stehle also offered invaluable advice and helped with the revisions of the text. Friends have accompanied me on this journey from near and far and I cannot even begin to imagine this work completed without them being there for me and cheering me up when I doubted myself. I owe a lot to Bradley Boovy, Berna Gueneli, and Jan Uelzmann whose friendship goes a long way. Thank you for laughing with me and crying with me! Paola Bonifazio, Emily Hillhouse, Daniela Inclezan, Martin Kley, Iñaki Pradanos, Katrin Schreiter, and Kerry Wallach have been eager and understanding listeners. Tanja Dückers and Anton Landgraf have supported me with creativity, chocolate and wonderful dinners in Berlin, and have helped with logistics. Teodora Dimitrova, Bella Katsarska, Deniza Petrova, Teodora Stancheva, Petina Wynn, and Yanita Yankova have been there for me all these years to lean on. My parents, Zahari and Nikolinka, and my brother, Dimtcho, deserve more than my warm thank you. From my first engagement with the German language and film in 1991, they have encouraged me to pursue my dreams. They have let me go and though I will never know what that cost them, I am thankful for the freedom and ability to carve an intellectual path. My mother-in-law, Svetla Lalova, offered muchneeded help with child care and opened her home for visits, dinners, and celebrations. As I look back, I also realize how much I have been shaped in my understanding of society and socialism, of art and politics, but also of being a woman by the legacy of my grandmothers,

xiv

Acknowledgments

Maria and Dimitra. Their image of hard-working and socially engaged women has left an imprint on my very identity. To my husband, Stanislav, and to my children, Sophia and Alexander—you are the best co-travelers I could ever wish for. My heart is grateful for the welcome breaks from writing, a warm home to come to after a long day of work, and delicious pancakes to greet the mornings with. Above all, you made sure I watch also “other films.” Thank you for your patience and understanding, and for letting me know who is the best mommy “in this entire big world.” Thank you for being part of who I am—your love means more than you know.

INTRODUCTION

“Can we Europeans still entertain? Can we think in the dimensions of a global culture? . . . The first who has a vision of the film of the future, to him belongs BABELSBERG!”1 With this bold statement in 1992, Volker Schlöndorff, an acclaimed cineaste born in West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany, or FRG; hereafter West Germany or FRG), invited European artists to take over the studios near Berlin. The same studios had housed the now defunct East German state-run film company, Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA; 1946–92) and before that, one of the largest motion picture industries on the continent, Universum Film-Aktiengesellschaft (UFA; 1917–45). As Babelsberg’s managing director (1992–97), Schlöndorff had avowed earlier in his statement: “To me, the name DEFA has no color or odor. Like the name UFA, it belongs to history and to an era that is not mine. It should continue to live in history as a name.”2 This text and later interviews stirred a larger debate about the dismantling of DEFA right after the collapse of East Germany (the German Democratic Republic, or GDR; hereafter either East Germany or GDR)—a controversy in which hundreds of filmmakers and crew members were dismissed from their job because they were viewed as obsolete in a newly transformed industry. In what became known as the public battle for Babelsberg, former DEFA employees largely decried Schlöndorff’s failure to recognize how much they had in common with their Western counterparts, particularly in regard to their contribution to European cinema.3 This controversy over DEFA’s legacy remained unresolved for at least another sixteen years.4 It was not that the Babelsberg manager was oblivious to German national cinema’s past successes—indeed, he sought to exploit UFA’s classics and assets as magnets to draw directors who were eager to conquer European theaters.5 He and the French Compagnie Générale des Eaux

2

Cinema of Collaboration

(CGE), which acquired the Babelsberg studios in 1992, saw the forces of globalization sweeping through postcommunist Europe and envisioned spearheading the transnationalization of cinema.6 Indeed, they aspired to resurrect the material base of UFA while burying DEFA’s past. And here lies the contradiction in terms: Revitalizing a studio that was to cater to European audiences and to attract the best talent on the continent was not merely a project for the future, it was also a dream of the past. DEFA inherited the dream of becoming a European presence from UFA and both actively cooperated with other industries on the continent. Certainly, UFA and DEFA could only approach such a vision from within their own limits as national and state-subsidized companies. The dream of “us” conquering European markets was a dream where national pride intertwined with the ambition for international visibility and acclaim. German filmmakers of the interwar period (November 1918 to September 1939) had shared this dream with other nations in the so-called Film Europe movement, a concerted effort in the 1920s to oppose Hollywood’s inroads on the continent. Even Joseph Goebbels’s entertainment empire contested U.S. dominance and its attempt to control world markets. In the postwar years, this dream resurfaced in DEFA’s effort to gain prestige in the guise of international solidarity and to earn recognition for the young socialist state. The East German film company restored UFA’s network and initiated numerous joint projects with French, West German, Czech, Polish, and other filmmakers, hoping to claim agency as one of the largest industries at the heart of Europe. DEFA’s leaders, too, opened Babelsberg’s doors for European directors and stars of stature and seized every opportunity to circulate their films abroad. Dismissing the legacy of these predecessors turned out to be a mistake: Schlöndorff’s business strategies led to disappointment among producers in and outside of Europe who, ironically, found better production structures, services, and prices in other ex-socialist studios.7 The persistent vision of Babelsberg as a locus of European cinema nevertheless invites broader questions that shape the current study: How are socialist cinemas of the postwar period positioned vis-à-vis their Western counterparts? What are productive ways to reconcile divergent traditions within the history of European filmmaking? And more specifically, what was DEFA’s original contribution to the cinema of Cold War Europe? What can the study of larger processes within European cinemas, such as coproductions, various forms of exchanges, and mechanisms for the international circulation of films and talent reveal about socialist cinemas?

Introduction

3

Cinema of Collaboration seeks to shed light on our understanding of socialist film industries’ legacies in what today is defined as European cinema. After all, the root of the controversy around Schlöndorff’s dismissive stance toward DEFA was his view of East German cinema as not European enough, or not European at all. Yet the idea of a clean break with the past, though not new to the German national context, has fallen short when it comes to European film. The continuity that links the cinemas of the 1920s, the 1930s, and the postwar period; the proliferation of models and agreements for international coproductions since the 1950s; and the rich dialogue between avant-garde movements in East and West from the 1960s onward complicates our often blackand-white understanding of European artistic production in terms of exclusion and belonging. At the same time, political division was a reality that tainted the cultural dialogue between East and West and engendered competing media discourses. As the major producer of feature and documentary films in the GDR, DEFA inevitably paid allegiance to the socialist state. Yet the company continued to pursue international contacts and joint projects in the hope of securing a prestigious position among the film industries of Europe. Cold War divisions, in other words, had engendered an attempt within East German cinema to consciously overcome nationalism via internationalism. This book, therefore, approaches the Cold War division through the lens of film coproductions and exchange, artistic collaboration, and cultural mediation, and thus responds to the need to rethink socialist cinemas within the constantly evolving discursive space of European cinema. As several scholars have argued, European cinema is a cinema in flux precisely because it feeds on historical continuity. For instance, Thomas Elsaesser has argued that European film is not a catchall category for national cinemas, but a dynamic entity that constantly defines and redefines itself in dialogue with other traditions, notably North American, Latin American, and Asian. At the same time, he identifies an internally created “gap between Central/Eastern Europe and Western Europe as wide as ever” and rightly questions the ability of “our Western perspective” to comprehend or judge the political tensions underlying filmmaking in socialist societies.8 The common ground for European cinema vis-à-vis national cinemas, for Elsaesser, is constituted not merely by avant-garde movements, but also by a persistent vacillation between an attraction to and denial of Hollywood and by a self-empowering mode of coproduction. Scholars of postwar European cinema, such as Anne Jäckel and Tim Bergfelder, have further explored the cross-pollination among continental industries.9 They foreground

4

Cinema of Collaboration

the key role of coproductions not as an alternative to but rather a defining element of national cinemas. Jäckel, in particular, focuses on the continuity between the early desire for consolidation of European industries and the dynamic transnational modes of production defining current European Union filmmaking processes. Taking a different route into this argumentation, Mark Betz demonstrates a “considerable overlap” among the film cultures and industries in Europe during the Cold War, which for him constituted the specific conditions for the emergence of “European art cinema” not within confined studios scattered across the continent, but in the framework of coproduction.10 Drawing on all above studies, in The Europeanization of Cinema Randall Halle extrapolates that “the cinematic apparatus repeatedly and uniquely proves capable of imagining collectivities and of acting as a bridge to bring people together in new ways.”11 His study of the impact of contemporary European actors and production structures on the transnationalization of cinema around the globe urges us to see the legacy of economic and political processes underlying the film industries in a new way. Halle casts into high relief the contours of European film at the intersection of the apparatus (as a sum of production and reception processes) and the interzone (as a space that always existed and enabled contact among communities of people). This trajectory of scholarship yields several insights about the processes that shape past and current European cinemas—insights that will help us see what socialist cinemas shared with their counterparts. First, continuity in the development of European film industries in terms of their cooperation and self-definition vis-à-vis the U.S. motion picture powerhouses is key for rethinking their output beyond the national. Second, the flow of ideas and individuals across geopolitical borders has always defined European filmmaking, even in times of political division. Third, a turn to the mode of production, economic sensibilities, and agency of individuals can help us examine and understand cinema more holistically. Taking a cue from these insights, the present study identifies three levels on which DEFA enters European cinema. The first level is the company’s inheritance and appropriation of UFA’s legacy in the shape of business and personal alliances. The second level consists of several strategies for cooperation and film exchange that were driven primarily by economic and commercial concerns. And the third level is formed by the specific mode of production within Eastern European cinemas in the postwar period, which, though distinct from the Western apparatus, enabled renegotiation of artistic agency and film circulation within the East. Exploring these three levels allows us to see DEFA as a com-

Introduction

5

pelling case study of a socialist film industry that participated in both the making and marketing of films on the continent. From a transnational perspective, DEFA offers an example of a locus of the continuous interplay of state and non-state actors and the cross-border current of pictures and people. The study of a state-sponsored cinema uncovers nuances in the dynamics between official interests and forms of control as additional considerations come into play such as the prestige that films earned internationally as well as the revenue that they brought back into the budget. It is well known that avant-garde movements such as the Polish and Czechoslovak New Waves were largely tolerated by their respective states due to their potential to showcase openness, innovation, and competitiveness with the West. In other words, the exploration of state-sponsored art cannot disregard the socioeconomic aspects of film and talent circulation. More importantly, DEFA’s steady attempts to reach out to other industries across the political divide, to coproduce with them, and to break into international markets complicate the view of Cold War European cinemas neatly fitting into two monolithic blocs. Along these lines, Cold War cultures have also been rethought in terms of a symbolic division that was in fact bridged by bilateral agreements for cooperation, artistic negotiations, and mobility across national borders.12 The production and dissemination of cultural products such as literature, music, art, and film, as well as related intellectual and commercial pursuits, provide indisputable evidence that “the ‘dreamworlds’ of East and West were never completely divided.”13 In this vein, Yale Richmond, a U.S. cultural officer assigned to postwar Germany and an insider of Cold War diplomacy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, challenges the perception of an isolated East as he explains that “exchanges in culture, education, information, science, and technology” form an important and yet largely understudied background to the political conflict of the Cold War.14 One should note that the exchanges that Richmond refers to often were regulated at the state level and individual participants were typically involved under the oversight by politicians. More than any other artistic form, film mirrored the respective imaginaries of both antagonistic powers: the United States and the Soviet Union. Film festivals, for instance, as Caroline Moine’s and Andreas Kötzing’s work demonstrates, even though officially sanctioned, emerged in the 1950s as key sites of artistic encounter, as well as of negotiation of official cultural policies.15 Moine convincingly demonstrates that unpacking the history of such festivals as a “border and contact zone, a place for screenings as well as

6

Cinema of Collaboration

exchanges and meetings between guests from all round the globe” restages the GDR on the European and international arena.16 Such studies comment on the symbolic exchange of ideas and films that can induce a transformation in representational practices and showcase DEFA as exemplary for German socialist cinema, on the one hand, and as an actor in the cultural dialogue between East and West, on the other. This twofold agenda links political and cultural history and warrants the need to study culture in its larger manifestations on the national and international levels. DEFA’s existence was temporally and symbolically framed by major events in Europe’s ideological division. The East German studio was founded on May 17, 1946, less than three months after former British prime minister Winston Churchill delivered his Iron Curtain speech, and it was dissolved in 1992, the year when the Treaty on European Union was signed in Maastricht to announce future European integration and a new era of political, cultural, and economic cooperation.17 Churchill’s seminal address inaugurated the division of the continent into East and West: “From Stettin to the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent,” declared Churchill.18 With this speech, Michael David-Fox observes, Churchill “was enshrining a metaphor that would not only rally his contemporaries but retrospectively structure historians’ understanding of communism and the Eastern bloc.”19 Indeed, DEFA’s precarious position between its role as an instrument of political indoctrination, on the one hand, and its desire for artistic innovation, on the other, has been discussed at length in most studies of the film company,20 and the dueling binaries of East and West have overshadowed not only politics behind the Iron Curtain, but also DEFA’s output. Such oppositions shaped the perception of GDR cinema throughout the following decades, as cultural policymakers and film critics continued to debate how socialist films differ from their Western counterparts. In the immediate postwar years, the discussion about what East German cinema should represent took as its starting point the rejection of National Socialist (Nazi) film aesthetics, at a moment when DEFA was still producing for the entire German market. Ralf Schenk offers a detailed discussion of the experimental character of DEFA narratives and visual style in the early years, but he also shows that during the Cold War the GDR cinema continued to be viewed as “the other” in the West.21 Along the same lines, Daniela Berghahn maintains that UFA and DEFA were compared in the literature for a long time as “two German film companies at the service of two totalitarian regimes,” while the

Introduction

7

similarities between these two companies had remained unexplored.22 In addition, the majority of DEFA scholarship focused on the East German Communist Party’s aspirations for its national film industry rather than on the agency of DEFA artists. Nevertheless, in certain aspects such as institutional structure and commercial considerations DEFA came closer to its Western competitors, which earned the studio a reputation as “Honecker’s Hollywood.”23 By the time the studio shut down, it had produced over seven hundred feature films, entered into more than fifty realized coproductions with other European studios, and attempted numerous cinematic and technical forms of cooperation, such as service provision, financial support for joint projects, film license trade, and employment of foreign actors and film professionals. Some critics argue that after the demise of the GDR, DEFA, like the rest of the culture of the former East, was colonized by a triumphant West.24 As a consequence, East German cinema was primarily discussed throughout the 1990s as a remnant of a bygone era and was perceived as a cultural institution serving a solely ideological mission.25 After the collapse of communism, it seemed appropriate that a studio that had catered to the socialist regime should be liquidated. As the 1992 controversy surrounding Schlöndorff’s vision of Babelsberg made clear, DEFA’s dissolution appeared a necessary measure for freeing German cinema from the burden of the past. In the process, GDR employees were released from their posts and largely seen as useless for the future of German cinema, and this tabula rasa approach also called for the dismissal of DEFA films and their aesthetics. Central to this disparagement of the East was Schlöndorff’s failure to recognize East Germans’ past “enthusiasm for European feature film,” as Bärbel Dalichow put it.26 Indeed, the inability of DEFA’s critics to comprehend that the state-run company had set out to achieve a European presence, both in artistic and in commercial terms, has haunted the studio almost since its founding. Furthermore, DEFA continues to be at the center of the post-unification discussion of the value of East German culture per se. In this vein, Brigitta Wagner has documented the 2008 debate around Schlöndorff’s audacious statement that he liquidated “the DEFA name” because “the DEFA films were terrible.”27 In fact, apart from objections by former studio employees and institutions now representing the East German studio’s legacy (e.g., the DEFA Foundation and the Progress Film Distributor), the outcry against Schlöndorff’s uncompromising rejection was rather minimal both in unified Germany and abroad. The common perception that DEFA as a state-run studio operated within a socialist economy and, at best, produced antifascist films, has fed on the

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Cinema of Collaboration

long-sustained convictions that, first, East German cinema lacked connections to the Western film market and, second, that it unequivocally rejected the Hollywood model of popular cinema and the European auteurist traditions. In the past two decades, this blunt equation of East German film with the GDR and its reduction to an insular institution have come under scrutiny in several influential edited volumes that seek to illuminate DEFA’s participation in a “constant dialogue if not competition, with both the capitalist West and socialist East.”28 In different ways, they all respond to the 2002 appeal by Barton Byg, the founder of the DEFA Film Library, to reject equating the East German studio’s history with the history of the communist state itself and reducing this cultural institution to a mere propaganda machine.29 Byg has critically assessed the persistent portrayal of DEFA “as a specter of Cold War paranoia or socialist utopia” in a legacy that continues to haunt contemporary visual culture.30 The 2013 essay collection DEFA International, edited by Michael Wedel, Byg, and others, was the first to bring into focus DEFA’s internationalization and to invite a more holistic approach to East German cinema.31 In 2014, Brigitta Wagner’s edited volume DEFA after East Germany sought to lay bare the studio’s heritage in the wake of German reunification and the subsequent opening of archives to scholars. In Re-Imagining DEFA (2016), scholars from the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom continued to probe new comparative approaches to East German cinema both as a national and a transnational phenomenon, in order to highlight audience reception, stardom, genre studies, and the marketing of DEFA classics in the twentyfirst century.32 Studies such as these have laid important groundwork for the examination of East German cinema in an international context. In doing so, they have begun to map an alternative perspective to the traditional Cold War view of DEFA voiced in Schlöndorff’s dismissive assertion. Taking a cultural-historical approach to socialist cinemas, Cinema of Collaboration builds on this scholarship’s commitment to interdisciplinary dialogue. Yet in order to debunk the persistent myths of DEFA as a self-contained national cinema with little ambition or little opportunity to address audiences abroad, we need to envision the East German studio’s creative and commercial pursuits as two sides of the same coin. Cultural exchange, within the present study, is understood as complementary to political division and ideological prerogatives. DEFA’s institutional history illuminates this relation due to the studio’s rig-

Introduction

9

orous export agenda, its role as initiator of numerous coproductions, and its activities as a distinguished player among the European cinema industries of the Cold War. Rosemary Stott has broached the topic of Western film imports into the GDR, focusing primarily on programming policy, exhibition, and spectatorship, yet DEFA as a locus of an ongoing film exchange from East to West still remains to be explored.33 A handful of studies have looked at a select number of DEFA classics that were circulated both within the Eastern bloc and in the West.34 Others have focused on East German audiences’ reception of DEFA films or emphasized distinct genres, specific national contexts, or particular time periods.35 Yet DEFA participated in a wider exchange of feature films and documentaries as well as in license trading throughout its existence. Moreover, taking advantage of its central location in Babelsberg, DEFA sustained contacts with film production companies, producers, authors, and intellectuals in the West, as well as with previous Central European partners, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. Such partnerships inspired several creative and structural developments within the socialist film industry, from the renewal of joint projects with big French studios to the reintroduction of artistic production units in Babelsberg to the reimagining of established Western genres. In order to effectively reposition DEFA within the European cinemas of the Cold War, the key conceptual move, in my view, is to take exchange as a heuristic device rather than a marginal phenomenon. My study scrutinizes existing mechanisms of film conceptualization, production, and negotiation as a whole in order to highlight important individuals and agendas that shaped the processes of coproduction and distribution, while also digging into the studio’s correspondence with its many international partners. Collaboration might not be the only lens that can be used to this end, but it has acquired importance as an emerging core concept in the history of the Cold War, as well as in the film histories of European cinema and in Central and Eastern European Studies. Approaching DEFA as a case study for understanding socialist societies and their creative pursuits, and more generally for determining the function of cinema in the second half of the twentieth century, this monograph provides a bridge to related fields via its internationally informed discussion. Cinema of Collaboration, therefore, situates the East German studio in the context of its multilayered interactions with past and contemporaneous cinematic traditions, institutional alliances, and individual players. It focuses on several questions: What motivated DEFA’s participa-

10

Cinema of Collaboration

tion in the multiplicity of cultural exchanges? How does the company compare to other cinematic industries in divided Europe with respect to its willingness to pursue joint ventures? What kinds of cooperation existed, and how did they relate to the GDR government’s ideological agenda, to commercial concerns, or to various cinematic and artistic traditions? The four chapters in the present study will tackle these questions by analyzing DEFA’s engagement in a range of collaborations, such as film exchange in occupied postwar Germany, partnerships with independent producers or large film companies in the West, the promotion of new genres in response to Hollywood cinema, and teamwork between writers and directors on opposite sides of the EastWest divide in the 1970s and 1980s. Overall, the book examines and contrasts officially channeled or sanctioned contacts and individual agency in order to offer a comprehensive account of DEFA’s evolving strategies to ensure its international standing. More broadly, by focusing on DEFA as an example, this study reexamines the staging of postwar Central and Eastern European cinemas in the shadow of the Iron Curtain and probes the act of ideological division as an impediment but not a barrier to transnational cinematic exchange. Like other cinemas in the former socialist bloc, DEFA has been discussed in terms of once productive but currently reductive opposites such as commissioned versus auteurist filmmaking, propaganda versus modernist aesthetics, and state-controlled versus free-market cinemas. Cinema of Collaboration introduces more variables into these analyses, such as the agency of Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppen (artistic production units; hereafter KAGs), foreign producers’ business arrangements, studio management interventions, and script coauthorship across borders, to complicate our understanding of filmmaking processes in Cold War Europe. The book does not discount the fact that the continent’s geopolitical division played a vital part in the self-definition of DEFA as a “Hollywood behind the wall,” to borrow Daniela Berghahn’s term.36 However, this split also engendered East German filmmakers’ intense engagement with working models and genres that originated elsewhere in the East or the West. Whether we see the response by state-run studios in this “other Europe”—as Dina Iordanova has called the former socialist bloc—to Hollywood and Western European productions as imitation or opposition, disagreement or competition, borrowing or subversion, the rich dialogue with neighbors (as opposed to enemies) shows that European cinema, in fact, was equally shaped by commercial, artistic, and ideological agendas.37

Introduction

11

Rethinking DEFA History As described earlier, Cinema of Collaboration undertakes three interventions. First, it questions the conventional demarcation of East German cinema as an insular industry reduced to its submission to the socialist regime. Instead, multiple lines of continuity between UFA and DEFA invite a new understanding of East German cinema as shaped not only by ideological priorities, but also by an agenda for prestige and market presence. Second, DEFA emerges as an important yet neglected participant in Europe-wide film production and film circulation, as well as in the mediation between motion pictures and political philosophies during the Cold War. To that end, the book highlights one of the least explored aspects of the interaction across the EastWest divide, namely socialist cinemas’ dependency on hard currency and license sales to foreign film distributors. Third, by foregrounding DEFA’s exchange with Eastern European cinematic traditions, Cinema of Collaboration rethinks GDR cinema as Eastern European and questions ideological and geopolitical biases that relegate it to a second-tier cinema within Germany and Europe. To offer an alternative, this study looks not only at the coproductions DEFA initiated with its neighbors, but also at the project of fashioning socialist cinema as distinct from its Western counterparts. This endeavor entails the development of counter-genres and a unique model of studio organization, as well as strategies for negotiating political control over film art via coproductions and multinational crews or writer teams. All three interventions build on preliminary findings in existing studies.

Continuities between UFA and DEFA Since the 2000s, UFA’s legacy with regard to DEFA has undergone some reevaluation, as scholars have moved away from interpretations of East German film as an ideological counterpart of Third Reich cinema to an increased attention to its immediate postwar context. Traditionally, the 1946 DEFA founding document was quoted to demonstrate the decisive rupture in political terms that the East German studio sought to make with its predecessor.38 Studies focused predominantly on differences between the studios, highlighting DEFA’s antifascist agenda and acknowledging resemblances in both institutions’ “service of two totalitarian regimes” and their common purpose as “an instrument of political indoctrination.”39 At the same time, DEFA as a newly founded institution largely depended on former UFA personnel and expertise,

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Cinema of Collaboration

simply because there were very few film professionals who had not had a career in Nazi cinema.40 Thomas Heimann was among the first scholars to draw attention to the discrepancy between the high percentage of former Third Reich filmmakers at DEFA and the studio’s rejection of UFA entertainment models. He quotes a DEFA-conducted survey according to which 62 percent of DEFA directors, 73 percent of cameramen, 60 percent of production managers, and 75 percent of dramaturges (literary advisers, similar to a producer or a scriptwriter) between 1949 and 1952 had previously worked at UFA or the Terra studios.41 DEFA had in fact offered contracts to renowned Third Reich directors, as long as they had not made outright propaganda films and were willing to begin afresh. The list included Arthur Pohl, Gerhard Lamprecht, Helmut Käutner, Hans Müller, Paul Verhoeven, Hans Deppe, Wolfgang Staudte, Georg Wildhagen, Wolfgang Schleif, and others who had specialized in entertainment films during the 1940s.42 Early debates surrounding the abolishing of UFA, as Stephen Brockmann has shown, did not target filmmakers at all, but rather the apolitical and empty entertainment that Nazi cinema used to dupe the masses.43 Moreover, as evident from Brockmann’s research, established UFA directors of the Nazi period, such as Arthur Maria Rabenalt, participated in discussions about DEFA’s new aesthetic direction on a par with ardent communists, such as DEFA founder Kurt Maetzig. It comes as no surprise then, as David Bathrick explains, that a clear-cut break with the past was rather unrealistic.44 Instead, a yearlong transition was necessary due to filmmakers’ schooling in a narrative and visual style that offered diversion and mobilized emotions.45 But also postwar German audience tastes were shaped by Weimar and Third Reich cinema aesthetics and entertainment genres. In the absence of films with the right ideological spin, or of critical voices to expose the visual traps of Nazi films, and in order to scrape together funds for the emerging DEFA, the Soviet occupation forces sometimes resorted to screening UFA productions with Nazi film stars, such as Zara Leander and Luis Trenker.46 Consequently, the assumption that DEFA made a decisive break with its UFA heritage has yielded to the realization that continuities persisted through the reappropriation of film genres, reemployment of personnel, and recycling of prewar film aesthetics. At the same time, UFA’s enduring legacy for the self-definition of DEFA as a player on European markets has received much less attention. DEFA’s relationship to UFA can be reconsidered not only in terms of its inherited location and personnel, but also in terms of its creative agenda. As state-funded institutions, UFA and DEFA shared a strong

Introduction

13

national agenda as well as the quest for international prestige. Founded in 1917 with the sponsorship of Deutsche Bank at the order of the Army Supreme Command, UFA embodied the great era of German film. The largest European studio at the time comprised the worlds of Ernst Lubitsch, Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, Georg W. Pabst, Max Ophüls, and producer Erich Pommer, to name just a few.47 Before 1933, UFA paved the way for French, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, and other directors and actors to make high-quality pictures in Germany and to work with such renowned filmmakers.48 The sizeable film company actively pursued exchanges with European partners and worked toward establishing a lasting presence on the international market. Since UFA filmmakers competed with American-made pictures and production models, they sought alliances and coproduction projects with European partners in order to buttress their national cinema, while profiting from foreign studios’ resources and expertise. In the 1940s, under Goebbels’s auspices, UFA turned into a propaganda factory that continued to produce film fantasies and used earlier allies to distribute them internationally. Combining spectacle with subservience, UFA’s shortlived successor, the state-run conglomerate UFI, continued to dominate occupied Europe not only by means of rigorous export and distribution mechanisms, but also by coproducing films with French and Czech partners. In 1945, at the end of World War II, DEFA inherited these international contacts and a wide-reaching network, as well as the desire for a prestigious position among the film industries in Europe. Cinema of Collaboration reconsiders how the legacy of international contacts and coproduction agreements as transmitted from UFA to DEFA was linked to each studio’s understanding of its role in European filmmaking. This perspective illuminates the intertwinement of DEFA’s standing as the national cinema of the GDR with its active pursuit of partnerships with continental film industries. Such intertwinement became visible especially in the late 1950s, when the GDR strove to achieve political sovereignty and DEFA facilitated such aspirations by attracting Western European partners. Both filmmakers and politicians hoped that cultural alliances with the West would enable the German socialist state to remain independent of the FRG. At the same time, as UFA’s heir, DEFA continued to pursue coproductions with other studios, even after the GDR’s aspirations for political recognition in the West were shattered, to build on a cinematic culture that had competed on the world market and to feed off alliances with major European partners. Reconstructing the historical context of UFA’s and DEFA’s partnerships with French companies, this book reveals continuities in their

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Cinema of Collaboration

approach and institutional practices. DEFA filmmakers’ idea of cinema as a means of demonstrating both the high quality and the political importance of film art resonated with the agenda of French filmmakers in the 1950s. That agenda can be traced back to the significant cooperation between studios in these countries three decades earlier. Germany and France in the 1920s heralded the idea of a transnational cinema called Film Europe that could jointly resist the influx of Hollywood pictures. The goal was to create a universal European cinema that would transcend geopolitical borders. Coproductions were key to this plan: joint projects involving smaller continental film companies allowed these studios to pool their resources in order to lower production cost, and—in some cases—to benefit from national subsidies and screen quotas. The resurgence of the Film Europe ideal in postwar alliances between two of the largest film companies, DEFA and the French Pathé, evidences the desire for a shared European cinematic culture whose scope and function would extend beyond the need to protect national cinemas. Thus, by broadening the Cold War time frame within which the East German studio is usually situated, Cinema of Collaboration challenges the traditional view of a break between the cinematic cultures of pre- and postwar Germany. Moreover, it highlights the importance of both studios and individuals, in addition to political authorities, for our understanding of the DEFA project.

Traversing Borders and Film Exchange with the West Travel and interpersonal exchange were crucial in undermining Cold War animosity, and the fluidity of international contacts challenges the perception of the Iron Curtain as a solid divide. We now understand the Iron Curtain as porous and once rigid divisions along geopolitical borders have been rethought via the increasing focus on individuals, as opposed to governmental agency.49 Along these lines, Marsha Siefert has introduced an important term, “people-to-people cultural diplomacy,” that extends beyond the concept of soft power customarily used to designate Western cultural influence.50 This other type of diplomacy emerges in various forms of private encounters, as Siefert explains, such as “tourism, personal visits and correspondence, student exchanges, music performances, art exhibitions, author tours,” and other similar phenomena.51 Prominent foreign visitors and foreign influences from the West enhanced the circulation of ideas, practices, and norms in the East and vice versa.52 Such intertwinement of interpersonal encounters was made possible only by what Michael David-Fox

Introduction

15

has dubbed the “semipermeable membrane,” a porous Iron Curtain that regulated contacts among the blocs and provided selective access for artists and intellectuals.53 While the term “crossing the frontier” in the current discourse of the Cold War habitually refers to movement from East to West, in other words thematizing the West as an object of longing in the East, Cinema of Collaboration focuses on a less frequent phenomenon, namely the crossing from West to East. When we think about border crossing, we typically think about people who legally or illegally traverse frontiers to experience the other side or to mediate between two ideological camps. Such individuals are described differently in scholarship depending on the direction of their movement. In the context of Cold War Europe, Vladislav Zubok has dubbed westward travelers “dissidents” and eastward travelers who came to observe the socialist bloc “pilgrims from outside.”54 A third term, David-Fox’s “cultural mediators,” refers to insiders within an Eastern European culture who presented socialist ideology to those unfamiliar with socialism.55 Mediators, in this sense, were figures who came into close, sustained contact with prominent travelers or observers from the West, thus shaping their perception of the East as well as of cross-border contact in general. I appropriate this term in the context of divided Germany to describe those who worked in cultural production (in the film or literary business) and crossed borders to partner with DEFA in order to sell and popularize its products abroad. Thus, in the second and fourth chapters of this book, the term “cultural mediators” predominantly refers to Westerners. David-Fox’s term is especially useful here because, in a sense, the individuals featured in my discussion came from within German culture: they spoke the same language as their Eastern counterparts, some still had relatives in the East and visited them despite the division, and many had participated in the same cultural and intellectual life before World War II. The discussion of cultural mediators who traversed borders to trade or partner with DEFA and to showcase its product in the West is central to the second intervention that this book undertakes. Countering the belief that Eastern European cinemas remained regional in their character, Cinema of Collaboration brings out of the shadows producers and film financiers who sought to do business with the socialist studio. Such figures have remained on the margins of European film history, which conventionally privileges either the director, as the mastermind behind a cinematic production, or film stars as central to the marketability and the reception of films. Yet financier Erich Mehl, producers Artur Brauner, Walter Koppel, and Manfred Durniok, and media en-

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Cinema of Collaboration

trepreneur Leo Kirch, among others, exported GDR feature and documentary films to theaters and television broadcasters in the West and profited from this niche marketing. They succeeded in overcoming the rigid divide because they were able to operate simultaneously in two worlds: the Western cultural sphere and markets and East German official policies and ideology. Such intermediaries traded film licenses, introduced seemingly apolitical genres, such as fairy-tale adaptations or science fiction, to Western media markets, and, in the 1980s, were able to broker the import of Hollywood and Western movies into the East. Their agendas and their rapport with DEFA’s foreign trade department, DEFA-Außenhandel, have remained unexamined to date, but Cold War film markets were more deeply interlaced than existing scholarship has suggested. Above all, the mediators’ commercial engagement with East Germans undermines the popular conviction that socialist films were rarely exported due to their ideological character. In fact, with the growing popularity of television, GDR features often were screened in the West—with their East German labels removed— from the 1960s onward. Exiled intellectuals represent another type of cultural mediator and they were highly regarded among the socialist party and GDR artists. A prominent example is Thomas Mann who in the 1950s insisted that his 1901 novel, Buddenbrooks, be adapted as an East/West German film coproduction. The negotiations continued over several years and drew a number of East and West German literary and cinematic figures, including DEFA manager Albert Wilkening and West German distributor Ilse Kubaschewski. Hans Abich, a West German producer who had participated in license trade across the occupation zones with DEFA, was also involved in the project.56 However, unable to consolidate political with aesthetic concerns, DEFA withdrew from the coproduction and Buddenbrooks was realized in the West in 1959. In the early 1960s, DEFA dramaturge Walter Janka, a former editor of Mann and other writers who had escaped the Third Reich, used his contacts to the German-Jewish exile community in South and North America to bring business to DEFA and to acquire rights to literary works. Marta Feuchtwanger, Lion Feuchtwanger’s widow and a committed German intellectual based in California, participated in the scriptwriting process and the distribution of DEFA films in the United States during the 1970s. Such interactions between individuals and the studio were less profit-oriented and more driven by friendship or personal agendas. In fact, the cultural mediators’ actions were quite often constrained by cultural bureaucrats’ demands. Marta Feuchtwanger, for instance, saw

Introduction

17

an opportunity to bring East German film closer to U.S. exile and academic communities, yet she also had to correspond with GDR highechelon cultural attachés and diplomats in order to acquire film prints or to bring a DEFA filmmaker to California. Intellectual mediators like Marta Feuchtwanger and Thomas Mann represent a form of transnational cooperation that sustained DEFA’s persistent efforts to reach out to audiences behind the Iron Curtain. We need to consider the impact of such mediators as equally important to that of the earlier category of so-called business mediators. Ultimately, both types of mediators were professionals or cultural figures engaged in the same pursuit of art creation and dissemination as their DEFA colleagues, united by a common cause. By approaching both types of mediators as players in their own right, and by tackling their role in brokering the reception of DEFA in West Germany, Western Europe, and the United States, Cinema of Collaboration responds to several needs identified in German film studies. On the one hand, broadening the definition of the term “border crossing” to include West-East movement can impart new meanings to the divided identities within Europe and how they complemented each other. After 1961, when travel beyond the Berlin Wall was prohibited, working with Western cultural mediators also offered opportunities for East German and Eastern European filmmakers to reach out to foreign markets, and thus to establish international validation for their own art. At the same time, several of the cultural mediators working with DEFA opened a door to Eastern European markets and studios. These figures thus shed light on the interplay between officially endorsed encounters and private contacts. By foregrounding this interplay and cooperation, this study embraces a more inclusive approach that extends beyond the directors themselves to scriptwriters, producers, actors, and set designers. Such an approach allows also for insight into broader processes of cooperation among Eastern European artists.

DEFA and the Question of Eastern European Cinemas As in other socialist states, filmmaking in the GDR was a synthesis of efforts by successive cohorts of creative agents who did not work in isolation, but learned from each other and benefited from the open space of the socialist bloc and state-encouraged forms of exchange. Moreover, with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, such cooperation became a necessity. What ensued was a decisive turn to the East. GDR directors traveled for several reasons: to study or specialize in Moscow,

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Cinema of Collaboration

Prague, and Łódź; to view their Eastern neighbors’ films at festivals in Karlovy Vary, Leipzig, or the Soviet capital; and to negotiate numerous coproductions. The directors who entered such a lively cooperation belonged mostly to a younger DEFA cohort, a generation born after World War II. Some East German contacts, therefore, derived from previous UFA networks, but new alliances were forged as dictated by the needs of a shared market, common audience tastes, and similar demands by socialist governments. To cater to such diverse interests, DEFA filmmakers embarked on numerous joint projects, but a large part of this effort was the creation of socialist genres. Many DEFA classics analyzed repeatedly in scholarship for their artistic and entertainment cachet, such as science fiction features, the so-called Indianerfilme (films about Native Americans), fairy-tale adaptations, and artist or scientist biopics, could be brought to the screen only as coproductions with mainly Eastern European partners. This fact seems to get lost in the conventional DEFA story shaped by border closures and geopolitical vicissitudes. Cinema of Collaboration argues for a holistic view of Eastern European industries of the Cold War and thus examines DEFA’s ties to its neighbors within the socialist bloc. Katie Trumpener was one of the first to raise the question about DEFA’s “interrelationship with the other cinemas of Eastern Europe” and to point to the regional interconnectedness that played a central role for the film business.57 On the one hand, DEFA has always been “part of a film distribution and reception circuit which spanned eastern Europe,” but on the other, as Trumpener maintains, the East German studio never took a “dominant position” among socialist film industries.58 The reason for this, Larson Powell suggests, lies in the fact that DEFA failed to develop “the kind of auteurist modernism by which postwar cinema is commonly evaluated.”59 Though Powell emphasizes the influence of Soviet and Polish cinema on 1970s DEFA directors, he agrees with Trumpener that avant-garde traditions, such as the Czechoslovak New Wave and the Polish School, were lacking in the DEFA project. In Trumpener’s words, DEFA has remained “for the most part politically and aesthetically orthodox.”60 However, Oksana Bulgakowa, who also discusses commonalities and differences among DEFA and the Eastern European New Waves between 1956 and 1966, warns not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.61 Her study demonstrates that affinities in terms of aesthetics and style, as well as narrative themes such as personal freedom, reevaluation of the shared experience of World War II, and visually foregrounded subjectivity, need to be approached with an understanding of the specificity of each national identity and historical past. In other words, the daring

Introduction

19

experiments found in Italian Neorealism or the Polish, Hungarian, and Czech cinemas of the time should not become a cookie cutter applied to DEFA. Indeed, scholarship traditionally views avant-garde qualities as a prerequisite for determining which European films are valuable, yet it is necessary to ask whether innovation can be detected elsewhere, meaning not only on the visual or narrative levels. I propose that an inquiry into industrial aspects, distribution patterns, and cooperation strategies can take us further. Despite the lack of scholarly consensus on stylistic innovation, DEFA deserves a central place in Eastern European cinema history by virtue of its handling of the material side of filmmaking. Cinema of Collaboration foregrounds this idea and responds to the need for a comparative approach to Eastern European film industries, as identified by Dina Iordanova, Marsha Siefert, and Pavel Skopal. These film historians have recognized film cooperation, trade, and exhibition within the former socialist bloc as underexplored areas.62 Their methods of inquiry into this field, moreover, offer a complementary view on the current debate over aesthetics by reframing DEFA as an equal partner in Eastern bloc interactions. For instance, Iordanova and Siefert have shown that there was an elaborate system of cinematic barters between Eastern bloc countries and film festivals where exponent pictures were screened and discussed.63 In addition, socialist nations participated in state-governed circulation of cultural products within the bloc. As Siefert explains, this exchange was regulated by bilateral treaties of “friendship, cooperation, and mutual assistance” arranged to govern cooperation in science, education, tourism, and film.64 Second, domestic cultural institutions were created to represent “those involved in the production, dissemination, interpretation, and consumption of domestic culture in the individual Eastern European nations.”65 Such institutions comprised, for instance, creative unions among writers, musicians, artists, and filmmakers. While resembling professional or labor unions, these communities not only enabled official control over their members, but also served as a pluralistic forum to shape creative impetus. At the same time, as Siefert and Skopal show, allegedly similar institutional structures and practices, such as administrative hierarchies, state oversight, and cultural policymakers, differed from each other depending on national context and historical experience.66 This diversity of control mechanisms allowed for exceptions in the practice of censorship, and thus DEFA filmmakers saw coproductions with multiple socialist partners as a means to circumvent political restrictions. While comparing the cinematic industries in the GDR, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, Skopal

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Cinema of Collaboration

draws attention to DEFA’s role as principal initiator of coproductions and the preferred employer of Eastern European actors and filmmakers.67 In particular, he scrutinizes cultural transfer between these three countries, strategies for joint projects, and cultural policy regulating distribution and exhibition practices, as well as patterns of reception. Skopal concludes that “the history of Czech, Polish and East German cinema culture is not exclusively, nor even primarily, a history of ideologically loaded spectacles, ambitious art projects marred by ‘them’ or a few true ‘gems’ saved from the past and re-interpreted; it is also a part of many other histories—of institutions, diplomacy, state economics, education, marketing practices, and consumption.”68 Building on Iordanova’s, Siefert’s, and Skopal’s insights, the present study recontextualizes DEFA’s relationship to other socialist cinemas within the specific sensibilities and models of filmmaking informed by the Cold War. DEFA deliberately recycled elements from the state-run film companies in the East. The first such element was the structural organization of the film studio into artistic or dramaturgical units, an idea that emerged in the Czech, Polish, and Hungarian national studios. Such units comprised relatively independent collectives of film professionals gravitating around one or two leading directors and a dramaturge. This model offered internal support, mediation between the unit’s members and state officials, and better chances for negotiation of projects. Second, as discussed above, even though DEFA films were not as original as movies made within the Czechoslovak or Polish New Waves, they often adopted imagery and aesthetic sensibilities from socialist partners. Such borrowings attest to the ongoing dialogue within the socialist camp and the possibilities of pushing back at political limitations from within. Third, the socialist studios participated in economic exchanges of technical services, expertise, and talent, or provided landscapes and props for each other’s productions. Many DEFA genre films, for instance, were shot in the Yugoslav, Bulgarian, or Mongolian mountains, and other projects required the technical expertise of Soviet or Czech animation experts. In addition, DEFA filmmakers or dramaturges preferred working with multinational film crews or hiring Eastern European stars in coproductions. To a large extent, DEFA’s turn to the East was motivated by a shared sense of otherness vis-à-vis the West or of technological and material limitations. This urge to overcome a peripheral position forged a lasting collaboration among the cinemas of Eastern Europe. Like the abovementioned continental filmmakers of the interwar period who borrowed from, revamped, or even aesthetically rebelled against Hollywood genres,

Introduction

21

Eastern European studios developed strategies to emulate Western successes and to distinguish themselves from them both aesthetically and structurally. The differentiation in aesthetic terms meant the subversion of existing genres, such as the Western or science fiction. By empowering the disempowered, such as Native Americans or African people, in such genres, as well as by searching for innovative animation and special effects, DEFA and its Eastern European partners sought to fashion a “socialist” entertainment cinema. The above-described KAGs or writing teams formed with director, author, and—in some instances—the dramaturge or external consultants offer examples of new structural models that arose in response to Western cinemas. To focus on teamwork means to broaden the discussion of films to include an examination of how relations within the socialist bloc, institutional conditions, and domestic practices were impacted directly and indirectly by Cold War considerations.

Exploring the Archives Recovering DEFA’s agenda to cooperate with Eastern and Western partners would not be possible without access to archives whose contents have not yet been mined for information on the studio. Cinema of Collaboration’s exploration of archives was motivated, in particular, by the book’s ambition to emphasize the role of individuals who worked with and within DEFA. Inquiry into the motivation of West Germans doing business with the East German studio or its export department opens a new and intriguing dimension of national film history. Juxtaposing cross-border travel and trade with interactions that shaped the lived experience of historical actors allows for a fine-grained exploration of what outside observers valued about DEFA or projected onto the company. I delved into private archives of West German filmmakers or exiled intellectuals who dealt with DEFA: film financier Erich Mehl’s private archive in Lugano, Switzerland; the Artur Brauner collection at the Fassbinder Center in Frankfurt, Germany; and Marta Feuchtwanger’s archive at the Feuchtwanger Memorial Library at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Documents in Erich Mehl’s private archive enhance our understanding of the extent to which DEFA was involved in various types of partnerships with Western partners and underscore the studio’s dependency on Western currency. Mehl entered into contractual relations with the studio as a coproducer, traded film licenses, exported GDR films to

22

Cinema of Collaboration

West German broadcasters, received distribution rights for DEFA films in the West and copyrights for posters and other visual material, came into contact with promising Eastern European filmmakers such as Roman Polanski, and enjoyed traveling privileges behind the Curtain. In addition, Mehl’s correspondence with other producers points to a wide-reaching network of DEFA partners in the West, such as Artur Brauner, Walter Koppel, and Manfred Durniok. The existence of this network was confirmed by findings in the Brauner and in the Durniok archives. The Brauner archive supplies evidence of DEFA’s direct involvement in the early postwar film exchange in the late 1940s as well as of the complex process of casting Western actors in East German films or coproductions. Producers like Brauner and film financiers like Mehl operated multiple companies in West Germany or other Western European countries in order to be able to barter film subsidies in cash for services or to coproduce with DEFA. Similarly, the Durniok archive, housed at the Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, offers information about intermediaries who brokered deals between Western broadcasters and DEFA-Außenhandel, and thus debunks the myth that East German films were largely unknown or unpopular in the FRG. This archive also documents Durniok’s travel, his network-building strategies, and his lively cultural exchange with other socialist countries as well, such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and even China.69 Marta Feuchtwanger’s correspondence with Soviet and GDR highechelon party leaders and DEFA filmmakers yields insights into another distinctive area that has not been fully researched yet: the concerted attempt within the Eastern bloc to attract foreign intellectuals as supporters of the socialist project.70 The story of Feuchtwanger’s cooperation with one of DEFA’s best-known directors Konrad Wolf and the prolific dramaturge Walter Janka reveals a double agenda behind such recruiting. On the one hand, foreign visitors not only validated the ideological and social order behind the Iron Curtain, but also served as intermediaries who disseminated socialist artifacts and values in the West. The role of mediators between East and West Germany has so far been explored only in conjunction with attempts to internationally validate the GDR as a legitimate state.71 Feuchtwanger’s relationship with East German and Soviet officials, many of whom were wartime émigrés returning to their home country to build an antifascist society, suggests the longevity and legacy of the networks that existed among the German exiles in South and North America. The correspondence documenting this relationship is split between Konrad Wolf’s archive (located at the Berlin Academy of Arts) and other GDR officials’ ar-

Introduction

23

chives in the Federal Archive in Berlin and Feuchtwanger’s collection in Los Angeles. Another corpus of materials used in this book—including both published and hitherto unreleased sources—consists of interviews with filmmakers or authors employed permanently or temporarily at DEFA. Angel Wagenstein, a Bulgarian-Jewish writer who worked on four coproduction projects and a television feature film with East German filmmakers, offers a unique perspective both as an outsider to DEFA and as a fellow filmmaker from the socialist bloc. The East German studio, as Skopal has also shown, often hired Eastern European actors and film professionals.72 This practice was motivated not only by the studio’s agenda to hire experts at lower cost, but also by the officially endorsed need to cooperate with brother states. Wagenstein’s involvement in DEFA as a writer reflects both mandates: first, he worked on a temporary contract and thus was not paid a salary like most other GDR-based authors; and second, as a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party, he supposedly shared the ideals and values of internationalism promoted within the bloc. On a more pragmatic level, DEFA’s motives for cooperation were often purely material. For example, the studio needed locations that could not be found in the GDR; it required technical expertise or sought actors with distinct physiognomies or accents; and sometimes sheer economy forced the studio to trade services instead of paying in hard currency. DEFA strategies such as employing outsiders like Wagenstein, working with Western partners like Mehl and Brauner, or coercing Western intellectuals into popularizing socialist culture abroad all share some overlapping agendas: DEFA’s desire to achieve an international presence, to cut costs by cooperating with others, and, ultimately, to straddle the Iron Curtain divide.

Straddling the Divide Collaboration between East and West as seen through the prism of DEFA’s creative and business strategies serves as the organizing principle for the four chapters in the present study. While the first two chapters focus on earlier models for cooperation with Western partners (joint projects and service exchange between studios as well as film trade with cultural mediators), the last two chapters demonstrate how collaboration between artistic collectives (filmmaking units or director-writer teams) played a central role in fashioning socialist cinema as a counterpart and competitor to Hollywood. The first two chapters thema-

24

Cinema of Collaboration

tize primarily commercial pursuits and stage DEFA as a company with a specific economic and export agenda. The last two chapters engage deeper with the theoretical concepts of genre and authorship. Whereas film credits and critics usually give precedence to the institution of the film director, DEFA partnerships within the socialist bloc during the 1970s deconstructed this idea by treating filmmaking as a collective effort within an international (rather than purely national) framework. At the same time, individual chapters offer discussions of numerous genres: literary adaptations (chapter 1), suspense films and costume dramas (chapter 2), science fiction and films about Native Americans (chapter 3), and artist or scientist biopics (chapter 4). The variety of DEFA pictures made as coproductions or in cooperation with European film industries suggests that genre as a supranational category can further serve as a comparative lens. While this idea is not new to DEFA studies, it is new in the context of understanding film collaborations as driven less by political agendas than by popular demand and product marketing strategies. It is in this spirit that Cinema of Collaboration presents DEFA as a participant in an intense intercultural dialogue that so far has been perceived as mere backstage negotiations. The individual chapters in the book locate this dialogue in the East German studio’s cooperation with French companies (chapter 1), in the DEFA export department’s work with West German cultural mediators (chapter 2), in the adoption of Eastern European production models as an alternative to the Hollywood structure and the utilization of coproduction strategies to compete with mass entertainment (chapter 3), and in DEFA’s and Eastern bloc filmmakers’ shared desire to reconceptualize their artistic agenda in late socialism (chapter 4). Building on existing research and new archival findings, each chapter consists of close readings of representative film coproductions that are woven into broader cultural-historical accounts of political and institutional developments in Cold War Europe. The discussions in all four chapters include three components: first, an attempt to reconceptualize models for cooperation and agendas that have shaped DEFA history; second, primary research on film culture and politics in the GDR and Eastern Europe; and third, a focus on distinctive actors in the cultural mediation during the Cold War. Although all four chapters can be read as individual case studies, they refer to each other and form a chronological sequence. Chapter 1 traces the legacy of the 1920s ideal of an all-European cinema—Film Europe—in DEFA’s four postwar coproductions with French partners. All four were successful projects and serve here as a point

Introduction

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of departure for illuminating the ubiquitous conflation of artistic with political discourses from the 1920s, through the Third Reich, and into the 1950s. Specifically, chapter 1 delivers a comparative analysis of the continuities in Franco-German relations by demonstrating how three interwoven agendas were redefined in each period to reflect changing political prerogatives: first, a robust anti-American sentiment coupled with a critique of cultural imperialism; second, a national agenda driving international collaborations; and third, the use of joint productions to gain both recognition and a strong market presence abroad. These agendas were translated into institutional strategies for film coproduction that redressed Germany’s exclusion from the international community after each of the world wars, while also encouraging unity and solidarity among European filmmakers. Artists also networked on a transnational level by participating in film congresses and festivals, producing films with multinational casts, and sharing technical skills. As this chapter traces the continuity of Franco-German collaboration into the postwar period, it illuminates the ubiquitous conflation of artistic with political discourses and reveals the legacy of Film Europe. The question of commonalities and differences among DEFA, UFA, and UFI becomes crucial for understanding how past legacies may have impacted film production in postwar Eastern Europe. Chapter 2 highlights a different type of continuity that links the postwar interzonal film exchange between East and West Germany with the trade of film licenses during the Cold War. Financier Erich Mehl, who popularized GDR cinema abroad, fostered this exchange by overcoming the FRG’s ban on inter-German coproductions and by utilizing a wide network of professionals in his partnership with DEFA. While Mehl’s story forms the core of this chapter, other cultural mediators between East Germany and the West or Asia, such as Artur Brauner and Durniok, are also noted. Although lesser known in scholarship on East German cinema, Mehl was by far the most successful partner DEFA had in the West until East Germany’s political recognition in 1972. To illustrate his efficient business model, I open chapter 2 by recounting his significant intervention within West German politics to ensure the release of Wolfgang Staudte’s DEFA film Der Untertan (The Kaiser’s Lackey, 1951, GDR) in the West. My discussion here is based on unpublished correspondence and trade documents from Mehl’s private archive. Analysis of these sources reveals that Mehl’s lasting partnership with DEFA emerged from the interzonal film exchange, defied the governmental ban on inter-German cooperation in the 1950s, and adapted to shifting political tensions between 1961 and 1990. The chapter con-

26

Cinema of Collaboration

cludes with an in-depth analysis of the development of Mehl’s agenda between his first joint project with the East German studio, Leuchtfeuer (Navigating Light, 1954, dir. Wolfgang Staudte, GDR/Sweden), and his last one, Spielbank-Affäre (Casino Affair, 1959, dir. Arthur Pohl, GDR/ Sweden). In historiography, there are always continuities as well as ruptures; the question is how to identify and conceive of them and how to balance them. Recognizing continuities in the conduct of business across the European divide of 1945 can heighten our understanding of how collaborations persisted even when the Iron Curtain descended and common forms of trade and travel gradually stalled. Cultural mediators’ crossing of borders provides a framework for thinking about East German cinema’s trajectory and reception on both sides of the European divide. However, the activities of individuals attempting to straddle the divide also raise other issues, such as the role of ideology and institutions in the Cold War context and their broader influence on filmmaking. Chapter 3, therefore, explores DEFA’s efforts to produce entertainment films together with Eastern European partners in order to compete with the popular genre films of Hollywood and Western European cinemas. In German studies, ideas such as internationalism are sometimes set aside or dismissed as a pure form of ideological indoctrination. Yet we need to examine ideologies not only as shaping both sides of divided Europe, but also for their implications for the respective cultural discourses. Therefore, I highlight the importance of creative KAGs for the emergence of socialist-style entertainment cinema. Historically, these filmmaking collectives offered a new mode of artistic organization that Poland and Czechoslovakia had introduced in the 1950s within the structures of their respective state-run studios. In contrast to the Hollywood studio system of the time, filmmakers in Eastern Europe developed an alternative model: relatively autonomous units consisting of directors, literary advisers (or dramaturges, as they were known in the 1960s), scriptwriters, and production managers, which operated under the auspices of the larger state-run studio. DEFA adopted this model in the late 1950s with the mediation of Kurt Maetzig, who founded the first KAG within DEFA, Roter Kreis (Red Circle). I continue my discussion with a focus on Red Circle’s first coproduction, the East German–Polish utopian film Der schweigende Stern (The Silent Star, 1960, dir. Kurt Maetzig, GDR/Poland), made in the same year as the West German–U.S. coproduction about Wernher von Braun’s life, I Aim for the Stars (1960, dir. J. Lee Thompson). Tackling the impact of ideological discourse on these productions at the height of the space race,

Introduction

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this chapter sheds light on both the utopian film and the Indianerfilm, an Eastern European version of the Western, as ideologically charged genres that transcended national considerations. At the same time, such commercial projects were unthinkable without the exchange of services among Eastern European cinemas. It was not only the trade of expertise or the hiring of actors within the socialist bloc that defined these genres in coproduction, but also their emergence within distinctive artistic collectives: the creative unions. The impact of Eastern European genres, of course, extends beyond the commonly critiqued reenactment of Native American rituals or ferocious debates over scientific achievement during the space race. We need to see these films as occupying a middle ground between Western-style entertainment and the socialist project of educating the audience. Engaging these genres not only uncovers parallels between cinema’s agenda in both East and West, but also raises questions about the distinctiveness of GDR and Eastern European film. Its particularity had many dimensions, including its appeal to socialist and nonsocialist audiences, its competitiveness, its fascination with technical innovation, and, finally, the opportunity for a creative encounter among filmmakers within the East. In its last two decades, DEFA churned out a stream of historical dramas and biopics of artists and scientists that, like the genres discussed in chapter 3, were either coproduced with Eastern European partners or relied on collaboration through the exchange of technical services. Even though these genres had been common in East German cinema after the postwar period, they experienced a revival in the 1970s and 1980s as a kind of European art-house cinema and became central to DEFA’s international project. Chapter 4 contextualizes representative coproductions and focuses on the collaboration of directors with a writing team as well as with various cultural mediators. Filmed with a crew from eight different socialist countries, Konrad Wolf’s 1971 epic about the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya presents a unique opportunity to examine these developments. Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge, GDR/Soviet Union [USSR]) was directed by Wolf, yet it was cowritten by a team of authors, including DEFA dramaturge Walter Janka, Bulgarian scriptwriter Angel Wagenstein, and expatriate German intellectual Marta Feuchtwanger. This chapter draws attention to the strategy of screenplay coauthoring that became typical in such coproductions and in the case of Goya culminated during postproduction in a collective artistic effort to negotiate a film’s release despite censorship. I conclude chapter 4 with an in-depth analysis of the last successful coproduction between East and West Germany, Die

28

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Besteigung des Chimborazo (The Ascent of Chimborazo, dir. Rainer Simon, 1989, GDR/FRG). This retelling of Alexander von Humboldt’s life resonates with the aesthetic sensibilities of European-made films about artists and scientists. Goya and Chimborazo share several similarities worth pursuing here, because they illuminate the trajectory of the biopic as well as the significant effect a team of writers had on this genre. On the narrative level, both films focus on a universal genius portrayed as a person with strengths and weaknesses and on the discrepancies between rigid courtly norms, on the one hand, and artistic freedom of expression or passion for scientific truth on the other. On the production level, the multiplicity of languages spoken in both films (e.g., Spanish, French, and German in Chimborazo), as well as the varied shooting locations (Chimborazo was shot in East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, France, Colombia, and Spain) served to increase artistic and entertainment values and to appeal to wider international audiences. By tracing evolving coauthorship patterns among filmmakers in the 1970s and the 1980s, my discussion complicates the auteurist image of the DEFA director as a flagship institution in both film production and negotiations. In addition, it sheds light on the crucial involvement of the coauthors, dramaturges, and even consultants who ultimately shaped the aesthetic message of a film. Throughout the book I argue against a reductionist outlook on East German cinema, maintaining that processes in each arena explored here—partnership with Western European studios and cultural mediators, film exchange, introduction of filmmaking collectives, the recasting of Hollywood genres, transnational networks, and writing teams— need to be given their own historical weight. In short, an in-depth study of DEFA must be informed by the engagement of the state-run company with past and present traditions. I hope that the reader will find this engagement thought-provoking and worth pursuing.

Notes Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 1. Volker Schlöndorff wrote these words in an open letter to East German director Günter Reisch: “Die Vision oder wem gehört Babelsberg: DEFA und kein Ende: Offene Antwort Volker Schlöndorffs auf einen Brief Günter Reischs,” Berliner Zeitung, November 21, 1992. Translated in Randall Halle, German Film after Germany: Toward a Transnational Aesthetic (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 66. 2. “Selbstverständlich ein Immobiliengeschäft: Ein Gespräch mit den Filmregisseuren Volker Schlöndorff und Peter Fleischmann über den Verkauf der Defa,” Tagesspiegel, May 9, 1992.

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3. For a detailed discussion of the debate, see Bärbel Dalichow, “Das letzte Kapitel: 1989 bis 1993,” in Ralf Schenk, ed., Das zweite Leben der Filmstadt Babelsberg: DEFA Spielfilme, 1946–1992 (Berlin: Henschel, 1994), 329–53. 4. See Brigitta Wagner’s discussion of the Schlöndorff’s controversy in 2008 and the collection of related articles from the German press she curated in Brigitta B. Wagner, ed., DEFA after East Germany (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014), 1–7, 320–31. 5. Gundolf Freyermuth, Der Übernehmer: Volker Schlöndorff in Babelsberg (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1993). 6. For a detailed discussion of the transnational character of European cinema and Babelsberg’s central place within Europe as envisioned by Schlöndorff and CGE, see Halle, German Film After Germany, 60–88. Halle provides an insightful analysis of Schlöndorff’s expertise and his strategies to revamp Babelsberg into a prestigious site for high-quality and high-budget pictures, nevertheless hindered by the director’s resentment of Hollywood. Halle also sensibly points out that “Babelsberg was a small object in a giant media conglomerate,” Vivendi, in which the studios’ future was not a top priority and whose downfall ultimately led to the resale of the studios (Halle, German Film After Germany, 83). 7. See Angus Finney’s argument in The State of European Cinema: A New Dose of Reality (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 68–84. Throughout the chapter, but also specifically in two sections entitled “The Barrandov Experience” and “The Babelsberg Disappointment,” Finney explains why Schlöndorff’s strategies for restructuring the management of the studios and improving marketing operations failed compared to those at the Czech Barrandov studios and others, such as the Koliba Studios in the Slovak Republic and Mafilm in Hungary. 8. Thomas Elsaesser, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005), 13, 16. 9. Tim Bergfelder, International Adventures: German Popular Cinema and European CoProductions in the 1960s (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2005); Anne Jäckel, European Film Industries (London: British Film Institute, 2003). 10. Mark Betz, Beyond the Subtitle: Remapping European Art Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 1–43 (29). 11. Randall Halle, The Europeanization of Cinema: Interzones and Imaginative Communities (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 14. 12. For comparative studies on Cold War cultures, see Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam, eds., The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe, 1945–1960 (London: Frank Cass, 2003); Uta Poiger, Jazz, Rock, and Rebels: Cold War Politics and American Culture in Divided Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); David Crew, ed., Consuming Germany in the Cold War: Leisure Consumption and Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2003); and Mila Ganeva, Film and Fashion amidst the Ruins of Berlin: From Nazism to the Cold War (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2018). 13. Giles Scott-Smith and Joes Segal, “Introduction: Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War in East and West,” in Divided Dreamworlds? The Cultural Cold War in East and West, ed. Peter Romijn, Giles Scott-Smith, and Joes Segal (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2012), 1–9 (1). This essay collection argues that, despite obvious gaps between the political systems and everyday experience, people who lived in the two antagonistic power blocs still shared cultural forms. Another edited volume on this topic, Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies, ed. Annette Vowinckel, Marcus M. Payk, and Thomas Lindenberger (New York: Berghahn, 2012), argues for extending the scope of Cold War studies beyond the focus on politics, diplomacy, and military action in the 1950s and 1960s. The contri-

30

14. 15.

16. 17.

18.

19.

20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

Cinema of Collaboration butions to Cold War Cultures show how the reduction of the Cold War to a political conflict overlooks multiple artistic and cultural expressions that reveal commonalities and hybridity in the experiences of the period. Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), xiv. Recent scholarship on film festivals suggests the importance of both feature and documentary films and the sites for their display in this regard. See Andreas Kötzing and Caroline Moine, Cultural Transfer and Political Conflicts: Film Festivals and the Cold War (Göttingen, Germany: V&R unipress, 2017). Caroline Moine, Screened Encounters: The Leipzig Documentary Film Festival, 1955–1990 (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2018), 8. DEFA’s liquidation (i.e., the erasure of the company’s name from the German Business Register) technically took place in 1994. However, the company had already been sold in 1992 to the French conglomerate CGE, later renamed Vivendi SA. This sale was, effectively, the end of DEFA. See Jens Rübner, Faszination Kulisse–60 Jahre DEFA (Leipzig, Germany: Engelsdorfer, 2008). Compare to Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke, “Introduction: Re-imagining East German Cinema,” in Re-Imagining DEFA: East German Cinema in Its National and Transnational Contexts, ed. Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke (New York: Berghahn, 2016), 1–16. For DEFA’s last years and its legacy in the new cinematic landscape of unified Germany, see Wagner, DEFA after East Germany. Winston S. Churchill, “The Sinews of Peace,” in Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” Speech Fifty Years Later, ed. James W. Muller (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1999), 1–14 (8). Churchill’s speech on March 5, 1946 was a reaction to Joseph Stalin’s election speech delivered on February 9, 1946 where Soviet supremacy was asserted against a capitalist world that allegedly had engendered World War II and would soon collapse into another similar conflict. For details, see Alastair Koch-Williams, “The Soviet Union and the Early Cold War, 1945–53,” in Russia’s International Relations in the Twentieth Century, ed. Alastair Koch-Williams (London: Routledge, 2013), 87–99. Michael David-Fox, “The Iron Curtain as Semipermeable Membrane: Origins and Demise of the Stalinist Superiority Complex,” in Cold War Crossings: International Travel and Exchange across the Soviet Bloc, 1940–1960, ed. Patryk Babiracki and Kenyon Zimmer (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2014), 14–39 (15). Most edited volumes on DEFA rehearse its history and structure, but Englishlanguage monographs that offer a comprehensive analysis of the film industry and its intertwinement with the state are Daniela Berghahn’s Hollywood Behind the Wall: the Cinema of East Germany (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2005); and Joshua Feinstein, The Triumph of the Ordinary: Depictions of Daily Life in the East German Cinema, 1949–1989 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 8–49. Berghahn, Hollywood Behind the Wall, 19–23. Ibid., 22. See Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification and the “New” Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002). See also the interviews with two former DEFA directors, Peter Kahane and Jörg Foth, in Wagner, DEFA after East Germany, 51–79. Studies of DEFA’s ideological agenda include, among others, Thomas Heimann, DEFA, Künstler und SED: Zum Verhältnis von Kulturpolitik und Film in der SBZ/DDR 1945 bis 1958 (Berlin: Vistas, 1993); Dagmar Schittly, Zwischen Regie und Regime: Die

Introduction

26. 27. 28. 29.

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41.

42.

43. 44.

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Filmpolitik der SED im Spiegel der DEFA-Produktionen (Berlin: Links, 2002); and Wolfgang Gersch, Szenen eines Landes: Die DDR und ihre Filme (Berlin: Aufbau, 2006). Dalichow, “Das letzte Kapitel,” 351. See Brigitta Wagner’s “Introduction: Making History ReVisible” and “The Schlöndorff Controversy (2008)” in Wagner, DEFA after East Germany, 1–7 (1), 320–31 (322). Marc Silberman and Henning Wrage, eds., DEFA at the Crossroads of East German and International Film Culture (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2014), 2. Barton Byg, “Introduction: Reassessing DEFA Today,” in Barton Byg and Betheny Moore, eds., Moving Images of East Germany: Past and Future of DEFA Film (Washington, DC: AICGS, 2002), 1–23. Barton Byg, “Spectral Images in the Afterlife of GDR Cinema,” in Wagner, DEFA after East Germany, 24–47 (25). Michael Wedel et al., eds., DEFA International: Grenzüberschreitende Filmbeziehungen vor und nach dem Mauerbau (Wiesbaden, Germany: Springer, 2013). Allan and Heiduschke, Re-Imagining DEFA. Rosemary Stott, Crossing the Wall: The Western Feature Film Import in East Germany (Oxford: Lang, 2011). See, e.g., Sebastian Heiduschke, East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013); Qinna Shen, The Politics of Magic: DEFA Fairy-Tale Films (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2015); and Wedel et al., DEFA International. See here all the contributions listed under “Transnationale Distribution und Rezeption” in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 353–450. See also Lars Karl and Pavel Skopal, eds., Cinema in the Service of the State: Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1960 (New York: Berghahn, 2015). Berghahn, Hollywood Behind the Wall. Dina Iordanova, Cinema of the Other Europe (London: Wallflower Press, 2003), 1–3. See, for instance, Christiane Mückenberger and Günter Jordan, “Sie sehen selbst, Sie hören selbst . . . ’: Eine Geschichte der DEFA von ihren Anfängen bis 1949 (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1994), 14, 25. Compare to Alfred Lindemann, “Die Lage des deutschen Films,” in Der deutsche Film: Fragen—Forderungen—Aussichten. Bericht vom Ersten Deutschen Film-Autoren-Kongreß. 6–9. Juni 1947 in Berlin (Berlin: Henschel, 1947), 9–19. For a discussion of the structural resemblance between DEFA and UFA in terms of their organization and all-encompassing supervision of film projects, see Berghahn, Hollywood Behind the Wall, 13–21 (13, 19). Mariana Ivanova, “Die Prestige-Agenda der DEFA. Koproduktionen mit Erich Mehls Filmfirma Pandora (1953−1957),” in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 217−33. Thomas Heimann, DEFA, Künstler und SED-Politik. 57. Quoted also in Bathrick, “From Soviet Zone to Volksdemokratie: The Politics of Film Culture in the GDR, 1945– 1960,” in Karl and Skopal, eds., Cinema in the Service of the State, 15–38 (17). For some shared themes that such directors addressed when embarking on making films for postwar audiences, see Ganeva, Film and Fashion, a comparative study of East and West pictures in the immediate postwar in terms of aesthetic continuity and rupture. Stephen Brockmann, “The Struggle over Audiences in Postwar East German Film,” Film & History 45, no. 1 (2015): 5–16. David Bathrick, “From UFA to DEFA: Past as Present in Early GDR Films,” in Contentious Memories: Looking Back at the GDR, ed. Jost Hermand and Marz Silberman (New York: Peter Lang, 1998), 169–88. See also Bathrick’s expanded version of this essay, “From Soviet Zone to Volksdemokratie.”

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45. On Nazi cinema’s creative strategies and emotional effects, see Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996). 46. Detlef Kannapin, “Was hat Zara Leander mit der DEFA zu tun? Die Nachwirkungen des NS-Films im DEFA-Schaffen—Notwendige Anmerkungen für eine neue Forschungsperspektive,” in Apropos: Film 2005 [ = Das Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung, 2005], ed. Schenk, Ralf, Erika Richter, and Claus Löser (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2005), 188–209. 47. For a comprehensive account, see Klaus Kreimeier, The Ufa Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company, 1918–1945, trans. Robert and Rita Kimber (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996). 48. See Leni Borger, “Ufas Russen. Die Emigranten von Montreuil bis Babelsberg,” in Das Ufa-Buch: Kunst und Krisen—Stars und Regisseure—Wirtschaft und Politik. Die internationale Geschichte von Deutschlands größtem Film-Konzern, ed. Hans-Michael Bock and Michael Töteberg (Frankfurt, Germany: Zweitausendeins, 1992), 236–39; Sybille M. Sturm and Arthur Wohlgemuth, eds., Hallo? Berlin? Ici Paris! Deutsch-Französische Filmbeziehungen, 1918–1939 (Munich, Germany: edition text + kritik, 1996); Jörg Schöning and Johannes Roschlau, eds., Film im Herzen Europas: Deutsch-tschechische Filmbeziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert (Berlin: absolute Medien, 2007). 49. See Vladislav Zubok, “Introduction,” in Babiracki and Zimmer, Cold War Crossings, 1–13; Michael David-Fox, Crossing Borders: Modernity, Ideology, and Culture in Russia and the Soviet Union (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015); and Patryk Babiracki and Austin Jersild, eds., Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War: Exploring the Second World (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 50. Marsha Siefert, “Soviet Cinematic Internationalism and Socialist Film Making, 1955– 1972,” in Babiracki and Jersild, Socialist Internationalism, 161–93 (164). 51. Ibid. 52. Patryk Babiracki and Austin Jersild, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Babiracki and Jersild, Socialist Internationalism, 1–16 (2). In addition, two other volumes in the series East Looks West address the topics of travel and cultural exchange within Europe, before and after the division of the continent, and thus broaden the Cold War perspective on European spaces and cultures: Wendy Bracewell and Alex Drace-Francis, eds., Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe (Budapest: CEU Press, 2008); Wendy Bracewell, Orientations: An Anthology of East European Travel Writing, ca. 1550–2000 (Budapest: CEU Press, 2009). 53. David-Fox, “The Iron Curtain as Semipermeable Membrane,” 14–39 (14). 54. Zubok, “Introduction,” 1–13 (2). 55. David-Fox, Crossing Borders, 163–84 (163). 56. Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 90; “Buddenbrooks: Bonner Bedenken,” Der Spiegel, August 5, 1959; Manfred Jelenski, “Nur Bonn verhinderte die Koproduktion Buddenbrooks,” Deutsche Filmkunst, 12, 380–81. 57. Katie Trumpener, “DEFA: Moving Germany into Eastern Europe,” in Byg and Moore, Moving Images of East Germany, 92. 58. Ibid. 59. Larson Powell, “ ‘Wind from the East’: DEFA and Eastern European Cinema,” in Silberman and Wrage, DEFA at the Crossroads, 223–42 (223). 60. Trumpener, “DEFA: Moving Germany into Eastern Europe,” 95. On the term “Polish School,” see Paul Coates, The Red and The White: The Cinemas of People’s Poland (London: Wallflower Press, 2005), 17–19.

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61. Oksana Bulgakowa, “DEFA-Filme im Kontext der ‘neuen Wellen’ im osteuropäischen Film,” in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 73–91. 62. See Dina Iordanova, The Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film (London: Wallflower, 2003); Marsha Siefert, “East European Cold War Cultures: Alterities, Commonalities, and Film Industries,” in Cold War Cultures: Perspectives on Eastern and Western European Societies, ed. Annette Vowinckel, Marcus M. Payk, and Thomas Lindenberger (New York: Berghahn, 2012), 23–54; and Pavel Skopal, Filmová kultura severního trojúhelníko: Filmy, kina a dváci Československa, NDR a Polska 1945–1968 (Brno, Czech Republic: HOST, 2014). 63. Iordanova, The Cinema of the Other Europe, 49; Siefert, “East European Cold War Cultures,” 37. 64. Siefert, “East European Cold War Cultures,” 30. 65. Ibid., 32. 66. Ibid., 31. See also Karl and Skopal, Cinema in Service of the State; and Balázs Apor, Peter Apor, and E. A. Rees, eds., The Sovietization of Eastern Europe: New Perspectives on the Postwar Period (Washington, DC: New Academia, 2008). 67. Skopal, Filmová kultura severhíno trojúhelmníko. 68. Ibid., 286. 69. For further information on Durniok’s international activities, see the contributions by Angel Wagenstein, GDR documentary filmmaker Gitta Nickel and journalist Peter Schultze in Manfred Durniok, Manfred Durniok—Films & Friends, Berlin: Das neue Berlin, 1996, 24–29 and 127–32. 70. Marta Feuchtwanger’s role as an intermediary between Soviet and GDR culture and the United States has been previously mentioned only briefly by Manfred Flügge in his biography, Die vier Leben der Marta Feuchtwanger: Biographie (Berlin: Aufbau, 2008), 375–82. 71. See, for instance, Marc Silberman’s discussion of intermediaries between the French studios and DEFA in “Learning from the Enemy: DEFA-French Coproductions of the 1950s,” Film History 18, no. 1 (2006): 21−45; and Stefan Soldovieri’s discussion of Erich Mehl’s role at DEFA in “Socialists in Outer Space: East German Film’s Venusian Adventure,” Film History 10, no. 3 (1998): 382–98. 72. Pavel Skopal, “The Pragmatic Alliance of DEFA and Barrandov: Cultural Transfer, Popular Cinema and Czechoslovak-East German Coproductions, 1957–95,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 38, no. 1 (2018): 1–14.

Chapter 1

THE LEGACY OF FILM EUROPE DEFA’s Coproductions with France

The greatest film-producing nations on the European continent are Germany and France; they alone were capable of preserving their own substantial film industries in the face of the economically potent Film America. —Alexander Jason, La Cinématographie Française, March 24, 19281 It is no longer a secret in the Paris film studios that one can co-operate wonderfully with your DEFA. . . . No one else has such sizeable studios, no one builds such lavish sets, no one brings such vigor to a production as your DEFA. —French producer Paul Cadeac during his work on Die Elenden (Les Misérables, 1958, dir. Jean-Paul Le Chanois), April 26, 19572

It was the summer of 1957. On a movie set in Babelsberg, on the edge of Berlin, soldiers of the East German National People’s Army were erecting barricades and posing in dapper blue-and-white uniforms. Wheelbarrows lay scattered around; exhausted rebels rested behind a horse carriage, their clothing shabby, their faces blackened with gunpowder. A long-haired teenager ran past the slogan “Vivent les peuples!” (Long live the people!) chalked on a fake brick wall. “Silence!” ordered the French interpreter in German as director Jean-Paul Le Chanois approached the towering Jean Gabin, starring as Jean Valjean, to discuss the next scene.3 “A slow-paced revolution!” observed a reporter for the East German daily Neue Zeit, as if describing the gradual revival of Franco-German film relations. “[Victor] Hugo’s novel Les Mi-

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sérables [is being adapted] by DEFA in co-operation with Pathé-Paris, the largest French film company, into a double feature.”4 The reporter added, “Both sides are quite pleased with the smooth co-operation. Pathé-Film’s choice of DEFA for a partner shows the great reputation our films enjoy in France.”5 Such pronouncements were meant to whet East German moviegoers’ appetite for Western stars, glamorous costumes, and entertaining narratives; they surely pleased those cultural functionaries and party stalwarts who sought to promote recognition of the GDR’s sovereignty by mounting prestigious film coproductions with European partners. DEFA’s collaboration with Pathé was spurred by West Germany’s adoption in September 1955 of the so-called Hallstein Doctrine as a principle of foreign policy: henceforth West Germany would not maintain diplomatic relations with any government that recognized the GDR’s sovereignty. Historically motivated, this action was intended to propel the reunification of East and West Germany and to ensure the integrity of German culture. Instead, the doctrine imposed de facto restrictions on state-level trade and cultural exchange between the socialist state and nonsocialist nations. In response, the GDR sought to revitalize dormant European alliances, particularly with France, in order to encourage future business ventures and to reach out to otherwise inaccessible markets. To this end, the socialist government viewed cinema as an effective means to cultivate positive relationships with Western European nations in the absence of official diplomatic ties. East German coproductions with French partners served this purpose well: they were artistic products regulated by bilateral contracts, made by two or more studios across geopolitical borders, and intended for audiences in both socialist and capitalist societies. By undertaking joint film productions with private companies like Pathé, DEFA filmmakers could reenter the European artistic community and profit from the cultural cachet of Francophone cinema, which had a high profile in the mid1950s. Such cultural interactions, East German officials believed, would challenge the Hallstein Doctrine and effect the diplomatic recognition of their socialist state. In exchange for a share in the prestige of French cinema, DEFA provided Pathé with a wealth of financial (more than 3 million East German marks), material, and technical support during the making of Die Elenden. This level of commitment shows the extent to which the East Germans perceived such collaborations as seedbeds of future business ventures between the two film industries. In a 1957 interview, director Le Chanois made it clear that filming the epic would not have been

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possible without the cooperation of East Germany and access to the resources of Babelsberg: “The German share will be especially important in terms of the means of production. Enormous and gorgeous sets await me [in Babelsberg], designed under the guidance of my talented decorator Escoffier. . . . I was able to restore the Digne Square with Mr. Madeleine’s house, the City Hall, and the Hospital L’Auberge of Montfermeil; the forest where Valjean meets Cosette, the sewers of Paris, and several streets of the capital city.”6 Indeed, the scale of the scenery corresponded to the enormous ambition of this cooperative enterprise in both political and artistic terms. Shooting in Germany took sixty-nine days and required the construction of sumptuous sets and the use of superior sound and camera equipment, as well as many film professionals in comparison to earlier DEFA coproductions. A total of 127 French employees traveled to East Berlin, including cameramen, technicians, and lighting equipment specialists, to work with forty-four German actors, as well as thousands of extras, costume designers, and editors on the ostentatious project.7 Die Elenden was the most elaborate of four coproductions undertaken by DEFA with various French companies between 1956 and 1960, all of which shared a similar agenda. Two of the others were also adapted from nineteenth-century European literature: Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel (The Bold Adventure, 1957, dir. Gérard Philipe), based on Charles de Coster’s 1867 novel about the legendary national hero whose adventures served as an allegory for the Dutch War of Independence; and Trübe Wasser (Muddy Waters, 1960, dir. Louis Daquin), a socially critical moral tale drawn from Honoré de Balzac’s 1842 novel La Rabouilleuse. The fourth, Die Hexen von Salem (The Crucible, 1957, dir. Raymond Rouleau), had an American source, namely Arthur Miller’s 1953 critique of McCarthyism, The Crucible; the stage drama had been adapted for the screen by the left-leaning French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. All four films revisited historical events that were not only of interest to European audiences, but also provided an opportunity for critical commentary on contemporary social and political tensions in and outside of Europe. The 1958 version of Les Misérables, for example, focused on the lower classes’ striving for social justice and a better life. This coproduction, however, was distinguished from the others by its lavish sets, superior cinematography, and high production values, which reflect its makers’ intentions to create a state-of-the-art film that would rival the recent Hollywood extravaganza of The Ten Commandments (1956, dir. Cecil B. DeMille) and achieve commercial success in Europe and beyond. Overall, DEFA and Pathé aimed to create a high-

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brow cinéma de qualité that could brave mass-produced American entertainment. This agenda, as we will see later, had been shaped by the legacy of German-French cinematic relations since the early 1920s. Critical discussions of Die Elenden have tended to focus on its political motivations and ideological concerns, while its artistic and business agendas remain in the shadows. Some authors have foregrounded the connections between the communist convictions of the director, Le Chanois, and DEFA’s socialist realist cinema; others have scrutinized various disagreements between the partners in the coproduction, as the interests of France and East Germany diverged during the escalating Cold War.8 There is no doubt that the film is freighted with contemporary political and social commentary. Yet the history of its production reveals that Die Elenden was conceived first and foremost as a vehicle to recapture European markets saturated with imports from the United States. In the aftermath of World War II, when Hollywood releases prevailed in the West, many filmmakers in France sought to imbue their national cinema with unique aesthetic qualities that would attract viewers. As Le Chanois put it, Hugo’s novel possessed “an authentic national character that assures the international success of our best works in foreign countries.”9 More importantly, in his attempt to create a high-quality entertainment specifically for European audiences, the filmmaker followed in the tracks of numerous Franco-German coproductions from the interwar and wartime periods. Repositioned within the rich history of those collaborations, Die Elenden emerges as an edifying case study of DEFA’s and Pathé’s contribution to European cinema’s self-definition vis-à-vis Hollywood. Reconstructing the historical context of UFA’s and DEFA’s partnerships with French companies presented in this chapter reveals salient continuities in their approach and institutional practices as well as the evolving dynamics of Franco-German cinematic relationships. Moreover, the ideas about European cinema that both these film studios shared challenge the traditional view of a break between the cinematic cultures of pre- and postwar Germany. It is true that DEFA, in stark contrast to UFA in the early 1920s, never articulated the ambition to lead a Europe-wide consortium to rival Hollywood. Nevertheless, the Babelsberg studio’s program during the 1950s—to produce highbrow popular films as a way of reclaiming its former prominence within Europe—is the legacy of UFA’s self-conception as a studio at the very heart of the continent. DEFA’s filmmakers’ idea of cinema as means of demonstrating both the high quality and the political importance of film art resonated with the agenda of French filmmakers in the 1950s,

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but it can be traced back to the significant cooperation between studios in these countries three decades earlier. Cooperation among national film industries in Europe dates to the 1920s, when the Germans and the French spearheaded an initiative to create a transnational cinema—a Film Europe—as a way to jointly resist the influx of Hollywood products. The concept of a pan-European cinema encompassed an array of interchanges among motion picture studios on the continent, but it was never institutionalized; rather, it existed as a discourse in the trade press and as a focus of several filmmakers’ congresses. The Film Europe ideal found expression in multiple domains: aesthetic (exchange of artistic ideas and innovations), technical (exchange of technical expertise, assets, and editing services), ideological (national agendas), and commercial (mutual distribution deals or leasing of production facilities). This ideal laid the foundation for a dialogue among national film industries and inspired numerous strategies to cultivate European domestic markets. Established studios in Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and other nations formulated a set of industrial policies in order to promote their products and enable the free movement of cinematic talent, technical equipment, and expertise.10 Such policies governed the creation of protocols for coproductions, the use of international casts for nationally based films, or the exploitation of more universal settings and storylines. The goal was to create a universal international cinema that would transcend geopolitical borders. Coproductions were key to this plan: joint projects involving smaller continental film companies allowed them to pool their sources in order to lower production cost, and—in some cases—to benefit from national subsidies and screen quotas. Film Europe was also realized in reciprocal agreements between distributors and exhibitors in different nation-states, in response to their efforts to rationalize and secure a long-term market share.11 One of the institutions that steered Film Europe was the German film studio, UFA. From its inception, UFA was conceived as a leading player in the international film business; a government-instigated conglomerate that relied heavily on foreign revenue.12 UFA films, therefore, developed a distinct style that aimed at refined visual expression, fostered the innovative use of technology, and cashed in on its flamboyant stars. To become an intermediary between Western and Central European film industries, UFA opened its doors to directors and actors of French, British, Danish, Czech, Hungarian, Russian, and other nationalities, who made prestige films on German soil. Thus, the largest European motion picture studio responded to contemporaneous trends

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in German policy, which in the aftermath of World War I sought to alleviate strained relations with its neighbors (including a rapprochement with France); in the process, it demonstrated the inevitable confluence of film art and politics. Although Film Europe as such was rarely discussed after the late 1920s, the pan-European concept lived on in the ideologically tainted cinema of the Third Reich. For instance, Joseph Goebbels, the minister of public enlightenment and propaganda from 1933 on, used the idea as a pretext to create an Internationale Filmkammer (IFC; International Film Chamber) in order to boost the creativity, productivity, and market dominance of the Nazi film industry. French and German cinematic collaboration continued to flourish throughout the occupation of France: a set up that abetted the marketing of German films in Western Europe. In Paris, film companies sponsored by the Nazi government, such as L’Alliance Cinématographique Européene (ACE; European Cinematic Alliance, a subsidiary of UFA), Filmsonor-Tobis, and Continental produced and circulated the majority of pictures between 1929 and 1939. In 1942 UFA acquired all domestic German companies to become the overpowering state-run conglomerate UFI, which soon controlled both film production and distribution in occupied Europe. To sustain its dominant position, UFI continued to coproduce films with most nations on the continent.13 The German-French partnership became crucial for Nazi aspirations to conquer European markets: the Germans believed that, by increasing the number and quality of projects completed with occupied France, they would gain access not only to the Francophone world but also to other countries that preferred French over Nazi German cinema.14 At the same time, many French directors traveled to Babelsberg to make films because their own cinematic industry was on the brink of collapse due to economic crises. A similar situation prevailed after World War II: the motivations of French filmmakers who agreed to work in East Germany during the 1950s were less political than financial in nature. As the successor to UFA, DEFA inherited some institutional contacts to the once widereaching transnational network of the 1920s and the 1930s and was determined to maintain its predecessor’s standing in the international market.15 Neither DEFA’s location in the GDR, in other words behind the Iron Curtain, nor the status of East Germany as politically unrecognized in the Western hemisphere effectively hindered cooperation. On the contrary, DEFA emerged as an attractive partner to French companies who aspired to make big-budget productions but lacked the generous state subsidies that German cinema had always enjoyed. The

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Babelsberg studios—now sponsored by the GDR—continued to offer economically lucrative deals. The film business of postwar Europe—at least for a short time—had again become dependent on collaborations, where coproductions and reciprocal distribution agreements were customary. Thus, postwar French coproductions with East Germany, including Die Elenden, constituted the renewal of a decades-long cooperation that at times depended on and at times went beyond the approval of the respective governments. The key to a productive analysis of the continuities among UFA, UFI, and DEFA is a critical approach to three interwoven agendas that these studios shared—agendas that were redefined in each time period to reflect changing political prerogatives: first, a robust anti-American sentiment coupled with a critique of cultural imperialism; second, a national agenda driving international collaborations; and third, the use of joint productions to gain both recognition and a strong market presence abroad. These agendas were translated into institutional strategies for film coproduction that redressed Germany’s exclusion from the international community after each of the world wars, or that appealed for unity and solidarity among European filmmakers. As we will see, artists also networked on a transnational level by participating in film congresses and festivals, producing film versions with multinational casts, and sharing technical expertise. Scholars have discussed the three phases I examine here—Film Europe as a concerted endeavor of major film studios on the continent, the Third Reich’s aspirations to establish a Europe-wide film cartel, and the state-driven internationalism behind DEFA’s coproductions with European partners—without, however, recognizing the persistent confluences among them.16 The continuity of postwar French and East German collaboration described in this chapter thus illuminates the ubiquitous conflation of artistic with political discourses and reveals the lasting legacy of Film Europe.

Film Europe and Early French-German Coproductions In the mid-1920s, certain groups within the German and French film industries—especially those in the production and distribution sectors—saw Hollywood’s encroachment on European markets as a major challenge to their own commercial and artistic success. While Weimar society, in general, welcomed Americanization in popular culture and everyday life, the German experience of American film, as Thomas Saunders has suggested, “had acquired a narrative of its own, from

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anticipation to infatuation to disillusionment to recrimination.”17 This trajectory began with the post–World War I quest for a unique national cinema vis-à-vis American film expressed by key German directors of the period such as Georg Jacoby in “Film-America and Us” (1922), Joe May in “The Style of the Export Film” (1922), and Ernst Lubitsch in “Film Internationality” (1924).18 In response, the German film trade press adopted the term “Film Europe” to describe an ideal, vibrant film association that could counter American inroads. The term was first used in the 1924 article “European Monroe Doctrine,” published in a leading journal Lichtbildbühne, the second-largest film daily, which discussed the need to equalize import quotas between the continents; in his 1926 Reichsfilmblatt essay titled “Film-Europa,” Felix Henseleit invoked the concept in his appeal for the preservation of a distinct cinematic identity.19 The Film Europe movement blended cultural and economic motivations and culminated in a drive to regain domestic audiences and boost revenue. Several German and French producers and exhibitors assumed a leading role in the emerging pan-European film movement. UFA was uniquely positioned to lead this effort due to its vertically integrated structure, similar to that of leading American motion picture companies; its resources, talent, and cinema culture were on a par with Hollywood’s best. The French studios Pathé and Gaumont were among the keenest champions of Film Europe because they yearned to recover their long-lost supremacy in the U.S. and world markets. In particular, Pathé—between 1900 and 1910 the largest film producer in the world— had stoked the nickelodeon revolution in the United States as the primary supplier of quality film stock and genre features. Yet the Americans had managed to oust these companies, replacing the allegedly lowbrow entertainment they churned out with screen Westerns that instilled national values in movie-going culture.20 Fifteen years later, the leading French and German companies leveled similar criticism at Hollywood pictures, claiming that they lacked European values. Beyond their promise to consolidate the markets on the continent, UFA, Pathé, and other studios envisioned not just breaking the American monopoly but also revamping and promoting their own product as a new cinéma de qualité. To translate their criticism into concrete actions, Film Europe proponents formulated a new anti-American policy. Citing German and French audiences’ apparent preference for domestic productions over American imports, they condemned Hollywood’s cultural imperialism and emphasized the need to foster competition by producing prestige

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films together with other strong European film companies. Prestige came to be defined, in opposition to the American formula of massproduced entertainment, in terms of qualities such as technological innovation or distinctive cinematography that accounted for a stateof-the-art product. A concomitant debate evolved over the mentality of films and audiences, which the Film Europe champions defined as a cluster of interests, experiences, and tastes that set continental spectators apart from their American peers. In this regard, Hollywood scripts came under harsh scrutiny for their insensitivity to European mentalities and for their compromised aesthetic qualities. The conviction spread that a “good screenplay” was essential to a “good film.”21 Generally speaking, anti-American sentiment found expression in the harsh appraisal of contemporary Hollywood cinema as propaganda for American culture, values, and way of life. Such anti-American attitudes were fueled in the German trade press of the mid 1920s by appeals to the French and German film industries to stand up against Hollywood’s influence by collaborating. Lichtbildbühne, for instance, asserted, “If European films are to replace American movies, this needs to be done on the grounds of internationalism, and we must not produce films just to gain approval in a single country.”22 The film daily also suggested that “the new guiding principle for European film politics must be: band together,” so as “to establish a general principle of regulating mutual distribution according to existing levels of production.”23 Another prominent paper, Reichsfilmblatt, called for the creation of a European front of both producers and distributors. Only by initiating a new wave would these industries “encompass the cultural values of the old world and checkmate the American wave in Europe.”24 This seemed a plausible proposition for the prolific German industry as well as for most other large European film companies, who likewise hoped to enter trade and coproduction agreements. Filmmakers in France chimed in with admiration for UFA, and especially for its head of production, Erich Pommer, on account of his astute business sense and international connections.25 Most importantly, French directors were impressed and inspired by his extraordinary success with a series of monumental and technologically superior productions that challenged Hollywood’s hegemony, such as Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen sequel (1922–1924), or Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, 1924). In contrast, throughout the early 1920s, the film industry in France suffered from a chronic lack of capital and repeatedly failed to reform itself. By cooperating with the Germans, the French studios sought a practical solution to their eco-

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nomic predicament at a time when American releases outnumbered French productions by a factor of ten. And a solution came promptly: in the spring of 1924, Pommer signed an agreement with Louis Aubert to begin the reciprocal export and import of German and French films and to help his Société Aubert engage new audiences. That year, UFA opened its cinema circuit for Aubert and forty-four French films were shown in Germany, more than twice as many as the twenty German films screened in France.26 Encouraged by such successes, other large French companies followed suit: In December 1924 the German production and distribution company Westi formed an alliance with Pathé-Consortium, Ciné-France, and Société des Cinéromans after a year-long negotiation.27 Westi created a considerable stir with this pact when they announced the “European Film Syndicate,” a giant, albeit short-lived venture that pooled European resources from production to distribution and exhibition in Germany, France, Italy, and Sweden.28 These alliances sowed the seeds for further business and yielded the earliest Franco-German coproductions, discussed later in this chapter. Compared to their French partners, the German firms were in many ways already multinational companies well aware that they supplied not only their domestic market. With international audiences in the East more or less won, Francophone spectators on and beyond the European continent formed the most lucrative target for the German industry. This explains why UFA’s main producer initiated crucial contacts with French studios. Pommer, as the French press once characterized him, was the “soul of the gigantic cinematographic organization [UFA]”—the man behind Germany’s international silent film success in the 1920s.29 His ties to the French film industry went back a long way. He began his career in 1907 with the Berlin subsidiary of Gaumont, one of France’s largest movie companies after Pathé and Eclair. There he learned all the secrets of the profession, “from acting to film projecting, advertising, news editing, and sales.”30 Representing Gaumont and later Éclair, Pommer traveled throughout the continent during the 1910s, broke into the Balkan and Scandinavian markets, and developed an understanding of cinema as an international affair. In the wake of World War I, he highlighted both the significance of conglomerates and of cooperation for the prevention of foreign takeover and endorsed the cartelization of the young German industry in “the conquest of the world market.”31 As UFA’s most lauded producer, in 1924 he called for “European films, which will no longer be French, English, Italian or German, but entirely ‘continental’ films.”32 Indeed, Pommer himself accomplished the goal of interna-

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tionalizing German film in the 1920s by producing most of the Weimar cinema masterpieces and thus keeping abreast of the transatlantic competition (Figure 1.1). Unlike other proponents of Film Europe, especially the editorialists of the German trade press, Pommer was less vehemently anti-American. Although he initially rejected the notion of making films “with an American look” and chose to produce “nationally specific” films, he soon relaxed this stance in favor of what he would call “the international picture.”33 Pommer heralded “international talking films” as his

Figure 1.1. Erich Pommer (1889–1966), UFA’s most famous producer. Source: Deutsche Kinemathek.

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strategy, modeled on Hollywood, for guiding UFA in its transition to sound, and he deployed multiple-language versions to ensure the German product’s export.34 Internationally marketable films, in the producer’s words, required “the employment of unlimited capital” and awareness of “the habits, customs, and usages of the various people” in order to produce a film “capable of being understood all over the world.”35 The world, to him, included the audiences at home, always in need of being persuaded of the domestic product’s quality, as well as international art cinema outlets, and the vast American market that remained “UFA’s Achilles heel.”36 Upon his return to Germany in 1928 after a visit to Hollywood, Pommer defended American cinema for finding value in “simplicity” and thus coming “nearest to the taste of international cinema audiences.”37 As a visionary producer, he was open to learning from Hollywood, which made him a figure of continuity and rupture in the Film Europe movement. On the one hand, Pommer continued to believe in the European cinema’s uniqueness as he cultivated Franco-German cooperation not only in the 1920s, but also after he relocated to France in the 1930s to escape the Nazi regime. There, he embarked on French remakes of his earlier successes and experienced film business as a mixture of collaboration and rivalry. On the other hand, Pommer understood that filmmaking in Europe had faced significant economic hurdles, because each national cinema had a rather limited audience in contrast to the United States. As a result, in the following decades, and especially after his relocation to California in 1934, Pommer would embrace Hollywood’s focus on genre and audience appeal, while becoming a transatlantic intermediary for numerous European émigrés seeking a foothold in Hollywood. In his position as European producer extraordinaire, he continued to endorse the Film Europe ideal, although he no longer saw it as a movement in opposition to Hollywood. The pan-European film movement was jolted in late 1925, when UFA entered into a partnership with the three U.S. studios—Paramount, Universal, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer—that came to be known as the Parufamet agreement. The German company benefited financially to the tune of $4 million, but in return the American majors demanded a 50 percent share of screen time in German cinemas. Lichtbildbühne grimly described Parufamet as “UFA’s Americanization,” casting Hollywood’s cultural and economic monopoly in military terms as a conquest and domination.38 Die Weltbühne warned of the “American victory march” that they saw as bringing the “twilight of European film.” “Siegfried has returned home from his campaigns of conquest to become a clerk

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for the Yankees,” the paper griped.39 Under these circumstances, the trade press declared that a Europe-wide association was the only way out of what it perceived as UFA’s subjugation to Hollywood. FilmKurier, the most widely read film trade journal, called on the German film industry to develop a global policy and to embark on large-scale prestige European productions in order to shake off U.S. dominance.40 These strident calls resulted in a proliferation of Franco-German enterprises and cross-cultural contracts in subsequent years, among which the most significant were the 1927 contract between Ciné-Alliance and UFA for six films, and the accord between smaller independent producers Vandal, Delac, Aubert, and Wengeroff-Films signed in the same year and focused specifically on coproductions.41 Undoubtedly, this boom in Franco-German alliances, as well as their copartnership with British, Swedish, and Italian independent producers, not only brought Film Europe into focus again, but also required new sites for debates and exchange, which was more effective than the trade press. During the late 1920s, international film congresses provided the chief venues for discussions of Film Europe. These meetings took on symbolic importance for German filmmakers, serving as a sign of membership in an international artistic community after Germany was excluded from the League of Nations at the end of World War I. Indeed, in 1926 UFA delegates were invited to attend a filmmakers’ congress in Paris that had been organized under the auspices of the League of Nations. In order to demonstrate Germany’s support of Film Europe, Berlin hosted the First International Cinema Exhibitors’ Conference in 1928, where attendees discussed the formation of a Europe-wide trade body that would ease the cross-border circulation of films. Two other conventions followed in Francophone territory, in Paris (1929) and Brussels (1930).42 At these meetings the focus shifted to the need to reinforce restrictions on U.S. film imports and to adapt to the rise of talking pictures. All four conferences, in Andrew Higson’s view, failed to achieve any long-term results because an institutionalized professional organization never coalesced.43 Yet, at the same time, these conferences provided the basis for further networks and promoted the idea of film as a cultural product with the potential to preserve a specifically European heritage. The European ideal took shape in tangible projects primarily by French and German partners that explain the long-term symbiotic relationship of both industries. UFA’s interest in solidifying its position in the Francophone market continued to grow, and the persistent crises in the French industry continued to draw filmmakers and stars alike

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to the financially stable neighbor. One of the concrete manifestations of Film Europe was the first German-French collaboration channeled by Pommer’s agreement with Aubert, Jean Renoir’s 1926 adaptation of Emile Zola’s novel Nana. The film was only one of many adaptations based on French literature that cast a mix of foreign and domestic actors in order to secure international distribution. Renoir’s cast, for instance, featured in the title role a French celebrity of German descent, Catherine Hessling, who costarred with the renowned German actor Werner Krauss as Count Muffat. Other German stars cast in key roles included Karl Harbacher and Valeska Gert. Such collaborations relied heavily on German financing and shooting locations: Nana was partially filmed in Paris and Bavaria. In addition to profiting from the lease of production facilities and serious economic investments that promised lucrative return, the German partners in such productions saw more and more business opportunities.44 French and German partners shared an interest in the strategic marketing of their product and in reciprocal distribution deals, which were both crucial for the rapid growth of their business. The Germans, however, were economically more potent in this partnership and they soon began sponsoring subsidiaries in France with the ultimate objective to promote cooperation between the neighboring countries. For instance, right after the successful premiere of Nana in Paris, independent producer Lothar Stark founded in that city a company with the telling name Allemagna-Galia-Film, which became the main German partner in joint projects.45 In addition, a series of coproductions issued from the Westi/Ciné-France/Pathé–Consortium, the most prominent of which were Henri Fescourt’s Les Misérables (1925), Viktor Tourjanski’s Michael Strogoff (1926), and Abel Gance’s Napoleon (1927).46 Facilitated by such transnational enterprises, the number of German-French coproductions quickly increased to seventeen between 1927 and 1929—the very years when the idea of Film Europe was most actively debated and implemented at the congresses mentioned above. This trend continued in the decade after 1929, when UFA and its French partners coproduced an impressive total of 186 films.47 Coproductions functioned as star vehicles, boosted the market share of domestic films, and kept alive hopes for the creation of a European cinematographic union. As Jean-Pierre Jeancolas contends, by the late 1920s the exchange of talent and services had intensified and the desired “European blockbuster productions” to compete with Hollywood were finally proliferating.48 Even in cases when such films were not nominal coproductions, they continued to rely on German capital and

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famous actors, as was the case with L’Argent (Money, 1928, dir. Marcel Herbier), featuring Brigitte Helm and Alfred Abel.49 Moreover, coproductions including Nikolai Malikoff’s Paname n’est pas Paris (Apaches of Paris, 1927), Richard Oswald’s Franco-German-Swedish picture Cagliostro (1929), and G. W. Pabst’s Kameradschaft (Comradeship, 1931), drew multinational crews from across Russia and Central Europe and were touted accordingly in the French press as “an excellent European product that can displace Hollywood imports!”50 At the same time, as Saunders contends, “since co-productions and joint ventures provided a means to qualify motion pictures as domestic products in more than one market, Germany’s position as the hub of European cinema gave it an advantage.”51 With the advent of sound film technology, the advantage of the German film industry over its French partners would continue to grow. Overnight, the competitive edge held by visually opulent but silent German-French coproductions was eroded by Hollywood’s talking pictures. When U.S. cinema adopted the new tactic of reshooting films in multiple languages for foreign markets, industries on the continent began pondering their response.52 Film Europe was yet again instrumental in this respect, as it provided not only the ideational motivation behind new cooperation on sound productions, but also the necessary contacts for their distribution. The rationale for cooperation in the context of sound film remained strong as European companies themselves began to produce multiple-language films to retain domestic and foreign markets. These were basically versions of the same film in French, German, or Italian, usually with different casts (unless the actors were bilingual), but often using the same script, sets, and costumes. In Germany, UFA was the first to experiment with films in which several languages were spoken, as well as films produced in multiplelanguage versions. These projects required cross-licensing agreements that built on the export-import accords remaining from the silent film era and provided strategic marketing of European films. Eventually the studio settled on the creation of dual German and French versions because many actors were able to perform in both languages and most European audiences spoke at least one of them.53 While UFA equipped all its studios with sound technology and began producing at full bore in 1929, the French industry initially lagged behind. Thus, in 1930 one of the largest film conglomerates in France, Gaumont-Franco-Aubert, signed a new agreement, this time with Tobis-Klangfilm in order to use their sound technology patent. This act, of course, made the French product more competitive in the face of proliferating Hollywood sound

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films and guaranteed access to the newly equipped movie theaters that by 1929 refused to screen silent pictures. But the agreement also left the French dependent on their German partners. On the surface, such efforts were still allegedly laying the groundwork for a European film association, but in fact they provided thin cover for Germany’s expansionist appetites.

German Nationalism in the Guise of Internationalism Under the auspices of UFA and other motion picture companies, the Germans had taken concrete steps to ensure the unity of the European film industries. Since the early 1920s these studios, and most prominently Babelsberg, had attracted film personnel and technicians from all over Eastern and Central Europe—Russia, Romania, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria. Many had pursued successful careers not only in the German but also, later, in the French film industries.54 With German help, moreover, French firms reaccessed the European market as it adjusted to the new conditions of sound cinema. However, beginning in the late 1920s, the dynamics of all-European film culture and Franco-German relations would be redefined by the encroaching German domination of Francophone markets. The coproduced multiple-language films cleared the way for German companies to subsidize their own production facilities and to open distribution offices in Paris. Tobis became the first German studio to implement this model when it founded Filmsonor on French soil. But the most important endeavor in this regard was ACE—a joint distribution company headquartered in Paris that was founded in 1926 by UFA, Svenska and France. Many of the aforementioned Franco-German coproductions were made under ACE’s auspices, so that when sound film arrived in Europe in 1929 the company had a firm foothold in the French market. Originally, French distributors who worked for UFA’s subsidiary, such as Gaston Caval, saw it as an opportunity to expand their own audience base and thus contribute their national share to an all-European cinema. Caval called for unique film productions to be made at ACE as a way to rebrand French cinema: “Every country has its own personal style, its innate characteristics,” he argued, in the conviction that only national products would be potent enough to overcome American dominance.55 ACE’s aims did not, however, correspond to the Film Europe principles suggested by its name. Although the German subsidiary announced plans to produce films in both countries, “its main pur-

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pose,” as Kristin Thompson relates, “was actually to serve as an outlet for UFA films in France, and as such it functioned very efficiently for the next few years.”56 Already in 1927 the number of German pictures shown in French theaters had tripled without any corresponding upsurge in French exports and ACE’s imports exceeded the entire annual domestic film production.57 To be sure, ACE also played a major role in engendering more than a hundred German-French coproductions, multiple-language versions, and dubbed French films shot in Babelsberg between 1929 and 1939.58 Yet since 1933 the national agenda of the company had prevailed as several ACE producers became Nazi sympathizers and effectively aided the Third Reich in usurping the Francophone and European markets. As UFA’s subsidiary, ACE served Nazi efforts to control French film production and distribution; the same was true of Continental, another Parisian subsidiary opened by UFA in 1941. ACE and later Continental capitalized on the weak position of French cinema, a result of the 1929 economic depression and the collapse of several renowned French studios, including Gaumont and Pathé. Nazi collaborators were able to lure French talent to Babelsberg to support Germany’s plan to make inroads into European markets. ACE’s main producer, Raoul Ploquin, who in the late 1920s had scripted most French language versions for UFA, now sided with the Nazis. He moved to Berlin, where he served as director of all French productions made in Babelsberg between 1933 and 1939. Ploquin also managed to bring the elite of French cinema— including celebrities such as Pierre Blanchar, Jean Gabin, Pierre Renoir, Fernandel (Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin), Danielle Darrieux, and Raimu (Jules Auguste Muraire)—to German studios, where they starred in twenty-one films. UFA and Tobis also enticed some of the most prominent French directors at that time, including Jean Grémillion, Marc Allegret, Jacques Feyder, Julien Duvivier, and Henri-George Clouzot.59 The Nazis believed that German-sponsored films featuring French talent would enable them to conquer the markets of Central Europe and the Balkan states—a national agenda that French moviemakers also supported because their own cinema industry languished. The prevailing mood during these years of collaborative filmmaking is captured in a 1935 magazine article. Following the influx of French directors and actors to Babelsberg, film journal La Revue de Paris sent one of their best reporters, André Beucler, to document the lively interchanges at the German studio.60 Beucler praised the technical sophistication of the German industry and admired the excellent photography and sound produced at the UFA studio. He further described a kind of

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solidarity based on the internationalism of the German studios as well as their anti-Americanism, reminiscent of the Film Europe utopia only a decade earlier: You hear the German language marry with French, which shocks no one since [UFA] is still the center of Franco-German collaboration, where a bilingual murmur is part of the house style. . . . The atmosphere of camaraderie that reigns in this world of cousines germains [first cousins] is undeniable. It is based on a thousand little details of shared professional understanding; international—an understanding that allows a Danish actor to feel at ease with a Portuguese director, but which unquestionably creates deep bonds each year between 400 French and 400 Germans— sincere bonds, broken of course with the rapidity of cinematic images, but which recall wartime friendships and university relationships. To become a close friend with the Germans—whether they’re secret liberals, Hitler-supporters, monarchists, or militants—all you need to do is confine yourself to a fictional world and not take an interest in the Third Reich.61

In his praise of UFA’s substantial resources and the fraternal spirit it promoted among European nations, Beucler evidently catered to Germany’s aspirations to become the leader of a cinematic empire. Indeed, the national agenda nurtured by ACE during the 1930s would soon transform into a nationalist one. With the founding of Continental in 1941, the Nazis pumped money into an industry in crisis, but they also controlled the fate of French cinema and began to dictate what kind of films should be made. To that end, Alfred Greven, a Nazi supporter who, like his French counterpart Ploquin, had worked on UFA’s dual-language versions, was now appointed head of Continental. Though the company itself produced only 30 of the 220 French films made during the Occupation, Greven had the task of establishing control over all producers in the country, as Goebbels recorded in his diary in 1942: “I have ordered Greven to come to Berlin from Paris, to give him absolutely clear and unmistakable directives to the effect that for the moment, so far as the French are concerned, only light, frothy, and, if possible, corny pictures are desired. No doubt the French people will be satisfied with that too. There is no reason why we should cultivate their nationalism.”62 Goebbels’s private remarks stood in stark contrast to the Nazis’ widely advertised effort to create a new European film alliance through Continental and through the 1935 International Film Chamber discussed below. The nationalist agenda advanced by the minister of propaganda was best demonstrated by Continental’s takeover of movie theaters in

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France. What Greven did first was to expropriate Jewish-owned theaters and distribution chains. Next, he seized control over French exports within the continent and to the colonies. From then on, only those French filmmakers and producers who had signed with Continental were granted permission to export their work.63 The forcible expansion of the film market and the enormous economic profit for UFA, as well as the complete subjugation of occupied European industries, distinguished the nationalist agenda of the Third Reich’s cinema from the national projects of Weimar and East Germany. In his diary, Goebbels justified his nationalist appetites with an aggressive anti-Americanism: “We must proceed in our movie policies as the Americans do in their policies toward the North and South American continents. We must become the dominating movie power on the European continent. In so far as pictures are produced in other countries, they must be only of a local or limited character.”64 Goebbels’s hostility to Hollywood found expression in an organization he had founded in 1935: the International Film Chamber modeled on the so-called Reichsfilmkammer (Reich Film Chamber) that meticulously oversaw German domestic production.65 IFC had two official goals: first, to garner visibility and influence within the international filmmaking community, and second, to consolidate the continental European market. According to Benjamin George Martin, the IFC represented a “German-dominated European film-bloc oriented in opposition to the United States.”66 The coalition’s success depended on two factors: an insistence on a unique European cultural identity and the forcible exclusion of American releases altogether, first from German theatres and later from all movie theaters in occupied countries. The birth of the IFC was announced in 1934 at the opening of the Venice Film Festival, a venue that supposedly embodied a distinctly European style and showcased homegrown celebrities, promising directors, and powerful producers who socialized with artists, tourists, and fascist leaders. The founder of the festival, Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata, played a major role in IFC’s instigation and subsequently served as its vice president.67 Although the festival was not openly anti-American, the U.S. delegation correctly perceived the IFC as an emergent and belligerent competitor and boycotted an initial meeting in Venice in September 1935. Leadership positions in the IFC were reserved for Europeans only: its first president was the president of the Nazi Reich Film Chamber, Fritz Scheuermann; the vice presidents were representatives of the leading European studios in Sweden, France, and Italy. Of those three, France was granted a special role: the IFC’s seat

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was relocated to Paris in 1937, and a French producer, Georges Lourau, was appointed as copresident.68 Through these gestures Goebbels managed to secure broad support from the French industry, as he was well aware of the long-term friendship since the 1920s. Two years later, however, at the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the French became disillusioned with the Germans’ promises, and thus Lourau resigned and the Paris office was closed.69 The closing of the Paris office marked the end of the IFC’s first phase, which had preserved to some degree the legacy of Film Europe. Initially the IFC was conceived as a response to a perceived crisis in film distribution, similar to the crisis during the 1920s that Film Europe was meant to address. Until the mid-1930s, U.S. filmmakers continued to cover their production costs through sales in the large domestic market—a feat that no country in Europe, including Germany and France, could replicate. As a result, Hollywood had flooded the European market by offering low rental rates and package deals. The IFC sought to better utilize its domestic market, but to achieve that end, as Goebbels contended, U.S. imports had to be blocked. At the same time, the Nazi propaganda minister understood that imitating Hollywood’s marketing schemes was crucial to the success of UFA in Europe. Taking a lesson from the enemy, Goebbels encouraged the German industry to cultivate strong producers, draw talent from neighboring countries, distribute films in packages, and, finally, to foreground the Unterhaltungsfilme (entertainment features crafted in the image of Hollywood cinema).70 During the IFC’s second phase, from 1941 until 1945, the organization was reconceived as an adjunct to the New European Order, Hitler’s plan to conquer the continent. At the second IFC founding congress in July 1941, Goebbels, speaking “not as a German, but as a European,” assured all the delegates that “in the co-operation of European peoples in the area of film, Germany . . . pursues no selfish goals. We have here entirely altruistic motives.”71 The IFC’s new statutes, however, positioned Germany as the chamber’s leader, first by locating the organization’s head offices in Berlin, and second by insisting that votes within the organization needed to be weighted “in proportion to the significance of the film economy of each country.”72 All of the nations represented at the founding congress were supporters of the Nazi regime, including most Scandinavian and Balkan countries; France had not been invited to send a delegation. The IFC created a semblance of solidarity and promised economic and technical support to all new members, but the actual plan was to turn Europe into Germany’s export zone.

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To borrow Eric Rentschler’s term, a “cinema of powerful illusion” largely defined films produced under Nazi rule after 1942.73 Germanmade movies in France after this point, for instance, provided distraction from economic hardship and despair, while privileging escapist genres. The New European Order of the IFC’s second phase seemed to mark a peak in collaborations between the German and French motion picture industries, but in fact it revealed the absolute German subjugation of Northern France. This left a scar that, as we will see, many French directors subsequently involved in DEFA coproductions sought to expose by embedding explicitly anti-Nazi messages in their films. Like their East German colleagues, French filmmakers who had lived through the Occupation saw the former Nazi efforts to create and uphold a trans-European coalition under the New Order as inherently flawed. They now longed for a fresh start.

Postwar Franco-German Cooperation: From Opposition to State Recognition After World War II the dynamics of Franco-German cinematic cooperation were inevitably altered by the new political situation in Europe. France, formerly occupied by the Nazis, was now one of the occupying forces in Berlin, and French cultural officers, together with other representatives of the Allies, were responsible for deciding the fate of the German motion picture industry. This turned out to be a fraught task because Germany had emerged from the war ravaged and divided, preoccupied with internal conflicts rather than international alliances. There were now two states in the making, one socialist and one democratic. In the film industry, the political division led to an intra-German competition for material resources, production facilities, and human talent. With the establishment of two German states in 1949, the struggle over resources gave way to a debate over which country should be considered the legitimate heir of interwar Germany’s cultural and cinematic traditions. Meanwhile, the French film industry yet again found itself in a precarious situation after the war and consequently sought to reestablish a strong European cinema via partnerships with Italy, Great Britain, East Germany, and West Germany. The reason for this renewed interest in transnational alliances was the Blum-Byrnes agreement signed in March 1946 by the French minister of foreign affairs, Léon Blum, and the U.S. secretary of state, James Byrnes. The United States promised

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to cancel France’s war debt in exchange for opening French markets to American products, and in particular to Hollywood films. The reaction among industry members was harsh. French writer and director Marcel Pagnol, for instance, called for the establishment of “a common material and moral defense against the quantitative and qualitative assault of American cinema.”74 Pagnol’s rallying cry recalls the origins of the Film Europe movement in the 1920s as a reaction to American dominance of European markets. In order to counter the American ascendancy, French film studios began approaching other European partners with the intent of forming bilateral agreements. For instance, in February 1949 France sealed an agreement with Italy to collaborate on dual-nationality film productions, reminiscent of the dual-language versions once made at Babelsberg. In 1948 French producers had proposed a similar arrangement to DEFA, consisting of the production of five dual-language films per year, to be distributed in both countries.75 In their overture the producers had appealed to the antifascist stance shared by France and East Germany as well as the successful Franco-German collaboration during the 1920s, when German-French coproductions had gained far-reaching acclaim among European audiences. Yet DEFA rejected the offer, citing its own lack of human, technological, and other resources. In addition, the studio was busy competing with its West German counterparts for the allegiance of former UFA employees. This competition was one manifestation of a fierce contest waged by the Soviet and U.S. cultural administrations, using East and West Germany as proxies. Soviet authorities and DEFA itself were convinced that winning back successful producers and directors who had emigrated in the 1930s for the socialist cause would bring prestige to DEFA and validate the socialist state as the rightful successor to the German cultural heritage. On the other hand, U.S. film distributors operating in the American zone of occupation sought to saturate the devastated country’s film market with their own imports, similar to the end achieved by the Blum-Byrnes agreement. In West Germany the film control officers were predominantly exiles newly returned from the United States who had made successful careers for themselves in Hollywood. The most prominent among them was none other than Erich Pommer, UFA’s prolific producer and once an active proponent of Film Europe, who—as mentioned before—had left for California in 1934 to escape persecution as a Jew. He arrived in West Berlin twelve years later to help reconstruct a functioning film industry. Ironically, Pommer now worked for Film America and was

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soon pressured by the Motion Picture Export Association of America to represent its interests on the German market. He found himself caught, as Tim Bergfelder puts it, “between conflicting objectives of German politicians and filmmakers who were eager to resume an autonomous and strong national film industry, and of Hollywood’s major studios intent on keeping competition neutralized.”76 East German and Soviet intellectuals launched their own campaign to persuade former UFA filmmakers who had long ago emigrated to Hollywood to return to the GDR and join their cause. As we will see in the next chapter, DEFA played a central role in these efforts. In May 1946, at DEFA’s inauguration as a German venture, Soviet cultural officer Sergei Tulpanov publicly declared, “Film as an art for the masses has to become a sharp and powerful weapon against the reactionary spirit and in favor of the now burgeoning democracy, against war and militarism and in support of peace and friendship among all people in the world. . . . Another important task of the newly founded film company [DEFA] is to capture all progressive film artists and, at the same time, to educate the next generation of filmmakers in the spirit of an antifascist democratic art.”77 Much like French directors and producers during the immediate postwar years, the newly appointed DEFA management sought to rebuild the once strong domestic market with the help of qualified former UFA directors. Playwright Friedrich Wolf, for instance, seconded Tulpanov’s appeal several days later, when on May 30, 1946, he wrote to Leonard Mins, a member of the U.S. Communist Party: “By the way, I am a member of the artistic advisory board of our new film company Film A.G. DEFA. . . . If only we could get someone like William Dieterle or even Fritz Lang to come here! Do you think that might be possible?!”78 But it was Pommer who succeeded in attracting famous Hollywood colleagues, such as Lang and Josef von Sternberg, to the Western sectors in the late 1940s, as well as the British directors Alfred Hitchcock and Paul Rotha.79 Moreover, he later orchestrated comebacks for former UFA stars including Hans Albers, Sybille Schmitz, and Marlene Dietrich, and even scriptwriters such as Carl Zuckmayer and Fritz Rotter.80 When DEFA failed to win over similarly esteemed figures of the former UFA, the studio had to look for new ways to make allies in the West. By the mid-1950s East German politicians had decided that they must actively sponsor coproductions with Western partners if DEFA was to succeed in exporting a positive image of the newly founded socialist state. Thus, DEFA renewed contact with French film compa-

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nies, notably UFA’s largest former ally, Pathé Cinéma, as well as Films Borderie (closely associated with Max Ophüls’s multiple-language productions of the 1930s), and the left-leaning Ariane Films, which since 1945 had specialized mostly in Franco-Italian coproductions. This time around DEFA was prepared to embark on the joint venture the French had proposed in 1948 for economic and ideological reasons. On the one hand, DEFA hoped to reproduce the success of the 1920s coproductions; on the other hand, the East German state had undertaken a new national program to advance the cause of its legitimization. Although the GDR was not yet recognized in the West and thus had no bilateral agreements with Paris pertaining to cinema, private French producers were able to sign coparticipation contracts with DEFA. In 1955 DEFA studio manager Albert Wilkening proudly announced the first coproduction with French partners as “DEFA’s first appearance on the world market” and insisted that such films would demonstrate “DEFA’s international importance and particularly its impact on West Germany.”81 Key politicians, especially from the Ministry of Culture, seconded Wilkening and called attention to the potential of French coproductions to “provide important West German producers with ammunition in their struggle with Bonn to allow coproductions with DEFA.”82 In the functionaries’ eyes, therefore, instances of Western filmmakers who sought future cooperation with DEFA presented first and foremost an opportunity for their own political advancement. Uncertainty over the status of joint projects between France and East Germany would soon become a problem, as we will see in the subsequent discussion of Die Elenden but in 1955 both sides had hopes of a productive cooperation. These hopes evoked the drive behind the early German-French coproductions of the Film Europe years. For the French, the lucrative deal included access to generous state-guaranteed funding and the largest film facilities in Europe, together with a body of highly trained technicians and the economic advantage of being able to make films with a big-budget look that could compete with Hollywood. DEFA, for its part, developed a rather complex agenda, whereby increasing East German culture’s visibility in the West would accelerate political recognition of the GDR. But, at the same time, the presence of acclaimed French stars in all East German coproductions with French studios, as well as the aspiration to showcase new technology and thus the supremacy of socialist-made images, also recalls the impetus behind UFA’s decision to work with Pathé and Aubert in the 1920s. Finally, the rhetoric of Film Europe and Franco-German cooperation after World War I had aided Germany’s plea to reenter the

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League of Nations, while German cinema could more easily reach out to foreign audiences. The renewed plans for cooperation with French filmmakers encouraged artists in the GDR to protest against DEFA’s exclusion from European venues of cultural exchange. In March 1955 an East German delegation went to Paris to negotiate participation in the Cannes Film Festival. The delegates hoped to counteract the detrimental consequences of the Hallstein Doctrine by gaining greater visibility for GDR film art. Three months later one of the delegates, Rudolf Böhm, reported that the mission had succeeded in part: two DEFA films would be screened unofficially at the festival, namely Der Teufel von Mühlenberg (The Devil from the Steel Mountain, 1955, dir. Herbert Ballmann) and Stärker als die Nacht (Stronger than the Night, 1954, dir. Slatan Dudow). Böhm argued that film relations with France were of primary importance for the GDR’s efforts to gain political and cultural prestige. “The struggle for Germany’s democratic unification,” he advised, “is to be undertaken more forcefully in the film sector so that relations to West Germany’s film industry are secured and expanded; at the same time, securing relations to France and England and establishing new relations to Italy will have an impact on our West German film strategy.”83 DEFA’s delegation to Cannes, therefore, was a crucial step toward confirming French filmmakers’ patronage of East German cinema, and suggests that, for DEFA, political ends were a principle motive for undertaking the coproductions. Indeed, in the eyes of East German politicians, the involvement of celebrated European writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and renowned directors and stars such as Jean-Paul Le Chanois, Gérard Philipe, Simone Signoret, and Yves Montand was seen as evidence of left-wing European intellectuals’ support for the GDR’s socialist project (Figure 1.2). There are, however, several caveats to be registered regarding the political agenda behind the renewed Franco-German cooperation. The first is that the idealistic motivation of the French artists did not necessarily overlap with the aspirations of the GDR. While many French cinema celebrities at the time publicly announced their leftist convictions, they were also critical of any violence and oppression, whether in democratic or socialist societies. As we will see also in the case of Die Elenden, filmmakers were not always prepared to sacrifice their artistic vision in order to promulgate a biased political message. Whereas DEFA directors came under the direct scrutiny of political authorities, their French colleagues did not feel compelled to fulfill all censors’ wishes. French

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Figure 1.2. From left to right: Joris Ivens, Erwin Geschonneck, Elfriede Florin, Gérard Phillipe, Marga Legal, and Jean Vilar on the set of Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel (1956). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/André Manion, Waltraut Pathenheimer.

interests in Babelsberg, as mentioned already, were largely of a material nature: lavish decor and props on the cheap, enough extras from the East German army for mass scenes, and generous economic support to realize any directorial whim. The second caveat is that both partners to the cooperative projects could pursue different political goals yet still agree on specific agendas. Anti-Americanism was a case in point here: While the East Germans would critique the American way of life as part of their Cold War battles for recognition, French motion picture companies like Pathé sought to spark a backlash against Hollywood. At the same time, French companies could not transcend the limited scope of their cooperation with DEFA, given the political prerogatives imposed by the French government. These caveats can very well explain subsequent disagreements between the partners in the coproductions while, at the same time, evidencing a gray area filled with hopes, negotiations, and compromises. Above all, the points of agreement between the partners, such as the common agenda of gaining market share abroad, shed light on the question of how these projects were possible at all.

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Revisiting Die Elenden in Cold War Europe The four East German–French coproductions completed between 1956 and 1960 were all conceived as prestige films with an ideological twist. Three of the films, Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel (1956), Die Elenden (1958), and Trübe Wasser (1960), were adapted from European novels and translated struggles for justice, class equality, and liberation from occupiers into costume dramas and period films. The fourth, Die Hexen von Salem (1957), was based on an American stage drama critical of the 1950s anticommunist movement. These films represented a rather serious approach to cinema, where the representation on screen of highbrow literature was a priority and entertainment value a secondary concern. But precisely because of their realistic narratives and attention to European historical conflicts, these four projects contested the laughter and glamour of U.S. productions. The narrative content of these coproductions also provided a vehicle for an implicit anti-American program born out of the real-life struggles and political beliefs of the French artists who worked on them. In 1946 left-leaning authors, directors, and technical personnel in France formed the Centre National de Cinématographie in order to counteract Hollywood’s hegemony on the continent. As Thomas Lindenberger points out, most French directors who worked with DEFA were members of the Labor Union or the French Communist Party.84 As such, they naturally developed strong protectionist sentiments recalling those of the 1920s. For instance, Gérard Philipe, the director and star of the first DEFA-French coproduction, Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel, became known for his vehement protest against the Blum-Byrnes import agreements between France and the United States, and this protest informed his adaptation of the Ulenspiegel tale. Another left-wing director, Henri Aisner, contacted DEFA manager Albert Wilkening in 1955 with a proposal to collaborate on several pro-communist projects. Aisner had assisted Max Ophüls in Franco-German coproductions during the 1930s, and after World War II he hoped to return to the Babelsberg studio. Finally, Jean Gabin, a key actor in 1920s and 1930s German-French coproductions, had embraced communism, and he drew on its ideals in his characterization of Jean Valjean in Die Elenden. Although Hugo’s novel resonated with the strong socialist convictions of French filmmakers, competition with Hollywood was the driving force for adapting Die Elenden, especially on the part of Pathé. The fact that the French studio’s economic and market interests fueled and sustained the making of the film is at odds with the predominant

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scholarly explanation of the East German–French coproductions as epitomes of international solidarity and shared socialist ideals. Two key factors played an important role for the creation of these films in the mid-1950s: first, the desire to compete with the U.S. product by issuing quality cinema with a literary pedigree; and second, the economic power and material base of the East German studio, which was fully displayed in the adaptation of Hugo’s epic. Coupled with discourses on internationalism and cinema’s political potential, in the case of Die Elenden these factors were debated during production and ultimately resulted in a big-budget production prone to various interpretations. More importantly, DEFA’s and Pathé’s ambition to trump Hollywood’s superiority by cooperating on a prestige film with a multinational crew not only led to successful technical and aesthetic experimentation, but also reinstated the legacy of Film Europe. The 1958 adaptation of Hugo’s novel was the latest in a series of film versions of the classic that had been produced by Pathé and other French companies since the Film Europe era. For instance, the studio had collaborated with Westi and Ciné-France on Henri Fescourt’s ostentatious four-part film in 1925. This was one of the first projects to result from the mutual agreement signed between the three companies in 1924. By the 1950s, a few Germans could perhaps still remember Fescourt’s silent adaptation, which had been an international success at the time. More likely, however, the postwar audience was better acquainted with the subsequent Pathé project, Raymond Bernard’s 1934 talkie.85 This lavish, star-studded production had provided a formative experience for Bernard’s young assistant, Jean-Paul Le Chanois, who in 1957 took charge of the remake by Pathé and DEFA. In interviews, Le Chanois repeatedly referred to the earlier adaptation as his model. The new coproduction shared with the 1934 picture a strong claim for prestige, but its proximity to 1930s German-French coproductions as a whole was even greater. First, the film was shot in the French language by a French director who worked with producers from both countries; second, famous French stars were cast in the main roles; third, Babelsberg was the preferred shooting location on account of its virtually unlimited sets, extras, and props; fourth, most of the production expenses were covered by the East Germans, and their technical expertise seemed crucial for the completion of the project; and, finally, a film adaptation of a European classic constituted a politically acceptable project of significant commercial value that offered high-quality entertainment to boot. Pathé’s willingness to partner with DEFA in the 1950s stemmed from a dream of prestige as well as from clearly economic considerations.

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As Marc Silberman has argued, the execution of big budget historical dramas—“with many extras, well-designed studio sets and costumes, and expensive stars—was one of the few ways [French] production companies could compete domestically with what they considered to be their biggest challenge: the Hollywood blockbuster film.”86 Moreover, amidst the escalating Cold War, Pathé would profit not only from Babelsberg’s resources and technical expertise, but also from the inclusion of the socialist countries in its audience base. In return, East Germans were able to work with internationally renowned French professionals and to establish contacts with Italian producers as well. For instance, during the negotiations for the Die Elenden project, Pathé attracted Serena Rome as the third partner in what had now become a European coproduction.87 This triangular configuration recalled not only the once-powerful alliances of Film Europe, but also the authority of the IFC, under which the German, French, and Italian national cinemas joined forces to guard the continental markets by opposing the spread of U.S. releases. Indeed, Pathé’s plans to adapt Hugo’s novel were motivated by the unending rivalry with Hollywood. By the time this remake was shot in Babelsberg, European and U.S. directors had interpreted and adapted the story more than thirty times in a fierce competition over technical quality and prestigious casts that also played out on Broadway and Paris theater stages.88 The French company aimed to produce, if not the definitive version of Les Misérables, at least an adaptation superior to the 1952 American production directed by Lewis Milestone.89 This most recent Hollywood version gained wide attention in Europe, including premieres in France, West Germany, and most Western European countries. However, Milestone was roundly criticized by reviewers for his loose adaptation of Hugo’s original, and for shooting in black and white.90 According to a Newsweek reporter, the Hollywood veteran said in his defense, “Perhaps some day, it will be possible to make ‘Les Misérables’ as a two-part film.”91 In the 1958 version Pathé and DEFA aimed to avoid most pitfalls of the Milestone film by adopting a script that closely followed the original, dividing the story into two halves, and using the best color film technology available. Thus, even by American standards, Le Chanois’s picture would come to be regarded as the “most memorable film version,” marking a victory in the ongoing contest between Hollywood and major European studios.92 By the mid-1950s the stakes in the rivalry with Hollywood had been raised by the great success of Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments following its U.S. premiere on October 5, 1956; it would not arrive in

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Paris or West Berlin until the beginning of 1958. Filmed in Vista Vision and incorporating groundbreaking special-effect technology, the biblical epic raised audience expectations for sheer cinematic spectacle. Die Elenden was planned as an equally opulent project, with an enormous budget (DEFA alone contributed more than 3 million East German marks to cover filming and postproduction costs), a shooting schedule of seven months in Germany and France, and—most importantly— high standards for technical excellence.93 In 1957 the U.S. Technicolor corporation had just launched the Technirama (combining Technicolor and Cinerama) wide-screen format.94 DEFA’s French partners insisted on using this new process in order to successfully compete with DeMille’s blockbuster. This decision incurred a steep additional cost and caused logistic hassle as well—new cameras had to be brought to Babelsberg and the material had to be edited in the United Kingdom— but the choice by DEFA and Pathé to use the latest in American cinema technology indicates that they took the competition for technical mastery very seriously.95 The East German press welcomed the prominent French filmmakers of Die Elenden with unbridled enthusiasm. After two successful coproductions with Ariane Films, Pathé, and Films Borderie in France, DEFA was now gearing up for a full-length adaptation of Hugo’s masterpiece. The Babelsberg studio imagined the film as the first joint project where East Germans would be equal partners with the French and have a say not only in the economic but also the artistic and technical aspects of production.96 The hype over DEFA-French coproductions in the East German press was accompanied by multiple reviews of French films with popular German-speaking actresses, illustrated reports from the film sets, and lengthy interviews with celebrities such as Jean Gabin, Simon Signoret, Bernard Blier, Ives Montand, and Gerard Philipe. Special attention was given in the GDR press to director Le Chanois because of his strong socialist convictions, long experience in the film métier, and versatile skills. Le Chanois’s background was not dissimilar to that of many DEFA filmmakers who had been employed in the film industry during the 1930s and 1940s and who now desired to break with the old Nazi cinema and endorse a new political message in their work.97 Born in 1909 to Jewish parents, Jean-Paul Dreyfus later changed his name to Le Chanois in order to survive the Occupation. His first job was at Pathé, where he assisted well-known directors who took part in the 1920s and 1930s German-French coproductions, including Jean Renoir, Julien Duvivier, Maurice Turner, and Max Ophüls. In 1933, at the age of twenty-four, Le

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Chanois joined the French Communist Party and continued to work during the 1940s under his assumed name for the Franco-German and pro-Nazi motion picture company, Continental. In those years he did not become a major director (possibly because of his Jewish origins), but his work still enabled him to meet many Germans and to learn from their technical expertise in sound technology, film architecture, editing, and the entire production process. Throughout his employment at Continental, Le Chanois remained loyal to his political convictions and organized with like-minded film professionals a resistance network for the liberation of French cinema. In peacetime he helped reconstruct the professional trade unions for filmmakers.98 Together with many outspoken intellectuals, the unions led a battle against Hollywood’s ever-increasing presence on the French and European markets. The East German press praised Le Chanois’s films for his sincere preoccupation with social issues, the working classes, and the poor, especially in his devotion to developing a politically and commercially viable cinéma de qualité. These interests were in harmony with East German officials’ anticapitalist sentiments as well as their willingness to indulge in grandiose projects for ideological purposes. In the script that he coauthored with the prolific writer René Barjavel, Le Chanois sought to emphasize some universal values that, as it turned out, allowed multiple interpretations. In a 1957 interview for Pathé Magazine, he declared that, while his version was inspired by Bernard’s 1934 adaptation, it also departed from it. The material could “be interpreted differently without betraying the original,” Le Chanois contended, so he chose “to stress generosity and altruism.”99 His new interpretation foregrounded a humanist agenda by focusing on solidarity with the poor and the stigmatized, conversion from evil to good, love and compassion for the oppressed, and giving voice and agency to the lower classes. Without a doubt, Le Chanois’s and Barjavel’s treatment of Hugo’s classic was inspired by their own disdain for social inequality and marginalization, for instance in the treatment of Jews during the Third Reich. Moreover, their own wartime careers (Barjavel had become disillusioned with his army service) must have made them aware of their responsibility as artists to speak out and instruct the viewer on the necessity of social activism. This project, of course, met with the approval of GDR officials, who already in the fall of 1956 had become involved in the prestigious coproduction, with the goal of gaining visibility on the European scene. Le Chanois placed great emphasis on Jean Valjean’s personal struggle to achieve enlightenment, to learn by self-discipline, and to show

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compassion despite having been brutalized for years (Figure 1.3). As in Hugo’s original, religion also played a crucial role as the catalyst of Valjean’s transformation: after nineteen years in the Bagne de Tulon, where he was reduced to a number, Valjean (Jean Gabin) encounters a priest, Monsignor Myriel (Fernand Ledoux), who shows him respect and helps him overcome the habit of stealing and lying: “Give up on evil ways and turn to the good, because today I have bought your soul.” With this mandate, Myriel sends Valjean off to a life of integrity and benevolence. And he does, indeed, become a benefactor of hospitals, a school patron, and even a mayor who cares for the poor and the oppressed. Valjean, however, accomplishes all of this under a false name. His deception is soon discovered by the son of Javert, the prison governor who once had tortured him (father and son were both played by Bernard Blier).100 Threatened by Javert Junior, the mayor faces a moral dilemma: to rescue Cosette (Béatrice Altariba), whose mother Fantine (Danièle Delorme) had been forced into prostitution and died begging for Valjean’s help, or to reveal his true identity during a court trial staged by Javert Junior as a trap. As he does several times later in the film, Valjean here struggles fiercely with his conscience, but he finds

Figure 1.3. Jean Gabin as Jean Valjean in Die Elenden (1957). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Roger Corbeau.

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a way to rescue both Cosette and the falsely accused man. From that moment on, Valjean becomes Cosette’s father and is swept up in the 1832 riots because of her love for Marius (Giani Esposito). For Cosette’s sake, Valjean saves Marius’s life after he joins the campaign to restore the French Republic led by Enjolras (Serge Reggiani). At the barricades, Valjean witnesses the death of children (Gavroche, played by Jimmy Urbain) and women (Eponine, played by Sylvia Monfort). There, Valjean faces once again his old adversary, Javert Junior, who is now in Valjean’s power. The latter sets his oppressor free, demonstrating his appreciation of human life amid the bloody conflict—a gesture that in the film emphasizes the futility of war. While the younger Javert remains one-dimensional in his servile devotion to the law, Valjean fearlessly faces death, saves Marius’s life, and in the end even sacrifices his own wishes for Cosette’s well-being. Thus, solidarity and humanity, altruism and abnegation, became the core values in the original script followed during the initial phase of production; indeed, the ideologues had no doubt that a film based on such themes would be another international box office hit. The script resonated even with such hard-boiled GDR ideologues as Heinz Kamnitzer, who carefully read the French partners’ treatment and suggested enhanced attention to class contradictions to reinforce the political message of the film.101 In order to accommodate GDR cultural officials and de facto sponsors of the film who wished to see its ideological content strengthened, Le Chanois and Barjavel added to the script several scenes with a political undertone.102 For instance, the opening of the film predisposed audiences, as Susan Hayward has noted, “to see [Jean Valjean] as better than his captors, and as a working-class hero.”103 She refers here to the scene where Valjean with preternatural strength rescues the life of a fellow inmate trapped under heavy rocks in the quarry. By introducing this action, the screenwriter duo undermined Hugo’s depiction of his protagonist as incapable of altruism and turned him into a positive hero. Valjean’s embodiment of solidarity and humanism continues to visually dominate the film’s narrative: for instance, when he carries the weight of others, both physically and emotionally; when he saves ordinary people from death and despair; or when he bends over the bodies of Eponine and Gavroche in grief. But it is the confrontation between Valjean and Javert Junior that defines the film. Le Chanois presents Valjean as capable not only of physical but also of psychological strength: a hero who drew power from his unjustified suffering, and who was able to overcome his exploiter and show him the value of forgiveness.

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Although the script extolled the virtues of liberty, equality, fraternity—and, one may add, solidarity—the completed film added further levels of meaning to what was already present in the screenplay, notably by the carefully arranged mise-en-scène. To be sure, the meticulous reconstruction of Parisian streets and localities in Babelsberg invests the epic film with a documentary quality. For instance, the scene of General Lamarque’s funeral creates a sense of veritable representation through the deployment of a crane shot emphasizing the apparently authentic facades while the camera pans over the grieving crowds, and comes to rest on the procession. A contrasting dimension of the film’s exploration of mise-en-scène comes into view in one of the scenes at the barricades where the bodies of Eponine and Gavroche are laid next to Mabeuf’s under a banner that reads, “Égalité de l’homme et de la femme” (equality for men and women). The red flag that in Hugo’s classic led the revolutionaries in an uprising during General Lamarque’s funeral is now draped over the bodies of a man, a woman, and a child who all deserve to be treated equally. This amendment to Hugo’s narrative becomes ambiguous if we reposition the film within its political and historical context (Figure 1.4).104

Figure 1.4. The bodies of Eponine, Gavroche, and Mabeuf under the banner “Égalité de l’homme et de la femme” (Equality for men and women) in Die Elenden (1957). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Roger Corbeau.

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On the one hand, this scene accords with the spirit of Hugo’s novel, which often thematizes the struggles of women and children, and more specifically the harsh life of those forced into poverty, prostitution, suffering, and misfortune. This interpretation complied with the expectations of those GDR ideologues, such as Kamnitzer, who saw Hugo as a like-minded critic of precapitalist conditions. In the preface to his book Hugo identified “the three problems of the age” as “the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of woman by starvation,” and “the blighting of children by keeping them in darkness.”105 This preface was repeatedly used in the French film press to advertise Le Chanois’s remake.106 In both the novel and the film, the ABC socialist group spearheaded by Enjolras demands “les droits de la femme et de l’enfant” (rights for women and children).107 In this sense, the added scene may emphasize solidarity with all struggles for equality, including social and gender egalitarianism. On the other hand, as Susan Hayward has argued, the film’s representation of the “slain martyrs” of the July 1832 uprising may also be read as a comment on the recent Hungarian Revolution of 1956.108 Although this reading is not confirmed by Le Chanois’s own remarks on the film, it is not implausible if we consider the broader response of French intellectuals to the massacre in Hungary. Many intellectuals in France were disappointed by the socialist idea after the brutal suppression of free speech and reform movements within the socialist bloc. Communists and sympathizers including Gérard Philipe, the director and star of the first French coproduction with DEFA, Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel, as well as Simone Signoret and her husband Yves Montand, who adorned an earlier coproduction (Die Hexen von Salem, filmed at Babelsberg during the events in Hungary) as outspoken proponents of communism, now questioned their allegiance. Along these lines, Jean Valjean’s compassionate act of carrying the bodies of the wounded and the dead contains an expression of solidarity with the victims of the Hungarian Revolution. With its attention to Cold War politics, especially within the socialist bloc, Le Chanois’s film served to increase the critical potential of DEFA’s international coproductions and to foreground the European agenda in new ways. First, as a joint project of French and GDR filmmakers, Die Elenden became a forum in which artists could voice criticism of contemporary political events. In this sense the film that had already been publicized in order to raise audience expectations held the potential to sensitize European moviegoers to current events. Second, as a cooperative effort that crossed the Iron Curtain, Le Chanois’s film

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demonstrated the possibility of transcending geopolitical borders and eventually became a model for other filmmakers attempting coproductions. As we will see in chapter 4, GDR directors would benefit from such models, as Konrad Wolf did when he coproduced with several Eastern European countries a film adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge) (1971, GDR/USSR/Bulgaria/Yugoslavia). As Le Chanois had done in the 1950s, Wolf in the 1970s challenged the theme of censorship within the socialist bloc and addressed the ideological trials of socialists who sought political reform from within. In sum, the filmmakers’ act of using film coproductions already been approved on the state level in order to articulate messages that ran counter to the ruling socialist apparatus demonstrated the subversive potential of such joint projects. These two characteristics of Die Elenden as a European Cold War coproduction had a significant impact on the future relationship between the East German and French partners. Indeed, after the completion of this third East German–French coproduction, the initial enthusiasm of GDR ideologues for such projects was replaced by outright aversion. Two phenomena led to this change of attitude: first, the loss of state control over artistic projects and the possibly subversive interpretation of the material by filmmakers; and second, the failure of French studios to comply with East German politicians’ original plan to use a jointly produced film as a tool in their struggle for international recognition. Whereas in the mid 1950s highprofile cultural projects involving Westerners seemed to provide an effective way to counter the West German government’s boycott of the GDR as an illegitimate state, by the end of the decade the Communist Party had realized that its partnership with Pathé, Ariane Films, and Films Borderie would still be limited by French loyalty to Bonn. Since Le Chanois’s film not only exposed the futility of class enmity and warfare but also allowed for a subversive reading, East German party stalwarts were frustrated after the film’s premiere in Paris on March 12, 1958. Although the coproduction became a box-office success, selling more than a million tickets within the first two months of its release in France, ideologues behind the Iron Curtain had significant reservations about the final cut.109 In the GDR, Die Elenden was screened privately by six different committees and was not released officially until nine months later, after major cuts had been made. Although sharply critical of the religious and aesthetic aspects of the film, the Central Film Administration and the Ministry of Culture principally objected to the narrative’s treatment of conflicts between individual desires and

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political exigencies. In addition, the class conflict was staged less visually and dramatically than the GDR ideologues would have liked, and the film’s humanism derived less from its revolutionary theme than from sentiments expressed by characters such as Jean Valjean, Cosette, and Marius. The reception of the film was complicated by disagreements in both the East and the West. The massive public response of audiences in France and in East Germany, as well as in West Germany, where the film premiered in 1960 under the title Die Miserablen (The Miserable Ones), suggests that Le Chanois had struck a chord with his endorsement of universal humanist values. However, most press reviews were rather critical. In France, while praising Le Chanois for his casting choices, critics complained about the film’s failure as entertainment, noting especially the slow pace of some scenes, the traditional camera work, and the film’s excessive length.110 In the GDR, newspapers praised the exceptional performances of the lead actors as well as the quality and camera work of individual scenes, yet again directed much criticism at the long narrative, the lack of psychological motivation or good transitions between scenes, and the film’s ambivalence in its portrayal of the working classes.111 After 1959 DEFA’s growing discontent with its French partners led to the end of collaborations. In addition to concerns over the political messages of the coproductions, French companies were reluctant to acknowledge DEFA in the credits of the French versions of the films. DEFA had repeatedly insisted on its proper inclusion in the credits of all versions intended for distribution in Western Europe, but this demand could not be reconciled with the ban imposed by the Hallstein Doctrine. Neither of the earlier coproductions with Ariane Films and Films Borderie (Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel and Die Hexen von Salem) listed DEFA as an equal partner, which suggests that they were bound to comply with the existing policies of their own state. In other words, fulfilling the East Germans’ wishes would have prevented the French companies from marketing the films. Even in the case of Die Elenden, Pathé had downplayed DEFA’s role by presenting the French version as a French-Italian coproduction “with the co-operation of DEFA.”112 In 1958 the French went so far as to eliminate references to East Germany and DEFA from their promotional leaflets for the Cannes film festival.113 Even worse, when the film adaptation was released in West Germany, the French distributor complied with the Bonn regulations and omitted any mention of DEFA’s participation, not to mention its investment of more than 3 million East German Marks. These erasures shattered

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East German officials’ hopes of using coproductions to secure de facto recognition of the GDR’s sovereignty. Even though DEFA had initially tolerated the privileging of genre aesthetics over political messages in literary adaptations, it became clear that its partners were becoming increasingly ambivalent. As a consequence, upon Louis Daquin’s completion of the last East German–French coproduction, Trübe Wasser, in 1960, DEFA vetoed two further proposed adaptations of novels, namely Émile Zola’s La Débâcle (The Downfall, 1892) and Arthur Miller’s Focus (1945), a critique of anti-Semitism. Following the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, DEFA was forced to seek collaborations exclusively with Eastern European and socialist partners.

Conclusion The difficulties that DEFA encountered while trying to further its coproduction agenda with French partners in the 1950s were not unlike those encountered by the 1920s proponents of a pan-European cinema union. Both cultural projects were rooted in prevailing ideas of internationalism that proved hard to realize, especially in the conditions of war-ravaged Europe. The complex reality of joint projects undertaken across national borders had shaken the film industry’s hopes that cinematic art could benefit from alliances to the world of politics: during the Third Reich and later in the GDR, the economic and political strategies that underlay attempts to reach out to European partners and markets came to be justified by ideology. This powerful yet enslaving drive that lurked behind the impetus for European cooperation ultimately revealed the incompatibility between the interests of the state, the market, the industry, and the filmmakers themselves, and time and again created obstacles to the realization of the proposed ideals. Yet pragmatic forms of collaboration, such as the Franco-German coproductions that arose from the need to compete with the American film industry, did not die out. On the contrary, the resurgence of the Film Europe ideal in postwar alliances between DEFA and Pathé evidences the desire for a shared European cinematic culture whose scope and function would extend beyond the need to protect national cinemas. As we will see in the following chapter, this impetus found resonance not only in the ongoing project of officially approved film coproductions, but also in numerous practical arrangements for the provision of services and distribution licenses across the geopolitical borders imposed after the war. When we look beyond the agendas driving cooperation

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among studios or even states, the impulse for interpersonal exchange and the efficiency of individual agency in negotiating governmental regulations on film trade become most apparent.

Notes Parts of this chapter have been previously published in Mariana Ivanova, “DEFA and the Legacy of Film Europe: Prestige, Institutional Exchange, and Film Co-Productions,” in Allan and Heiduschke, eds., Re-Imagining DEFA: East German Cinema in Its National and Transnational Contexts (New York: Berghahn, 2016), 85–105. Reprinted with permission. 1. French film journalist Alexander Jason covered the development of Film Europe for the French trade press. This quotation comes from his article “Die Filmkonjunktur auf dem deutschen und französischen Absatzmarkt 1924/27,” La Cinématographie Française 490 (March 24, 1928), 19. 2. French producer Paul Cadeac, cited in W. H., “Französische Filmkünstler in Babelsberg: DEFA und französische Staatsfirma arbeiten zusammen an dem Film ‘Die Elenden.’ ” Neues Deutschland 98, April 26, 1957, 4. 3. This description is based on Manfred Merz’s article, “Auf den Barikaden von Babelsberg: Die DEFA verfilmt Victor Hugo—In der Hauptrolle: Jean Gabin,” Neue Zeit 117, May 22, 1957, 3. 4. Ibid. DEFA as well as some West German studios often produced double features with a running time of up to three hours. Such films included, for instance, Konrad Wolf’s 1971 Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge, GDR/USSR). While it was a practice in the United States to release similar films either as a longer single feature or in installments (the so-called multipart films), in the East German context Die Elenden, Goya, and other films were shown in two parts, with an intermission between the screenings. 5. Merz, “Auf den Barikaden von Babelsberg,” 3. 6. Marcel Huret, “Eternelle actualité des Misérables,” Pathé Magazine 16 (1957), 44–48 (47). 7. Compare to Aktiennotiz von der Referentin in der HV Film, Anne Pfeuffer, August 1, 1957 ( = BArch DR 1/4433). 8. The most significant contributions on DEFA coproductions with French partners are Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy”; Renate Epperlein, “Zusammenarbeit mit Esprit. Partnerschaften zwischen dem DEFA Studio für Spielfilme und französischen Produzenten in den 50er Jahren,” in Deutsch-französische Filmbegegnungen: 1929 bis in die Gegenwart, ed. Filmmuseum Potsdam (Potsdam, Germany: Filmmuseum Potsdam, 2009), 17–34, retrieved June 11, 2018, http://www.filmmuseum-potsdam. de/media/de/12783_17004_Franzosen2009.pdf; and Thomas Lindenberger, “Terriblement démodée: Zum Scheitern blockübergreifender Filmproduktion im Kalten Krieg (DDR-Frankreich, 1956–1960),” in Une Europe malgré tout, 1945–1990: Contacts et réseaux culturels, intellectuels et scientifiques entre Européens dans la guerre froide, ed. Antoine Fleury and Lubor Jilek (Brussels: Lang, 2009), 283–96. On individual coproductions, see Susan Hayward, French Costume Drama of the 1950s: Fashioning Politics in Film (Bristol, UK: Intellect, 2010), 223–37; and Günter Agde, “Koproduktionen als politische Prestigeobjekte. Der ostdeutsch-französische Film Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel von 1956,” in Filmblatt 40 (2009): 43–50.

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9. Jean-Paul Le Chanois, “Porquoi je vais tourner Les Misérables,” Les Lettres Françaises 16 (January 1957), quoted in Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy,” 35. 10. On UFA’s ties to British film companies and British-German coproductions, see Andy Räder, “Jack of All Trades: Alfred Hitchcock’s Apprenticeship in Neubabelsberg, 1924/25,” in Reassessing the Hitchcock Touch, ed. Wieland Schwanebeck (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017): 185–98. 11. Similar agreements were signed in postwar Europe to counter the influx of American imports. On the role of coproductions in postwar Europe, see Anne Jäckel, “Dual Nationality Film Productions in Europe after 1945,” Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 23, no. 3 (2003): 231–43; and Bergfelder, International Adventures. 12. For a lucid general overview of the formation of UFA, see Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany’s Historical Imaginary (London: Routledge: 2000), 106–21. 13. See Ernst Offermans, Internationalität und europäischer Hegemonialanspruch des Spielfilms der NS-Zeit (Hamburg, Germany: Dr. Kovač, 2001), 73–95. 14. See Karen Fiss, Grand Illusion: The Third Reich, the Paris Exposition, and the Cultural Seduction of France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 131–60 (“FrancoGerman Relations in the Cinema”) (133). 15. On the transition from UFA to DEFA and the process of acquiring the Babelsberg studios, see Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 9–49. The name “UFA,” however, did not cease to exist. The company was resurrected in West Germany in 1956 on a much smaller scale and it never acquired the fame of the conglomerate in the 1930s. On the history of the postwar company and the UFA brand, see Peter Mänz, Rainer Rother, and Klaudia Wick, eds., Die UFA: Geschichte einer Marke (Bielefeld, Germany: Kerber, 2017). 16. See Bathrick, “From UFA to DEFA”; Bathrick, “From Soviet Zone to Volksdemokratie; Barton Byg, “DEFA and the Traditions of International Cinema,” in Allan and Sandford, DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946–1992, 22–41; Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 284–335; and Fiss, Grand Illusion, 131–60. 17. Thomas Saunders, “German Conceptions of ‘Film Europe,’ ” in “Film Europe” and “Film America”: Cinema, Commerce and Cultural Exchange 1920−1939, ed. Andrew Higson and Richard Maltby (Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 1999), 327–45 (327). This collection of studies and original documents provides the most extensive scholarly treatment of Film Europe to date. On specific events and leading players in Germany, see Saunders’s contribution to that volume, “Germany and Film Europe,” 157–80. For important earlier discussions on Film Europe, see Kristin Thompson, “National or International Films? The European Debate during the 1920s,” Film History 8 (1996): 281–96; Victoria de Grazia, “European Cinema and the Idea of Europe, 1925–1995,” in Hollywood and Europe: Economics, Culture, National Identity, 1945–1995, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (London: British Film Institute, 1998), 9–33; and Andrew Higson, “Film-Europa. Kulturpolitik und industrielle Praxis,” in Sturm and Wohlgemuth, Hallo? Berlin?, 63–76. Most recently, documents on the Film Europe debate have been translated and published in Anton Kaes, Nicholas Baer, and Michael Cowan, eds., The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory 1907–1933 (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 288–316. 18. Georg Jacoby, “Film-Amerika und wir,” Berliner Zeitung, no. 322, supplement FilmB.Z., December 3, 1922, reprinted in Kaes, Baer, and Cowan, The Promise of Cinema, 297–98; Joe May, “Der Stil des Exportfilms,” Film-Kurier, 166, August 4, 1922, reprinted in Kaes, Baer, and Cowan, The Promise of Cinema, 294–95; Ernst Lubitsch, “Film-Internationalität,” in Heinrich Pfeiffer, ed., Das deutsche Lichtbild-Buch: Film-

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19.

20.

21.

22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

Cinema of Collaboration probleme von gestern und heute (Berlin: August Scherl, 1924), 13–14, reprinted in Kaes, Baer, and Cowan, The Promise of Cinema, 298–300. Anonymous, “Europäische Monroe-Doktrin,” Lichtbildbühne, March 1, 1924, trans. Brenda Benthien, reprinted in Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America,” 328–30; and Felix Henseleit, “Film-Europa,” Reichsfilmblatt, July 24, 1926, trans. Thomas J. Saunders, reprinted in Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America,” 338–40. On the role of these companies, and especially Pathé’s impact on the U.S. market and cinematic tastes, see Richard Abel, The Red Rooster Scare: Making Cinema American, 1900–1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). See Charles F. Klein, “Europa, America, Mentalität, Produktion,” Der Film 16, September 3, 1927, 5–6; Ch. Delac, “Europäische Solidarität,” Reichsfilmblatt 39, September 25, 1926, 10; and the unsigned “Filme, die wir brauchen—Filme, die wir nicht brauchen,” Reichsfilmblatt 18, May 1, 1926, 1. Anonymous, “Europa-Amerika,” Lichtbildbühne, May 21, 1924. Anonymous, “Europäische Monroe-Doktrin,” 329. Felix Henseleit, “A European Front,” Reichsfilmblatt, March 6, 1926, trans. Thomas J. Saunders, reprinted in Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America,” 333. For a discussion of reactions in the French press to Film Europe, see Jeanpaul Goergen, “Entente und Stabilisierung. Deutsch-französische Filmkontakte 1925–1933,” in Sturm and Wohlgemuth, Hallo? Berlin?, 51–62. Richard Abel, French Cinema: The First Wave, 1915–1929 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 42. As Abel shows, within a year the ratio of French to German exports was nearly inverted as the number of German exports grew. Westi was actually formed by German and Russian capital that émigré Vladimir Wengeroff and German financier Hugo Stinnes, who played a key role in Weimar cinema after World War I, invested in the film business. The most precise and detailed account of both alliances and their connection to Film Europe is given by Richard Abel, “Production: From Independent Artisan to International Consortium,” in French Cinema, 15–37. On the European Film Syndicate and Westi’s agreement with the French companies, see Thomas Saunders, “Germany and Film Europe,” in Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America,” 157–80 (162–63); and Daniel Otto, “ ‘. . . Die Filmindustrie Europas retten!’ Wengeroff, Stinnes und das ‘Europäische Filmsyndikat,’ ” in Fantaisies russes: Russische Filmmacher in Berlin, ed. Jörg Schöning (Munich, Germany: edition text+kritik, 1995), 59–82. Paul de la Bolerie, in La Cinématographie Française, February 24, 1924, quoted in Ursula Hardt, From Caligari to California: Erich Pommer’s Life in the International Film Wars (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1996), 78, 82. Hardt’s book offers the most elaborate study of Pommer’s life and career, while the most comprehensive collection of documents by and about Pommer is found in Wolfgang Jacobsen, Erich Pommer: Ein Produzent macht Filmgeschichte (Berlin: Argon, 1989). For the best discussion of Pommer’s model of production, see Elsaesser, “Erich Pommer: ‘Die Ufa’ and Germany’s Bid for a Studio System,” in Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After, 106–41. Hardt, From Caligari to California, 17. For a detailed account of Pommer’s work for French companies, see Hardt’s chapter “International Beginnings,” 11–30. Erich Pommer, “Bedeutung der Konzerne in der Filmindustrie,” in Das Tagebuch 35, September 11, 1920, 1139–41. Reprinted in Kaes, Baer, and Cowan, The Promise of Cinema, 290–92 (290). C. de Danilowicz, “Chez Erich Pommer,” Cinémagazine 4, July 4, 1924, 11, quoted in Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell, Film History: An Introduction, 3rd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009), 153.

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33. Hardt, From Caligari to California, 84–85. Compare Saunders, “Germany and Film Europe,” 161. 34. Erich Pommer, “The International Talking Film,” in Frank Arnau, ed., Universal Filmlexikon 1932: Europa (Berlin: Universal Filmlexikon, 1932), 13–16. Reprinted in Kaes, Baer, and Cowan, The Promise of Cinema, 314–16. See also Erich Pommer, “Peut-on faire des Films Internationaux?,” in La Cinématographe Française 542, March 23, 1929, 40; and Erich Pommer, “Der internationale Film,” Film-Kurier, August 28, 1928. 35. Pommer, “The International Talking Film,” 315. 36. Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After, 119. 37. Erich Pommer, “The International Picture: A Lesson of Simplicity,” Kinematograph Weekly, November 8, 1928, 41, reprinted in Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America,” 392–94. 38. Anonymous, “Amerikanisierung der UFA?,” Lichtbildbühne, January 9, 1926. 39. Axel Eggebrecht, “Filmdämmerung?,” Die Weltbühne, February 9, 1926. Reprinted in Kaes, Baer, and Cowan, The Promise of Cinema, 301–4 (302). The reference to Siegfried alluded to the commercial flop of Fritz Lang’s big-budget production Siegfried (1924) despite the director’s and Pommer’s visit to the United States to attend the premiere and the preceding well-funded advertisement campaign. 40. Anonymous, “Europas Filme den Europäern!,” Film-Kurier, November 11, 1925. 41. For a meticulous list of companies and directors involved in these early coproductions, see Abel, French Cinema, 36. 42. On the conferences, see Higson, “Film-Europa,” 63–76. 43. Ibid., 74. 44. On the production of Nana, see Abel, French Cinema, 32, 200–2. 45. Jean-Pierre Jeancolas, “Deutsch-französische (Film-)Beziehungen von 1929 bis 1944,” in Filmmuseum Potsdam, Deutsch-französische Filmbegegnungen, 5–16. 46. Abel, “Discourse,” 41. 47. For a detailed account of interwar German-French coproductions, see Francis Courtade, “Die deutsch-französischen Koproduktionen,” in Heike Hurst and Heiner Gassen, eds., Kameradschaft-Querelle. Kino zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich (Munich, Germany: Institut Français de Munich, 1991), 159–72. 48. Jeancolas, “Deutsch-französische,” 5–6. 49. See Margit Fröhlich’s discussion in “Playing the European Market: Marcel L’Herbier’s L’Argent (1928), Ufa, and German-French Film Relations,” in Continuity and Crisis in German Cinema, 1928–1936, ed. Barbara Hales, Michaela Petrescu, and Valerie Weinstein (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2016), 273–90. 50. Jeancolas, “Deutsch-französische,” 6. This quotation from a 1929 review of Cagliostro is from the journal Cinéa—Ciné pur tous; no page number or issue is provided. For additional discussion of Kameradschaft and film reviews, see Hermann Barth, Psychagogische Strategien des filmischen Diskurses in G. W. Pabsts Film “Kameradschaft” (Deutschland 1931) (Munich, Germany: Diskurs Film, 1990). 51. Saunders, “Germany and Film Europe,” 173. 52. On multiple-language film versions, see, among others, Richard Maltby and Ruth Vasey, “The International Language Problem: European Reactions to Hollywood’s Conversion to Sound,” in Hollywood in Europe: Experiences of a Cultural Hegemony, ed. David W. Ellwood and Rob Kroes (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994), 68–93; Joseph Garncarz, “Made in Germany: Multiple-Language Versions and the Early German Sound Cinema,” in Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America,” 249–73; and Chris Wahl, Sprachversionsfilme aus Babelsberg: Die internationale Strategie der UFA, 1929–1939 (Munich, Germany: edition text+kritik, 2009).

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53. Erich Pommer played a significant role in this process. See Jacobsen, Erich Pommer, 42–50. 54. Abel, “Discourse,” 40–41. Although Abel talks here primarily of a “French/Russian émigré/German axis of investment,” most of the filmmakers and investors involved had traveled and worked in Central Europe and Germany before arriving in France. 55. H., “Les Accord de la Soeciété Générale de Films et de l’Alliance Cinématografique Européenne,” La Cinématographie Française 482, January 28, 1928, n.p., cited in Goergen, “Entente und Stabilisierung,” 57. 56. Kristin Thompson, “The Rise and Fall of Film Europe,” in Higson and Maltby, “Film Europe” and “Film America,” 56–81 (61). 57. Abel, French Cinema, 46. 58. Wahl, Sprachversionsfilme aus Babelsberg, 158–87. 59. For a complete list of all involved filmmakers, producers, and actors from Germany and France, see Courtade, “Die deutsch-französischen Koproduktionen,” 164–69. 60. Visitors to Babelsberg included several young directors who would later significantly influence postwar French cinema, such as Marcel Carné and Serge de Poligny, as well as actors such as Mireille Balin, Elvire Popesco, Pierre Blanchar, Jean Gabin, and Raimu. Courtade, “Die deutsch-französischen Koproduktionen,” 165. 61. Originally in La Revue de Paris 1, 1935, 572–73, translated and quoted in Colin Crisp, The Classic French Cinema, 1930–1960 (London: Tauris, 1997), 179–80. 62. The Goebbels Diaries, 1942–1943, ed. and trans. Louis Lochner (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1948), 215. 63. Courtade, “Die deutsch-französischen Koproduktionen,” 202. 64. Lochner, The Goebbels Diaries, 221. 65. The Reich Film Chamber oversaw the Aryanization of the German film industry. See David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933–1945 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983); and Kreimeier, The Ufa Story, 267–76. 66. Benjamin George Martin, “ ‘European Cinema for Europe!’ The International Film Chamber, 1935–42,” in Cinema and the Swastika: The International Expansion of Third Reich Cinema, ed. Roel Vande Winkel and David Welch (New York: Palgrave: 2007), 25–41 (25). 67. de Grazia, Irresistible Empire, 325. 68. For a detailed discussion of the distribution of seats in the IFC, see Martin, “European Cinema for Europe!,” 27–28. 69. Ibid., 28. 70. See Fiss, Grand Illusion, 142; de Grazia, Irresistible Empire, 330–31. 71. “Tagung der Internationalen Filmkammer. Berlin 16–21, Juli 1941,” 10–11; quoted in Martin, “ ‘European Cinema for Europe!,’ ” 29. 72. Ibid. 73. On Nazi cinema and its effects, see, among others, Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion; Sabine Hake, Popular Cinema of the Third Reich (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001); and Lutz Koepnick, The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). 74. Quoted in Jäckel, “Dual Nationality Film Productions,” 231. 75. “Protokoll zum 23 DEFA Vorstandsitzung,” signed Albert Wilkening and dated April 14, 1948 ( = BArch DR 117/21701), 118. 76. Bergfelder, International Adventures, 24–25. 77. Quoted in Albert Wilkening, Betriebsgeschichte des VEB DEFA Studio für Spielfilme, 3 vols. (Berlin: VEB DEFA, 1981), 1:52. 78. Cited in Mückenberger and Jordan, “Sie sehen selbst, Sie hören selbst . . . ,” 375. Ac-

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80. 81. 82.

83. 84. 85.

86. 87.

88.

89.

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cording to Mückenberger and Jordan, Wolf had conducted a lively correspondence also with former UFA director Leo Mittler, as well as Austrian filmmaker Leopold Lindtberg and Italian director Roberto Rossellini (15–16). While in exile, Pommer had sustained his relationship with most former UFA employees and even worked during his short stay in France with many other prominent exiles such as Lang, Robert Siodmak, Curt Bernhardt, Billy Wilder, and Max Ophüls. For more information, see Elsaesser, “Erich Pommer,” 120. See also Hardt, From Caligari to California, 145–62. Hardt, From Caligari to California, 188–90. Letter by Albert Wilkening, June 1, 1955 ( = BArch DR 1/4701), 14. Letter by Fritz Apelt, State Secretary of the Ministry of Culture to the Central Committee of the SED, June 1, 1955 ( = BArch DR 1/4701), 66. Cited and translated by Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy,” 25. Report from June 6, 1955 ( = BArch DR 1/4644); cited in Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy,” 40–41. See Lindenberger, “Terriblement démodée,” 283–84. Many in the German audience would have become familiar with Raymond Bernard’s adaptation already during the Third Reich, but the film was also among the so-called Beutefonds Filme (booty films) confiscated and shown by the Soviets after World War II. For information on such films, see “Protokoll der Sitzung des ZK der KPdSU (B) Nr. 65 vom August 31, 1948,” reprinted in Die ungewöhnlichen Abenteuer des Dr. Mabuse im Lande der Bolschewiki, ed. Oksana Bulgakowa (Berlin: Deutsche Kinemathek, 1995), 257. Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy,” 39. Serena produced sixteen films between 1958 and 1977, half of which were joint ventures with France. Together with Artur Brauner’s CCC, Pathé, Avala (Yugoslavia), and Franco London films (United Kingdom), Serena also participated in three of the famous Karl May films by Robert Siodmak: The Yellow One (1964), Treasure of the Aztecs (1965), and Pyramid of the Sun God (1965). For a detailed discussion of these coproductions, see Bergfelder, International Adventures, 188. The first known versions of Les Misérables are French silent shorts by the Lumière brothers in 1897 and by Albert Capellani in 1906. U.S. director James Stuart Blackton followed suit in 1909 with a longer successful adaptation foregrounding the love story. This prompted Pathé, the French company controlling U.S. markets in the 1910s, to rehire Capellani for a full-length remake in 1913 with silent cinema celebrities Henry Krauss and Maria Ventura. For a meticulous account of all adaptations until 1989, see Edward Behr, The Complete Book of “Les Misérables” (New York: Arcade, 1989), 151–58. Pathé Magazine lists ten French screen adaptations of Hugo’s novel up to 1957. See Huret, “Eternelle actualité des Misérables.” Lewis Milestone (1895–1980), a Jewish émigré to Hollywood born on the periphery of the Russian Empire (in Kishinev, Moldova), changed his name from Lev Milstein when he arrived in the United States in 1913. He was no stranger in Europe: he had worked in Belgium and Germany before embarking on a successful career and becoming a master of film adaptations. He is especially known for films based on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and John Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men (1939). He was often compared to Sergei Eisenstein: both directors had worked extensively in the theater before coming to filmmaking, and both scrutinized social issues and inequality in their work. For a detailed discussion, see Harlow Robinson, “Lewis Milestone: The Russian Connection,” in Cineaste 37, no. 2 (2012): 10–14.

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90. See A.W., “Fox Version of ‘Les Misérables,’ with Rennie as Valjean, Reopens the Rivoli,” New York Times, August 15, 1952. This review mentions earlier adaptations in both the U.S. and Francophone markets and concludes laconically, “However, repeated variations of this noble theme have not always contributed luster to the original. And the present version is no exception.” See also “Les Misérables,” Time, August 15, 1952, 75. 91. “Les Misérables,” Newsweek, August 18, 1952, 83–84. 92. Behr, The Complete Book of “Les Misérables,” 152. 93. Compare to Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy,” 36. 94. See Huret, “Eternelle actualité des Misérables.” 95. On the use of Technicolor in the production, see Hayward, French Costume Drama, 225, 236. 96. E. R., “Liebe, Spannung und Musik: Die DEFA-Pläne für 1957—das neue Verfahren “Totalvision,’ ” Neue Zeit 14, January 17, 1957, 4. 97. On Le Chanois’s biography and the political situation in France during the Occupation and after the war, see Crisp, The Classic French Cinema, 182–84; Hayward, French Costume Drama, 224; Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy,” 35; and Lindenberger, “Terriblement démodée,” 283. 98. Crisp, The Classic French Cinema, 194. 99. Quoted in Huret, “Eternelle actualité des Misérables,” 47. 100. Le Chanois’s introduction of Javert’s son as Valjean’s nemesis was a device that allowed him to justify the choice of an older actor for Valjean’s role. 101. Konzeption von Heinz Kamnitzer from April 9, 1957, BArch, DR 117/11868, quoted in Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy,” 35. 102. The screenplays, translated by Ruth von Mayenburg, were made available to DEFA by April 2, 1957; see BArch DR 117/2543 and 117/2545 for Part I and Part II. 103. Hayward, French Costume Drama, 226. 104. This scene might also refer to Marius’s first encounter with Monsieur Thénardier, Cosette’s abusive foster parent: “To think there is no equality, even when we are dead! Just look at Père Lachaise! The great, those who are rich, are in the upper part, in the avenue of the acacias, which is paved. They can go there in a carriage. The low, the poor, the unfortunate, they are all put in the lower part, where there is mud up to the knees, in holes, in the wet. They are put there so that they may rot quicker! You cannot go to see them without sinking into the ground.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, trans. Charles E. Wilbour (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 737. 105. The first two quotes are from Wilbour’s 1997 translation of Hugo’s novel (Hugo, Les Misérables), n.p.; the third is from Christine Donougher’s translation, Hugo, The Wretched (London: Penguin Books, 2013), n.p., quoted in Huret, “Eternelle actualité des Misérables,” 37. 106. Ibid. 107. See “Book Fourth—The Friends of the ABC,” in Hugo, Les Misérables, 640–70. 108. Hayward, French Costume Drama, 225. 109. Compare to Silberman, “Learning from the Enemy,” 45. 110. See G. Poix, “Prestige et décadence des Misérables,” Image et Son 111 (April 1, 1958): 15–16. 111. See Valentin Heinrich, “Die Elenden neu verfilmt: eine Coproduktion DEFA-Pathé,” Berliner Zeitung 16, January 20, 1959, 4; H. U., “Der Sträfling aus dem Bagno. “Die Elenden’—ein Film nach dem Roman von Viktor Hugo,” Neue Zeit 17, January 21, 1959, 4; and Horst Knietzsch, “Die Elenden—Ein Film nach dem gleichnamigen Roman von Viktor Hugo,” Neues Deutschland 24, January 24, 1959, 4.

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112. See also Silberman’s discussion of the production history of Die Elenden in “Learning from the Enemy,” 35–37. 113. As was the case with Die Hexen von Salem, described by Silberman (“Learning from the Enemy,” 26), Pathé Cinéma and other French companies and distributors ran into difficulties when defining DEFA’s role in the film credits, because the GDR had not yet been officially recognized by France and an open collaboration with the East German state film studio would cause bureaucratic problems. To avoid complications, the French partners wanted to label the films as Franco-Italian coproductions with the collaboration of DEFA; although GDR functionaries initially accepted this compromise, they later rejected further collaborations wholesale.

Chapter 2

FILM EXCHANGE BEYOND THE BAN Erich Mehl’s Partnership with DEFA

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for our continuing cooperation of more than two and a half decades. You have distributed several hundred DEFA films and showed great prudence and acumen in bringing them to audiences. Your unwavering efforts have contributed a great deal toward DEFA’s worldwide prestige. —Bernhard Otto, letter to Erich Mehl, September 10, 19901

Wolfgang Staudte’s 1951 film Der Untertan (The Kaiser’s Lackey) was the first picture to stir frenzied debates on the merits of film import/export across the recently drawn inner German border.2 A film adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s eponymous novel, this DEFA production critiqued the subservient mentality of the middle classes during the Wilhelmine period and drew a parallel between protagonist Diedrich Hessling’s (Werner Peters) docile admiration of nationalist ideals and the mindset of postwar West German politicians. Der Untertan premiered in East Berlin on August 31, 1951—only a month after the federal government had put an end to the lively film exchange conducted among the four occupied zones of Germany.3 The film exchange, as we will see in this chapter, was a complex trade in film licenses and distribution rights regulated by the Allied occupation authorities after World War II. Not only pictures circulated among the sectors of the German capital: in the immediate postwar years, directors, actors, and audiences alike were also able to move unimpeded across the new borders and to make or view films. By the early 1950s, however, the political division of Ger-

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many had interfered with both film production and exchange, as evident in the conflicted reception of Der Untertan. Even though both German states were founded in 1949—only two years before the release of Staudte’s adaptation—the media response to Der Untertan reveals a starkly polarized climate in Germany at the time. GDR critics were overwhelmingly positive in their reviews of the film, lauding Staudte’s adaptation of Heinrich Mann’s 1918 eponymous novel for its “storyline that does justice to the masterful original!”4 In addition to applauding the film’s aesthetic and narrative excellence, reviewers discussed its prestige and exportability and noted its function as a timely intervention in the intra-German conflict mirrored by an accelerating Cold War.5 In the West, however, media voices were far more reserved. Reviews were brief and devoid of references to the contemporaneous political conflict. After all, everyone was waiting to see whether the West German government would approve Der Untertan for distribution. The major West German news magazine, Der Spiegel, for instance, briefly announced the premiere of Staudte’s “biting satire” and laconically noted, “The film runs only in the Eastern [Soviet occupied] zone.”6 Two months later the magazine released a much more rigorous and positive review, although its title, “A Time That Has Long Passed,” rejected allusions in Staudte’s film to the current rearmament of West Germany and the concomitant polarization of animosities across the German-German divide.7 For Der Spiegel and other West German media, however, criticism of the thematic content of Der Untertan appeared to be part of a strategy to encourage its release in West Germany by blunting its message.8 Whereas the GDR press openly celebrated the film’s association of nationalism with capitalism, West German papers recognized its value as cinema while deploring the ideological baggage of the new adaptation. “There is quite the danger,” the neutral Swiss paper Die Tat maintained, “that [the film] will remain misunderstood or misinterpreted. We should only hope that one day Der Untertan will be discussed objectively and beyond the current political biases.”9 Der Untertan became a benchmark in postwar filmmaking, raising questions about the legitimate appropriation of the prewar German legacy, the value of film exchange, and the threat of ideological infiltration into the West. At a time when the newly founded GDR yearned for political recognition, as discussed in the previous chapter, German émigrés who had once played a major role in interwar cultural life were actively pursued and persuaded to join the socialist cause. Such was the case with Heinrich Mann, one of the most acclaimed leftist Weimar writers, who in 1949 entered negotiations with DEFA over the rights

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to his novel, Der Untertan.10 These negotiations evolved into a political game: the GDR government offered Mann the presidency of the newly established Academy of Arts in East Berlin and awarded him the national prize for literature. Though Mann resisted the temptation and remained in the United States, such gestures were not uncommon in the GDR’s politics of seeking legitimization via laying claims on traditional German cultural heritage. As we will see in chapter 4, courting prominent leftist intellectuals in exile continued well into the 1970s. At the same time, not only the well-known author, but also the high quality of the East German film itself were deemed important when it came to export decisions. Like the prestige DEFA-French coproductions in the mid-1950s, Der Untertan offered the young socialist state a compelling opportunity for self-promotion. West Germany’s response to East Germany’s attempts at political persuasion through art was not welcoming. West German politicians not only disagreed with the GDR’s foundational myth, which portrayed it as the legitimate heir of German humanist traditions, but they also alleged a danger of ideological contamination through art and specifically through cinema. Consequently, in the early 1950s films from the East came under harsh scrutiny by state officials in Bonn. Following its glamorous GDR premiere and celebratory acclaim in the East German press, Staudte’s film became the first casualty of the West German government’s fear of ideological infiltration and was promptly banned from distribution in West Germany. In 1953, two years before adopting the Hallstein Doctrine mentioned in chapter 1, West German officials took further measures to control the importation of films made by DEFA and the Soviet bloc: the Adenauer government instigated the socalled Interministerieller Ausschuss für Ost-West Filmfragen, 1953–66 (Interministerial Commission for East-West Film Questions). This new commission would maintain the ban on Der Untertan for several years.11 Only a couple of months after the commission’s founding, however, Erich Mehl, a young financier and newcomer to the film business, mounted a major campaign to allow the premiere of Staudte’s contested film in the West. This campaign marks the beginning of a series of transnational business strategies launched by Mehl and other independent West German producers to evade bans on coproductions with the GDR. Mehl had been waiting for an opportunity to win the trust of East German filmmakers and to establish himself as the distributor of DEFA films in the West. He recognized the demand for quality pictures in West Germany and saw a niche in the market after the Iron Curtain descended. During his prolonged battle with the Interministerial

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Commission for East-West Film Questions, the entrepreneur enlisted influential West German media, including Der Spiegel and Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (Broadcasting Service in the American Sector; RIAS). Both the magazine and the radio station were strongly in favor of freedom of artistic expression in Adenauer’s Germany. Graf Nayhus (Der Spiegel) and Jürgen Graf (RIAS) thus raised their voices in support of Staudte’s film.12 In 1955 Der Spiegel appealed to West German officials to foster cooperation among filmmakers and producers in both states and to put an end to the ludicrous censorship of cultural products made behind the Iron Curtain.13 Similarly, two years later Karl Heinz Pepper, the head of Europa-Filmverleih and later the sponsor of Europa-Center in Berlin (1961) put pressure on the federal government on behalf of Mehl.14 By mobilizing his connections to business circles in West Germany, the film financier not only succeeded in arranging the West German premiere of Der Untertan in 1957, but also inserted himself as a mediator between DEFA and the federal government. Mediators like Mehl, as this chapter will show, were ubiquitous in the first postwar decade, when the prospects for German unification seemed viable. Most were neither coerced by GDR authorities nor were they committed supporters of the socialist cause. Rather, the mediators were often novices or outsiders in the German film industry who recognized a business opportunity in the void left in the cultural domain by postwar arrangements and the growing Cold War animosities. In addition to Mehl, these mediators included Artur Brauner, Hans Abich, Walter Koppel, and others. Many of these DEFA partners in the 1940s and the 1950s embarked on successful careers as independent producers based in West Germany and continuously pursued coproduction and film export deals in Eastern and Western Europe. By exchanging films and services across the political divide, these liaisons commercially profited from a lucrative niche that opened due to scarcity in the film supply in both Germanys during the late 1940s. For the East German studios, working with independent contractors—producers, distributors, and film financiers—was essential to maintain a presence in the West German market and, by extension, the markets of other capitalist countries. During the years of the Hallstein Doctrine (1955–69), DEFA had to pursue not only large studios behind the Iron Curtain, such as Pathé Cinéma and Films Borderie, but also contacts with private persons and ventures in order to distribute its product in the face of governmental bans. As we saw in chapter 1, by the mid-1950s sustaining a fair dialogue with Western film companies while attending to the GDR politicians’ expectations became an insur-

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mountable challenge for the DEFA management. Negotiations with independent producers went much smoother for several reasons: they were less dependent on state subsidy, more flexible in giving DEFA decision-making power, and driven more by marketing than by aesthetic or ideological concerns. Even after the political bans were lifted in the early 1970s, the East German studios continued to enlist the services of distributors such as Manfred Durniok and Leo Kirch, who supplied GDR movie theaters and television broadcasters with pictures from Western and Asian countries. With such partners, DEFA reproduced a working protocol established with liaison Erich Mehl in the mid-1950s.

Erich Mehl’s Partnership with DEFA-Außenhandel The case of film financier, distributor, and independent coproducer Erich Mehl (1918–2010) deserves particular attention, because he established himself as the only longstanding partner DEFA had in the West until East Germany’s political recognition in 1972 (Figure 2.1). This becomes clear in a letter that the seventy-two-year-old financier received in September 1990.15 In his capacity as the legal counsel of DEFA-Außenhandel (DEFA Foreign Trade Department), Dr. Bernhard Otto wrote to thank Mehl for a thirty-five-year-long cooperation with the East German film studio: “You have distributed several hundred DEFA films,” Otto reminisced, “and showed great prudence and acumen in bringing them to audiences. Your unwavering efforts have contributed a great deal toward DEFA’s worldwide prestige. All contracts signed with you were completed in a correct and timely manner and your positive business attitude has enabled and facilitated the export of our films.”16 Otto’s seemingly generic gesture of appreciation, however, was by no means a mere form letter announcing the closure of the now dispensable office. Indeed, behind these laconic lines lay decades of convoluted negotiations and Cold War film politics: after the successful premiere of Der Untertan, DEFA and Mehl traded in film distribution rights and evaded the ban on East German–West German coproductions, thus rendering the Berlin Wall permeable to film business. The vagaries that marked this enduring relationship suggest an idiosyncratic business model for film exchange that raises the following questions: What economic and ideological incentives did DEFA and the East German government perceive in film trade with Western distributors and producers? What was Mehl’s own motivation for coproducing with a studio in the GDR and sustaining a film exchange? What enabled him to establish lasting

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Figure 2.1. Erich Mehl (1918–2010), West German film financier, independent producer, and DEFA coproducer. Courtesy Private Archive Erich Mehl/Gabriele Ott, Lugano, Switzerland.

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relations with DEFA-Außenhandel and to overcome persisting political hurdles such as bans, censorship, and state-imposed regulations on film production? More broadly, what do we gain from studying such models of successful cooperation across the East-West divide? By tackling these questions, the present chapter reveals Mehl’s partnership with DEFA as the driving force behind the continuous film exchange between East and West Germany during the Cold War. The flexibility of this business model suggests that the circulation of postwar German pictures was governed by economic interest as much as it was subject to political control. In order to uncover possible motivations and models for Mehl’s relationship with DEFA-Außenhandel, this chapter traces it back to the film exchange across the occupied zones in Germany between 1947 and 1951. The discussion that follows is based on unpublished correspondence and trade documents recently made available in the private archive of Erich Mehl and Dr. Gabriele Ott.17 Analysis of these sources reveals a lasting partnership between Mehl and DEFA that emerged from the interzonal film exchange, defied the governmental ban on inter-German cooperation in the 1950s, and adapted to shifting political tensions between 1961 and 1990. Mehl’s role in popularizing DEFA films abroad was indispensable for securing East German cinema’s international reputation, as well as for establishing a dialogue between the cinematic cultures of East and West. His success reopens the question of individual agency in forging transnational strategies for negotiating and circumventing political bans. Mehl and his partners at DEFA-Außenhandel rehearsed several models of collaboration that include using a wide network of Western independent producers, founding companies beyond German borders, and trading film distribution rights or technical services. All these strategies are illustrated in my discussion of one of Mehl’s coproductions with DEFA, Spielbank-Affäre (Casino Affair, 1957, dir. Arthur Pohl). By remapping the temporal and geographic realm of film exchange on the basis of Mehl’s activities, this chapter invites a new understanding of the ongoing dialogue between the film cultures of East and West across the ideological Cold War divide.

A European Network for Sustaining the German-German Film Exchange The term “film exchange,” as used here, encompasses not only export and import but also transnational collaboration for film financing and

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coproducing, license trade, and film distribution. Not limited to the German context, these practices were common in national cinemas during the Cold War, as collaboration among studios in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and their Western partners in France, Italy, or Great Britain attests.18 As I turn to discuss cross-cultural exchange, therefore, I shift the perspective from a binary understanding of antagonistic powers as defining forces of the Cold War to foreground a more complex relationship among those who created or commercially used art and those who controlled art production and distribution. Indeed, scholars who study film exchange and the travel of artists in the European and transatlantic Cold War contexts have recently begun to emphasize the role of individuals vis-à-vis state-owned ventures.19 On the one hand, this emphasis brings into new relief the effects of crossborder movement of people and artifacts on the power relations within the socialist bloc. On the other hand, not only tensions and dissidence emerge as objects of study in the process, but also a reality of ideological promises and interdependency between state structures and individuals from the West. Erich Mehl’s successful networking with Eastern and Western European film producers and distributors contributes to this redefinition of the interplay between institution and individual, which until recently has only been seen in a static and essentialist way. Looking at his business exchanges with Western producers and the DEFAAußenhandel leads us to a more nuanced understanding of not only divergent but also shared agendas between East and West. Mehl exchanged with his peers in West Germany services ranging from financing film projects and trading licenses to the supply of studio space, scripts, and actors for DEFA coproductions. Another strategy to facilitate film exchange with the GDR and other countries from the socialist bloc was Mehl’s initiation of ventures across European borders. When in 1954 the Adenauer government issued a ban on film coproductions with the GDR (discussed at length below in this chapter), Mehl founded a Swedish film company, Pandora, so he could partner with DEFA on four projects. Similarly, when East German bureaucrats censored two Pandora/DEFA films in the late 1950s, Mehl closed Pandora, relocated to Switzerland, and from there managed his license trade with DEFA-Außenhandel via third-party distributors in Italy, France, and West Germany. Both strategies are key to understanding why East German filmmakers and functionaries cooperated with him, and to deciphering Mehl’s own economic interests in accessing Eastern European markets. By trading in distribution rights for West German, French, and Italian films to be screened on GDR television and redis-

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tributed to other socialist countries, Mehl gained unrivaled access to cinematic production behind the Curtain, a privilege that allowed him to monopolize for two decades the distribution of DEFA productions and select Eastern European films in the West. Erich Mehl’s contacts served him particularly well in his partnership with DEFA. He began developing his network in the 1950s by establishing strong connections with West Germany’s emerging independent producers, such as Horst Wendland (Rialto Film), Artur Brauner (Central Cinema Company; CCC), and Gero Wecker (Arca Film Holding). The nature of these relations was mainly financial: Mehl invested cash in several film projects at a time when bank credit was hard to get. In the following years, he expanded his circle to include prominent journalists who gravitated around film business groups, such as Will Tremper (a columnist who later became a filmmaker himself) and Hans Borgelt (a film commentator and public relations manager for the Berlinale). By the 1960s Mehl began acquiring bankrupt film companies such as Arca Film Holding and Oppenheimer Film Holding, inheriting their contacts to important international film ventures. Arca was already partnering with the largest West German distributor, Constantin, while Oppenheimer had a Paris subsidiary and was involved in joint projects with France. Mehl’s acquisitions enabled his financial involvement in numerous coproductions with Italy, France, and Great Britain, as well as distribution deals and license trading. Moreover, his circle of partners now included major European and U.S. studios, such as Pathé and Paris Productions, Serena and Excelsa in Rome, United Artists, and Yugoslavia Film, to name a few.20 Simultaneously, with the emerging medium of television, Mehl followed in the steps of moguls Leo Kirch and Horst Wendland and began supplying Eastern European films to West German and Western European broadcasters. Despite his active engagement in Cold War film industries and cultures in both the East and West, Erich Mehl largely remains “the big unknown of German cinema.”21 Born on March 24, 1918, in Berlin as the son of a Deutsche Bank CEO, the future producer did not have an artistic but rather an entrepreneurial background. In 1939, at the age of twenty-one, he enlisted in the Wehrmacht and fought in the Winter War after the Soviet Union invaded Finland. Seriously wounded, Mehl returned to Berlin where in 1946 he first bought shares in one of the leading brands of the German bread and beer industry. Like Artur Brauner and the young Leo Kirch, he was drawn to invest in the lucrative cinema world. A promising but short-lived opportunity arose with Leo de Laforgue’s first postwar picture, Großstadtgeheimnis (Big City Se-

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cret, 1951), which Mehl funded via his new film company, Ideal-Film, founded under American license in Munich-Geiselgasteig.22 After a trial run as a producer of de Laforgue’s film, Mehl decided that he was better equipped to become a financier and cultural ambassador who exchanged film rights and services across the German-German divide.23 The fact that Mehl has drawn little attention from film scholars is due not only to scarce media coverage, but also to the nature of his interventions in the film world. Shunning the limelight, he conducted his business behind the scenes at film festivals and glamorous premieres. He often invested in projects by other film producers without appearing in the credits, or purchased the distribution rights for a film after a successful opening. Mehl granted few interviews, and those were to friends such as Jürgen Graf, Will Tremper, and Hans Borgelt. In those rare instances when he spoke to the press, Mehl usually lobbied for the release of DEFA films in the West.24 In the East German media, however, Mehl often went unmentioned in film reviews foregrounding DEFA’s achievements. By remaining behind the scenes, Mehl was able to enjoy freedom of movement, tax relief, and stable business connections that rendered his endeavors to bring East German films to Western audiences during the Cold War successful. By bringing the film financier onstage, we become aware of DEFA films as commodities in European cinema’s cycle of aesthetic production, assessment, distribution, and economic return. Mehl’s East German partner, DEFA-Außenhandel (1955–93), played a crucial role in the GDR conceptualization of film as not just a prestige product in cultural exchange, but also as a source of substantial economic profit. While DEFA itself was a state-run company and state-subsidized venture, DEFA-Außenhandel, its export/import department, was entirely dependent on income from the sale of film distribution rights and licenses. Thus, the department held a unique position within DEFA as its only economically self-sustaining division; its mandate was to enhance DEFA’s prestige abroad and to generate revenue for the state. According to Daniela Berghahn, this mission was successful with more than three thousand GDR feature film licenses sold to eighty countries until 1990, compared to roughly two thousand imported films from thirty-six countries.25 DEFA-Außenhandel was the successor of a Soviet distributor, Sovexport, and the DEFA Auslandsabteilung (DEFA Export Department), as well as the office for Filmübernahmeund Außenhandelsbetrieb (Film Acquisition and International Distribution) created in 1952. Upon relegating the domestic distribution of films to Progress Film-Verleih (Progress Distribution) in 1955, this office

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was renamed DEFA-Außenhandel. Until the political recognition of the GDR in 1972, films could be purchased directly only from socialist and Scandinavian countries and from Switzerland, Austria, and Holland. While trade with other socialist countries was regulated by bilateral agreements between the nations, DEFA-Außenhandel approached West German and other capitalist markets indirectly, via transnational cooperation with independent film producers and financiers, because they were more flexible and ready to make concessions; also, like Mehl, they were able to function as intermediaries between DEFA and the Adenauer government. Therefore, trading conditions and prices for film licenses were frequently negotiated via film exchange. This often required a balancing act between the use of rather limited funds and DEFA-Außenhandel’s primary duty: to sell socialist films at a higher price in order to ensure a steady influx of hard currency into state coffers. Over the years, the number of DEFA employees increased from eight in 1953 to fifty-six in 1989. Under managing directors Charlotte Schlotter (1953–69), Kurt Jordan (1969–73), and Helmut Diller (1973– 90), the office reached an export volume of 8.5 million East German marks and an import volume of 7.2 million East German marks.26 These numbers demonstrate that film in the GDR was used for the state’s economic gain—an agenda that, as we will see, had its roots in the interzonal film exchange between 1948 and 1951.

Film Exchange during the 1940s “Film exchange” was the buzzword in the postwar German press at a time when occupation authorities pondered ways to reconstruct the domestic film industry as directors and actors commuted between West Berlin and Babelsberg and young audiences flocked to Grenzkinos (cinemas at the inner German border). After the so-called Filmpause (film break), the one-year-long period when the Allies halted film production in order to introduce a licensing system, film exchange among the zones became economically indispensable.27 Even though the break had a positive effect on the reorganization of the film industry, it resulted in an acute shortage of domestic productions. The crisis went even deeper: shortage of qualified film personnel ensued from the large-scale emigration in the 1930s, obtaining a license to produce films was extremely hard, the importation of foreign pictures (mainly from Hollywood) increased by the day, and moviegoers demanded quality entertainment.

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In these conditions, the film exchange began first between the Soviet and the French sectors, and the British and U.S. sectors followed suit later. The cultural policies of the French were more liberal and oriented toward competing with their colleagues in East Berlin, as Peter Pleyer suggests.28 Already in summer 1946, while Staudte was shooting the first German postwar picture for DEFA, Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us, 1946), the French issued the first film license in a Western sector to Artur Brauner for his film Sag die Wahrheit (Tell the Truth, 1946, dir. Helmut Weiss). Therefore, in March 1947 the French authorities signed an agreement with the Soviets for the exchange of international films, as announced by an article entitled “Film Goes Across the Sector Borders.”29 The agreement postulated that two French pictures must be annually exchanged for two Sovietmade films. In the meantime, Walter Koppel, an independent producer and head of Real-Film Hamburg, drew the British authorities’ attention to the ongoing film exchange and demanded that he be permitted to enter a similar agreement with the DEFA studio, whose size and reputation were rapidly growing. Koppel’s request was then taken up at one of the meetings of all four cultural authorities where a uniform policy for all sectors was discussed. Rolf Meyer ( Junge Film-Union) also requested to participate in the film exchange and was the first to demand the regulation of such trade, at the young Film Producer Association in 1948.30 The role of independent producers such as Koppel, Brauner, and Meyer in establishing and maintaining the film exchange should not be underestimated. Researchers Peter Stettner and Claudia DillmannKühn have established the significance of the interzonal exchange for the reconstruction of the German postwar film industry. For example, Stettner’s monograph on the Junge Film-Union in the British zone shows that interzonal exchange became the only way for producers to remedy shortages in domestic film supply in the late 1940s.31 DillmannKühn’s account of Brauner’s intensive cooperation with the Soviets engages with another dimension of this cooperation.32 In exchange for raw film stock, props, extras, and shooting locations, the West Berlin–based producer provided the Soviet-controlled DEFA with distribution rights to his own films. Because the West German market was so small, producers had to look to the East in order to cover their production costs. By foregrounding this trade of film products and services, Stettner and Dillmann-Kühn demonstrate that independent Western producers in the immediate postwar years conceived of the film exchange as vitally important for their survival amid competition from foreign companies.

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With Directive 55, issued by the Allied Control Council on June 25, 1947, the exchange of pictures was legalized, yet not without reservations.33 Initially the United States and its allies were reluctant to endorse unfettered film exchange because they viewed DEFA as the Soviets’ “continuation of state control of culture, similar to that constructed under the Nazi regime.”34 Fears of a new dream factory emerging from the rubble and mirroring the structure of Goebbels’s UFA led to the decentralization of film production in the Western zones and reluctance to grant licenses. Erich Pommer, the once-powerful UFA producer who returned to Germany in 1947 as a film officer in the U.S. zone, put those fears into words: “They [the Soviets] have built a powerful industry along the lines of the old UFA, and if the zonal boundaries are ever dropped, they will be in perfect condition to absorb the weak, decentralized industry in the U.S. Zone.”35 Indeed, in the fall of 1947, DEFA emerged as the largest continental motion picture company, with more than 1,500 employees and two studios at its disposal—one in Babelsberg, where the UFA had been headquartered, and one in Johannisthal, previously owned by Tobis.36 Under the leadership of Alfred Lindemann, the East German film studio attempted to move beyond the limits of the Soviet zone to become a suprazonal company. As Alfred Lindemann suggested in 1947, We have to expect that we will be operating in a free market one day. . . . Therefore, it is of great importance to produce as many German films as possible. Our priority lies not in economic concerns but in the great relevance of film as a means for the democratic re-education of the German people. . . . We are the ones who were incarcerated in concentration camps or in jail; we lived through the most brutal oppression in Germany; we are the ones who know the hardship of rebuilding and each person’s adversity and misery; we will make ourselves heard in this new Germany—with each film that we make. For this reason, we feel obliged to help in a comradely manner every German producer who needs our help for his project, under the condition that his film is artistically sound and serves the greater goal of democratization. . . . We welcome everyone who wants to help the new and true democracy with creativity, directing, and acting, no matter in which zone one lives.37

His successor as DEFA director for production, financing, and management, Walter Janka, continued to actively pursue this agenda. Janka entered the position only three weeks before the Berlin Blockade of June 1948, yet he managed to sustain the exchange due to his personal connections and his conviction that “DEFA films need to be shown in

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all countries of this world.”38 Though we will return to Janka’s role within DEFA in more detail in chapter 4, it is important to highlight his significant contribution to the film exchange during the Berlin Blockade. Shortly before he took the position of production director, Janka returned from Mexico where he had founded the publishing house, El Libro Libre, which edited and released works by most German exile writers, such as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Anna Seghers, Lion Feuchtwanger, and others. At DEFA Janka was responsible for the distribution, contracts for licensing, and various financial questions, and in that capacity he was the contact person for most West German partners. He was able to translate the politics of the Soviet zone into business and vice versa, to make the business demands by DEFA partners plausible to the Soviet officials. Walter Koppel and Gyula Trebitsch in Hamburg were Janka’s first important contacts in the West. Janka and Koppel knew each other from their youth as communists in the Weimar Republic. Koppel mediated Roberto Rossellini’s cooperation with DEFA on Germany Year Zero (1948) and Janka returned the favor by connecting him with Staudte. In the following months, Koppel began to trade film rights with DEFA in exchange for row film material and various services.39 By July 1948 the producer had opened a bank account for DEFA in Hamburg in order to navigate transactions with the studio. Koppel mediated to Janka the contact with Lucie Berndsen at Schorcht Film Distribution in Munich. Berndsen provided DEFA with a list of all film producers in the American zone and facilitated the distribution of DEFA films such as Affaire Blum (The Blum Affair, 1948, dir. Erich Engel) in the American sector.40 As mutual cooperation with partners in the U.S., British, and French zones continued to grow, Janka established an independent distribution company within DEFA to be able to navigate the studio’s partnerships despite the Berlin Blockade. Moreover, he convinced Soviet authorities in the profit they would gain by renting out DEFA studio space to Western producers, such as Artur Brauner.41 In 1949, before leaving his post, Janka summarized, “For almost all of our films in the production years 1948/1949 we were able to sign film exchange agreements with British, American, or French film producers or distributors.”42 By late 1948 cooperation with DEFA, including the interzonal film exchange, became more and more necessary—and there were several good reasons for that. First, the revival of the film industry in the U.S., French, and British occupied zones was delayed and strict decartelization guidelines were applied, but nevertheless a few film licenses were granted. As a result, newly licensed independent production companies found little support from the Allies, the West German government,

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or the former Ufi conglomerate. Second, “the costly and paralysingly bureaucratic state subsidy schemes,” as Tim Bergfelder shows, led to a dramatic decrease in indigenous pictures and the saturation of the domestic market with foreign film productions due to “the government’s failure to establish quota regulations.”43 For this reason, the reception of West German films in other countries was rather poor, and the only substantial export markets were German-speaking countries, such as Austria and Switzerland. Third, as Joseph Garncarz maintains, West German audiences generally did not prefer Hollywood films, but domestic or European films.44 Fourth, in an atmosphere of growing Cold War antagonism, Central and Eastern European markets appeared beyond the reach of Western producers, but DEFA continued to have unimpeded access to them. As we saw in the previous chapter, Goebbels had extended his entertainment empire largely in those regions and had tried to imbue audiences with a taste for German films. Finally, East and West German distributors alike shared economic profit by cashing in on pictures made on the other side without sharing the cost of production. For all these reasons, West Germans were interested in working with DEFA. Thus, the Berlin Blockade from June 1948 to May 1949 could not greatly affect film exchange among the zones. The Soviets managed to import and distribute ten films from other zones, though the British general Sir Brian Robertson had issued a ban on media exchange in January 1949. This ban caused on outcry among several West German producers, who wrote a letter demanding that Robertson reopen the film exchange or face two undesirable alternatives: “film monopolies or no film industry at all.”45 Indeed, in February 1949, the interzonal exchange resumed but under the condition of strict political censorship. Both the ban on film exchange and the producers’ reaction, furthermore, had repercussions for cinematic cooperation in the mid-1950s. In 1954, censors in the Adenauer government referred to General Robertson’s ban and strict censorship measures in order to justify their own conservative import policy.46 West German film producers in the 1950s, too, reacted to the restrictive measures by forming an organization to defend their interests and writing letters to persuade the censors of the need for film exchange and coproductions. One of the most prominent producers involved in both the reaction to the 1949 ban and the mid-1950s attempts at inter-German film coproductions was Artur Brauner. He had an unusual origin and language skills that proved pivotal for his work across zonal borders. Born in Poland to Jewish parents in 1918 as Abraham, Brauner later changed

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his name to Artur. He was able to escape the Łódź ghetto after the Nazi occupation and somehow found his way to the Soviet Union, where he remained hidden until Nazi Germany’s defeat.47 It is likely that there he learned Russian, a language similar to his native Polish, which later came in handy during negotiations with Soviet film officers. In 1945 Brauner returned to Berlin where he reunited with his parents and siblings and married Therese Albert, who had survived the war by changing her name to Maria and passing as a Polish migrant worker in Germany. Though most of their family members had either perished in the Holocaust or emigrated to Palestine, Artur and Maria made their home in Berlin. In those transitional years, Brauner saw himself pressed to find a way to support his young family and parents. He thus entered the film business by founding in 1946 his CCC, a private venture that initially did not have enough capital to obtain its own studio premises. In fact, most ateliers in the Western zones were decimated during the bombing of Berlin and many other filmmakers also faced similar difficulties in finding places to shoot. Three years later, however, in 1949, Brauner was able to procure a chemical factory and renovate it for filmmaking. In the meantime, as a newcomer and a “cultural outsider,” as Bergfelder calls him, Brauner won the goodwill of the Soviet and the French cultural officers. In fact, he was the first person to receive a license in the French sector of Berlin and produced the first postwar picture made in the West, as already mentioned, Sag die Wahrheit. In the next decade, Brauner would become the most successful independent producer not just in Germany, but in the history of the postwar European film industry, with revenue of more than 30 million German DM each year.48 When it came to dealing with the Soviet authorities, Brauner had several significant advantages compared to his German colleagues. He had the clean record of someone who had never worked for the Nazi dream factory, yet he also had entrepreneurial astuteness combined with his strong Polish and Jewish self-consciousness. He spoke Polish and Russian as well as German and Yiddish, resembled the early Erich Pommer in his unwavering capacity to work around the clock, and was able to quickly expand his network to include others in the film industry. For example, in the late 1950s he reconnected with Jewish filmmakers who had emigrated to Hollywood—the elite of Weimar cinema whose films he had admired as a child. In the next two decades Brauner would bring back to Berlin many prominent émigrés, including Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, William Dieterle, and the sons of exiled directors Max Reinhardt and Richard Oswald. Another advantage Brauner possessed

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in comparison to former UFA workers was his ability to funnel cash to the destitute German film industry. Later, he circulated anecdotes of his schemes, for instance selling his mother’s fur coat or attracting as a partner in CCC his brother-in-law, Joseph Einstein, an infamous Berlin black-market boss at the time. Whatever his strategies, Brauner knew how to impress the Soviets at a moment when everyone saw them as enemies: he spoke their language and knew their culture, he delivered the finances they needed to start making films, and he profited from their readiness to support new German films, their antifascist ideology, and their determination to use moving pictures largely for reeducation purposes. Brauner collaborated with DEFA and expanded the nature of film exchange across zonal boundaries to include the supply of props, extras, and services. In this way the producer established a working relationship with the state-owned studio that later benefited his friend and business partner, Erich Mehl. Since 1947 the CCC owner had cultivated good connections with Soviet film officers by negotiating the rental of atelier space and technical equipment, as well as by employing Red Army soldiers and locals as extras. The Soviets provided generous support for Brauner’s Holocaust film Morituri (1947, dir. Eugen York). They arranged for shooting locations in Glienecke and Schildow and for studio and office space, as well as transportation and technical services such as cars, cameras, lighting, musical instruments, and editing equipment.49 This collaboration continued uninterrupted by the Berlin Blockade, when Brauner’s operetta film Herzkönig (King of the Heart, 1947, dir. Helmut Weiss) was screened in fourteen cinemas in East and West Berlin on March 11, 1949.50 In June 1949 Brauner returned to the Soviet zone to shoot several comedies and renewed the film exchange with DEFA by trading screening rights.51 The producer’s successful business with the Soviets despite the blockade demonstrates how ideological prerogatives could be set aside when shared interests with private producers promised political and economic gain. As Brauner’s partner in several film projects, Mehl later used and expanded his business model by focusing on technical services and props, lobbying for East German films in the West and offering in exchange entertaining pictures from the West. Not all collaborations between West Germans and Soviets were as smooth as Brauner’s, and the interzonal film exchange soon came to an end. Anxieties about the importation of East German films were voiced in West German media, while frustration with the inequality of the film exchange—East Germans imported more films from the West than they exported—led to a growing polarization. In the East, films from the

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West were boycotted by the press, even though they were sporadically shown in cinemas. As a result of such controversies, the interzonal film exchange was officially suspended in July 1951 by a decree of the West German government. The balance was eighteen DEFA films screened in West Germany between 1948 and 1950 compared to twenty-four West German films shown in the East. The forced suspension of the film exchange could not reverse the dynamics in the filmmaking industry overnight. Most Berlin-based film professionals were still commuting between the Eastern and Western parts of the city. Until 1954 every second film director employed by DEFA came from the West. In addition, a third of all scriptwriters as well as numerous actors were based in West Berlin and worked simultaneously for DEFA and Western film producers such as Brauner.52 The years between 1951 and 1953 were difficult, as filmmakers struggled to find film stock, new genres and topics, and fresh acting talent. The main reason for the artists’ commute, however, was their anticipation of Germany’s reunification sooner rather than later. Artists found a forum to debate the situation in organizations such as the Schiller and Goethe societies, which accepted members from all zones and held their annual meetings alternately in the East and West. “Why should this cooperation not be possible in filmmaking?,” asked the chair of the Schiller society, Thomas Mann, while negotiating with East and West German filmmakers a coproduced adaptation of his novel Buddenbrooks (1901).53 Moreover, DEFA itself was divided over what feature films they wanted to make; the predominant opinion was that they should produce for both East and West German markets. According to DEFA managing director Sepp Schwab, some directors insisted on a decisive break with the UFA style and a more politicized cinema, while another group of filmmakers defended entertaining and apolitical cinema as a better strategy in marketing DEFA: “With the aggravation of the political situation in Berlin and the foundation of the West German Federal Republic, a small group of filmmakers posed demands for changing our course: instead of following the Soviet example, they defended the exclusive production of films of ‘apolitical’ content that would be able to find their way into the West, as well as into the East.”54

Erich Mehl Arrives on the Scene Similar aspirations for German-German cooperation, combined with the profitable model of film exchange from the 1940s, motivated Erich

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Mehl in 1951 to found Ideal-Film. For Mehl, economic investment in the leading entertainment industry of the time promised a greater return than the stock market, so he began developing his transnational system of film financing. In contrast to Brauner, however, Mehl was not a producer in the common sense of the word. With little experience in selecting film scripts or casting actors, the young investor had to wait for the right opportunity to arrive. The chance came with Vera Mügge, who helped Mehl to enter postwar film business on a larger scale.55 An established costume designer at DEFA and Brauner’s CCC, Mügge introduced Mehl to colleagues in Babelsberg. Initially Mehl supplied her with props, such as his own Mercedes and Rolls Royce cars, fashionable men’s suits, crocodile leather briefcases, and other accessories that were scarce in postwar East Berlin.56 Soon Mehl saw a new opportunity to take over distribution licenses for DEFA films by way of renewing the film exchange between East and West Germany. As we saw at the beginning of the chapter, the film financier began lobbying in the West for the release of Wolfgang Staudte’s contested project, Der Untertan. By mobilizing his connections to business circles in West Germany, the film financier not only succeeded in arranging the West German premiere of Der Untertan in 1957, but he also inserted himself as a mediator between DEFA and the federal government. Mehl arrived on the scene at a moment when the East German studio was at acute need of liaisons in the West. Since 1951 DEFA had been trying to coerce West German film professionals to work in Babelsberg.57 This goal became especially urgent in 1953, when DEFA acknowledged a decrease in audience numbers due to the failure of its political films to engage East German viewers. In the following year, the GDR founded a new Ministry of Culture, which urged DEFA’s management to require that all filmmakers employed by DEFA relocate to East Berlin. In addition, a new model of coproducing films was introduced: “The Ministry of Culture in the German Democratic Republic proposes the following measures that serve the struggle for an integral humanistic German culture in the realm of film and could encourage the dialog between both parts of Germany: . . . joint East/West German film production; beginning of open negotiations among film producers in East and West about the cooperative production of Heimat and cultural films, as well as humanistic films.”58 This statement suggests that the GDR government tried to amalgamate cultural and political arguments. By attracting prominent Western intellectuals with concrete projects such as film coproductions, the

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GDR government hoped to pave the way for recognition of the socialist state’s sovereignty in the West. As we saw in the beginning of the chapter, an Interministerial Commission for East-West Film Questions was founded in Bonn in response to the East German government’s effort to renew the inter-German film exchange. This commission was based on military regulations enacted in 1949 in the aftermath of the Berlin Blockade—and more specifically, General Robertson’s ban on media exchange in the British zone. These circumstances are reflected in the renaming of the commission between 1954 and 1956 to Interministerieller Vorprüfungsausschuß für den Filmaustausch Ost-West (Interministerial Commission for Pre-Approval of East-West Film Exchange).59 Prominent members were recruited from the Ministry for all-German Affairs and the Federal Office for Constitution Protection, which suggests that the Adenauer government shared their East German colleagues’ view of film as a weapon in the struggle for political recognition. The censorship of DEFA and Eastern European films reached its peak between 1953 and 1957, when out of 307 movies 50 were banned. The latter represent 38 percent of all 130 films that were denied import license until 1966. The foundation of the Commission for East-West Film Questions was advertised not as a censorship apparatus, as Michael Grisko contends, but—ironically—as an upturn of the interzonal film exchange in the interest of West Germany.60 A 1953 memo of the commission stated, “Film exchange, particularly with the Soviet occupied zone, should be pursued because of the growing demand for West German films among the population in the Soviet zone. This is due to the continuing screening of Soviet films and pictures from the Soviet occupied zone [i.e., DEFA films] in the state-owned movie theaters that have produced a passive resistance among audiences.”61 Clearly, accepting films made in the “other” Germany was a problem in both East and West, and the motivation for the export of films behind the intra-German border was always found in the audiences’ preference for the “right” German films. The competition in film production continued, and now the ideological motivations were stronger than ever. In November 1954 the commission also met to weigh the commercial advantages of coproducing films with the East Germans against the political disadvantages and concluded vaguely that “the approval of coproductions between DEFA and West German producers requires a political decision made at the highest level.”62 The vagueness of this statement discloses the great caution with which coproductions were handled in the wake of the Hallstein Doctrine: they

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had the potential to be used as a weapon against West Germany’s politics of exclusion. In the mid-1950s the ban on film cooperation with East German partners elicited a strong reaction by West German film producers, who replicated the 1949 strategy of writing a protest letter to the government and reaching out to the media. On November 9, 1954, the German Film Producers’ Alliance met in Hamburg to discuss how the ban on East/ West German film exchange could be opposed. In addition, the producers demanded a green light for the first East/West German coproduction, the above-mentioned adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel Buddenbrooks.63 At the forefront of the deliberations were producers Hans Abich (Göttingen) and F. A. Mainz (Hamburg), and business law expert Dr. Eugen Wildermuth (West Berlin).64 Moreover, in 1954 Wildermuth founded a company, Internationale Filmhandels-Gmbh (International Film Trade Holding) for the import/export of films across the intraGerman border and even gave lectures on its importance for the Interministerial Commission for East-West Film Questions.65 However, all these efforts to challenge the political decisions from within remained fruitless. While the commission made some concessions regarding the import of a few Eastern European films, it did not reverse the ban on German-German film coproductions.

DEFA Film Coproductions with Pandora Unlike other Western film producers, Mehl succeeded in trading East German and Eastern European films across political borders because he continuously altered his business strategies in response to persistent political pressures. He used Brauner’s 1940s model for exchanging films and services with DEFA, and he also reinvented it to accommodate additional challenges. For example, in 1954 he founded a second company in Sweden, Pandora, while keeping his Ideal-Film offices in Berlin and Munich. This allowed him to circumvent legal restrictions on joint coproductions with the East by orchestrating the exchange of services between his own companies. Such arrangements were already a common practice among producers in West Germany, such as Brauner and Gero Wecker, but Mehl was the first one to deploy this strategy on an international scale so he could coproduce with DEFA. Pandora and Ideal-Film continued to participate in the larger network of West German and European film companies that Mehl drew on to provide DEFA-Außenhandel with exchange films, and to hire script-

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writers, actors, and composers for his own coproductions with DEFA. In addition, Mehl served as an intermediary with French, Italian, and West German filmmakers for other major DEFA projects with European partners.66 Thus Pandora fulfilled an important role in channeling well-established Western actors and fresh faces alike into East German coproductions in order to satisfy GDR audiences’ hunger for entertainment (Figure 2.2). Pandora was founded, therefore, solely for the purpose of coproducing films with DEFA for both the domestic and the European markets. In the subsequent five years, four coproductions were realized: Leuchtfeuer (Navigating Light, 1954, dir. Wolfgang Staudte), Das Fräulein von Scudéri (Mademoiselle de Scudéry, 1955, dir. Eugen York), Spielbank-Affäre (Casino Affair, 1957, dir. Arthur Pohl), and Die Schönste (The Most Beautiful, 1957, dir. Ernst Rechenmacher [Ernesto Remani]; second cut 1959, dir. Walter Beck). From his first coproduction with DEFA onward, Mehl implemented a series of strategies that reveal his political precautions

Figure 2.2. Pandora manager Johannes Röhr welcomes Henny Porten on her arrival to Stockholm to work on Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1955). From left to right: production manager Werner Dau, Henny Porten, Erich Mehl, director Eugen York, Johannes Röhr, set designer Erich Zander, and costume designer Vera Mügge. Courtesy Private Archive Erich Mehl/Gabriele Ott, Lugano, Switzerland.

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in the wake of the federal government bans on joint projects with Eastern Europeans. At the same time, he also continued to improve his system of film financing, which was based on the exchange of services among his own companies. For instance, he financed Pandora without having his name on the records. Instead, a Swedish citizen, Johannes Röhr, functioned as Pandora’s managing director. Each time DEFA signed a new contract with Pandora, Mehl went with Röhr to a notary public in Stockholm and received the general power of attorney over the production, financing, and distribution of that film. The plasticity of Mehl’s business strategies, coupled with his generous cash investment in joint projects and the timely completion of his duties, earned him—at least initially—the benevolence of GDR officials and censors (Figure 2.3). Mehl’s flexibility allowed him to gradually increase his agency as a DEFA partner, too, as multiple versions of the DEFA/Pandora coproduction contracts suggest. As with most DEFA films and especially those made in coproduction, the process of amending paragraphs continued for several months until the agreement was finalized. A prime example is the first contract signed by Hans Rodenberg (DEFA manager), Albert

Figure 2.3. Erich Mehl’s documentation of Pandora. Courtesy Private Archive Erich Mehl/Gabriele Ott, Lugano, Switzerland.

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Wilkening (DEFA managing director), and Mehl as head of Ideal-Film, dated February 6, 1954. This document regulated the production of Leuchtfeuer and outlined the business model for subsequent coproductions. Significantly, this contract opened with an announcement that Mehl’s partnership with DEFA constituted a “renewal of cooperation in cultural terms”—in other words, a continuation of the obliterated interzonal film exchange.67 The partners envisioned a clear division of responsibilities: DEFA controlled the artistic dimensions of the production while Mehl abstained from decisions on the story and visual design of the film and accepted responsibility for delivering paychecks to Western actors and the composer, paying half of the director’s salary, and covering manufacturing costs up to 35,000 DM. In return, the film financier received for an unlimited time full distribution rights for West Germany, the United States, and five other countries. Beyond the profit-sharing agreement, DEFA insisted on being prominently credited in Leuchtfeuer which was to be the first German-German coproduction (negotiations for Buddenbrooks ran at the same time, but ended unsuccessfully); joint credit would become a recurrent point of negotiation in all contracts with Mehl. The East Germans’ demands indicate that they saw these projects not only as moneymakers but also as political vehicles to encourage the GDR’s recognition abroad. The definitive ban on coproductions with DEFA in early 1954, however, prompted a redrafting of the Leuchtfeuer contract. As a West German citizen, Mehl had to avoid incurring any liability or inviting accusations by the Adenauer government. The revised contract was signed on March 29, 1954, by Pandora’s Swedish manager Röhr and did not mention Mehl at all. In this second version, the opening paragraph originally referring to the interzonal film exchange now emphasized the partners’ “desire for international cooperation,” a vague expression that served as a concession to Bonn’s recent ban on inter-German relations.68 Consequently, specific details concerning Mehl’s financial investment in the film and his involvement as a coproducer were also omitted. Similar precautions shaped all later contracts with Pandora: even though Mehl himself signed them as a representative of the company, the terms of his financial commitment remained unspecified, and his responsibilities constantly shifted. The DEFA/Pandora coproductions cast into sharp relief the intertwinement of political prerogatives and transnational collaboration. While East German politicians initially viewed these films as economically profitable and instrumental in the GDR’s struggle for recognition, later projects that focused on West German realities triggered a swift

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reassessment and censorship. The first two coproductions were adaptations of well-known literary works and exemplified the socialist government’s official stance that East Germany was the sole custodian of the classical German legacy. Set on an island in the Atlantic in 1901 and in seventeenth-century France, respectively, Leuchtfeuer and Das Fräulein von Scudéri avoided contemporary problems in divided Germany and featured strong working-class characters. In contrast, SpielbankAffäre and Die Schönste were set in West Germany and criticized the discrepancy between glamour and gloom in the FRG by contrasting upper-class society’s decadent lifestyle, expensive cars, and elegant clothing with the exploitation of innocent citizens and the state’s complicity with criminals. Yet despite this layer of social critique, East German censors were troubled by the all-too-alluring representation of life in West Germany in these films. At the peak of the wave of defections from the GDR to the West in 1957, the last DEFA/Pandora coproductions were sanctioned for their superficial opposition to capitalism.69 Nevertheless, the controversy surrounding Spielbank-Affäre and Die Schönste did not put an end to Mehl’s successful business partnership with DEFA, nor did it diminish the East Germans’ economic profit from this cooperative venture. In order to understand how the working relationship between Mehl and DEFA was preserved, we need to trace the significant changes in this partnership that took place at various stages of the coproduction process. Spielbank-Affäre is a case in point that demonstrates how the quest for cultural and political prestige came to dominate the agenda. An analysis of this film’s production history sheds light on DEFA’s internal conflicts at the time, as well as on Mehl’s own motivation for pursuing coproductions with the studio and his increasing agency in making decisions about the visual and narrative message of the film.

Negotiations over Spielbank-Affäre In 1955, when Mehl and DEFA agreed to work on their third joint project, Spielbank-Affäre looked like a promising investment for both partners. The film’s premiere was set to coincide with the publication in East Berlin of the novel on which it was loosely based, Hans Oettinger’s Geld ist eine kalte Sache (Money Is a Tough Business). An insider in the West German gambling industry, Oettinger moved to the GDR in the early 1950s and wrote a fictional memoir exposing the tangled relationship between drug dealing and entertainment, crime, and politics in the

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FRG. Out of Oettinger’s memoir, director and writer Arthur Pohl fashioned the story of Sybille Schilling (Gertrud Kückelmann), an aspiring actress in need of money who falls prey to Dr. Busch (Peter Pasetti), a shrewd lawyer who pays her to gamble for him. Busch conspires with Italian mafioso Martinez (Willy A. Kleinau) to undermine the business of Gallinger (Rudolf Forster), a casino owner. At night, Sybille unknowingly spends bogus chips in Gallinger’s club; during the day, she dates reporter Gerhard Fischer (Jan Hendriks) who is investigating the counterfeiting affair. Gerhard is oblivious to Sybille’s involvement, but his discoveries begin to worry Gallinger, who forces the newspaper’s editor to fire the journalist. The casino owner grows concerned not only about his losses, but also about his establishment’s prestige. Meanwhile, Sybille and Gerhard get married, he discovers her secret, and she promises to quit gambling. Yet the couple’s struggle to pay accumulating bills sends her one last time to the casino, where Gallinger’s people catch her with the false chips. The casino boss blackmails Sybille and, in her despair, she throws herself in front of a car. Meanwhile, Dr. Busch is strangled so he will remain silent (Figure 2.4). The film received two different endings for its release in East and West, which showed that marketing concerns were not always compat-

Figure 2.4. Spielbank-Affäre (1957). Dr. Busch supplies Sybille with bogus chips at Gallinger’s casino. Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Erich Killan.

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ible with an ideological agenda.70 The partners held divergent views about the film’s content already at the script stage, which clashed in prolonged debates over whether the finished product should be a polished entertainment or a work of high cinema. This conflict resulted in five different screenplays between April 1955 and June 1956, in which controversial scenes in the casino, the newlyweds’ apartment, and various offices were time and again reconceptualized. One significant point of contestation was the ending. Mehl insisted that Gallinger and Martinez had to be brought to justice in the end, with Fischer’s help. In his view, this less politicized closure would be more marketable in the West. At DEFA, dramaturge Marieluise Steinhauer and the script unit representative, Anne Pfeuffer, recommended that Mehl’s ending should be accepted in the West German version of the film if the coproducer agrees to other scenes’ revisions.71 The ending in the GDR version, however, served to appease the East German censors: Gerhard attempts to seek justice from the city’s prosecutor, but without success. The couple is devastated, while Gallinger is unapologetic after his court hearing, declaring that no one had been harmed. This battle-turned-to-barter deal demonstrates not only Mehl’s growing agency in negotiations with DEFA, but also the company’s high stakes in such a production. Due to its potential to reach Western spectators and international film festivals, Spielbank-Affäre was early on endorsed by Anton Ackermann, head of Hauptverwaltung Film (Central Film Administration).72 Even after the final script that was prepared in May 1956 failed to fully satisfy the GDR censors, Ackermann confirmed the production start.73 This decision demonstrates that East German cultural functionaries were willing to compromise on ideological content when it came to audiences in the West. In other words, DEFA coproductions of the 1950s served a double standard: while film censors in East Germany were still concerned with domestic viewers’ exposure to capitalism (hence the different endings), the GDR film administration conceived the manifestation of DEFA’s brand in the West of equal importance. During the tenure of the Hallstein Doctrine, East German coproductions with European partners were the only DEFA films that were able to compete at Western festivals. These pictures ranging from historical dramas to fairy-tale adaptations were typically entered as productions by the partnering country, yet they were widely publicized in the GDR as a triumph for socialism, solidarity within the bloc, and Eastern European art.74 DEFA’s quest for prestige was also reflected in endeavors to attract well-known West German actors and film professionals, which led to

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further compromises with the film’s political message. Writing to Charlotte Schlotter, DEFA-Außenhandel’s head, the studio’s managing director Albert Wilkening praised Mehl for securing actors “of a stature unavailable in the GDR.”75 Eight West German or Austrian actors were cast in the main roles. Rudolf Forster and Peter Pasetti, for instance, enjoyed a reputation that went back to Weimar cinema, and both had appeared in popular West German romances and comedies. Similarly, West Berlin–based Willy A. Kleinau already had a successful career in DEFA. Between 1950 and his untimely death in 1957, he appeared in fifteen East German films and three coproductions with Pandora.76 The studio also hired crew members who had a strong background in popular feature films, such as costume designer Vera Mügge and composer Martin Böttcher, who had both worked across the German-German border. Even director Pohl who had written or directed nine DEFA films at this point, working for almost a decade exclusively for the East German studios, lived in the West and received his check in hard currency.77 The predominantly West German crew, led by Pohl and his scripting assistant, Will Tremper, came to see DEFA’s expectations for a politically innocuous drama as an imposition on the project. In fact, the East Germans’ ability to control the plot and the aesthetic message of the film, as envisaged by the 1955 contract, had diminished. As cameraman Joachim Hasler reminisced, “Pohl had clandestinely changed the film” and, instead of following strictly the carefully edited script, reinvented it after talking to an interested U.S. distributor.78 The opportunity to break into the U.S. market with Spielbank-Affäre led Mehl to invest in high production values, resulting in a visually opulent wide-screen picture with vibrant colors. Though these qualities would ensure the film’s success in the West, the party stalwarts’ commercial agenda clashed with their political prerogatives once they debated how the film must be shown in the GDR. Once Pohl’s film was completed, the double standard for coproductions had to be renegotiated. Not surprisingly, at the obligatory screening for the GDR Ministry of Culture, Spielbank-Affäre elicited hostile reactions and determined attempts to censor or even ban it. Officials denounced not only the Western-style pop music and lavish costumes, but even more the miseen-scène. The elegant apartment of a West German couple, which was beyond the reach of socialist citizens, as well as the extravagantly furnished offices of capitalist casino bosses and Mafiosi, had to be stripped of their “dangerous appeal,” as Minister of Culture Alexander Abusch demanded.79 As a result, a prestige project shot in color for wide-screen projection would receive its East German premiere in September 1957

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not only with an altered ending, but also in black and white and the regular 35-millimeter format. Naturally, this angered the West German filmmakers who were not willing to uphold such double standard and boycotted the GDR premiere. Most importantly, coproducer Mehl was disappointed by the functionaries’ disfigurement of the film and complained in Der Spiegel that, visually, Spielbank-Affäre had been reduced to a “gray sauce.”80 Pohl’s picture became the scapegoat in the doublestandard conflict internal to DEFA; a conflict produced by the socialist government’s changing views on the economic and political benefits of cooperating with Western partners. While GDR politicians strove to promote and monetarily profit from DEFA’s visibility in West Germany; the East German company also had to educate domestic socialist viewers ideologically, a mandate that this third coproduction with Pandora failed to fulfill. The scandal surrounding the film’s premiere grew out of proportion with the director’s farewell from DEFA after a decade and with the ban of Die Schönste, the last film coproduced with Mehl. In this sense, Spielbank-Affäre, though conceived as a showpiece to win international acclaim for the GDR cinema, eventually turned into a fiasco because it was unable to deliver an educational tale to East German moviegoers. In the words of Wolfgang Jacobsen, the production became “an anti-DEFA DEFA film” decried in West German media as a “dirty SED [Socialist Unity Party of Germany]-affair.”81 Even though Spielbank-Affäre generated such bad publicity for both the East German studio and Mehl, surprisingly, his partnership with DEFA-Außenhandel continued well into the 1980s. In fact, some strategies involved in this coproduction illuminate Mehl’s motives for later cooperating with the film trade department. Most importantly, his role as DEFA-Außenhandel’s exclusive partner in film exchange was laid out in the 1955 Spielbank-Affäre contract. This document records several steps Mehl took to exert greater influence on decisions about the film. First, he secured his right to veto the ending and to distribute the coproduction under a different title (Parkplatz der großen Sehnsucht, or Parking Lot Named Desire, echoing Elia Kazan’s 1951 hit). Second, Mehl insisted on organizing a screening for Western distributors once 50 percent of the shooting was completed. Third, he received a distribution license for five years that covered more territory than any previous contract: ten countries in Western Europe, South America, Asia, and the United States. In return, the East Germans also posed a new demand: Mehl had to deliver five exchange films to DEFA-Außenhandel for distribution in East and West Berlin. This was not unprecedented in Mehl’s earlier collaboration with DEFA’s film trading department. Since 1952, he had co-

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financed films for Arca (the Immenhof series) and CCC and exchanged them for successful East German productions via DEFA-Außenhandel. However, this clause had never appeared in DEFA’s coproduction contracts before this time, and it confirmed the gradual shift in Mehl’s relations with the East German studio, from partnering with DEFA on joint projects to a strictly economic relationship with DEFA-Außenhandel based on film exchange. With Spielbank-Affäre, Mehl demonstrated his ability to leverage his relationships with West German and European producers in order to advance his relationship with DEFA. His strategies included using third-party companies for casting and even cofinancing the film and arranging an elaborate exchange of services (film licenses vs. financial investments), as well as a film exchange scheme. Of course, Mehl derived more than economic profit from this exchange: he was also able to maintain his ties to producers on both sides of the German-German divide, and to sustain his image as the sole mediator between DEFA and Western cinema. Mehl’s modus operandi is revealed in his correspondence with Brauner during the preproduction phase of SpielbankAffäre. Mehl’s contract with DEFA obliged him to include West German actors on his payroll, and he asked CCC to assist him with finding fresh faces in exchange for partial distribution rights for the film. On May 31, 1956, Mehl (as director of Ideal-Film) signed with Brauner a contract where CCC committed to paying the wages of leading actress Gertrud Kückelmann (40,000 DM) and of the secret scriptwriter, Will Tremper, who was hired to spice up the dialogues in the casino. Another contract between Tremper and Brauner from June 6, 1956, reveals that the West Berlin producer used a second company he owned, Alfu, to fulfill this payment, possibly to avoid taxes. The arrangement with Mehl guaranteed Brauner 35 percent of the total return from the film’s distribution for five years in the ten countries identified in the 1955 SpielbankAffäre contract with DEFA. Such tacit involvement in cofinancing in return for distribution rights, as well as the use of multiple companies for monetary transfers, was common practice at the time, not only for the CCC head but also for most film investors and distributors in West Germany.82 Mehl and Brauner subsequently signed two other contracts in 1957 and 1960 stating that CCC would deliver two of the exchange films Mehl had to provide for DEFA-Außenhandel, as agreed in 1955. This elaborate business model, where both Brauner and the film trading department derived benefits from the distribution of their films, attests Mehl’s crucial position as a mediator between the West and East German filmmaking industries.

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Mehl’s Role in Popularizing East German Cinema Abroad It was precisely Mehl’s status as an influential liaison in the West and his transnational network of companies, producers, and financial support that made him an indispensable partner for the GDR government and DEFA. After the last Pandora coproduction with East German partners, Die Schönste, was shelved following prolonged negotiations with cultural functionaries, Mehl focused his partnership with DEFAAußenhandel on film exchange. The exchange was once again encouraged on the state level by East and West Germany’s endorsement of a policy of cultural rapprochement in the mid-1960s: in 1964 Minister of Culture Hans Bentzien of the GDR publicly announced negotiations for renewed cultural collaboration with West Germany in order to normalize inter-German relations. One of the concrete proposals Bentzien made was “the expansion of the exchange of valuable films with antifascist and democratic content under the condition of eliminating instances of censorship.”83 Though censorship, of course, never ceased, the continuous desire of the GDR to facilitate film exchange, and by extension European commerce across the German-German border, bolstered DEFA-Außenhandel’s business with Mehl. As Rosemary Stott shows, over the following decades the GDR’s importation of entertaining feature films from the West increased, while East German films found their market primarily among Western European broadcasters.84 Mehl subsequently concentrated on purchasing film licenses from DEFA-Außenhandel for distribution in West Germany, Italy, France, and other Western European countries, primarily via the medium of television. To this end, he moved to Switzerland in the early 1960s where he founded a new film-financing holding, Berolina. This company functioned as a mediator between DEFA-Außenhandel and thirdparty distributors not only in Germany but also throughout Europe. A salient example of such film exchange comes from 1964, when Mehl delivered to DEFA the Italian film Salvatore Giuliano (1962, dir. Francesco Rosi). For this exchange, Berolina signed contracts with an Italian distributor, Galatea of Rome, and with West Berlin–based Eukos. On the one hand, Galatea transferred via Mehl’s company the rights for cinematic and television distribution of Salvatore Giuliano to DEFA-Außenhandel for six consecutive years.85 On the other hand, DEFA granted Eukos a seven-year license for Slatan Dudow’s last film, Verwirrung der Liebe (Love’s Confusion, 1959).86 The trade of an Italian Mafia film for a popular romantic comedy attests a continuity in Mehl’s preference for

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using entertaining genre films in his exchanges, already present in his 1955 Spielbank-Affäre contract with DEFA. As discussed below, many similar trades are recorded in the Mehl/Ott archive. Moreover, Mehl’s mediation between DEFA-Außenhandel and Western producers subsequently evolved into a transnational enterprise enabled by contacts with independent European distributors, as well as by his convenient business location in Switzerland. With the growing popularity of television in the early 1960s, Mehl began to distribute DEFA films primarily to West German broadcasters, such as ARD and ZDF, which famously preferred to work with liaisons who selected and negotiated on their behalf promising deals abroad.87 This exploitation of the small screen to the advantage of the film exchange was in sync with contemporaneous trends in film distribution on the European market.88 Mehl himself considered his film exchange with DEFA-Außenhandel the most important aspect of his longstanding partnership with the studio. Indeed, about two hundred pages, including contracts, license agreements, receipts and letters, preserved in the DEFA-Außenhandel files document this intense partnership.89 In 1994 Mehl wrote to film scholar Ralf Schenk, who twenty years later would become the director of the DEFA-Foundation in Berlin: “The bulk of my collaboration with DEFA consisted though in purchasing licenses or exchanging art films—to the extent this was allowed by the respective Federal Ministries. Since 1992 [sic], I have taken over ca. 350 DEFA feature and documentary films, particularly for distribution via television.”90 Schenk corrected the date of the initial film exchange to 1952 and confirmed that Mehl had received distribution, screening, and television rights to hundreds of DEFA pictures in Western Europe, the United States, and Yugoslavia, as well as in some countries in South America and Asia. These rights were usually granted for up to seven years via carefully formulated license agreements and film exchange contracts.91 Once Mehl had acquired the rights to East German films, he used distributors from his wide-reaching network in West Germany (Apollo and Constantin) and France (via the Oppenheimer Group). By circulating DEFA products through several private companies Mehl was able to export them to the West.92 According to DEFA-Außenhandel’s last director, Helmut Diller, his office participated in such film exchanges from 1953 until August 1989, which makes Mehl a pioneer as well as one of the most important partners of this department.93 To date, two documents in Erich Mehl’s private archive attest to the importance of his film exchange with DEFA-Außenhandel for his successful outreach to European audiences. The first document presents a

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catalogue of 519 exchanged DEFA or Western feature films dating back to 1947 and even includes titles circulated during the years of interzonal exchange. This catalogue reveals continuities not only in terms of Mehl’s business model but also in terms of genres whose popular appeal persisted beyond the immediate postwar years. Most DEFA films that Mehl imported in the 1960s and the 1970s were entertainment features such as musicals, films for children and youth, costume dramas, operetta films, and literary adaptations. Some licenses for DEFA films were renewed several times, which suggests that they were positively received outside of the GDR, as in the case of several works by director Hans Müller, such as Zar und Zimmermann (The Czar and the Carpenter, 1955) and Mazurka der Liebe (Mazurka of Love, 1957), that successfully premiered in West German cinemas, or Gerhard Klein’s Berlin Ecke Schönhauser (Berlin Schönhauser Corner, 1957). Mehl’s selection of DEFA genre productions for the Western markets provides a key to understanding East German cinema as a potent competitor in making quality films across the inner German border, and also reveals spectators’ preferences for certain genres such as children’s films or musicals, where DEFA undoubtedly filled a niche market in the media landscape of Western Europe. Broadcasters not only in the FRG, but also in France and the United Kingdom valued East German and other Eastern European films for several reasons. First, these emerging media players targeted distinct audiences, such as the youth and women and competed with others for a limited number of annually produced domestic genre pictures on the local market. Second, via DEFA-Außenhandel, Mehl was able to offer unbeatable prices and high-quality films that offered opulent costumes and sometimes, different narrative strategies to attract audiences.94 At the same time, select West German titles that Mehl brought to the GDR, such as Figaros Hochzeit (The Marriage of Figaro, 1949, dir. Georg Wildhagen), Emilia Galotti (1958, dir. Martin Hellberg), and Buddenbrooks (1959, dir. Alfred Weidenmann), suggest that East German importation also favored high-quality productions in order to compensate for meager imports from Hollywood. Similarly, Mehl was able to procure distribution rights to Western films for DEFAAußenhandel, which later distributed them within the socialist bloc.95 This, in turn, was an economic boost for the struggling GDR film industry and provided a welcome distraction from the increasingly critical Eastern European films of the late 1970s and the 1980s. In fact, importing politically innocuous genre pictures from the West via independent producers like Mehl, as Stott has shown, had become a hidden second layer of censorship for the GDR functionaries.96

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The second document illustrating Mehl’s strategies for film exchange reflects developments from the 1960s on, as East Germans came to prefer less-sophisticated films and West German television began to concentrate on documentaries. Mehl’s notebook displays licenses purchased between 1962 and 1973 for a total of fifty-one DEFA and West German films. This list highlights 1960s Western television’s taste for DEFA Heimat-documentaries such as Erich Barthel’s Unser Erzgebirge (Our Erzgebirge, 1955) and Land an der Havel (The Havel River Country, 1957), and science documentaries such as Von Röntgen und seinen Strahlen (On X-Rays and Radiation, 1958, dir. Götz Oelschlegel) and Ultraschall (Ultrasound, 1956, dir. Manfred Gussmann). Mehl’s acquisition of fewer and fewer feature films from the East over the years reflects Western European broadcasters’ rising demand for educational programs. At the same time, the pictures Mehl delivered to DEFA-Außenhandel catered to GDR viewers’ continuing demand for entertainment. They included films widely popular in the West, such as U.S. Westerns (for instance, Along Came Jones, 1945, dir. Stuart Heisler), as well as West German Heimatfilme (heritage films) such as Hermann Kugelstadt’s Heimatglocken (Heimat Bells, 1952) and Das Forsthaus in Tirol (The Lodge in Tirol, 1955). Mehl’s steady provision of Western imports for GDR television, which later trickled into other socialist countries, turned him into a “Leo Kirch” in the Eastern European context until the late 1970s. Mehl’s private records documenting his film exchange with DEFA-Außenhandel provide insight not only into the convoluted routes that this exchange took, but also into aspects of the media landscape of divided Germany in the 1960s and 1970s: audience tastes, television programming, and the fluidity of the film business across national borders.

Following in Mehl’s Steps: Other Cultural Mediators Mehl’s participation in the development of East and West German media since the 1950s brings us back to Der Untertan and the significance of the film financier’s victory in the battle with the Interministerial Commission for East-West Film Questions. The media attention that Staudte’s adaptation received not only exposed the existence of censorship in West Germany, but also resulted in the successful premiere of Der Untertan in Munich on March 8, 1957. Moreover, the film became one of Mehl’s exchange films and was aired by one of the largest broadcasters in West Germany, ARD, on July 27, 1961, only two weeks before construction began on the Berlin Wall.

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Mehl’s strategy of mediating between West and East as an independent producer and financier also found a successful following in the West: other figures were encouraged to explore routes for importing Eastern European films or for collaborating with studios behind the Iron Curtain. Since the late 1950s and well into the 1960s, trade in film licenses, film exchange in various forms, and enlisting the media to gain support among the public became weapons for other producers or distributors. A notable example in this respect is Russian-born entrepreneur Sergio Gambaroff, who in 1958 succeeded in convincing the Interministerial Commission for East-West Film Questions to permit the premiere of Mikhail Kalatozov’s Letyat zhuravli (Cranes Are Flying, 1957). Der Spiegel reported at length on this success and introduced the otherwise private trader to the Western public.97 Following in Mehl’s steps, Gambaroff functioned as mediator between the cinematic industries of the Soviet Union and West Germany. He founded a distribution company in West Berlin and later expanded his business to include subsidiaries in Munich and Dusseldorf. According to Hans Borgelt, Gambaroff negotiated directly with Sovexport (the USSR alternative to DEFA-Außenhandel), which made the exiled Russian their exclusive representative in West Germany.98 The identical methods that DEFA-Außenhandel and Sovexport used to distribute their products in the West attest to a phenomenon in the film industries within the socialist bloc that still needs to be explored. Like Mehl, Gambaroff became involved in transborder film exchange, importing into the USSR all of Staudte’s films and many Brauner-sponsored titles, a fact that—as Borgelt also maintains—evidences the universal network among West Berlin filmmakers. Between 1957 and 1979, Gambaroff managed to export 80 West German films to the Soviet Union and import 130 Soviet films into West Germany. After 1971 he became one of the curators for the independent West German cinema, Arsenal, and became its main supplier of films from the Soviet republics; he also procured films for the Deutsche Kinemathek, which since the reunification has developed into one of the most important German film archives.99 Other producers followed suit in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Leo Kirch and Manfred Durniok, who established viable ties to DEFAAußenhandel and continued to exchange film licenses in a more relaxed political setting, at least with respect to East-West business. Kirch, for instance, had already established a reputation in the West as the chief supplier of Hollywood films for the main broadcasters, ARD and ZDF. In the late 1970s he began negotiating package deals on Western pictures with DEFA-Außenhandel. Like Mehl, Kirch was sensitive to the

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specific preferences for genres and stars among GDR officials as well as the demand for pictures with critical potential, especially in regard to life in the United States.100 More importantly, the open negotiations with Kirch point to the new willingness of the East German authorities and DEFA-Außenhandel to make more concessions to Westerners. As Gerd Horten demonstrates, in the late 1970s and during the 1980s, “the GDR’s cultural film policy was increasingly driven by economic necessity and overwhelming consumer demand, while ideological concerns took a back seat.”101 This development can also be traced in Manfred Durniok’s partnership with DEFA-Außenhandel.102 Passionate about Asian and Eastern European cultures, the West Berlin–based producer mediated between China and Japan, Hungary and Poland, and both German states. Starting in 1968, Durniok—like Mehl—first became involved in coproduction projects involving DEFA and West German television broadcasters ARD and ZDF, a fast growing partnership that lasted until the late 1990s.103 This cooperation began in 1970, when Durniok successfully coproduced with DEFA Gitta Nickel’s documentary 365 Meter über Berlin (365 Meters above Berlin)—a film that, according to the director, was a mutually beneficial project.104 One year later, the West German producer was able to import into the West one of Konrad Wolf’s most successful films, Ich war 19 (I Was 19, 1968). Shortly after that, Durniok attempted the adaptation of Klaus Mann’s novel Mephisto, which did not, however, materialize as a German-German joint project. Durniok eventually coproduced the film in 1981 with Hungary, and it became one of István Szabó’s most celebrated masterpieces.105 In the early 1980s, Durniok coproduced with DEFA three more films: an East German coproduction with Sweden, Switzerland, and West Germany called Ärztinnen (Woman Doctors, 1984, dir. Horst Seemann); a coproduction with Bulgaria, Cuba, and West Germany entitled Bockshorn (1984, dir. Frank Beyer); and Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (Memoirs of a Goodfor-Nothing, 1973, dir. Celino Bleiweiß) with American DEFA star Deen Reed. Another successful coproduction with DEFA was conceived a decade later, in 1986, when Durniok mediated between a Tokyo-based studio and producers in West Berlin and Babelsberg. Even though East German officials initially hesitated over the project, Durniok was able to win DEFA filmmakers to his side and complete Die Tänzerin (The Dancer, dir. Masahiro Shinoda) in 1989 as a West German–Japanese coproduction with DEFA’s participation.106 The website of Durniok’s foundation lists more than four hundred film projects that he directed, produced, or financed, many of which were coproductions. As a dis-

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tributor, Durniok imported more than two hundred and fifty Chinese films to both East and West Germany. The foundation website describes Durniok in the following way: “He came from the divided city of Berlin and did not allow himself to be hindered by political borders that divided Eastern from Western Europe, nor by cultural differences in the Near East or in the distant countries of Asia. As a filmmaker, he established himself as a mediator between cultures.”107

Conclusion By cooperating on film coproductions and popularizing DEFA films internationally, cultural mediators like Erich Mehl, Artur Brauner, and Manfred Durniok played a crucial role in establishing a dialogue between the cinematic cultures of East and West during the Cold War. This dialogue was shaped in equal measure by political, economic, cultural, and cinematic rationales. While the format of coproductions only temporarily served to balance diverging sensibilities, license trade continued to be a successful business across the political divide. DEFAAußenhandel’s trade with independent producers in the West provided the East German government with a crucial financial resource— little acknowledged in scholarship—for battling shortages in the state budget. In addition to earning revenue, DEFA coproductions and, later, feature films screened by Western broadcasters, ensured the GDR’s cultural presence abroad before and after the official recognition of the socialist state in 1972. At the same time, the creativity and perseverance shown by Erich Mehl, the West German film financier, and DEFAAußenhandel force us to rethink the role of entrepreneurial individuals in negotiating rigid Cold War politics. The story of Mehl’s success as a mediator between European institutions is more than a narrative featuring a marginalized backstage persona; it also casts new light on Cold War cinema in its aesthetic, political, and economic dimensions. The interaction between Western mediators, cultural ambassadors, and liaisons and film studios in socialist states, moreover, calls for a reconsideration of the position of Eastern European cinemas during the Cold War vis-à-vis European film history proper. The next chapter will contribute to such a reconceptualization of the role of DEFA and Eastern European cinemas by charting the new course they took in the 1960s and the 1970s. Their turn toward genre cinema paved the way for a new understanding of both the role of film in a socialist society and the increased impact of audience preferences on

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filmmaking. While individual agency will play a significant role in this turn, I will also foreground the artistic collectives that formed within the state-run studios as support groups of sorts. The DEFA project of coproduction was also fundamentally redefined, as debates among filmmakers shaped the future of film art in the GDR in terms of its thematic but also ideological orientation. I will trace the ways in which these debates led to the affirmation of film as a tool for propagating friendship and political unity at a moment when GDR politicians shifted their attention from achieving a positive image in the West to strengthening ties to other countries in the socialist bloc.

Notes Parts of this chapter have been previously published in Mariana Ivanova, “Film Exchange beyond the Ban: Erich Mehl’s Cooperation with the East German Film Studio DEFA (1954–1990),” in German Studies Review 41, no. 1 (2018): 99–122. Copyright © 2018 by The German Studies Association. Reprinted with permission by Johns Hopkins University Press. 1. Bernhard Otto, letter to Erich Mehl, September 10, 1990, Private Archive Erich Mehl/ Gabrielle Ott, Lugano, Switzerland (hereafter Mehl/Ott). 2. The film was previously known as Man of Straw, after the title given to the 1947 edition of Ernest Boyd’s partial English translation of Heinrich Mann’s novel, Der Untertan. (Boyd’s translation had also appeared under the titles The Patrioteer [1921] and Little Superman [1945].) Most recently, the novel Der Untertan was published in 1998 under the title The Loyal Subject in a nonabridged translation by Helmut Peitsch. Since 2008, however, the DEFA film has been distributed in DVD format as The Kaiser’s Lackey. See Der Untertan [The Kaiser’s Lackey], dir Wolfgang Staudte (1951; Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2007), DVD. I, therefore, use this title in references to the film. 3. In July 1951 West Germany issued a ban on the import of all DEFA films, which effectively ended the official film exchange across the German-German border. For details, see Peter Stettner, “Der deutsch–deutsche Filmaustausch in der Nachkriegszeit (1947–1951): Von der gesamtdeutschen Kooperation zum Kampf um die politische und kulturelle Hegemonie im geteilten Deutschland,” in DEFA Film als nationales Kulturerbe?, ed. Klaus Finke (Berlin: Vistas, 2001), 149–67. 4. H. Hofmann, “An uns ist die Entscheidung! Der in Karlsbad preisgekrönte DEFA– Film ‘Der Untertan’ in Berlin erstaufgeführt,” Nationalzeitung, September 11, 1951. 5. See, e.g., Janos Veiczi, “ ‘Der Untertan’: ein neuer richtungsweisender Film der DEFA nach dem Roman von Heinrich Mann,” Junge Welt, September 7, 1951; Wolfgang Joho, “Der Untertan ist nicht ausgestorben: Zu dem neuen DEFA–Film ‘Der Untertan,’ ” Sonntag, September 9, 1951; and N. N., “Untertan—wie vorgerstern. Ein Film kam zur rechten Zeit,” Deutsche Woche, September 11, 1951. For evidence that Staudte was, indeed, critical of West German politics at the time, see Malte Ludin, Wolfgang Staudte (Hamburg, Germany: Rowohlt, 1996): 29–66; and Egon Netenjakob, Orbanz, and Prinzler, eds., Staudte (Berlin: Wissenschaftsverlag Volker Spiess, Edition Filme, 1991): 184–89.

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6. Anonymous, “Der Untertan,” Der Spiegel 43 (1951), October 24, 1951, 33. 7. Anonymous, “In eine Zeit, die längst vergangen ist,” Der Spiegel 50 (December 12, 1951), 44. On the rearmament issue, compare the aforementioned East German review in Deutsche Woche and Gustav Leuteritz, “Verfilmter Irrweg des wilhelminischen Deutschlands,” Tägliche Rundschau, September 4, 1951. The latter implied an analogy between the so-called wrong path taken once in Wilhelminian Germany and the politics of West Germany siding with the capitalist world. 8. For more West German reviews, see Michael Grisko, Heinrich Mann und der Film (Munich, Germany: Martin Meidenbauer, 2008), 409–20. 9. Anonymous, “Dynamische Totalität der Verneigung: Zu einem DEFA–Film Wolfgang Staudtes,” Die Tat, October 7, 1951. Quoted in Grisko, Heinrich Mann und der Film, 397. 10. Letter by DEFA artistic director Falk Harnack, September 23, 1949, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Heinrich Mann Nachlass 2828. 11. For the banning of the film by the Ministry of the Interior and the subsequent reaction among film clubs in West Germany, see Ulrike Weckel, “Begrenzte Spielräume: Wolfgang Staudtes Filme und deren Rezeption im Kalten Krieg,” in Massenmedien im Kalten Krieg: Akteure, Bilder, Resonanzen, ed. Thomas Lindenberger (Cologne, Germany: Böhlau Verlag, 2006), 25–48 (33). 12. Grisko, Heinrich Mann und der Film, 403–20. 13. Anonymous, “Ost–West Geschäft: Blinklicht durch den Vorhang,” Der Spiegel, January 12, 1955, 36–38. 14. Karl Heinz Pepper, letter to Diedrich, November 1957, Mehl/Ott. 15. DEFA–Außenhandel (1955–93) was responsible for the export, import, and exchange of films in the GDR and related economic and legal issues in film trade. Additional duties included the purchase and sale of film licenses, as well as arranging services for foreign clients in the realm of feature and television film productions. 16. Bernhard Otto, letter to Erich Mehl, September 10, 1990, Mehl/Ott. 17. The archive is based in Lugano, Switzerland, and is currently managed by Dr. Thomas Summerer. 18. Marsha Siefert, “Co-Producing Cold War Cultures: East-West Filmmaking and Cultural Diplomacy,” in Romijn, Scott-Smith, and Segal, Divided Dreamworlds; Pavel Skopal, “Reisende in Sachen Genre—von Barrandov nach Babelsberg und zurück”; and Massimo Locatelli, “Wunschvorstellungen im Kalten Krieg,” both in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 249–266 and 291–304, respectively. 19. Babiracki and Zimmer, Cold War Crossings; Vowinckel, Payk, and Lindenberger, Cold War Cultures; and Romijn, Scott-Smith, and Segal, Divided Dreamworlds. 20. For a complete list of Mehl’s partners and acquired companies, see https://www .gabrieleott.ch/library (accessed June 14, 2018). 21. Will Tremper, “Er zählt zu den grossen Hintergrundfiguren des deutschen Films: Erich Mehl, der jetzt 75 wird,” Die Welt am Sonntag, March 21, 1993. 22. For Mehl’s biography, see Will Tremper, Grosse Klappe: Meine Filmjahre (Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1998), 218–23; and Ralf Schenk, “Ich fürchte mich vor gar nichts mehr,” Berliner Zeitung, August 19, 2010. 23. Roland Keller, “Ein Leben für Film und Kino,” Filmecho/Filmwoche, September 3, 2010. 24. Hans Borgelt, “Der Mann im Hintergrund,” Film International, July 5, 1966; “Ost-West Geschäft. Blinklicht durch den Vorhang,” Der Spiegel, January 12, 1955; and “Plädoyer für den Untertan,” Der Spiegel, November 21, 1956, quoting RIAS journalist Graf. 25. Berghahn, Hollywood Behind the Wall, 34.

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26. “320 DEFA-Außenhandel,” DEFA-Stiftung, http://www.defa-stiftung.de/Außenhandel (retrieved October 2018). 27. Hester Baer, Dismantling the Dream Factory: Gender, German Cinema, and the Postwar Quest for a New Film Language (New York: Berghahn Books, 2009), 10–11. 28. See Peter Pleyer, Deutscher Nachkriegsfilm 1946–1948 (Munster: C. J. Fahle, 1965), 41. 29. Anonymous, “Der Film geht über die Sektorengrenzen,” Berlin am Mittag, March 3, 1947. 30. Peter Stettner, “Der interzonale Austausch,” in Peter Stettner, Von Trümmerfilm zur Traumfabrik: Die “Junge Film-Union,” 1947–1952. Eine Fallstudie zur westdeutschen Filmproduktion (Hildesheim, Germany: Olms, 1992), 54–61. 31. Ibid. 32. Claudia Dillmann-Kühn, Artur Brauner und die CCC. Filmgeschäft, Produktionsalltag, Studiogeschichte 1946–1990 (Frankfurt, Germany: Deutsches Filminstitut, 1990). 33. Stettner, “Der deutsch-deutsche Filmaustausch,” 149. See also Jens Sobotka, Die Filmwundrerkinder: Hans Abich und Filmaufbau GmbH Göttingen (PhD diss., University of Munster, Germany, 1997), 5–8. 34. Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 70. 35. Letter from Pommer to Carl Winston, August 23, 1947, quoted in Hardt, From Caligari to California, 171. Winston was the chief of the Motion Picture Branch in the U.S. sector of Berlin, and Pommer was his eventual successor. 36. Alfred Lindemann, “Die Lage des deutschen Films (Auschnitt),” reprinted in Film und Gesellschaft in Deutschland: Dokumente und Materialien, ed. Winfried von Bredow and Rolf Zurek (Hamburg, Germany: Hoffmann und Campe, 1975), 248–54 (248). 37. Lindemann, “Die Lage des deutschen Films (Auschnitt),” 249, 253. 38. Walter Janka, Letter to Hans Jendretzky, October 1, 1948 ( = BArch, DR117/21801). 39. Walter Koppel, Aktiennotiz für die DEFA, March 27, 1948 ( = BArch, DR 117/21703). 40. Lucie Berndsen, Letter to Walter Janka, January 6, 1949 ( = BArch DR 117/21800). 41. Protokoll 16. Aufsichtsratssitzung, April 13, 1949 ( = BArch DR 177/21735). See also Günter Jordan, “Die Unterwerfung oder der Fall Walter Janka: Recherchen zum Jahr 1948/49,” in Ralf Schenk and Erika Richter, eds., apropos: Film 2001 [ = Das Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung, 2001] (Berlin: Das Neue Berlin, 2001), 262–95, for more details on Janka’s business contacts with the other zones. 42. Walter Janka, “Erklärung,” Berliner Blätter, April 2, 1949, BArch DR 117/21800. 43. Bergfelder, International Adventures, 58–64 (58). 44. Joseph Garncarz, Wechselnde Vorlieben: Über die Filmpräferenzen der Europäer 1896– 1939 (Frankfurt, Germany: Stroemfeld, 2015). 45. Cited in Stettner, “Der deutsch-deutsche Filmaustausch,” 151. 46. Stephan Buchloh, Pervers, jugendgefährdend, staatsfeindlich: Zensur in der Ära Adenauer als Spiegel des gesellschaftlichen Klimas (Frankfurt, Germany: Campus, 2002), 220– 24. 47. On Brauner’s biography, see Dillmann-Kühn’s most detailed account to date in Artur Brauner und die CCC, 8–17. The producer, who had always been guarded about his wartime past, provided a rather laconic account in his own memoir: Artur Brauner, Mich gibt’s nur einmal: Rückblende eines Lebens (Munich, Germany: Herbig, 1976). His postwar career and the foundation of his company were covered at length in “Das ist Leben,” Der Spiegel 47 (1957), November 20, 1957, 45–56; and in Bergfelder, International Adventures, 105–20. 48. Dillmann-Kühn, Artur Brauner und die CCC, 12. 49. Ibid., 27–40.

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50. For media coverage of Brauner’s film, see Michael Hanisch, “Um 6 Uhr abends nach Kriegsende” bis “High Noon.” Kino und Film in Berlin der Nachkriegszeit 1945–1953 (Berlin: DEFA-Stiftung, 2004), 91. 51. Dillmann-Kühn, Artur Brauner und die CCC, 40–42. 52. See Heinz Baumert and Hermann Herlinghaus, eds., Zwanzig Jahre DEFA–Spielfilm (Berlin: Henschel, 1968), 42; and Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 86–87. 53. Thomas Mann, Tagebücher 1953–1955, ed. Inge Jens (Frankfurt, Germany: Fischer, 1995), 870. 54. Sepp Schwab, Auf neuen Wegen: 5 Jahre fortschrittlicher deutscher Film (Berlin: Deutscher Filmverlag, 1951), 15. 55. Vera Mügge started working as a costume designer during the Third Reich. She became famous for her costumes in UFA’s first color film, Frauen sind doch bessere Diplomaten (Women Are Better Diplomats, 1941, dir. Georg Jacoby). After the war, she worked at DEFA where she designed the costumes for classics such as Kurt Maetzig’s Rat der Götter (Council of the Gods, 1950, GDR) and Slatan Dudow’s Frauenschicksale (Destinies of Women, 1952, GDR). She was the costume designer of all DEFA/Pandora coproductions except Leuchtfeuer. Between 1958 and 1973, she worked exclusively in the West. For more information, see Ganeva, Film and Fashion, 10, 162, 181. 56. Mariana Ivanova’s interview with Gabriele Ott, Lugano, Swizterland, June 15, 2015. 57. For a discussion of DEFA’s employment of West German filmmakers, see Mariana Ivanova, “Coproductions (Un)Wanted: 1950s East/West German Film Collaborations and the Impact of Sovietization on DEFA’s Prestige Agenda,” in Karl and Skopal, Cinema in Service of the State, 107–24. 58. “Programmerklärung des Ministeriums für Kultur der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Zur Verteidigung der Einheit der deutschen Kultur,” Sinn und Form, Beiträge zur Literatur 2 (1954), 303. 59. For a complete history, see Buchloh, Pervers, jugendgefährdend, staatsfeindlich, 218–48; and Kötzing and Moine, Cultural Transfer and Political Conflicts. See also http://www .filmzensur-ostwest.de/ (retrieved October 2018). 60. Grisko, Heinrich Mann und der Film, 404. 61. Aktennotiz IV B 5—463/53, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, quoted in ibid., 406. 62. Kurzprotokoll from November 20, 1954, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, quoted in ibid., 407. 63. On the negotiations around Hans Abich’s coproduction of Die Buddenbrooks with DEFA, see Sobotka, Die Filmwunderkinder, 167–174. 64. Heinz Kersten, “Koproduktionen,” in Kersten, Das Filmwesen in der Sowjetischen Besatzungzone Deutschlands (Bonn: Deutscher Bundesverlag, 1963), 135–45. 65. H. C., “Anwaltskarriere endete im Zuchthaus. Der Wirtschaftsjurist Wildermuth hatte als Filmkaufmann keinen Erfolg,” Die Zeit, February 26, 1965. 66. Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 91, 101–4, 133. 67. “Vereinbarung zwischen DEFA Spielfilmstudio and Ideal-Film, München,” Mehl/ Ott. 68. “Vereinbarung zwischen DEFA Spielfilmstudio and Ideal-Film, München,” revised version, Mehl/Ott. 69. Anton Ackerman, “Über die sozialistische Kunst: Thesen des Hauptreferats, 2. Fassung,” BArch, DR 1/4667, 20–21. 70. For discussions of the film’s planning and censorship history, see Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 138–42; and Stefan Soldovieri, “Betting on Entertainment: The Cold War Scandal of Spielbank-Affäre [Casino Affair, 1957],” in Allan and Heiduschke, Re-Imagining DEFA, 106–26.

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71. See “Spielbank-Affäre” signed by Marieluise Steinhauer, dated April 5, 1956 ( = BArch DR 117/2564); and “Aktenvermerk für den Genossen Ackermann” signed by Anne Pfeuffer, dated May 25, 1956 ( = BArch DR 1/4731). 72. Anton Ackermann, letter to Hans Rodenberg, November 5, 1955 ( = BArch, DR 1/4367). 73. See Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 140. 74. A prime example is the first Bulgarian/East German coproduction, Sterne (Stars, 1959, dir. Konrad Wolf, GDR), which won the jury award in Cannes in 1959. See “Cannes-Preis: Unter falscher Flagge,” Der Spiegel, May 27, 1959. The film was entered as a Bulgarian production, though it was banned for political reasons in Bulgaria. Sterne was also entered in the Edinburgh International Film Festival competition in 1959 and won a gold medal in Vienna. See Frank-Burkhart Habel, Das große Lexikon der DEFA-Spielfilme (Berlin: Scharzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 2000), 584–85. Das singende, klingende Bäumchen (The Singing, Ringing Tree, 1957, dir. Francesco Stefani, GDR) is a fairy-tale film that was screened in 1958 at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. This was possible with the help of the West German director who made the film while visiting Babelsberg; the film subsequently received wide publicity in the United Kingdom after BBC bought it. For a detailed account of its reception, see Daniela Berghahn, “Ein Kultfilm zum Gruseln: Die Rezeption von Das singende, klingende Bäumchen in Großbritannien,” in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 405–20. For attempts to screen DEFA documentary films in West German festivals and further battles with the Interministerial Commission for East-West Film Questions, see Andreas Kötzing, “Provozierte Konflikte: Der Club der Filmschaffenden und die Beteiligung der DEFA an der Mannheimer Filmwoche 1959/60,” in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 369–84. 75. Albert Wilkening, letter to Charlotte Schlotter, May 23, 1956 ( = BArch DR 1/4659), quoted in Soldovieri, “Betting on Entertainment,” 113. 76. For other casting choices, see Soldovieri, “Betting on Entertainment,” 114–15. 77. On Pohl’s biography and work, see Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 138–39. 78. Quoted in ibid., 139–40. 79. Quoted in “Die gefährliche Farbe,” Der Spiegel, October 30, 1957. 80. Ibid. 81. Wolfgang Jacobsen, “Cha Cha Bim Bam Bum,” in Jacobsen, Babelsberg: Ein Filmstudio 1912–1992 (Berlin: Argon, 1992), 282–83. 82. Eleonore Emsbach, Artur Brauner Archiv, Deutsches Film-Institut, Frankfurt, email to Mariana Ivanova, November 17, 2015. 83. “Ergebnisse und Aufgaben bei der Entwicklung der sozialistischen Nationalkultur: Aus der Rede des Ministers für Kultur, Hans Bentzien, auf der zweiten Bitterfelder Konferenz,” Neues Deutschland, April 25, 1964. 84. Stott, Crossing the Wall, 88–91. 85. Bernhard Otto, letter to Erich Mehl, May 5, 1964, Mehl/Ott. 86. DEFA-Außenhandel, letter to Erich Mehl, February 29, 1964, Mehl/Ott. 87. Thomas Clark, Der Filmpate: Der Fall des Leo Kirch (Hamburg, Germany: Hoffmann & Campe, 2002), 68–83. 88. Stott, Crossing the Wall, 88. 89. See relevant DEFA-Außenhandel files in BArch, DR 133/581 and 609. 90. Erich Mehl, letter to Ralf Schenk, March 14, 1994, Mehl/Ott. 91. Ralf Schenk, email to author, November 20, 2015. 92. Mariana Ivanova’s interview with Gabriele Ott, Lugano, Switzerland, July 11, 2016. 93. Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 341.

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94. Compare to Berghahn’s discussion of BBC’s motivation for acquiring Das singende, klingende Bäumchen, “Ein Kultfilm zum Gruseln,” 410–13. 95. Mariana Ivanova’s interview with Gabriele Ott, Lugano, Switzerland, July 11, 2016. 96. Rosemary Stott, “Zwischen verdeckter Zensur, finanziellen Zwängen und öffentlicher Nachfrage: Die Kriterien für die Auswahl der aus dem Westen in die DDR importierten Filme,” in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 353–67. 97. Anonymous, “Russland-Geschäft: Romeo gegen Lottchen,” Der Spiegel 5 (January 28, 1959): 55–56. 98. Hans Borgelt, Filmstadt Berlin (Berlin: Nicolai, 1979), 90–91. 99. Erika Gregor, “How Georgian Films Came to Cold War West Berlin,” in Discovering Georgian Cinema, ed. Susan Oxtoby et al. (Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2014), 29–31. 100. Rosemary Stott, “National Cinemas in the Film Programmes of the GDR: The American, British and West German Film Import,” in Stott, Crossing the Wall, 95–144. 101. Gerd Horten, “The Impact of Hollywood Film Imports in East Germany and the Cultural Surrender of the GDR Film Control in the 1970s and 1980s,” German History 34, no. 1 (2016): 70–87 (71). 102. For a sporadic account of Durniok’s cooperation with DEFA and DEFA-Außenhandel, see Dieter Wolf, Gruppe Babelsberg: Unsere nichtgedrehten Filme (Berlin: Das neue Berlin, 2000), 52–54, 187–96, 240–43. See also Manfred Durniok, Manfred Durniok— Films & Friends (Berlin: Das neue Berlin, 1996). 103. See Peter Schultze, “P.S. über M.D.,” in Durniok, Manfred Durniok, 127–32. 104. Gitta Nickel, “Telespargel,” in Durniok, Manfred Durniok, 27–28. 105. Wolf, Gruppe Babelsberg, 52–54. See also István Szabó’s contribution “Dann fangen wir doch an—wie der Film “Mephisto” entstand,” in Durniok, Manfred Durniok, 16– 19. 106. Masahiro Shinoda, “Working with Manfred Durniok,” in Durniok, Manfred Durniok, 76–78. 107. Manfred Durniok Productions, http://www.durniok.com/durniok_en.html (accessed June 10, 2019).

Chapter 3

COMPETING WITH THE WEST, RUNNING WITH THE EAST Creating Utopia in DEFA Artistic Production Units

Today, we aspire to something far more and far beyond the forms of [film production] organization under capitalism. Our artistic production units seek teamwork in the spirit of camaraderie among film artists, technicians, managers, and production workers. They want to become creative families . . . ; to venture into artistic experiments that will serve the evolution of socialist film art. —Kurt Maetzig, “Die Zeit ist reif,” Deutsche Filmkunst, September 19561 From the beginning, we recognized that we had to clearly distance ourselves from the capitalist films of this genre [Indianerfilme]. . . . Most important to us was to assume an unequivocal historical-materialist perspective on history and to elevate historical truth as our guiding principle. —Günter Karl, Berliner Zeitung, 19712

In 1956, in a programmatic statement entitled “The Time Is Ripe,” one of DEFA founders and prolific directors, Kurt Maetzig, outlined a new model for film production teams and advocated their role in distinguishing DEFA from Western cinema. He dubbed these production teams “creative families” who would “venture into artistic experiments that will serve the evolution of socialist film art.”3 One of the goals, hereby, was to think of new genres that would compete internationally with Hollywood’s entertainment empire. By uniting directors, literary authors, and technical personnel, Maetzig maintained, the new artistic production units would create a forum for such new genres and

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expertise exchange, foster better-organized production schedules, and bring into alignment the economic and artistic interests of the studio. Maetzig envisioned an artistic director as the head of each unit who would assume political and financial responsibility for projects and mediate between cultural functionaries of the state and the party and filmmakers, thus creating a “close and trustworthy relationship” with them.4 The units, he promised, would help overcome the structural and organizational malfunctions plaguing the studio at the time. Even though Maetzig’s vision might have been overly optimistic, film collectives within the socialist bloc, as we will see in this chapter, would soon become the backbone of Eastern European cinematic industries. Historically, the filmmaking collectives offered a new mode of artistic organization that Poland and Czechoslovakia had introduced in the 1950s within the structures of their respective state-run studios. In contrast to the Hollywood studio system, where the majors had total control over film production and distribution, filmmakers in Eastern Europe developed an alternative model: relatively autonomous units consisting of directors, literary advisers (also known as dramaturges), scriptwriters, and production managers, which operated under the auspices of the larger state-run studio. These teams were responsible for script development, production budgets, and the creative supervision of a range of feature films and most coproductions. Such units emerged throughout the socialist bloc: in Czechoslovakia, Poland, the USSR, and Yugoslavia during the 1950s, in Hungary and Bulgaria during the 1960s, and in Romania during the 1970s.5 In the GDR, the artistic production units were introduced between 1959 and 1961 as Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppen (hereafter KAGs). The emergence of the KAGs marked the transition from partnering with Western studios and individuals, as outlined in chapters 1 and 2, to DEFA’s focus exclusively on Eastern European partners. Though the KAGs were not mandated by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in an attempt of total control, they did respond to an increasing concern within the GDR Ministry of Culture that international cooperation with Western partners required unfeasible compromises. This concern, as we have already seen, was repeatedly voiced at the ministry’s heated debates over the mid-1950s coproductions with French studios and Erich Mehl. Moreover, other Eastern European functionaries shared the same fear of increasing concessions to the West, while artists in the region sought new ways of creative expression in the wake of de-Stalinization.6 Such sensibilities engendered the consolidation of a network among Eastern European industries at a series of interna-

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tional filmmakers’ congresses between 1957 and 1960. For example, the Prague conference of 1957 underscored the necessity of creating new aesthetic styles and genres that drew on progressive movements such as the Italian Neorealism—and that could compete with Hollywood and popular cinema for the attention of socialist audiences. The second film conference in Sinaia, Romania, met in 1958 and elaborated on the differences between socialist and capitalist filmmaking; it also introduced new models of efficient collaboration within state-sponsored studios. At this conference, GDR’s minister of culture, Alexander Abusch, asserted that “coproduced films should not allow anymore for concessions to reactionary ideologies and should demonstrate a respect for the GDR’s own creative and artistic forces.”7 The resolutions of both conferences culminated in the decisions of the last filmmakers’ congress of 1960 in Sofia, Bulgaria, setting a new course in the practice of coproduction and film exchange involving solely socialist countries. From the early 1960s on, DEFA’s coproduction and trade partners came exclusively from Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and other socialist allies in Asia or South America.8 What characterizes these collaborations is a complex concept of “socialist cinema,” related, according to managing director Albert Wilkening, to DEFA’s ambition by strengthening its contacts to other Eastern European film studios to compete on an entertainment-oriented film market.9 The path to fulfill this ambition, Wilkening suggested, was through the creation of new socialist genres specifically in the form of coproduction. This way, not only would DEFA “increase our films’ potential to attract audiences,” but would also work toward “the stabilization and consolidation of socialist collaboration with our comrades from socialist film studios.”10 By sharing the cost of considerable film projects, DEFA was able to initiate the production of two new genres that were in reality remakes of the science fiction and Western-genre films. These overhauled versions of escapist Hollywood genres became possible only through DEFA’s turn to the idealized artistic communities described by Maetzig. This chapter, therefore, combines two interconnected narratives that foreground the value of the above-mentioned films not only as new genres, but also as coproductions that shaped 1960s and 1970s socialist cinema. The first narrative traces the emergence of the KAGs as a new model of filmmaking that was conducive for international collaboration. The second narrative engages the Cold War competition that shaped the creation in the East of new entertainment genres derived from classical Hollywood cinema. The conceptualization of these genres coincided with DEFA’s decision to abolish coproducing with the West

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and to openly compete with cinemas behind the Iron Curtain. Until the mid-1950s science fiction films and Westerns were trademarks of Hollywood, but at the end of the decade DEFA and its Eastern European partners began revamping these genres for their own purposes, namely to create homegrown entertainment and attract a younger generation of moviegoers. Thus, both genres received a range of new ideological characteristics and, above all, new names: science fiction productions were remade into utopische Filme (utopian films), and Westerns were transformed into Indianerfilme (films about Native Americans struggling against American imperialism).11 The renaming of the genres suggested that Eastern European cinemas wanted to set themselves apart from their Western competitors and foreground their own agendas critical of U.S. imperialism, colonialism, and capitalist values. The utopian films and the Indianerfilme reflected the Eastern bloc’s attitude to the Cold War “others.” These films were coproduced among socialist partners and projected contemporaneous conflicts in divided Europe into a galactic future or a frontier past. Thus the narratives developed in both genres imagined a community that would be able to overcome the tensions of the 1960s and 1970s Cold War race. For instance, the utopian films presented visions of the future in an imaginary harmonious society, but they also embodied warnings of nuclear extermination as a consequence of capitalist exploitation of human minds and bodies. The Indianerfilme shared with the utopian films the representation of a community unified by notions of brotherhood and solidarity with the oppressed, and at the same time critiqued the capitalist model of a society built on race, gender, and class distinctions. Thus, although both genres emulated Western entertainment features, they were also imbued with a clear ideological agenda and the socialist cultural officials naturally viewed them as an apt vehicle for educating young socialist audiences. The KAGs played a crucial role in channeling these agendas and, at the same time, their strife for artistic independence clashed with some of the political prerogatives. Moreover, the transformations that the KAGs underwent within DEFA until the early 1980s inevitably impacted their work with other KAGs as well as the varying success of their coproductions.

The Emergence of the KAGs Between 1959 and 1961 DEFA introduced seven KAGs.12 Among these KAGs, Red Circle stands out for its development of both types of

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counter-genres.13 Red Circle’s formation was evidently inspired by the making of Der schweigende Stern (Silent Star, released in the West as First Spaceship on Venus, 1960, dir. Kurt Maetzig), a joint project between GDR and Polish filmmakers that revamped the science fiction genre and was the first utopian film coproduced by Eastern European studios. In fact, Maetzig proposed to DEFA the model of the KAG during his collaboration with the Polish artistic production unit Iluzjon.14 After Maetzig had founded Red Circle and became its artistic director, other East German filmmakers followed suit. The first KAGs emulated this formula by attracting prominent writers and connecting them with seasoned directors, such as Slatan Dudow, Konrad Wolf, and Gerhard Klein. During their development, several KAGs experimented with genre cinema—an experiment that was subsequently harnessed and contained by political authorities. For instance, the unit Johannisthal released several musicals and comedies while Red Circle made two utopian films and eleven Indianerfilme.15 The initial forays in the entertainment genres were always made with the help of Eastern European partners, mostly Polish and Czechoslovak, whom DEFA considered more experienced in genre cinema. As we will see later in this chapter, Red Circle’s first two utopian films were coproductions with Polish partners, and their first Indianerfilm was made in close cooperation with a Czech director, cameramen, and actors. Similarly, Johannisthal’s early musicals and comedies were made as coproductions or collaborations with the Barrandov Studio in Czechoslovakia. At their onset, the KAGs had to create a socialist version of capitalist entertainment practices. Although this tongue-in-cheek agenda was a cover for the KAGs’ desire to conceptualize and control their own art, Ernst Hoffmann, director of the Central Film Administration (HV Film) readily promoted it in 1959 as the studio’s weapon for retaining viewers: “Our struggle to win the audience can only succeed through good and honest films. . . . This is why the artistic production units [i.e., KAGs] will receive eminent importance in the next stage of our film art’s development. Directors, production and shooting managers, and entire production units will work closely together in order to show that film art is a collective art. . . . The studio will provide the home and technical equipment for the projects, while the KAGs and the studio management will bear responsibility for the artistic and economic aspects of filmmaking.”16 During the early 1960s the KAGs redefined the idea of a socialist collective in DEFA and translated, to some extent, the spirit of good teamwork into practice. As Marcin Adamczak has observed, the early

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artistic production units throughout Eastern Europe had become “imaginary units” and nurtured divergent hopes among filmmakers aspiring to artistic freedom and among cultural officials expecting a boost in productivity, economic stability, and political loyalty.17 Indeed, until the mid-1960s the KAGs’ relatively independent status allowed for risky economic and aesthetic decisions that made the realization of several contested coproductions possible.18 At the same time, the hierarchy among KAG members began to engender internal censorship and selfcriticism, while the production managers who continued to report to the head dramaturge were obliged to justify the unit’s rationales. In addition, as we will see in the discussion of Der schweigende Stern, the DEFA management did not easily grant agency to the KAG leadership in the negotiation with international partners. This tension between the project of the KAG as a creative family and the prestige agenda of the studio came to the fore especially after the Kahlschlag (clearing) of 1965 and ensued a stricter top-down control of the KAGs and resulted in a stronger alignment of their aesthetic agenda with functionaries’ expectations.19 In the 1970s DEFA took control of most entertainment features, thus further curtailing the role of artistic or even film directors, and introducing dramaturgical units (KAGs led by one dramaturge). The idea was to centralize the decision-making power in the unit; for that reason, the Red Circle and Johannisthal dramaturges avoided signing coproduction contracts and resorted to service agreements with politically acceptable partners who could offer the necessary shooting locations and extras. The Indianerfilme of the 1970s, as a result, were rarely coproduced, yet they still were made in cooperation with filmmakers from socialist countries, including Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Cuba, and Mongolia. The network of dramaturgical units within the bloc, therefore, continued to play a central role in such “pragmatic alliances,” as Pavel Skopal called them, for the purposes of talent casting and scouting of exotic landscapes.20 While state officials expected the KAGs to team up with allies in the East, more often than not the ideal of comradeship cracked under the burden of the artistic groups’ divergent priorities and interests. In particular, debates over scripts and the clear definition of genre conventions were recurrent points of conflict. Thus, coproduction endeavors among socialist partners both created tensions among the units and served as proving grounds for their own utopian aspirations to create art independently and innovatively. The KAGs’ prominent political and cultural functions as intermediaries within DEFA production culture as well as the tensions that

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came with this role are best illustrated in the documented history of Red Circle as the first KAG. With Maetzig as its artistic director, the unit initiated two East German/Polish utopian films, Der schweigende Stern and Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (Signals: A Space Adventure, 1970, dir. Gottfried Kolditz, GDR/Poland). The production stories of these films demonstrate the slow consolidation of the KAG and the challenge that the artistic director and dramaturges faced in their attempt to create a film that would satisfy all coproducers. Specifically, Der schweigende Stern demonstrated Red Circle’s difficulties to navigate dissonance between the Polish partners and DEFA as an institution. Later, during the 1970s, Red Circle specialized in the Indianerfilme genre under the auspices of directors Gottfried Kolditz and Konrad Petzold. This genre proved more successful than its predecessor, as we will see in the subsequent discussion of the first Indianerfilm made with Czech partners, Die Söhne der großen Bärin (The Sons of Great Bear, dir. Joseph Mach, 1967, GDR). The sweeping success of this film across Eastern Europe inspired DEFA’s subsequent cooperations on Indianerfilme with numerous other socialist countries. Many of these joint ventures were steered by the scriptwriting duo formed by director Kolditz and the famous Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitić, the star of thirteen Indianerfilme. Working together within Red Circle, Kolditz and Mitić wrote and produced two of the most lauded DEFA entertainment pictures of all times: Apachen (Apaches, 1973) and its sequel Ulzana (1974). The director-actor collaboration also marked DEFA’s transition from coproductions with Eastern European studios—ventures that were often fraught by problems—to a model of indigenous features made in cooperation with socialist partners providing DEFA with services, props, extras, and shooting locations. The Red Circle endeavor to create a socialist version of Hollywood popular genres thus fleshes out the very tension of this project: on the one hand, these big-budget productions relied on economic cooperation and services from their neighbors; on the other hand, they revealed differences and disagreement within the cultural production throughout the socialist bloc. At root, the genres of utopian films and the Indianerfilme were ideologically charged genres that had to traverse national constraints and pursue an agenda of commercial competition with Hollywood in order to replace Western imports to Eastern European markets.21 Realized as coproductions through Red Circle and other KAGs or through the exchange of services and talent with other Eastern European studios, these genre films were endowed with a complex mandate: to entertain, to educate, and to promote a fantasy of a socialist community

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transcending the limits of time and space. Such films not only repeated and varied already existing conventions, but also “altered the notion of genre itself,” as Jaimey Fisher recounts, “insisting on realism and political engagement usually anathema to such audience-indulging products.”22 In their function as hybrids and political correctives, the utopian films and the Indianerfilme gained a unique role as cultural products of the interactions between socialist utopianism and the competition with the capitalist West. Creating utopia via audience-pleasing films increased the entertainment value of such (co)productions behind the Iron Curtain, yet it also exposed their constructed and ideologically compliant message and their reinforcement of stereotypes for the sake of educating Eastern European viewers into good socialist citizens. To be sure, these films cashed in on public fear of and fascination with the future in similar ways that literature and media during the Cold War did.

The Birth of the Utopian Genre The makers of utopian films used the popularity of Eastern European science fiction literature to become mediators between popular taste and the state’s attempt to appropriate young people’s fantasies and aspirations in their own political discourse. This became possible in the context of de-Stalinization post-1956, and especially after the launch of two Sputniks celebrated widely by a younger generation of science fiction “thaw writers” and readers in the socialist bloc.23 Sputnik I went into orbit on October 4, 1957, and with that, the celestial contest between Soviets and Americans, the Eastern and the Western hemispheres, went public. A second Sputnik followed in early November, launching into space a living being, the dog Laika; this was a scientific triumph that nourished the ideological utopias of the communist regime. The space race engendered curiosity for science fiction literature on both sides of the Curtain that now gained more and more popular appeal. Both the growing interest in Western popular literature and the success of Eastern European science fiction novels among GDR readers resulted in the state’s endorsement of these genres in order to cultivate and control the public imaginary of what the future under socialism would offer. Consequently, as Sonja Fritzsche suggests, “science fiction’s place within the GDR discourse on utopia received further support with the popular success of Stanislaw Lem’s first book The Astronauts,” released in German translation in 1954.24

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Lem’s novel belonged to a large cohort of literary texts demonstrating the capability of science fiction to appeal to diverse audiences and to serve as a projection of socialist progress’ triumph over capitalism. Most utopian films made in Eastern Europe between 1960 and 1980 adapted best-selling novels by authors such as Ivan Efremov, Sever Gansovsky, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in the Soviet Union; Karel Čapek in Czechoslovakia; Vladimir Voinovich in Yugoslavia; Lyuben Dilov in Bulgaria; and Carlos Rasch in East Germany, among others. The novels were enthusiastically received, especially by the younger generation, praised the technological-scientific achievements of socialism, and promised the emancipation of science for the good of humanity. Adopting Lem’s and other science fiction authors’ approach, Eastern European filmmakers studied contemporary scientific research in order to be able to present on screen the future possibilities of socialist technology and to create compelling forms of film entertainment.25 Though experiments with utopian films date back to the late 1950s, Eastern European science fiction films became most prominent on the international market via Jindřich Polák’s iconic Ikarie XB-I (Voyage to the End of the Universe, 1963, Czechoslovakia) and Andrei Tarkovsky’s film adaptations of novels by Stanislav Lem (Solaris, 1972, USSR) and the Strugatsky brothers (Stalker, 1979, USSR). These classics participated in a much larger media discourse on space exploration and flight, which reflected Cold War anxieties and attempted to transpose them into the future. Science fiction films on both sides of the Curtain paired the dream of conquering outer space with underscoring Cold War divisions.26 In the United States of the 1950s the genre revealed the interplay of fears of invasion, nuclear catastrophe, and loss of political control that shaped the public. Such examples include three classics released in 1953, specifically Byron Haskin’s The War of the Worlds, William Cameron Menzies’s Invaders from Mars, and Jack Arnold’s It Came from Outer Space, as well as Don Siegel’s infamous Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Film scholars have viewed most of these genre-defining pictures as signs of paranoia in the heyday of the space race.27 At the same time, the genre offered Eastern European filmmakers a model that they could work against or borrow from. Socialist cinemas thus entered the race to win audiences by making films of high technical quality that they imbued with the message of humans coexisting like brothers—a utopia loudly propagated by socialist governments. Soviet and Eastern European filmmakers’ response to lavish Hollywood productions were films that claimed scientific value and experimented with special effects and animation.

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Some programmatic Soviet titles include Pavel Klushantsev’s Doroga k zvezdam (Road to the Stars, 1957), Viktor Morgenstern’s Ya byl sputnikom solntsa (I Was a Sputnik of the Sun, 1959), and Mikhail Karzhukov and Aleksandr Kozyr’s film Nebo zovyot (The Sky Calls, 1959). Both genres, of course, constantly borrowed from each other in terms of mise-en-scène, shot composition, animation, costumes, and use of props, which mirrored the frenzy surrounding the space race discourse.28 Maetzig made his own contribution to the ongoing competition when he embarked on directing DEFA’s first socialist-made utopian film, Der schweigende Stern. In doing so, he was not oblivious to the existing traditions of the science fiction genre in Weimar and early Soviet cinema. As a former UFA employee, he was familiar with pioneers, such as Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita (Aelita: Queen of Mars 1924, USSR), as well as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927, Germany) and Die Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon, 1929, Germany).29 Yet Maetzig presented his project first and foremost as redressing the flaws of the American genre. In an interview from the 1980s he critiqued Hollywood science fiction for its focus on fear of alien aggression and its inability to look beyond the “immediate reality in the United States.”30 The American movies from the 1950s, he postulated, were “stuck in today,” while socialist utopian films shared a “concrete and optimistic vision of a future society based on progress.”31 In contrast to the paranoid and apocalyptic tone of Western science fiction films, DEFA utopian films were expected to provide an ideal image of society ruled by the promise that class and social conflicts would be solved by international solidarity. DEFA managing director Albert Wilkening reiterated the films’ function in 1972 and emphasized that they should “reflect our world view in emanating vitality” and “distinguish themselves principally from foreign [Hollywood] film productions” that, according to him, reduced themselves to the representation of technocratic worlds and the threat posed by aliens to Earth.32 Therefore, DEFA’s utopian genre dispensed with the action elements of the classical science fiction film and offered instead what Maetzig has described as an “approach of cooperation instead of confrontation.”33 (Figure 3.1.) This cooperative approach was most effectively implemented in DEFA’s determination to coproduce its science fiction films with other socialist nations. Between 1960 and 1976 DEFA and its Eastern European partners released four feature films referred to as technisch-realistische Utopie (technical-realistic utopian films), which aimed at representing technological progress in realistic terms.34 The first of these, Der schweigende Stern, had a strong antinuclear and pacifist message and

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Figure 3.1. Der schweigende Stern (1960). An international team of astronauts exploring Venus. Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Waltraut Pathenheimer.

portrayed an international space crew drawn from eight countries, including the first black astronaut shown on film.35 As the most expensive and perhaps the most ambitious DEFA film to date, the project attracted Western European partners and much media attention in the late 1950s. Der schweigende Stern successfully ran in West Germany as Raumschiff Venus antwortet nicht, and in Great Britain, Japan, and even the United States under the title First Spaceship on Venus. DEFA and Poland, therefore, decided to cash in on its success with another coproduction, this time a popular science documentary for TV release, Die Reise nach Kosmatom (Journey to Cosmatom, 1961, dir. Manfred Gussmann and Janusz Star). After a ten-year hiatus, DEFA renewed its series of collaborations with a Polish artistic production unit on their next utopian feature film, Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer, a response to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, UK/ US). The reasons for the decade-long abandonment of the genre lie in the concerns that had remained unaddressed during Maetzig’s film coproduction: justification of the overwhelmingly high budget, unresolved dealings with Western partners,

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and debates on the limitations of artistic experimentation and license within the SED’s vision of socialist-style entertainment. Nevertheless, in the 1970s DEFA conceived two further coproductions as sequels to Signale; they were Eolomea (1972, dir. Herrmann Zschoche, GDR/ USSR/Bulgaria) and Im Staub der Sterne (In the Dust of Stars, 1976, dir. Gottfried Kolditz, GDR/Romania). The last utopian film was Besuch bei Van Gogh (Visiting Van Gogh, 1985, dir. Horst Seemann), made nine years later as an East/West German coproduction. It was an adaptation of a Soviet novel by Sever Gansovsky and borrowed West German and French set designs and props, which points to DEFA’s renewed aspirations for collaboration with Western partners in the later 1980s. Though quite divergent in style and distribution, all utopian films had one agenda in common: they paired the dream of conquering outer space with a utopian vision of successful scientific teamwork as a metaphor for a new harmonious society.

Red Circle’s First Utopian Film: Der schweigende Stern The first utopian film was devised as a coproduction among Eastern European partners, and though the project was unstable in the early stages, it ultimately proved to be a successful cooperation between the young artistic production units. Both DEFA’s emerging KAG Red Circle and its Polish partner Iluzjon entered new territory with the genre of utopian films, so working together took on an experimental character. Film scholars have engaged the remarkably prolonged negotiations over script versions with a focus on the involvement of state officials as censors or advocates of the project.36 Most recently, Sonja Fritzsche has recontextualized the film within its cohort of contemporaneous Eastern European science fiction features and thus acknowledged the influence exerted on its makers by their respective cinematic cultures.37 Building on this scholarship, the subsequent discussion of Der schweigende Stern reconsiders the lengthy and involved production history of the film against the background of Red Circle’s development and demonstrates how it impacted the shaping of later genre coproductions at DEFA. The story of Der schweigende Stern reveals the entanglement of the KAG’s emergence with a new understanding of artistic agency that paralleled the political agenda to coproduce with Eastern European partners. When in late 1956 the Polish artistic production unit Iluzjon proposed the cinematic adaptation of Lem’s novel Astronauci (The Astronauts, 1951, published in the GDR in 1956 as Planet des Todes [Planet

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of Death]), DEFA enlisted Maetzig to direct this ambitious project. Not only was he one of the most experienced East German directors, but he also showed with his programmatic speech, “The Time Is Ripe,” that he had recognized the need for socialist quality films to compete with the Western genres. Consequently, his partnership with Iluzjon gave Maetzig the opportunity to observe Zespół Filmowy, the Polish artistic production units as a model to be soon adopted for DEFA’s reorganization. Maetzig’s partner in Der schweigende Stern, Ludwik Starski, had in 1955 founded Iluzjon, whose formula for success lay in the close collaboration between literary authors, scriptwriters, and directors. In his 1956 speech Maetzig reiterated the scriptwriter’s privileged position within a KAG where he was to find a “creative family.”38 His conceptualization of the KAGs harked back to another Polish filmmaker, Wanda Jakubowska, who together with Starski advocated the artistic production units in Poland. When in 1955 she founded her own unit, START, she announced its objective of “cooperation between the screenwriter and director from the very moment that the film is born” thus emphasizing the importance of a shared vision within the team.39 Positioning the director-author axis at the center of creative work in the unit not only meant more artistic freedom, but also internalized the process of script discussion and revision, as well as censorship, within the unit, as we will see in the discussions surrounding Der schweigende Stern. Though some DEFA scholars have focused primarily on the selfcensorship encouraged within the KAGs, the Polish artistic production units’ leaders saw this process of internalization of tasks and agency as liberating.40 This was especially true for Iluzjon’s artistic director Ludwik Starski and production manager Edward Zajiček, who in 1956 demanded that DEFA work closely with Stanislaw Lem on the film adaptation of Astronauts.41 At the height of the euphoria surrounding the space race, Lem’s best-selling novel offered a rousing but also politically compliant plot.42 It opens in the year 2003, with Soviet scientists engaged in the construction of a large nuclear power plant for the purpose of melting the ice of the North Pole and creating energy. The scientists discover a spool-like object in the Siberian taiga, supposedly a remnant of the meteorite that caused the Tunguska explosion in 1908. Using the historical explosion as a departure point, Lem develops his fictional story from the perspective of narrator Robert Smith, a North American pilot who participates in a subsequent expedition to Venus. Once the scientists decode the ominous message of the spool, they send out an international crew, composed predominantly of members from economically empowered

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states: the USSR, the United States, China, India, and France, as well as Poland, Germany, and a country in Africa.43 The expedition becomes a vehicle for another plot line that follows the evolving friendship between the Soviet captain Arsenyev and Smith and ends with an optimistic message about future peace on Earth brought about by international solidarity and collaboration. Despite the novel’s inherent optimism, the vagaries of the political discourse between 1956 and 1960 prompted many departures from Lem’s original text in order to accommodate the partners’ diverging viewpoints, the raging space race, and ideological prerogatives both in East and West. The problem was that for a long time it remained undecided who will participate in the coproduction. The film script, therefore, underwent twelve revisions by various authors in East and West Germany, France, and Poland. For instance, the film’s working title Planet des Todes had to be replaced by the ideologically acceptable Der schweigende Stern, which also sounded more positive and intriguing. In addition, to promote the 1957 Soviet launch of Sputnik I, the story was relocated from the distant and hard-to-imagine 2003 into the near future of 1970. Some other space-age-driven changes that sharpened the film’s critique of American imperialism included the addition of a female Japanese character, physician Sumiko Ogimura (Yoko Tani), whose parents died in the bombing of Hiroshima, as well as a new debate between the pacifist North American pilot and U.S. scientists who advocated nuclear armament. Although Der schweigende Stern’s final ending from 1960 remained faithful to Lem’s message in his novel, so many changes were made to the script after 1956 that “by the time the final version of the screenplay had been completed,” Stefan Soldovieri observes, “the story shared only the most general plot features with its nominal literary source.”44 There are several factors that accounted for the painstaking script revisions. One of the motivations, as Soldovieri and Sebastian Heiduschke have shown, lay in the high stakes that the DEFA studio and the GDR Ministry of Culture held in this first socialist coproduction meant to conquer Western markets.45 The ideological investment of GDR and Polish cultural functionaries in this project, especially after the launch of Sputnik I, emerged, as we will see, in their concern that another picture, a U.S.–West German venture entitled Der Mann, der nach den Sternen greift: Wernher von Braun (I Aim at the Stars, 1960, dir. J. Lee Thompson) might overshadow the success anticipated for Der schweigende Stern. Another factor that led to prolonged revisions might be found in the Polish artistic production units’ privileging of the script as

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the most important element of a film, as explained above. In the Polish context, production managers worked closely with literary directors to contribute to the novelty of film production, as they understood it. In other words, both parties were used to a certain degree of independence and a rather lenient treatment by the political authorities at this stage. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need to account for significant differences between the Polish system of artistic production units, already established and functioning by 1956, and DEFA, where the KAG Red Circle did not take shape until 1959. The prolonged negotiations over the script coincided with the slow consolidation of Red Circle as a KAG. Since Der schweigende Stern was initiated before 1959, when the DEFA KAGs were officially announced, the project landed on the DEFA managing director Albert Wilkening’s desk. Between 1956 and 1958 the extensive correspondence between Wilkening and Iluzjon’s artistic director Starski shows that the studio as an institution initially took control over the project, yet it remained unclear who the partners in the project would be. Wilkening took several steps, such as appointing a team of scriptwriters and contacting prospective partners in France, without first securing the Polish coproducers’ approval. This lack of communication almost resulted in aborting the project. Starting in 1959, however, Starski began communicating more often with Maetzig, the Red Circle artistic director at this point, and Johannes (Hans) Mahlich as the production manager’s agency increased. This communication took place during the actual film production, yet Maetzig’s and Mahlich’s involvement in the dialogue helped alleviate the Polish partners’ anxieties about the staggering number of script revisions, and ultimately provided an instructive example for the KAG during the negotiation over the next big-budget utopian film, Signale. Naturally, a high-quality coproduction on space conquest and technological advancement, such as Der schweigende Stern, resonated with DEFA’s agenda for prestige partnerships with France and West Germany, as discussed in both previous chapters. Therefore, Wilkening entrusted the Der schweigende Stern script to the West German duo Alexander Stenbock-Fermor and Joachim Barckhausen, a team that had already successfully scripted the DEFA coproduction with Erich Mehl, Das Fräulein von Scuderi (1955, dir. Eugen York). Their draft from February 1957, however, met with Maetzig’s fervent disapproval. The director not only insisted on keeping the original political message viable in the script, but also felt responsible for the aesthetic quality of the film, given his advocacy of the Polish model of internalizing script decisions within the

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production unit. Even though the writer duo was soon dismissed from the project, Starski wrote to Wilkening to express his mistrust in the way his East German partners were handling the joint project. Laying out what he conceived as a fair plan for teamwork between the coproducers, Starski insisted that Polish director and author Jan Fethke, who “will best represent Lem’s view,” should participate in cowriting the script.46 In response, Wilkening suggested as a coauthor Günter Reisch, Maetzig’s trusted friend. Simultaneously, Starski complained about DEFA’s lack of professionalism and disrespect for Iluzjon’s priorities. Wilkening was accused of distributing the roles among the coproducing partners unevenly, reserving all the major positions (director, cameramen, architect, sound engineer, film editor, makeup artist, and props master) for Germans. Starski’s and Wilkening’s communication continued in roller-coaster fashion. On the one hand, Wilkening tried to accommodate Iluzjon’s demands as much as he could. For instance, when Fethke and Reisch prepared their new script in equitable collaboration, Iluzjon and Stanislaw Lem were the first to peruse it.47 Soon after they granted their approval, on October 2, 1957, the Polish unit and Red Circle signed the coproduction contract. Yet, on the other hand, Wilkening decided to involve DEFA’s French partners into the coproduction, a decision that resulted from Iluzjon’s scanty financial involvement into the project with only 20 percent. Wilkening’s invitation of French filmmakers to participate in Der schweigende Stern was, therefore, strategic: they would cofinance a large portion of the expensive feature and contribute internationally acclaimed film stars known to GDR audiences from the French coproductions with DEFA. In his letters to prospective French partners, Wilkening emphasized existing collaborations with Pathé and proposed a meeting with the Franco-London representative at the Berlin film festival.48 In October 1957 Pathé’s intermediary, Ruth Fischer, responded to Wilkening, reassuring the company’s agreement to collaborate with DEFA, yet under the following conditions: distribution rights for Western Europe and a new version of the script composed by their director and writer, Louis-Émile Galey.49 There was only one problem: the Polish coproducers were not a party to the negotiations with Fischer. Wilkening’s deliberations with the French studio in the absence of Iluzjon’s members frustrated the subsequent coproduction negotiations with Starski. One reason was DEFA’s hasty endorsement of Galey’s extensive changes to Fethke’s and Reisch’s script and a separate contract that the East Germans signed with Pathé.50 After reviewing Galey’s

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amendments, Starski and Zajiček protested even more that the French presence would threaten their project.51 In order to save Der schweigende Stern, Wilkening had to relinquish DEFA’s initial plans for a spectacular production and to enlist yet another writer duo made of his most experienced authors, Günter Rücker and Wolfgang Kohlhaase. Alas, their new version of the script further upset the Polish film commission and even author Lem.52 They demanded the reinstatement of Fethke as an author and a return to Reisch’s and Fethke’s script. At that point, the debates over the script turned into a politicum. The GDR deputy minister of culture, Erich Wendt, who had earlier disagreed with the French involvement into the coproduction, took control over the negotiations. On August 22, 1958, Wendt called the Polish Minister of Culture and National Heritage Tadeusz Galiński to request his support for the project’s continuation.53 By September 1958 Fethke was restored in his function as an author and, in February 1959, the film shooting began. But what made the GDR functionaries intervene into the making of Der schweigende Stern and why would Wilkening succumb to the demands of the Polish partners? The answer lies in two parallel developments: first, the political pressure exercised on DEFA to abolish cooperation with the West, and second, and related to this decision, the real-time competition that Der schweigende Stern faced as the production of another West German–American coproduction progressed. On January 8, 1958, Der Spiegel published a report about the endeavors of Hamburg-based producer Friedrich Mainz and his company Fama Film to adapt for the screen the story of Wernher von Braun, the infamous rocket scientist of the Third Reich and designer of the V-2 missile used in the 1944 attacks on London. A typewritten copy of this article dated 1958 is held by the Kurt Maetzig archive at the German Arts Academy (file 275), which suggests that competition with the West German production was used as a bargaining point in negotiations over Der schweigende Stern’s production. Moreover, in an interview with film historian Günter Agde, Maetzig cited the relevance of Wernher von Braun’s research next to Soviet scientific reports as sources for the conceptualization of his utopian film.54 Both films took several years to make and were delayed by numerous negotiations over economic and production matters, depending on who was deemed to be winning the space race. In resonance with the political discourse of the time, Der Spiegel ironically commented on the rivalry between Maetzig and Mainz: “The outcome of the race, in which the East Germans now seem to have a big lead, could arguably affect negatively the run of the Wernher von Braun biopic on the Western film market.”55

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Mainz intended to create a semi-fictional biography of von Braun, which he envisioned as “the best film of 1958” and as “the first feature film in the Western world that will focus on rocket and space travel in the Sputnik era.”56 Wernher von Braun was not only one of the leading Nazi scientists, he we also a supervisor of Explorer I and II, the American government’s response to Sputnik I in Spring 1958. While media in the FRG debated the significance of the contribution of German scientists to both Soviet and U.S. successes, von Braun was quickly exalted as a prophet of the space age in the American press.57 However, I Aim at the Stars as Mainz’s ambitious project was initially disrupted by the successful release of the first Soviet Sputnik in October 1957. “We can’t show how the Americans potter about with their satellite program, while the Sputnik circles the Earth,” was one of UFA producers’ cynical comment for Der Spiegel in January 1958.58 Surprisingly, the fierce competition offered by Maetzig provided Mainz with the bargaining chip that allowed his project to succeed. In 1958 the U.S. studio Columbia Pictures offered to save the project with 5 million DM. Moreover, the West Germans were thrilled to see the scientist come back to advertise the film and were proud of his successes in the United States. Once Columbia Pictures took the upper hand in coproducing I Aim at the Stars, the von Braun film was seen as jeopardizing DEFA’s plans for the export of Der schweigende Stern to the West.59 Thus, the production histories of the two films not only tracked the ups and downs of the space race, but also demonstrated how its vagaries permeated cultural production in the East and West alike and created a focal point of identification for audiences on both sides of the Curtain. After the premiere of I Aim at the Stars and throughout the 1960s, during the height of the competition over manned exploration of space, von Braun’s persona and his Nazi past received even more attention in the East German context. Following large protests in Britain and France against the film’s overtly positive representation of von Braun and the erasure of his close collaboration with the Nazis, the East German media and DEFA launched a campaign against the rocketeer. Several GDR newspapers began reporting regularly in a negative tone on the scientist’s role in the U.S. efforts in the space race, a hostile quasi-biography by Stasi (GDR Ministry for State Security) officer Julius Mader appeared in 1962, and a new DEFA spy feature, Die gefrorenen Blitze (Frozen Lightning, dir. János Veiczi, GDR), conceived as a counter-film to I Aim at the Stars, was released in 1967.60 This vehement reaction to the German-American coproduction coincided with the GDR’s new political prerogatives,

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namely the turn to consolidating and growing cooperation among the countries of the socialist bloc. Considering DEFA’s disappointment with its French partners, as we have seen in chapter 1, and the strong opposition by functionaries, such as Wendt, to coproducing with the West, the studio had to focus on cultivating Eastern European partners. Indeed, in light of the competition with the West, Wilkening’s attitude toward Iluzjon had changed and the completion of the film gained a new importance. In April 1958 the financial director of the coproduction, Herbert Volkmann, wrote a rather affirmative report of his cooperation with the “Polish friends,” as he repeatedly referred to Starski and Zaijček. The recipients were Wilkening, Wendt, and Anton Ackermann from the Central Film Administration.61 Volkmann emphasized that, after an earlier meeting in Warsaw, the Polish partners had agreed with all the suggested revisions affecting the political message of the film, as required by the GDR’s deputy minister of culture. “We have no disagreements about the film’s political and aesthetic message,” Volkmann explained, referring to author Lem as well as Iluzjon. Following his insistence on the filmmakers’ unity regarding the ideological function of their utopian film, the financial director defended his Polish colleagues by highlighting the difficult financial situation they would face if the film were to remain incomplete. “Both sides will see it as a political failure if we are unable to finish our project,” Volkmann continued, playing his last card in front of the functionaries.62 If the negotiations with French and Polish partners led by Wilkening attest to the failure of the utopia of fair cooperation with artists on both sides of the Iron Curtain, the work of Maetzig and Mahlich during the shooting of Der schweigende Stern delivers an example of lived international solidarity. In the fall of 1958 the crew from various European and African socialist countries began filming at the small airfield Berlin Johannisthal, in the Polish part of the Carpathians, as well as in the studios of Babelsberg and Wrocław. Only a few days after the start of the film shoot, Maetzig proudly reported to Wilkening that he was directing in four different languages and tried to accommodate various demands by actors and film personnel from seven different countries. Mahlich, for his part, managed to attract Soviet Tricktechniker (technicians who used animation to create special effects). Upon seeing the Soviet documentary Doroga k zvezdam at a DEFA-internal screening in August 1958, Mahlich wrote to the GDR embassy in Moscow asking to be put in touch with the special-effect specialists and architects of that film. He emphasized the international and entertainment agenda of the project and the lack of East German expertise in the field. It was not

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uncommon for embassies to intermediate between studios, considering their responsibility to enhance cultural exchange. Indeed, a few months later, in October 1958, the Lenfilm studio contacted Wilkening. They offered to send a team of special-effect professionals and a cameraman to Berlin for three months in exchange for DEFA’s acceptance of Mikhail Postnikov, their chosen actor for the lead role of Arsenyev.63 During the two years of preparation for shooting, Mahlich was also able to collect an impressive array of airplane and optical equipment, radars, antennas, and other props from various GDR and Polish suppliers, such as the optics company Carl Zeiss Jena. Finally, the filmmakers’ success in soliciting expert knowledge from nuclear research institutes in Germany and the USSR points to their enormous efforts to create a truly international film with the participation of people of various national, social, and professional backgrounds.64 The utopian nature of the project, once it entered its production phase, buttressed the film’s plot. Der schweigende Stern represented a microcosm of socialist society set on board a star ship. The Soviet captain always discussed with the crew his next step, thus emulating democratic decision making and exemplary teamwork. In addition, the members’ questions, doubts, and tough-to-control emotions were welcome as well. This is perhaps best illustrated in a conversation between Arsenyev (Postnikov) and Hawling (Oldřich Lukeš). Before the space crew embarks on its mission to Venus, Hawling shows the Soviet captain his son’s drawing of a rocket in which both astronauts are flying on a mission to save the endangered planet. This imagined solidarity between the U.S. and Russian scientists finds expression yet again shortly before the spaceship’s takeoff. Arsenyev explains at a press conference, “Here are some members of the team who are preparing for takeoff. They will make up the largest collective of the best astrophysicists and astronauts. This collective will form the Cosmocrator’s crew.” When asked why his team does not consist exclusively of Soviet scientists, Arsenyev replies, “Landing on Venus cannot be achieved only by one nation. We are internationalists, and not only in politics. In a peaceful world, we don’t keep our successes to ourselves.”65 The agenda of international solidarity propagated on screen, furthermore, responded to some cultural functionaries’ fantasy of a utopian community of viewers. On June 29, 1959, the Central Film Administration’s representative, Ernst Hoffmann, wrote to Heinz Willmann, the general secretary of the GDR’s Friedensrat (Peace Council) and a member of the World Peace Council. Hoffmann envisioned the simultaneous

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premiere of the East German/Polish coproduction in Berlin, Warsaw, Moscow, and Prague, as well as in Beijing and Tokyo, and possibly other capital cities in capitalist countries. He sought the World Peace Council’s help in realizing this idea, and hoped that the event would boost the GDR’s image abroad.66 Even though this plan never materialized, the endeavor to include the coproduction in the larger spectrum of utopian and popular science films circulating in the socialist bloc remained.67 Indeed, Der schweigende Stern achieved international acclaim. At the twelfth international film festival at Karlovy Vary in July 1960, the organizers presented the film (which was screened at the competition) to more than six thousand viewers from all over the world. According to reviews in Neues Deutschland (July 13, 1960) and Der Morgen (July 16, 1960), Maetzig’s film was celebrated as innovative and sensational at the festival. A few months earlier, when the film premiered in the GDR, Horst Knietzsch had praised it in Neues Deutschland (February 28, 1960) for its ability to compete with Hollywood films of the same genre and for its use of visual effects. In early February, Starski invited Wilkening and the East German filmmakers to attend the Warsaw premiere as honored guests. “We are convinced,” he wrote, “that the film Der schweigende Stern, which disseminates the ideas of international solidarity and team work and mirrors our struggle for peace, will enjoy great success among our audiences.”68 Der schweigende Stern premiered on March 7, 1960, in Warsaw and was, accordingly to Starski, received quite positively. The utopian agenda for successful cooperation was immediately translated into deeds. Drawing on the success of Der schweigende Stern, the DEFA studio for popular science films initiated Die Reise nach Kosmatom.69 Directors Gussmann and Star used some special effects from Der schweigende Stern and hired the same composer, Andrzej Markowski, to score the feature. Several years later Mahlich was asked to prepare a report on all planned coproductions with Poland during the 1960s. Next to Der schweigende Stern, he listed the successful cooperation between the Polish artistic creative unit START and DEFA, Spotkania w mroku (Encounters in the Dark/Begegnung im Zwielicht, 1960, dir. Wanda Jakubowska). Five more projects between Red Circle and the Polish artistic production units Iluzjon, Rhytm, and Studio had been in planning at the KAG, including film adaptations, biopics, and historical projects by directors Aleksander Ford and Kurt Maetzig. Alas, most of them failed or were censored on the recommendation of GDR cultural officials after the Kahlschlag of 1965 when the KAGs were significantly restructured.70

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In the Wake of the Kahlschlag: Courage to Follow Convention Following the ban of twelve socially critical films at the Eleventh Plenum of the SED in December 1965, as DEFA dramaturge Klaus Wischnewski explains, the film studio had to radically change its programming policy.71 The KAGs’ growing artistic autonomy was curtailed and the groups were reorganized and renamed Dramaturgengruppen (dramaturgical groups), centralized units managed by a dramaturge who reported regularly to the chief dramaturge and the studio’s management. In addition, the number of KAGs was reduced from seven to four: Babelsberg, Berlin, Johannisthal, and Red Circle. The role of the literary authors and directors was dramatically diminished, while the dramaturges were expected to assume most of the decision-making responsibilities in ideological, aesthetic, and economic matters.72 Thus, from 1966 on the dramaturges performed multiple functions in the hierarchy of the studio, such as authorizing film scripts, communicating with and coordinating all participants in a film production, and shepherding each project through all stages of censorship and approval. Dieter Wolf, KAG Babelsberg’s dramaturge since 1964, stated that his role also included mediating between the state institutions of control, such as the GDR Ministry of Culture and the Central Film Administration.73 In sum, the dramaturges were responsible for negotiations with internal agents at DEFA, such as film authors, directors, actors, and production managers, as well as with the chief dramaturge of the studio, with international partners, and with the GDR Ministry of Culture. This mediation was similar to what Maetzig had envisioned in his 1956 address, but the reform basically shifted the responsibility for projects from film directors who had acted as artistic directors to the dramaturge. In the aftermath of the Kahlschlag, Wischnewski maintains, pragmatic functionaries encouraged the young generation of film directors to use cinematic conventions in their films more effectively—in other words, according to existing political prerogatives. The dramaturge calls this initiative Mut zur Konvention (courage to follow convention), referring to a qualitatively new DEFA project of entrusting not individual film directors but the dramaturgical groups with the creation of Erfolgsserien (sequels to successful genre films).74 The serial production of acclaimed Indianerfilme and utopian films, which reached its zenith in the 1970s, offered younger filmgoers the appealing experience of participating in the adventures of positive heroes.

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There were several motives behind DEFA’s successive development of genres, which became popular among Eastern and Western European moviegoers in the 1960s and the 1970s. DEFA combined narrative, visual, and ideologically acceptable ingredients that appealed both to party functionaries and to larger audiences. Although Wischnewski bemoans the inability of DEFA to achieve Genre-Professionalität (genre professionalism) in creating well-rounded genres as Hollywood did, utopian films and Indianerfilme as joint projects with socialist partners offered more than imitations of Western entertainment cinema.75 The utopian films demonstrated technical superiority and transnational solidarity, without wasting any effort on depictions of fantastic worlds, space wars, or parallel realities. Similarly, as Red Circle dramaturge Günter Karl stated in 1971, the international film crews that worked on the Indianerfilme used elements from genre cinema that were guaranteed to attract viewers but also assumed a historical-materialist perspective.76 By effectively employing genre conventions and claiming historical accuracy, DEFA filmmakers infused escapist genres with an enlightening message and thus created politically correct entertainment.

Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer A decade passed between the release of Der schweigende Stern and the production of the next German/Polish project, Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970, dir. Gottfried Kolditz). The seeming abandonment of the utopian genre was due partially to the conflict-ridden production of Maetzig’s film, complicated by budget issues and especially by Wilkening’s initiative to collaborate with French partners.77 In addition, Wilkening’s role as studio head was reconsidered at the Eleventh Plenum, in light of his support for many of the projects that were censored. Similarly, Red Circle received much critique for exceeding its authority in producing the infamous Maetzig film Das Kaninchen bin ich (The Rabbit Am I, 1965, GDR), which together with Frank Beyer’s film Trace of Stones became the censors’ primary target.78 Following the reorganization of the KAGs in the wake of the Kahlschlag, the power of decision making in Red Circle was transferred from Maetzig to one of the former production managers, author Günter Karl, who now became the dramaturge, and to Dorothea Richter, the KAG’s production manager from 1966 to 1990. In this way, the Central Film Administration and the Ministry of Culture hoped to exert multilevel control over the artistic production: first, under the dramaturge’s supervision, the KAG had the

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task of debating the film script and preparing it for submission; second, the individual KAGs’ dramaturges reported to the chief dramaturge and recommended that the script be accepted; and, finally, the chief dramaturge conveyed the project to the studio head who, upon completion of the shooting and editing, assembled the artistic commission and the Central Film Administration representatives for a final approval. The coproduction of Signale became Red Circle’s mandate, yet in terms of production strategies, Der schweigende Stern and Signale differed greatly. The production of Maetzig’s film was impeded by the intervention of DEFA’s management and high-ranking political actors from the GDR and Poland. In contrast, the second East German/Polish coproduction was mainly confined to two artistic production units with their respective dramaturges. The making of Signale, as a result, was downscaled in both economic and political terms, and thus was much less problematic compared to Der schweigende Stern, which set a precedent with its twelve script revisions and three years of negotiations before shooting began. Records of internal discussions among DEFA officials and the KAG’s representatives prior to Signale’s release indicate that the filmmakers were well aware of the crises during the making of Der schweigende Stern, but dramaturge Günter Karl justified the new coproduction on the grounds of the genre’s political potential.79 Karl emphasized Red Circle’s new utopian film project as a cooperative endeavor with one of the oldest and most respectable Polish artistic production unit, Kadr.80 Unlike Maetzig’s and Mahlich’s project, where the struggle for funding and the ambition for international prestige had overshadowed the work with Polish partners, the makers of Signale followed the post-1965 prescription to use conventions effectively. In his report on the first Signale script, Karl praised his two authors, director Kolditz, and “the extremely popular Yugoslavian actor Gojko Mitić,” who he believed would increase the film’s appeal among younger moviegoers.81 Cultural functionaries were familiar with the name of Kolditz, who by 1970 had worked on several DEFA fairy tales and musicals exported to East and West and who had already proved himself a master of socialist-style entertainment. Not only did he recruit Mitić from West Germany, but he also created a new successful DEFA genre by casting him in a series of Indianerfilme that received positive media reviews and filled movie theaters with young moviegoers. Kolditz collaborated with Mitić on the Signale script, which suggests the intention to cash in on their success among Eastern European audiences with the Indianerfilme (Figure 3.2). Mitić had enjoyed the East German authorities’ benevolence since he abandoned his career in Western-genre films

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in the FRG to appear in several DEFA political dramas. In addition, Karl argued that this new project was conceived with socialist humanist ideals in mind and with the mutual agreement of the German and Polish artistic production units. He promised that the revival of the utopian genre would achieve two equally important goals: first, it would avoid the allegorical interpretations of present conflicts (a feature of Der schweigende Stern that drew criticism); and, second, it would successfully compete against rather abstract Western science fiction productions: “In conclusion, we would like to point out that our script draws neither on a parable of the present, nor on some utopia of a Neverland, but that it represents a ‘realistic-fantastic’ adventure and a humane, moving story, which we hope has every chance to become a success with audiences.”82 A few years later, celebrating Signale as a successful socialist response to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Hans-Dieter Tok reiterated Karl’s agenda in the Wochenpost of January 15, 1971, saying that the picture was dominated “not by terror, panic, and apocalyptic prognoses, to which one should helplessly surrender (as aspects of numerous science-fiction productions in the West), but by the triumph of reason and the cooperation of Earth’s populace.” Thus the production of Signale not only became DEFA’s response to the Hollywood-made blockbuster, but also marked the transition from the experimental Der schweigende Stern to future DEFA utopian films of lower budget and a more successful cooperation among the coproducing teams.

Figure 3.2. Gojko Mitić in Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Detlef Hertelt, Kurt Schulze, Heinz Wenzel.

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On the plot level, Signale shared a couple of similarities with Der schweigende Stern. To begin, the story revolved around the rescue of a spacecraft named Ikaros, which was damaged in a meteor storm with virtually no chance of survival. Based on the 1968 German science fiction novel Asteroidenjäger (Asteroid Hunter) by GDR author Carlos Reisch, Kolditz’s narrative focused on a strong commander figure, Veikko (Piotr Pavlovski), who, like Arsenyev, assembled an international crew of four men and two women on a rescue mission. The name of his small spaceship, Laika, pays tribute to the first living creature to orbit the Earth, and by extension to Soviet successes in the space race. Veikko’s team consists of a French engineer, Gaston (Helmut Schreiber), a Spaniard, Juana (Irena Karel), a German, Konrad (Alfred Müller), an Egyptian physician, Samira (Soheir Morshedy), and a Pole, Pavel (Yevgeni Sharikov), who embark on a mission to save Ikaros.83 Their quest is also reminiscent of Arsenyev’s mission in Der schweigende Stern: A robot designed by Gaston had decoded a message coming from a damaged ship on Jupiter, and Veikko, despite his colleagues’ advice, is determined to save any remaining lives. Terry (Mitić) is the only one he manages to save, and he not only joins the Laika crew, but also swears his friendship to Veikko. In contrast to Maetzig’s film, the first half of Signale focuses on life on board the Laika, which significantly slowed down the development of the story and was later criticized in film reviews.84 The second half of the film is devoted to the discovery of the Ikaros and Terry and Veikko’s rescue mission. Toward the end of the film, Veikko reveals his vulnerable side to Samira (the empathetic physician on board, reminiscent of Japanese Sumiko in Der schweigende Stern). Their dialogue summarizes Signale’s message in a somewhat didactic manner: individual sacrifice is necessary to rescue human life and to preserve peace on Earth. The film concludes with scenes of life on Earth, and, contrary to Der schweigende Stern, the story ends on a rather optimistic note: the Laika’s crew and Terry safely return to Earth and together enjoy a vacation at the beach. Despite the exotic scenery of the Black Sea coast, Signale remains visually defined by space shots imitating the abstract compositions of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (Figure 3.3). Signale clearly differed from Der schweigende Stern due to its filmmakers’ determination to treat this project as a collective endeavor equally beneficial to both partners in the coproduction. To avoid repeating the history of prolonged negotiations over Signale, Red Circle reviewed at each stage the expectations and demands of its Polish partner, Kadr. Instead of dividing the tasks mechanically, DEFA dramaturges now

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Figure 3.3. Innovative set design in Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Detlef Hertelt, Kurt Schulze, Heinz Wenzel.

sought to use their Warsaw colleagues’ strengths in areas such as special effects, animation, set design, and acting. At the same time, the contract between Red Circle and Kadr signed on April 24, 1969, assigned 70 percent of the financial responsibility for the project to DEFA.85 Unlike Wilkening’s struggle to find financial support for the realization of an ambitious project, this time the Polish artistic production unit and the East German KAG agreed on a more realistic and ideologically less troublesome representation.86 In March 1971, while finishing the final approval report, production manager Dorothea Hildebrandt pointed to the crucial assistance of East German and Polish writers (C. U. Wiesner, Kolditz, and Mitić) who had adapted “the author’s [Carlos Reisch’s] fantasies” to a “credible cin-

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ematic representation” reflecting contemporary tendencies in scientific and technological progress.87 In addition, Hildebrandt’s report summarized Red Circle’s ambition for a pioneer endeavor as follows: The production of the utopian film Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer is to be considered a new beginning in this genre. Within two years, the film units completed a pioneering accomplishment, and all colleagues contributed their exceptional commitment and perseverance. This applies for the German, as well as for the Polish filmmakers. Above all, we need to acknowledge the artistic-technical management of the material, which gives the film its extraordinary appeal. We gained experiences and insights that shall benefit our studio’s future utopian films.88

Indeed, one of these insights was the importance of carefully vetting script and production plans within Red Circle before securing the dramaturge’s approval. In a letter dated February 29, 1968, Karl reported to Günter Schröder, DEFA’s chief dramaturge from 1966 to 1977, on the process of internal negotiations over the script and appropriate genre conventions.89 He mentioned that the KAG’s representatives and their Polish partners had agreed on film aesthetics, including a variety of special effects and shots imitating Kubrick’s film. Their accord points to improved negotiations between the dramaturges, even though the post-1965 restructuring of the KAGs tightened administrative control over film production. This agreement was played up in the discussions of Signale’s first cut on April 8, 1970, though there were also tensions between the makers of Der schweigende Stern and the new Polish-East German utopian film.90 Among the attendees were director Kolditz, production manager Hildebrandt, dramaturge Karl, directors Herrmann Zschoche and Maetzig representing Red Circle, Wilkening and dramaturges Schröder and Dieter Wolf representing DEFA, and Nowak and Pieske representing Kadr. The meeting opened with Karl reading both artistic groups’ Stellungnahme (a position statement typically composed and presented by a KAG upon completion of a project). In his statement, Karl strongly emphasized the ideological message in Signale, the competition with Kubrick’s just-released film, the aesthetic continuity of the genre with Der schweigende Stern, and, as one might expect, the smooth cooperation with another socialist nation. In response, Wilkening and Maetzig both praised the technical achievements, animation, and costumes in the film, while Wolf added that the tensions in the story had to be strengthened and demanded that the relationship to Earth be made more visible. Wilkening chimed in that the emotional appeal was too

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weak and the audience needed to see sympathetic characters onscreen. Director Kolditz responded to their demands by insisting that his film was not to be compared to Der schweigende Stern. Kolditz believed that Maetzig’s utopian film had attended to the then-relevant threats and antagonistic tensions that informed the late 1950s, at the birth of the space age. “This struggle has been long resolved in our plot in the interest of the progressive powers and we trust our audience will be able to recognize that,” he added.91 He further demanded that his colleagues view Signale in a broader international context of science fiction productions. Supporting this view, chief DEFA dramaturge Schröder closed the meeting by expressing the hope that it would not take another ten years to create the next entry in this genre. He maintained that Americans and West Germans used these films to bring their ideas closer to people, despite the nihilist view that they disseminated. “We need to polemicize,” Schröder concluded, “against the ideological and philosophical visions of the future they offer and engage the audience with our ideas about the future.”92 While it is true that competition with Hollywood and Western imports was a major justification for Signale as it was for Der schweigende Stern, it is also true that Karl, who invested much energy in developing DEFA genre cinema (including the Indianerfilme), had primed his film to succeed by foregrounding its political agenda in his official reports. There, he repeatedly reminded cultural functionaries not only of young Eastern European viewers’ entertainment needs, but also of the SED educational agenda behind those genre films: “We hope that we will use this topic [space travel] for the dissemination and consolidation of a Marxist worldview,” he had already said in 1968, “by way of countering imperialist manipulation with our image of tomorrow in a utopian representation.”93 Karl’s and Schröder’s accord on the film’s political agenda explains why, despite controversies during the production of subsequent utopian films, GDR political officials continued to support these coproductions. The positive reception of Signale among East German audiences (577,832 viewers in the first three months) fulfilled the officials’ hopes.94

In Search of Success Formula: The Millionenfilm While the discourse on entertainment in the GDR of the 1960s and early 1970s was shaped mostly by anti-Western diatribes, the potential of entertainment cinema to exploit audience interest in popular topics

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for the successful dissemination of ideas remained on the East German functionaries’ agenda. In particular, following the Kahlschlag of 1965, DEFA’s film programming policy increasingly relied on genre films and a rising number of imports from the West, both of which evidenced the authorities’ slow acquiescence to viewers’ desires. In order to differ from the Western popular genre tradition, DEFA strived for a “cinema of responsibility and entertainment”—in that order—as the last head of the Central Film Administration, Horst Pehnert, recapitulated in 1989.95 In Pehnert’s opinion, only a well-balanced mix of “enlightenment potential and entertainment value” could have guaranteed the GDR moviegoers a “qualitative viewing experience” and, simultaneously, satisfied the political authorities.96 At the same time, the solution that DEFA dramaturges proposed, as we will see, comes closer to borrowing (instead of contesting) the Hollywood success formula of the blockbuster. Striking a balance between socialist cinema’s two objectives, to entertain and to educate, had been a challenge since the 1960s. While the utopian films, for instance, promised to offer quality entertainment, they were caught, as we have seen, in an internal contradiction: the genre appealed to the audience’s imagination and filled the theaters, yet the process of project consolidation among KAGs and Eastern European artistic production units was slow and conflict ridden, and production costs were higher than revenue. These economic and ideological constraints, as in the case of Der schweigende Stern, challenged the KAGs’ autonomy and prevented it from achieving the desired artistic expression, let alone delivering the film within a reasonable time frame. These limitations continued to haunt the production of popular genres at DEFA, especially in the context of growing competition with escapist Western adventure films. The pressure on DEFA to renew its search for a success formula reached its pinnacle in the 1970s, when DEFA-Außenhandel and the Central Film Administration were reduced to importing more and more Western features in order to compensate for receding domestic production. From the mid-1960s, as Rosemary Stott recounts, blockbuster features from the United States and Western Europe became regulars in GDR cinema theaters.97 There was a clear correlation between the import of Western entertainment and the lagging production of genre cinema in the GDR. East German cultural officials needed DEFA’s competitors not only to make up for the deficit in domestic film production, but also to keep audiences in the theaters. The number of

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Western imports, therefore, increased from a total of fifty-three films in the 1960s to eighty-one in the 1970s and continued to grow.98 In these circumstances, Pehnert buttressed the earlier appeal for courage to follow convention by proposing a more populist film policy based on what he termed Millionenfilm (films that could attract a million viewers). Such films had a thrilling plot, a well-selected cast of actors, and a rapid editing style that would “keep the viewers agog with expectation in their seats for ninety minutes.”99 In summary, they were chasing after the Hollywood model. Another consideration was economic revenue. As Stott maintains, the strategy of the Millionenfilm imitated that of the Western blockbuster film “in that films that had cost the state a large amount of western currency to procure were exhibited in a manner that ensured that the returns were high.”100 This rang true not only for domestic productions, but also for the rising number of imports that DEFA-Außenhandel subsidized with hard currency or with onerous license-trading deals. Alas, many DEFA films produced under Pehnert’s cinema programming policy failed to draw massive numbers of viewers, and for two more decades the domestic industry failed to match the Western imports’ production and entertainment values, with one exception—the Indianerfilme.

The Rise of the European Western Arguably the most celebrated DEFA genre, the Indianerfilme, like the earlier utopian films, was the product of competition with the West. Specifically, they responded to Harald Reinl’s Karl May adaptations in West Germany, and, in fact, shared with them many Yugoslav sets, locations, and extras. Starting in 1962, Reinl’s Rialto Film released in quick succession seventeen Westerns over six years. The Winnetou sequels were among the few West German genres with lasting international appeal in the 1960s.101 Though heavily relying on the success of Karl May’s literature among young postwar audiences, West German Westerns spoke the visual language of the classical Hollywood genre, for example, John Ford’s and Howard Hawks’s 1940s and 1950s oeuvre.102 At the same time, as Tim Bergfelder shows, due to their unique compilations of nostalgia, popular culture, and a decidedly internationalist agenda, the West German Westerns offered an “alternative tradition of imagining the Wild West that ran parallel to the aesthetic codes and ideological concerns of the Hollywood western.”103 The potential for

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social commentary that is inherent to the genre, as well as mythologization of the past that the North American and Western European Westerns shared, have not only transferred over to DEFA Indianerfilme, but were curiously adapted and redefined in the socialist context. This redefinition found expression in the DEFA filmmakers’ insistence on historically accurate representation, which would both guarantee their films’ success and fulfill their educational mission among socialist audiences. The Indianerfilme participated in a broader trend in European cinema at the time. While Reinl’s films or classical American Westerns were not exhibited in GDR theaters until the late 1970s, they became accessible to socialist citizens of the 1950s via West German television or in neighboring countries with more lenient film programming policies, such as Czechoslovakia. Not only DEFA filmmakers but also their Eastern European neighbors were fascinated with the possibilities of the quintessential American genre in terms of visual attractions (color, exotic locations, special effects) but also its potential to be subverted and burlesqued. In 1964 Czechoslovakia produced its own parody of a Western, Odřich Lipský’s Limonádový Joe aneb Konska Opera (Lemonade Joe, or A Horse Opera), which became hugely popular in Eastern Europe and was followed by several equally acclaimed animated features. The spaghetti Westerns shot in Italy, France, and Spain beginning in the late 1960s also parodied the classical Hollywood genre and were thus often imported into the East.104 Even French Nouvelle Vague directors exploited the genre in the early 1970s by creating the counter-Westerns that critiqued both American cinema and the capitalist society that, in their view, created it. At the same time, certain U.S. variations of the genre were welcome behind the Iron Curtain: Westerns that did not conform to the tradition of glorifying white settlers, foregrounding aggression and bloodshed, or demoting Native Americans as savages inferior to conquerors. As Stott states, such representatives of the genre were termed “anti-Westerns” in GDR media reviews, and film selectors often recommended them for import.105 The first U.S. Western to be imported and screened in East Germany was John Sturges’s The Magnificent Seven (1960), but it produced such an uproar in theaters that DEFAAußenhandel had to rethink its agenda regarding genre imports. The subsequently imported features were black-and-white classics from the 1940s and 1950s exemplifying a rather anticapitalist and historicized rhetoric. Forced into a race against the steady influx of “ideologically fit” Hollywood-produced “anti-Westerns,” as Stott shows, DEFA had to consolidate and stabilize its own genre of Indianerfilme.106

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The Indianerfilme Genre Between 1965 and 1983, DEFA released seventeen pictures that portrayed the struggle of Native American tribes against white colonizers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.107 Like their West German counterparts, these films appropriated numerous elements that visually, aurally, and narratively defined Hollywood Westerns, such as vast prairie landscapes, dramatic scores, revenge and shoot-outs, long tracking shots, and slow-paced editing.108 The first DEFA Indianerfilm, Die Söhne der großen Bärin, was produced in 1966 in collaboration with Czech partners. Three others were realized as coproductions, and eight were made in collaboration with socialist studios, or shot on location in Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Romania, Bulgaria, and even in Mongolia, Georgia, and Cuba.109 The production rationale behind these films, therefore, acknowledged the GDR cultural policymakers’ demand in the 1970s for collaboration with Eastern European partners, and for the creation of competitive entertainment features with educational messages. At the same time, these films marked a significant shift in generic patterns by imbuing their stories with an internationalist agenda and Eastern European cinematic attractions, such as Balkan landscapes or Mongolian horses and steppes. In terms of production mode, they relied on the viewers’ identification with the international stars, visual and narrative distinctiveness, and a clear educational message; they were often made as sequels in order to cash in on previous successes. The makers of the Indianerfilme sought to reverse the power relations between white colonizers and Native Americans and to focus their narratives on the struggle of the latter. While the utopian films countered visual representations of future communities found in Hollywood and West German productions, with Indianerfilme DEFA and Eastern European filmmakers attempted to rewrite the history of a politically and physically endangered community by representing it as unified by notions of brotherhood. The films not only revisited the past but also spoke to the evolving Cold War conflicts of the late 1960s and the 1970s between the United States and such socialist countries as Angola, Cuba, Vietnam, and North Korea. In DEFA utopian films, brotherhood was construed as a close affinity rooted in agreement on universal (socialist) values such as freedom, collective well-being, and work. The DEFA Indianerfilme, similarly, served to buttress the myth of international solidarity when East Germany found itself surrounded by Slavic nations within the socialist camp. The fact that most of these pictures were shot in Eastern Europe and cast foreign actors in the lead

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roles underscored the importance of this task. This “new” attitude to the story of the North American West, and of East Germany’s Eastern neighbors, as dramaturge Klaus Wischnewski put it, revealed DEFA’s desire “not to focus on battles among [American] Indians, but to bring out the significance of the individual. The [American] Indians are the heroes of our stories: our main concern was to achieve the right proportions in the representation.”110 The visual and narrative representation characteristic of the Indianerfilme thus discloses a political agenda on the part of the filmmakers, who aimed at showcasing capitalist expansion, yet at the same time foregrounded the American Indian leader as a figure of audience identification. Yet numerous scholars have contested this desired balance by exposing other and more troublesome agendas lurking beneath the surface of DEFA’s most celebrated genre. In contrast to the utopian films, the Indianerfilme facilitated identification with the oppressed through a fascination with American Indians as “noble savages,” as well as through “fantasies of compensation and restitution,” as Hartmut Lutz and Katrin Sieg have shown.111 Lutz insists that the English term “Indian” (from which the German Indianer derives) must be distinguished from the term “Native American,” which signifies actual persons of indigenous descent in North America. For him, the term “Indian” refers to an ideological construct conceived by Europeans and reflecting their own imaginary of harmonious bodies in a congruent community.112 Evan Torner endorses this distinction in his research on postcolonial, gender, and race stereotypes in the Indianerfilme and proposes “American Indian” as an accurate way of designating their protagonists.113 His critique proceeds from the tension between the Red Circle unit’s insistence on historically and racially accurate representation and its overt romanticization of the American Indians as proponents of peaceful coexistence—what Torner refers to as the “socialist whiteness”—that these films presented on screen. Torner further scrutinizes the genre as “ethnographic stunt shows,” referring to what Katrin Sieg had earlier critiqued as “ethnic drag” in the Indianerfilme.114 Given that the Indianerfilme displayed such an array of race and gender clichés, it might be useful to question their wide reception in the East as well as their success of melding the different geographic and ethnic realities of nations within the socialist bloc. The pictures become Millionenfilme at home and abroad, a success due, at least to some extent, to their allure as “thrilling adventures” that “show the true power and courage in the face of death in the [American] Indians’ struggle” as opposed to “simplified formulas” and “predictable outcomes of the

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conflict” in U.S. Westerns.115 Vera Dika confirms that the Indianerfilme produced “a ‘re-mythification,’ that is, a reformulation of established genre conventions for the purpose of telling a new myth, now to a specific people at a particular time in history.”116 In other words, the Indianerfilme gained momentum during the Cold War competition, to which they contributed a new myth about the socialist East and its pacifist intentions. Consequently, the success of this genre in the 1960s and 1970s might be explained not necessarily with the race and gender clichés they perpetuated, or the audience’s blindness for such stereotypes, but by some other need: the need for utopia. Since travel to the West became almost impossible for East Germans after 1961, DEFA Indianerfilme shot in Eastern Europe offered an opportunity to GDR citizens to familiarize themselves with their socialist neighbors. In a sense, the genre commercialized the Balkans, and the Carpathians, the Caucasus, and Black Sea resorts thus encouraging a sort of cinematic tourism across the borders.117 Equally important was the physical appearance of the non-German actors, who for the most part came from these countries. As Katie Trumpener argues, the ideological project of the Indianerfilme included familiarizing East Germans with the landscapes and physiognomy of the “other,” in other words, to enable an “encounter and entanglement of German viewers with Eastern European life.”118 If DEFA Indianerfilme underscored the myth of international solidarity by casting predominantly Slavic actors, there was also another dimension to the popularity of the genre throughout Eastern Europe: fan clubs. As early as the 1960s, Indianerfilme fans and readers of literature about American Indians formed utopian clubs that channeled escapist desires.119 The so-called Indianists were ideal communities unified by a lived-out fantasy, in other words the recreation of American Indians’ life, rituals, and cultural attributes. Moreover, they became very popular throughout the socialist bloc, providing entertaining shows for audiences ranging from factory workers to ambassadors in countries such as Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. American Indian clubs eventually received the status of Volkskunstkollektive (folk art collectives) in the GDR and were awarded prizes for their constructive contribution to socialist cultural life.120 In the 1970s Eastern European Indianists even expressed solidarity with Native Americans protesting in the United States. Such demonstrations were held in key GDR cities, such as Rostock and Berlin, where people gathered signatures on petitions on behalf of the International Treaty Council.121 The gatherings of Indianists were more than communal or pastime activities. As Anna Altman has shown, the Indianists emulated state propaganda by

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calling Native Americans “victims of U.S. imperialism” and promoting peace among peoples through friendship and blood brotherhood with the oppressed.122 Another scholar, Birgit Turski, former Indianist herself, brings to light the “close-knit group” of Indianists who remained active after German reunification and who still return to popular locations in the former GDR to “revisit the feeling of community, the feeling of being family.”123 The fact that a fantasy of a peaceful family-safe community lives on among the Indianists points to the success of the Indianerfilme as a genre that intertwined ideology and commercialism in a unique way. In what follows, we will question the strategies that DEFA filmmakers used to claim their genre as a solidarity-raising vehicle, on the one hand, and to harness Eastern European talent for the purposes of creating an appealing entertainment, on the other.

Die Söhne der großen Bärin: The First Indianerfilm and the First Millionenfilm The first and arguably genre-defining Indianerfilm was made before and during the Kahlschlag of December 1965 and premiered on February 2, 1966, in East Berlin and on July 8 in Czechoslovakia. Made in cooperation with several Czech filmmakers, Die Söhne der großen Bärin was a genuinely socialist response to the Karl May movies in the West and to Hollywood Westerns, but in order to be distinguished, was termed a historical adventure film in official DEFA documents.124 By claiming historical accuracy, as we will see in our later discussion, the film’s scriptwriter and prominent GDR historian, Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich, sought to imbue the film’s message with enlightenment potential and entertainment value, as Central Film Administration director, Pehnert, had proposed in his Millionenfilm-speech. Indeed, Die Söhne der großen Bärin successfully appealed to younger viewers and, simultaneously, attended to cultural functionaries’ imaginary of a well-rounded political message of anti-imperialism. There were several reasons for this Indianerfilm to become a prime example of Millionenfilm: first, its script was ideologically compliant with the official political message; second, it was not a coproduction, so there was virtually no conflicts of interest among international partners; and third, the KAG leadership had improved its communication both with the literary author and with the DEFA management. Indeed, after its premiere the film immediately topped the charts with more than 3.48 million tickets sold in the first thirteen weeks of its run. Die Söhne der großen Bärin became one of the

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most successful DEFA films of all time, with 4.87 million viewers in the GDR and across the socialist bloc in countries such as Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, and the Soviet Union.125 Die Söhne der großen Bärin revolves around the Dakota struggle against white settlers, oppression, and starvation on a reservation, and the exodus of the Dakota across the Northern Plains to Canada in the 1870s. The small community leads a peaceful life near the Black Hills, until one day the rumor that gold is discovered on the tribe’s holy mountain brings in prospectors and adventurers. Among these is Red Fox (Jiří Vrštála), a white settler who challenges Mattotaupa (Adolf Peter Hoffmann), the chief of the Bear tribe among the Dakota, to reveal the location of his secret gold cave. When the chief peacefully refuses, Red Fox kills him in front of his son, Tokei-ihto (Gojko Mitić), which triggers the Bears’ vengeful attack on a stagecoach. After the turmoil, Tokei-ihto finds a white girl, the daughter of fort commander Major Smith (Hans Hardt-Hardtloff), and brings her back to her father together with an offer of peace. However, he is trapped in the white settler’s fort and becomes the target of the whites’ counterattack. A debate over how to deal with the American Indians divides the settlers: old Major Smith defends the native tribe and demands fair treatment, while a younger lieutenant named Roach (Gerhard Rachold) is only after the gold. Toward the end of the film, the Dakota Bear tribe has been evicted from their territory and confined to a reservation without sufficient food or water. Tokei-ihto is leading his clan on a journey beyond Missouri to a find a new land when Red Fox, who murdered his father, suddenly reappears to fight him again; in the end the villain receives justice from the young war chief’s hand. At the end of the film, the new chief Tokeiihto appeals to his people with an overtly political message that, as Gemünden rightly observed, corresponded to the GDR foundational myth: “farming, raising domesticated buffaloes, being blacksmiths and making plows—that’s our new path.”126 (Figure 3.4.) Die Söhne der großen Bärin became a model for the Indianerfilme genre at DEFA as well as for the Millionenfilm, particularly by virtue of its production history. The film was not announced as a coproduction, yet heavily relied on the expertise and services of other Eastern European studios, as well as on Eastern European actors and extras, film professionals and set designers, props, and locations. Made under the leadership of two Red Circle veterans, production manager Hans Mahlich and dramaturge Hans-Joachim Wallstein, Die Söhne der großen Bärin was directed by Czech Joseph Mach, an imported specialist in genre cinema. Mahlich and Wallstein formed a crew that displayed their internation-

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Figure 3.4. Chief Tokei-ihto in Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Waltraut Pathenheimer.

alist agenda: they gave the lead role to Gojko Mitić, who had just been recruited from West Germany and to lauded Czech actor Jiří Vrštála who played the villain Red Fox. Moreover, the Red Circle leadership selected a cast including seven other Czech actors, mainly in secondary roles, while cameramen Jaruslav Tuzar and Milan Duda served on the crew. In addition, Die Söhne der großen Bärin was filmed on location in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, which required the help of local filmmakers and a supply of animals and props. But how can one explain the large contingent of Czechoslovak filmmakers and actors, as well as Yugoslav extras and services, if the film was not devised as a coproduction? The answer is provided by the KAGs’ post-1965 tendency to outsource production, as Pavel Skopal suggests, which included drawing

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talent from other Eastern European countries.127 DEFA had borrowed this practice from UFA, which, as we saw in chapter 1, in the 1930s contracted French and Eastern European directors and actors to make films in Babelsberg. Red Circle’s dramaturge, Wallstein, now hired director Mach and a sizeable number of film personnel who would lend their expertise in entertainment cinema and thus guarantee an increase in the picture’s audience appeal. The idealistic and ideological rationale behind this endeavor allowed for an assemblage of film actors from East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and—in other films—from Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Russia, Mongolia, and Uzbekistan. As with the utopian films, these multinational crews had to reach an understanding both in terms of language and professional skills, but they also had to exchange ideas and train each other, an act that aided the artistic production units who had complained about the lack of trained professionals. A Central Film Administration report from that year cited by Skopal declared that “co-productions do not excuse the constant postponement of training indigenous experts, especially when making entertainment movies and musicals.”128 This same pragmatic rationale was used by the Red Circle dramaturge to justify his choice of Czechoslovak colleagues for the director, actors, and cameramen positions in The Sons of Great Bear (Figure 3.5). In addition to redefining their agenda for coproductions and replacing it with “pragmatic outsourcing” of talent, Red Circle had also developed its model of working with literary authors.129 In contrast to the utopian films, Red Circle now implemented two new strategies in the scriptwriting process for their Indianerfilme: first, the stories represented a state-endorsed anti-American message buttressed by what was believed to be historical truth; second, prominent KAG members took over as scriptwriters. Die Söhne der großen Bärin offers an excellent case study for the first tendency, as we will see in the subsequent discussion of prominent author Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich’s involvement into creating the Indianerfilme imaginary. However, once the genre was established, most scripts were conceptualized by the dramaturgical unit leaders. For instance, Red Circle’s director Günter Karl took charge of earlier features made between 1968 and 1971—Spur des Falken, Weiße Wölfe, Tödlicher Irrtum and Osceola (cowritten with Walter Püschel)—and ensured their smooth passage through challenges by censors.130 Red Circle’s next two film projects, comprising DEFA’s most celebrated sequels, Apachen (1973) and Ulzana (1974), were created by the long-standing director-actor writing duo of Gottfried Kolditz and Gojko Mitić.131 Though this strategy of directors or unit leaders author-

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Figure 3.5. Director Josef Mach in conversation with an actor in Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Waltraut Pathenheimer.

ing their own films had guaranteed in the Czech and Polish units more artistic independence and creativity, at DEFA it was used for purely ideological motives and results, as the studio manager Wilkening has observed in 1974.132 Thus, the Indianerfilme sought to perpetuate a specific mythologizing imaginary as described above. The scripting phase of Die Söhne der großen Bärin offers insight into this process, as well as into the motivation behind the claim of scientific or historical truth of the narrative. The story of Die Söhne der großen Bärin was drawn from the eponymous novel by Humboldt University historian Liselotte WelskopfHenrich.133 The novel appeared in 1951 and was reprinted three times in that year alone due to popular demand; it was immediately released in West Germany and Austria, and translations of the work into several Slavic languages were also successful.134 Welskopf-Henrich’s decision to publish a story that she had written as a young girl in the 1930s came in response to GDR Culture Minister Paul Wandel’s appeal to writers

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to develop socialist literary genres in order to compete with Western European young-adult fiction and children’s books.135 A member of the Berlin Academy of Science and a passionate proponent of Native American rights, Welskopf-Henrich embraced the minister’s call for entertaining stories grounded on scientific and historical fact. As a child she had devoured Karl May’s books, but now she publicly declared that her combination of fiction and historical fact was a direct response to May’s ahistorical fabrications. To the satisfaction of party officials, she openly challenged not only the veracity of Karl May’s literature, but also of the cinematic adaptations popular in West Germany; she understood the importance of producing a better version of those Westerns.136 Welskopf-Henrich repeatedly rewrote the script for Die Söhne der großen Bärin to purge it of the imaginary characteristics with which she had imbued her American Indian characters in her childhood. In an interview for one of the most popular youth magazines, Junge Welt, the author mentioned her youthful passion for Karl May’s novels and explained her involvement in Mach’s film in the following way: “Our film is significantly different from the Indianerfilme made in the West, even though after the war [i.e., World War II] some humanistic filmmakers produced features that treated the [American] Indians justly. Our film wants to fulfill this task in a new and eminent way: the film offers not only a fair view of the problems these people face, but it focuses on the nature and experiences of the [American] Indians themselves.”137 The imaginary in Welskopf-Hernich’s novels—specifically, its program of understanding and embracing Native Americans’ experience— manifested itself in her activism. In the GDR the author led several campaigns for Native American rights and even inspired some of her West German readers to volunteer on U.S. reservations. Her correspondence with American Indians provided her with a pool of new ideas and narrative motifs. As evident from her interview, Welskopf-Henrich’s mission remained educational, although overtly ideological: her primary goal was to inform East and West German citizens about Native American life under U.S. oppression. To that end, she collected signatures in support of Native American activism, sent books and care packages to various tribes in the United States, and even visited several reservations in the early 1970s.138 It is important to rehearse Welskopf-Henrich’s symbolic role in the creation of the Indianerfilme imaginary, first and foremost because she successfully linked the party hardliners’ educational agenda with her anthropological expertise and integrated her exemplary political activism with this entertainment genre. Her selection as a children’s author

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acclaimed in both East and West and a state-decorated writer committed to the socialist project, as well as the prolific correspondence between Red Circle’s leadership and Welskopf-Henrich, suggests a new understanding of the place of literary authors and scriptwriters in the creation of DEFA genre cinema. In the wake of the prolonged debates surrounding the production of Der schweigene Stern in the late 1950s, literary authors and scriptwriters now had to ensure that the Indianerfilme transmitted an ideologically safe message.

Red Circle’s Agenda for the Indianerfilme: Crafting the Imaginary Red Circle’s claim to historicism buttressed their deliberate attempts to craft an imaginary that would capture audiences across the socialist bloc. This was already clear after Red Circle’s box office success with Die Söhne der großen Bärin. In 1966, Mahlich and Red Circle’s unit dramaturge Günter Karl justified their first feature using the Cold War rhetoric of a competition between the camps, moving on to emphasize the intentional fashioning of Mitić as a role model for young viewers: “We saw the possibility of creating an Indianerfilm that would differentiate itself from westerns displaying [American] Indians only as anonymous and hostile masses. Not the white oppressors but the [American] Indians are in our case the heroes for the audience to see, [American] Indians who can serve as role models because of their courage, will to fight, and love for their people.”139 This agenda was further developed and complicated in the years to come. The individual experiences of Native Americans did not show up in scripts or on the screen, but were replaced by reconfigurations and repetitions of the Hollywood genre that reinforced existing racial, ethnic, and gender clichés, as Gemünden and Torner have repeatedly argued. In the 1970s, for instance, Karl discussed the strategies he used when deliberately crafting this imaginary—strategies that have angered many a North American scholar and that can be seen as an internal contradiction at the heart of the Indianerfilme, namely the intentional redressing of the Western genre for ideological purposes, coupled with an insistence on the scripts’ historical and anthropological scientific accuracy. In a memo written on November 3, 1970, Karl recommended himself and three other members of what he called the DEFA adventure films collective inside the dramaturgical group for the prestigious Heinrich Greif Award. The dramaturge sought to legitimize his unit’s

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agenda for these films on two levels, and both levels were essential for the creation of the Indianerfilme imaginary. First, the genre cashed in on the phenomenon of fan clubs, and second it appealed to a loyal readership that consumed all novels and GDR research on the topic. These two agendas intertwined in Karl’s memo as follows: The Indianerfilme have always been a genre widely acclaimed and popular among our audiences, [a genre] of utmost importance for our international filmmaking agenda. So far, such genres had served almost without exception the dissemination of an antihumanistic, chauvinistic, racist, and imperial ideology. . . . While developing our series of Indianerfilme, we were driven by an intention to mobilize the great audience appeal of this genre in order to present to our youth a scientifically and historically researched screen image that corresponds to our historically materialistic concept of history.140

In addition to underscoring the novelty of the Indianerfilme with respect to the American Westerns, this statement also emphasizes the goal of enticing a new generation of viewers into theaters—a goal dictated by the GDR cultural functionaries’ Millionenfilm agenda. This agenda provided the link between the two levels for the legitimization of the Indianerfilme. Once he established this connection, Karl delivered the other portion of DEFA’s project, namely the adaptation of this imaginary to the GDR’s current political agenda. It becomes clear that this had little to do with the authentic struggles of Native Americans, but rather mirrored the contemporaneous Cold War contest: The artistic collective [KAG Red Circle] worked systematically and continuously on films of impressive quality that expose the background of social power struggles, racist politics, and the oppression of the people as manifested in the capitalist developments in the U.S. . . . The films’ protagonists, as figures of identification for our audiences, and the struggle of these heroes’ tribes are not only representative of an episode in the history of the Plains Indians and their white oppressors. In their artistic allegory, the Indianerfilme offer the picture of contemporary aggressive, reactionary American politics and expose its fascist roots for everyone to see.141

Whether contemporaneous moviegoers were aware of the “artistic allegory,” in Karl’s words, they were consistently reminded in media reviews of the fantastic nature of the version of the American West propagated in the Indianerfilme. While largely endorsing the ideological discourse that insisted on the films’ historicity, East German reviewers often foregrounded the constructed nature of both the cinematic American Indian characters and of Eastern European locations far away from

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the Wild West. This was their way to further educate the young viewers that the grass is not greener on the other side. For instance, the second Indianerfilm, Chingachgook—Die große Schlange (1967, dir. Richard Groschopp) drew some rather cutting remarks about its resemblance to a Heimatschnulze (schmaltzy film about the homeland) far removed from the “real-life scenery of North America.”142 Other reviewers ironically referred to the “film-Arizona Romania and Uzbekistan” they discovered in the widely popular Ulzana.143 These and other examples in contemporaneous media show that GDR audiences were probably aware of the absurdity presented by the Indianerfilme construct, but that they also enjoyed it and allowed themselves be entertained by artificially constructed plots and scenery.144 For people who had to live behind the Iron Curtain, which in 1961 became a wall of stone and bricks, such fantasies provided an avenue for identification not only with the neighboring Slavic community, but also with life in an innocent society. In other words, both the imaginary of a socialist-controlled future in the utopian films and the cultural escapism offered by the Indianerfilme created a microcosm of East German experience and social activity.

Conclusion The utopian films and Indianerfilme not only had the capacity to bring GDR audiences back into ailing cinemas, but also succeeded in providing an alternative to Western entertainment cinema in several respects. While many contemporary film scholars rightly expose their shortcomings in comparison to accomplished Hollywood and West German genre cinema, most of the films discussed here still drew a significant number of Eastern European viewers and demonstrated the GDR’s receptiveness after 1961 to international collaboration with socialist countries. Thus, they represent two types of “socialist” utopian visions: one projected into the future (and fueled in part by technology-generated anxieties) and one projected into the past (and manifested in a community of fandom who reenacted film narratives). The creation of the utopian films and the Indianerfilme, as we have seen in this chapter, was largely possible because of the restructuring of DEFA into KAGs. Not only was socialist-style genre cinema devised and negotiated within the KAGs, but they also had to find a way to work with other similar units abroad. The stories of Red Circle’s cooperation with Polish, Czech, and Yugoslavian partners, as presented here, are replete with tensions and pitfalls of such teamwork. Yet the

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films that were finished and released, even after twelve script revisions, as in the case of Der schweigende Stern, demonstrate an effort for a solidarity not only on political level, but also on a transnational level. That such solidarity was practically hard to achieve shows the move that Red Circle made in the 1970s toward pragmatic cooperation in terms of services as opposed to cumbersome coproductions where agreement was hard to reach. By the late 1970s and particularly by the 1980s, when the GDR film officials’ policy with regard to film import changed, DEFA genres lost their importance for audiences. During the 1960s and the 1970s many Western films were censored, but in the 1980s East German screens were opened to most Hollywood and Western European genre productions and began cashing in on their popularity. An increase in discussions of the relevance of Western imports marked this change in attitude toward Hollywood genre cinema. Commercial entertainment pictures from the West now offered, according to Rosemary Stott, a “strong catharsis” free of the criticism of GDR society that had become prominent in many DEFA films since the late 1970s.145 Indeed, in contrast to other genres of the 1970s and especially the 1980s, the Indianerfilme and the utopian films have remained politically compliant genres and, as time passed, their educational message became obsolete. In addition, as we will see in chapter 4, other genres such as biopics offered DEFA filmmakers within the KAGs more feasible possibilities for artistic expression and disagreement with the official party line. The significance of the Indianerfilme and utopian films coproduced by DEFA in East Germany and socialist Europe remains in the fact that, like their Western counterparts, they were planned on an international scale. While Hollywood science fiction films and West German Karl May adaptations relied on spectacle and adventure, DEFA coproductions with socialist partners in general, and the Red Circle films, specifically, pretended to scientific or ethnographic authenticity, although they did not live up to this ideal. Politically subdued and didactic in their representation, these films proffered a utopian vision of integration into an international socialist community, as well as escapist fantasies related to the open spaces of the plains or the universe. These fantasies, as we saw in the discussion of the Indianerfilme, facilitated idealistic social activism and a belief in the ability to overcome ethnic differences. At the same time, it was only within a cultural niche or imagined society that these differences could be overcome. The next chapter offers an exploration of another genre of Eastern European cinemas that will bring us back to the question of the East

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German studio’s ambition to participate in European cinema in its own right. Although DEFA’s own new wave cinema had been suffocated in the Kahlschlag of 1965, the studio still followed its agenda to produce prestige films that rivaled Hollywood cinema, this time not by imitating its genres but rather by returning to an UFA classical tradition, the artist and scientist biopics. The work on biopics, as we will see, was a logical continuation of the KAGs’ and dramaturgical units’ work on genre cinema. Moreover, the model of strong cooperation between a director and writer, as well as with the dramaturge within a KAG, as we saw it at play in Signale and Die Söhne der großen Bärin, was further developed. In what follows, I will discuss representative examples of the European artist and scientist biopics of the 1970s and the 1980s and elaborate on the filmmakers’ self-reflexive representations of an artist in an ailing socialist society.

Notes 1. Kurt Maetzig, “Die Zeit ist reif,” Deutsche Filmkunst 2, no. 9 (1956): 257–60 (258). 2. W. N. Berger, “Abenteuer, Aktion, Indianer?,” interview with Günter Karl, Berliner Zeitung, July 11, 1971, 10. 3. Maetzig, “Die Zeit ist reif,” 258. For a detailed account of the structure and function of the KAGs, see Wolf, Gruppe Babelsberg, 9–14. 4. Maetzig, “Die Zeit ist reif,” 258. 5. Peter Szczepanik, “The State-socialist Mode of Production and the Political History of Production Culture,” in Behind the Screen: Inside European Production Cultures, ed. Peter Szczepanik and Patrick Vonderau (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 113– 34 (118, 122). See also Iordanova, The Cinema of the Other Europe, 23. 6. For these two coinciding developments, see Karl and Skopal, Cinema in Service of the State; and Josephine Woll, Real Images: Soviet Cinema and the Thaw (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000). 7. Alexander Abusch, “Aktuelle Probleme und Aufgaben unserer sozialistischen Filmkunst,” Deutsche Filmkunst 9 (1958), 261–70 (270). 8. DEFA partnered primarily with the Czech Barrandov in Prague, the Polish Zespół Filmowy in Warsaw, Hungarofilm in Budapest, the Yugoslavian Bosna Film based in Sarajevo, the Romanian Studio Bukarest, the Bulgarian Boyana Film in Sofia, as well as the Soviet Mosfilm and Lenfilm based in Moscow and Leningrad, respectively. Occasionally, there were also partnerships with Cuba and Chile; see Jennifer R. Hosek’s discussion of two coproductions with Cuba: . . . und deine Liebe auch (And Your Love, Too, dir. Frank Vogel, 1962); and Preludio 11 (Prelude 11, dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1964) in Jennifer R. Hosek, Sun, Sex, Socialism: Cuba in the German Imaginary, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012, 55–89. For late 1970s DEFA coproductions with Chile, see Dennis Hanlon, “ ‘Operación Silencio’: Studio H&S Chile Cycle as Latin American Third Cinema,” in Allan and Heiduschke, Re-Imagining DEFA, 127–45. 9. “In order to widen [DEFA’s] field of topics and to better comply with the need for entertainment, great attention is paid to coproduction and cooperation, in particular

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12.

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with regard to the film production of other socialist countries” (Albert Wilkening, “Filmproduktion in der DDR,” in 30 Jahre DEFA, ed. DEFA-Außenhandel, Berlin: DEFA-Außenhandel, 1976, 9-11 (10). DEFA Jahresbericht [Annual Report] 1970 ( = BArch DR 117/19120, p. 23). Throughout this chapter I refer to utopische Filme as utopian films, but there is no apt or short translation of the German term Indianerfilme. While the latter were sometimes dubbed Red Westerns or even Easterns (the term “Easterns” modeled on Westerngenre films) most scholars, such as Gerd Gemünden, Evan Torner, Tim Bergfelder, and Sebastian Heiduschke use the German term. In order to avoid terminological confusion, I will use Indianerfilme in my discussion. Szczepanik provides a well-researched overview of the emergence and development of artistic production units in Southeast Europe from the late 1940s throughout the 1980s. His comparative approach distinguishes between dramaturgical units and creative units. He defends a historical continuity between the Nazi-studio system and their Herstellungsgruppen (production groups) that influenced early attempts at reorganizing both the Czech and the East German postwar industries. Szczepanik demonstrates that in the Czech context, Produktionsgruppen (production units) have existed since 1941 under the auspices of German-owned Prag-Film. See Peter Szczepanik, “Between Units and Producers: Organization of Creative Work in Czechoslovak State Cinema 1945–1990,” in Restart zespołów filmowych/Film Units: Restart, ed. Marcin Adamczak, Piotr Marecki, and Marcin Malatyński (Krakow, Poland: Ha!art, 2012), 271–311. Whether the impetus for the creation of the DEFA KAGs came in fact from the previously established UFA tradition of production teams, or whether they were somehow influenced by the postwar Czech industry demands further examination. While there is no direct evidence for the KAGs’ emergence as late as 1956 from UFA’s tradition, Szczepanik concedes that DEFA filmmakers, like Maetzig, have repeatedly pointed to their work with the Polish units as a source of inspiration in the search for a KAG model (Szczepanik, “Between Units and Producers,” 274). For significant differences between DEFA dramaturgy and its predecessors at UFA, see Dieter Wolf, “Vorspann,” in Gruppe Babelsberg, 5–14. The seven KAGs created between 1959 and 1961 were (1) Red Circle (1959–67, artistic dir. Kurt Maetzig), (2) Heinrich Greiff (1959–66, artistic dir. Konrad Wolf, specialized in historic dramas and everyday life features), (3) Solidarität (Solidarity, 1959–63, artistic dir. Adolf Fischer, after 1964—renamed to Gruppe Babelsberg, or Group Babelsberg), (4) Berlin (1960, artistic dir. Slatan Dudow; specialized in comedies, musicals, and other genres), (5) Gruppe 60 (Unit 60, 1960–64, artistic dir. Alexander Lösche), (6) Johannisthal (1964, artistic dir. Georg Honnigmann), and (7) konkret (1961—1964, artistic dir. Gerhard Klein) renamed to Kinder-und Jugendfilm (Children and Youth Film) in 1964. See https://www.defa-stiftung.de/defa/geschichte/filmwesen-derddr/200-defa/ (retrieved June 19, 2019). Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 153. See also Wolf, Gruppe Babelsberg, 9. Wolf, Gruppe Babelsberg, 197. Ernst Hoffmann, “Errichtet neue Höhen in der Filmkunst,” Deutsche Filmkunst 7, no. 10 (1959): 296–99 (297–98). Marcin Adamczak, “Film Units in the People’s Republic of Poland,” in Adamczak, Marecki, and Malatyński, Restart zespołów filmowych / Film Units: Restart, 231–70 (252). Two examples for such coproductions are Sterne (Stars, 1959, dir. Konrad Wolf, GDR/ Bulgaria) and Igelfreundschaft (Hedgehog Friendship, 1962, dir. Hermann Zschoche, Czechoslovakia/GDR). A love story between a German soldier and a Greek Jewish teacher who is transported to Auschwitz through Bulgaria, Sterne was banned from

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20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

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Cinema of Collaboration the theaters by the Bulgarian government. Yet it not only was celebrated in the GDR, but also made its way to the Cannes Film Festival in 1960 where the film won the jury prize (see Chapter 2, footnote 74). Igelfreundschaft thematized a coming-of-age story of a little boy who lived on the East German border. The making of the film coincided with the building of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, which made the representation of the border region problematic. However, the film was saved as a children’s film by both artistic production units involved into this coproduction, Red Circle and the Czech production artistic unit Rouha-Jelinek. The Kahlschlag refers to the ban of twelve socially critical films at the Eleventh Plenum from December 16 to 18, 1965. The plenum was originally announced as a discussion of new economic restructuring, but it turned into a harsh debate and subsequently led to the censorship of several books, plays, pictures, and songs, by primarily younger artists. Refer to the section “In the Wake of the Kahlschlag” in this chapter for more details. For a detailed discussion of the dynamics of talent transfer and exchange in coproductions with Czechoslovak partners, see Skopal, “The Pragmatic Alliance.” On this topic, and on the later development of these genres, see Rosemary Stott, “Genre Films in the Film Programs of the GDR: The Western and the Science Fiction Film,” in Stott, Crossing the Wall, 145–84; and Jaimey Fisher, “A Late Genre Fade: Utopianism and Its Twilight in DEFA’s Science Fiction, Literary and Western Films,” in Silberman and Wrage, DEFA at the Crossroads, 177–96. Fisher, “A Late Genre Fade,” 178. For an extensive commentary on the impact of the thaw writers on Eastern European readers’ perceptions of the science fiction genre, see Istvan Csicsery-Ronay’s essay “Science Fiction and the Thaw,” Science Fiction Studies, 31, no. 3 (2004): 337–44. For an overview of the literary scene accompanying the production of DEFA utopian films, see Sonja Fritzsche, Science Fiction Literature in East Germany (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006). Fritzsche, Science Fiction Literature, 80–83 (80). For a complete list of film adaptations of Lem’s novels, see Krzystof Loska, “Lem on Film,” in The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem, ed. Peter Swirski (Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006), 153–71. On the history of the popularization of space travel and exploration in twentiethcentury Russia and the Soviet Union, including popular discourse in print media, film, and literature, see, e.g., two edited volumes: James T. Andrews and Asif A. Siddiqi, eds., Into the Cosmos: Space Exploration and Soviet Culture (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011); and Eva Maurer, Julia Richards, Monica Rüthers, and Carmen Scheide, eds., Soviet Space Culture: Cosmic Enthusiasm in Socialist Societies (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). On the formation of the genre and its subsequent resurgence in 1950s U.S. culture, see, e.g., Christine Cornea, Science Fiction Cinema: Between Fantasy and Reality (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007); and Lincoln Geraghty, American Science Fiction Film and Television (Oxford: Berg, 2009). See, e.g., Bryan E. Vizzini, “Cold War Fears, Cold War Passions: Conservatives and Liberals Square Off in 1950s Science Fiction,” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 26, no. 1 (2008): 28–39; and Michael Bliss, Invasions USA: The Essential Science Fiction Films of the 1950s (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). James Blackford, “Red Skies: Soviet Science Fiction,” Sight & Sound 21, no. 7 (2011), 44–48. See also Sonja Fritzsche, “ ‘Dreams of Cosmic Culture’ in Der schweigende Stern [The Silent Star, 1960],” in Allan and Heiduschke, Re-Imagining DEFA, 210–26.

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29. For a detailed discussion of the science fiction tradition in Weimar Germany, see Peter Fischer, Fantasy and Politics: Visions of the Future in the Weimar Republic (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991). On the Soviet tradition, see James T. Andrews, “Getting Ready for Khrushchev’s Sputnik: Russian Popular Culture and National Markers at the Dawn of the Space Age,” in Andrews and Siddiqi, Into the Cosmos, 28–44. 30. Kurt Maetzig, in an interview with Günter Agde entitled, “Von der Filmballade bis zur Utopie,” in Kurt Maetzig: Filmarbeit, Gespräche, Reden, Schriften, ed. Günter Agde (Berlin: Henschel, 1987), 111–26 (121). 31. Ibid., 125. 32. Cited in Detlef Kannapin, “Peace in Space—die DEFA im Weltraum. Anmerkungen zu Fortschritt und Utopie im Filmschaffen der DDR,” in Zukunft im Film, ed. Frank Hörnlein and Herbert Heinecke (Magdeburg: Scriptum Verlag, 2000), 55–70 (64). 33. Agde, Kurt Maetzig: Filmarbeit, 121. 34. In addition, Detlef Kannapin and Sonja Fritzsche identify several other films that might fit squarely into the genre, including some popular scientific or documentary features as well as children’s films with a story that begins or ends in the future. Examples include the children’s films Abenteuer mit Blasius (Adventure with Roboter Blasius, 1975, dir. Egon Schlegel, GDR/CSSR), Blumen für den Mann im Mond (Flowers for the Moon Man, 1975, dir. Rolf Losansky, GDR), and Das Ding im Schloss (The Thing in the Castle, 1979, dir. Gottfried Kolditz, GDR). See Fritzsche, “Dreams of ‘Cosmic Culture’ ”; and Kannapin, “Peace in Space.” 35. On the racial discourse in the film, see Evan Torner, “Casting for a Socialist Earth. Multicultural Whiteness in the East German/Polish Science Fiction Film Silent Star,” in The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film, ed. Sonja Fritzsche (Liverpool, UK: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 130–49. 36. See Stefan Soldoveri, “Socialists in Outer Space: East German Film’s Venusian Adventure,” Film History 10, no. 3 (1998): 382–98; Burghard Ciesla, “ ‘Droht die Menscheit Vernichtung?’ Der schweigende Stern—First Spaceship on Venus: ein Vergleich,” in Ralf Schenk and Erika Richter, eds., apropos: Film 2002 [ = Das Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung, 2002] (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2002), 126–36; Michael Grisko, “Zwischen Sozialphilosophie und Actionfilm: Grenzen und Möglichkeiten des Science-fiction-Genres bei der DEFA,” in Schenk and Richter, apropos: Film 2002, 108–20; and Heiduschke, “The Birth of DEFA Genre Cinema,” in Heiduschke, East German Cinema, 69–76. 37. Fritzsche, “Dreams of ‘Cosmic Culture.’ ” 38. Maetzig, “Die Zeit ist reif,” 257. 39. Wanda Jakubowska, “Zespoly-poczatek prelomu,” Film 47 (1955), cited in Adamczak, “Film Units in the People’s Republic of Poland,” 252. On the Polish units, see also Dorota Ostrowska, “An Alternative Model of Film Production: Film Units in Poland after World War Two,” in A Companion to East European Cinemas, ed. Anikó Imre (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 253–65. 40. See Feinstein, The Triumph of the Ordinary, 103–8, 155–58; Schittly, Zwischen Regie und Regime, 70–90. 41. Adamczak maintains that Edward Zajiček and his wife, Jolanta Leman-Zajiček, were among the first to document the origins of the film-unit idea and that they provided the most comprehensive historiography of the Polish artistic production units to date. Adamczak sees their engagement as evidence of their enthusiasm and conviction regarding the model of the artistic production units that was discontinued after 1990. Adamczak, “Film Units in the People’s Republic of Poland,” 234. 42. On Lem’s early novels and their politically acceptable message, see Loska, “Lem on Film,” 153–58.

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43. When Lem wrote his novel in 1950, only the United States and the USSR had tested and declared their nuclear weapons. The inclusion of members of most of the other states that later developed their own nuclear missiles must have been speculation on the part of both Lem and Maetzig. To strengthen the antinuclear message, the initial film script and its later revisions introduced a female character, physician Sumiko (Yoko Tani), whose parents died in the bombing of Hiroshima. 44. Soldovieri, “Socialists in Outer Space,” 383. 45. Ibid.; and Heiduschke, “The Birth of DEFA Genre Cinema.” 46. Letter from Ludwik Starski to Albert Wilkening, August 24, 1957 ( = BArch, DR 117/ BA (I) 1927). A native of Poland, Jan Fethke started as a screenwriter for Phil Jutzi in the 1930s and worked on the script for Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück (Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness, 1929, dir. Phil Jutzi, Germany). He later worked as an assistant director for Fritz Lang. What Ludwik Starski saw as an advantage, namely Fethke’s former career at UFA—was hardly welcomed by East German political authorities and film policymakers in the 1950s. Nevertheless, later DEFA would accept him back into the Der schweigende Stern project, as the Polish artistic production unit demanded. 47. Letter from Starski to Maetzig, September 17, 1957 ( = BArch DR 117/BA (I) 1927). 48. Letters by Wilkening to René Bezard (Pathé Consortium Cinema) and Claude Jäger, Procinex, Paris, both dated September 18, 1957 ( = BArch DR 117/BA (I) 1927). 49. Ruth Fischer was the sister of the well-known composer Hanns Eisler, who worked closely with Bertolt Brecht on one of the first proletarian films, Kuhle Wampe oder wem gehört die Welt? (Kuhle Wampe or Who Owns the World?, 1932, dir. Slatan Dudow, Germany), and who composed the music for two of the East German/French coproductions, Die Hexen von Salem (1957) and Trübe Wasser (1960). Fischer was active in communist circles of the Weimar Republic, and was leader of the Communist Party there from 1924 to 1926. During the Third Reich and the World War II, Fischer emigrated to France and then the United States. Upon her return to Paris in 1955, she published several works critical of Stalinism that called for reforms of communism and Soviet society after Stalin’s death. 50. Memo by Hans Mahlich, December 17, 1957 ( = BArch, DR 117/BA (I) 1927 1957–62). 51. Letter from Edward Zaijček to Hans Mahlich, February 25, 1958 ( = BArch DR 117/ BA (I) 1948a). 52. Letters from Starski to Wilkening, June 27, 1958, and July 31, 1978 ( = BArch, DR 117/ BA (I) 1927 1957–62). 53. Memo from Konrad Schwalbe, DEFA head dramaturge, to Wilkening, August 21, 1958 ( = BArch, DR 117/BA (I) 1927 1957–62). In this memo, Schwalbe mentioned an escalation of the Der schweigende Stern issue to the Central Committee of the SED, where it was decided that future communications about the project would be conducted between the East German and Polish ministries of culture. 54. Agde, Kurt Maetzig: Filmarbeit, 121. 55. “Happy-End auf der Venus,” Der Spiegel, January 8, 1958, 37–38. 56. Ibid., 37. 57. For West German discussions, see “Mach Platz, Sputnik!,” Der Spiegel, February 12, 1958, 36–42; and “Raketen verlängern die dritte Dimension,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 9, 1959, 9. For the U.S. media debate, see the headline on the cover of Life, November 18, 1957: “Wernher von Braun, Top U.S. Space Expert, and Moon Rocket Model”; George Barrett, “Visit with the Prophet of the Space Age,” New York Times, October 20, 1958, SM 14; “Reach for the Stars,” Time February 17, 1958, 23–29; and “The Seer of Space: Lifetime of Rocket Work Gives Army’s Von Braun a Special Insight into Future,” Life, November 18, 1957, 133–39.

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58. “Happy-End auf der Venus,” 37. 59. Letter from Kurt Maetzig to Alfred Kurella, head of the Cultural Department at the GDR Central Committee, January 7, 1958. The DEFA director emphasizes the publicity Der schweigende Stern has already won in West German media and the film’s potential for export ( = SAPMO: DY 30 IV/2/2-02682). 60. Michael J. Neufeld, “ ‘Smash the Myth of the Fascist Rocket Baron’: East German Attacks on Wernher von Braun in the 1960s,” in Geppert, Imagining Outer Space, 106–26; and Fritzsche, “Dreams of ‘Cosmic Culture,’ ” 221–22. For a detailed analysis of the film, see Thomas Heimann and Burghard Ciesla, “Die gefrorenen Blitze: Wahrheit und Dichtung. Filmgeschichte einer Wunderwaffe,” in Schenk and Richter, apropos: Film 2002, 158–80. 61. Report by Herbert Volkmann, April 14, 1958 (= BArch DR 117/BA (I) 1927 1957– 62). 62. Ibid. 63. Wilkening, “Schriftwechsel zu Film 238 Planet des Todes” ( = BArch, DR 117/BA (I) 1927 1957–62). 64. BArch DR 117/BA (I) 1048 Produktion Mahlich, Schriftwechsel. 65. The Silent Star, dir. Kurt Maetzig (1960; The DEFA Sc-Fi Collection, Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2005), DVD. 66. Wilkening, “Schriftwechsel zu Film 238 Planet des Todes.” 67. The East German premiere of DEFA’s first utopian film entered a cohort of Soviet and Eastern European science fiction films. See Fritzsche, “Dreams of ‘Cosmic Culture,’ ” 211. 68. Letter from Starski and Sowronski to Wilkening, February 5, 1960. Another letter in the same file from March 9, 1960, offers samples of the positive reviews in Poland. ( = BArch, DR 117/BA (I) 1927 1957–62); Wilkening, “Schriftwechsel zu Film 238 Planet des Todes.” 69. Gussmann, an experienced filmmaker of short and popular films, started a series of films produced following the 1957 launch of Sputnik. They included Es ist kein Geheimnnis! (It’s Not a Secret, 1958) and Signale aus dem All (Signals from the Universe, 1960). Another film, Schneller als der Schall (Faster than Sound, 1958, dir. Jürgen Thierlein), also dealt with astronomic and scientific discovery. 70. Memo by Hans Mahlich, “Zusammenarbeit mit VR–Polen,” July 7, 1967 ( = BArch DR 117/BA (I) 1150—Roter Kreis, Einschätzungen, Protokolle 1966–67). 71. Klaus Wischnewski, “Träumer und gewöhnliche Leute: 1966 bis 1979,” in Schenk, Das zweite Leben, 213–63 (213). 72. Wolf, Gruppe Babelsberg, 11–14. 73. Ibid., 5–8. On the contested role of dramaturges in Czech and Polish artistic production units, see Szczepanik, “The State-socialist Mode of Production,” 120–24; and Ostrowska, “An Alternative Model,” 454–59. 74. Wischnewski, “Träumer,” 213, 220. 75. Ibid., 213. 76. Frank-Burkhard Habel, Gojko Mitić, Mustangs, Marterpfähle: Die DEFA-Indianerfilme (Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, 1997), 12. 77. For a detailed discussion of the reasons, see Evan Torner, “To the End of the Universe: The (Brief) History of the DEFA Science Fiction Film,” in From Weimar to Christiania: German and Scandinavian Studies in Context, ed. Florence Feiereisen and Kyle Frackman (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 89–106. On Signale, see Torner, “To the End of the Universe, 97–100. 78. Feinstein, The Triumph of the Ordinary, 151–75.

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79. Günter Karl, “Protokoll der Rohschnittabnahme von “Signale,’ ” April 8, 1970 ( = BArch DR 117/BA (II) 1782). 80. Karl, “Protokoll der Rohschnittabnahme.” 81. Ibid. 82. Ibid. 83. Production manager Hildebrandt’s final report on the film underscores Kolditz’s goal (similar to Maetzig’s endeavor) to assemble an international film crew from six different countries ( = BArch DR 117/BA (III) 3443 Schlussberichte 1966–84). 84. Grisko, “Zwischen Sozialphilosophie und Actionfilm,” 112–14; and Torner, “To the End of the Universe,” 99–100. 85. Co-Produktionsvertrag zw. DEFA und PRF Warszawa, April 24, 1969 ( = BArch DR 117/BA (II) 879). This contract announces two managers, M. Nowak (Poland) and Dorothea Hildebrandt (GDR). 86. Günter Karl, “Bestätigung des Filmstoffes: Alarm im Weltraum,” September 2, 1968 ( = BArch DR 117/23355). The title of the film changed in April 1969 to Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer. See also Karl’s letter to chief dramaturge Schröder, February 29, 1968, and the subsequent discussion of genre conventions in BArch DR 117/BA (II) 1781. 87. Dorothea Hildebrandt, “Schlussbericht,” ( = BArch DR 117/BA (III) 3443). 88. Ibid. 89. Memos from meetings on February 7, 9, 15, 16, and 22, 1968 ( = BArch DR 117/BA (II) 1781). 90. Karl, “Protokoll der Rohschnittabnahme.” 91. Ibid. 92. Ibid. 93. Karl, “Bestätigung des Filmstoffes.” 94. Ibid. 95. Pehnert’s phrase “Kino der Pflicht und der Kür” was an interpretation of the German expression “Erst die Pflicht, dann die Kür,” meaning that one should first deal with duties and responsibilities and then act on personal wishes and preferences. For a summary of Pehnert’s seminal speech at the last East German filmmakers’ conference, see Helmut Lange, “Soll und Haben des DDR-Kinos,” Filmspiegel 7 (September 1989): 10–11. 96. In a 1982 interview for Berliner Zeitung, Pehnert identified two perpetual problems in East German cinema of the 1980s that paralleled Maetzig’s concerns in the early 1960s: audience boredom with DEFA productions and competition from Western and television productions. Pehnert, however, saw no contradiction between the diametrically opposed features ascribed to DEFA genre cinema: its entertainment qualities and its Erkenntniswert (enlightenment potential), as he termed it. Reprinted in Horst Pehnert, Kino, Künstler und Konflikte: Filmproduktion und Filmpolitik in der DDR (Berlin: Das neue Berlin, 2009), 180. 97. Stott, Crossing the Wall, 146. 98. Ibid., 84, 95–96. 99. Horst Pehnert, “Kino, das die Leute auf dem Sitz und in Spanning hält,” interview in Tribüne 105, 1982, quoted in Pehnert, Kino, Künstler und Konflikte, 180. 100. Stott, Crossing the Wall, 85. 101. Bergfelder, International Adventures, 172. 102. For a detailed discussion on the resonance of the genre with contemporaneous issues, see Stanley Corkin, Cowboys as Cold Warriors: The Western and U.S. History (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004). Corkin demonstrates the way some

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105. 106. 107.

108.

109.

110.

111.

112.

113. 114.

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of the most popular Westerns provided a social commentary on U.S. politics at the time, the Cold War conflict, and the space race. Bergfelder, International Adventures, 172–206 (173). See Holger Briel, “Native Americans in the Films of the GDR and Czechoslovakia,” European Journal of American Culture 31, no. 3 (2012): 231–47; and Edward Buscombe, “Injuns!’ The Native Americans in the Movies (London: Reaktion, 2006), 181–220. Stott, Crossing the Wall, 156–57. Ibid., 158. Compare to Evan Torner, “The DEFA Indianerfilm: Narrating the Postcolonial through Gojko Mitić,” in Re-Imagining DEFA, 227–47 (227); and Fisher, “A Late Genre Fade,” 192. For a more detailed discussion of the genre, see Gerd Gemünden, “Between Karl May and Karl Marx: The DEFA Indianerfilme (1965–1983),” Film History 10 (1998): 399–407. The coproduced films were Weiße Wölfe (White Wolves, 1969, dir. Konrad Petzold and Boško Bošković, GDR/Yugoslavia); Osceola (1971, dir. Konrad Petzold, GDR/ Bulgaria/Cuba); and Der Scout (The Scout, 1983, dir. Konrad Petzoid, GDR/Mongolia). The films made in cooperation with other studios were Spur des Falken (Falcon’s Trail, 1968, dir. Gottfried Kolditz), with Grusia-Film Tbilissi; Tödlicher Irrtum (Fatal Error, 1969, dir. Konrad Petzold), with Kinostudio Sofia, Bulgaria, and Polski Film, Studio Łódź, Poland; Gottfried Kolditz’s Apachen (1973, Apaches), its sequel Ulzana (1974), and Tecumseh (Hans Kratzert, 1972), with Mosfilm and Buftea, Romania; Severino (Claus Dobberke, 1978), Blauvogel (Blue Bird, 1979, dir. Ulrich Weiß), and Atkins (1985, dir. Helge Trimpert), in cooperation with Buftea-Studios, Romania. This statement was made during a debate between East German filmmakers and young moviegoers that was published in Junge Welt, March 20, 1966; cited in Habel, “Gojko Mitić,” 221. See Hartmut Lutz, “German Indianthusiasm: A Socially Constructed German Natonal(ist) Myth,” in Germans and Indians: Fantasies, Encounters, Projections, ed. Colin G. Calloway, Gerd Gemünden, and Susanne Zantop (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 167–84; and Katrin Sieg, “Indian Impersonations as Historical Surrogation,” in Calloway, Gemünden, and Zantop, Germans and Indians, 217–42. Lutz focuses on the social construction of a German national myth as it relates to the perpetual fascination of Germans with things Indian in literature, visual arts, and film. Sieg examines impersonations of Indians and the social meanings of Indian hobbyism in East and West Germany since the 1950s, and the related unique crosscultural identification of Germans with Native Americans. Lutz, “German Indianthusiasm,” 181–82. See also Philip J. Deloria’s argument that “Indians” in such European films or novels of the Cold War were not equivalent to Native Americans. Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). Torner, “The DEFA Indianerfilm: Narrating the Postcolonial,” 227–28. Ibid., 227; and Evan Torner, “The DEFA Indianerfilm as Artifact of Resistance,” Frames Cinema Journal 4 (2014), retrieved from http://framescinemajournal.com/ article/the-defa-indianerfilm-as-artifact-of-resistance/. See also Katrin Sieg, “Ethnic Drag and National Identity: Multicultural Crisis, Crossings, and Interventions,” in The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy, ed. Sara L. Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 295–319.

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115. DEFA-Außenhandel Film Program draft for Spur des Falken (1969) from December 12, 1968 ( = BArch DR 117/1781 KAG Red Circle). 116. Vera Dika, “An East German Indianerfilm: The Bear in Sheep’s Clothing,” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 50 (2008), https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/ jc50.2008/Dika-indianer/text.html 117. Eastern European landscapes were common not only in the Indianerfilme, but also in some utopian films, such as Eolomea (1972, dir. Herrmann Zschoche, GDR/USSR/ Bulgaria), shot largely on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Eastern Europe. 118. Trumpener, “DEFA: Moving Germany into Eastern Europe,” 96. 119. Birgit Turski, Die Indianistikgruppen der DDR: Entwicklung, Probleme, Aussichten (Idstein, Germany: Baum, 1994). Turski argues that GDR Indianists instigated the creation of similar hobbyist groups in Czechoslovakia and Poland. “As crucial factor in the development of the Indianist movement in the USSR,” Turski maintains, “our Leningrad friends point to the screenings of DEFA Indianerfilme and familiarity with the works of Polish Indianist Sath-Okh” (20–21). 120. See Friedrich von Borries and Jens Uwe Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys: Der Wilde Westen Ostdeutschlands (Frankfurt, Germany: Suhrkamp, 2008), 35; and Sieg, “Indian Impersonations,” 218–23. 121. See H. Glenn Penny, “Red Power: Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich and Indian Activist Networks in East and West Germany,” Central European History 41 (2008): 447–76 (460–64). 122. Anna Altman, “Socialist Cowboys,” The New Yorker, April 12, 2012. 123. Turksi, Die Indianstikgruppen der DDR, 10, 31. 124. Compare to “Stellungnahme zum Treatment ‘Osceola’ ” by Günter Karl from February 4, 1970 ( = BArch DR 117/BA (II) 1780); and “Drehbuchbestätigung von ‘Apachen I’ ” by Günter Karl from May 8, 1973 ( = BArch DR 117/23433). 125. Günter Karl, “Schlussbericht—Die Söhne der großen Bärin” ( = BArch DR 117/ 23290). See also Elizabeth Prommer, Kinobesuch im Lebenslauf: Eine historische und medienbiographische Studie (Constance, Germany: UVK Medien, 1999), 346. Torner cites “twelve-million-plus GDR viewers who saw Söhne der großen Bärin,” most probably referring to the entire run of the film in East Germany. Torner, “The DEFA Indianerfilm: Narrating the Postcolonial,” 237. 126. Gemünden, “Between Karl May and Karl Marx,” 400. 127. Skopal, “The Pragmatic Alliance,” 5–6. 128. Ibid., 5–6. 129. Ibid., 6. 130. Klaus Wischnewski, “Träumer und gewöhnliche Leute,” 222. 131. Evan Torner, “The Red and the Black: Race in the DEFA Film Osceola,” New German Review 25, no. 1 (2011): 61–81 (67). 132. Albert Wilkening, “Bericht des Hauptdirektors zur Rechenschaftslegung über das Planjahr 1974,” ( = BArch DR 117/19126). 133. For an extensive biography of Welskopf-Hernich and a discussion of her role as an author in the GDR, see Penny, “Red Power.” 134. For the book’s international reception to date and the awards it garnered, including a prestigious UNESCO children’s book prize in 1963, see Penny, “Red Power,” 453–54. 135. Borries and Fischer, Sozialistische Cowboys, 43–44. 136. See, e.g., a memo from a 1956 KAG Red Circle meeting with party functionaries and Welskopf-Henrich (= BArch DR 1/6240).

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137. Quoted in Habel, Gojko Mitić, 19–20. 138. Penny, “Red Power,” 463–745. 139. Hans Mahlich and Günter Karl, January 13, 1966, translated and quoted by Torner, “The DEFA Indianerfilm as Artifact of Resistance,” n.p. 140. Günter Karl’s memo, November 3, 1970 ( = BArch DR 117/BA (III) 1781). 141. Ibid. 142. Herbert König, Volksstimme, July 4, 1967. 143. Hans-Dieter Schütt, Junge Welt, May 25, 1974. 144. Compare here Torner’s useful distinction between “believing” and “alieving” (Tamar Szabo Gendler’s concept) that the films portrayed a historical struggle accurately. Torner, “The DEFA Indianerfilm: Narrating the Postcolonial,” 233–34. 145. Stott, Crossing the Wall 2002, 98.

Chapter 4

WRITING TOGETHER DEFA’s Biopics in the Context of European Cinema

Is the artist always the servant of power? Is it possible to take your own way, your own path, which is not the path of the state? . . . In the great conflict between artists and power—where are you? —Angel Wagenstein, scriptwriter for Goya, 20171 [Our film] is about the young Alexander [von Humboldt]’s perseverance to dream. About his curiosity for the world, his thirst for freedom, the fight to emancipate himself from the narrow confines of familial bonds, and from the constraints of society. —Paul Kanut Schäfer, author and scriptwriter for Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, 19902

Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya, or the Hard Way to Knowledge, 1971, dir. Konrad Wolf) was an artist biopic that involved seven socialist countries and had the longest production history among DEFA coproductions. Devised in the early 1960s, Goya addressed a contentious topic: the role of the artist vis-à-vis an oppressive regime. This tension culminated in the film’s final scene: a close-up of the Grand Inquisitor condemning Francisco de Goya to be forever forgotten, followed by a frame of the Spanish painter’s signature in larger-than-life letters. This ending, of course, provoked heated debates among functionaries and filmmakers; debates that sought to erase any references to the contemporaneous political moment. That there was a lot at stake suggest the sheer number of sixteen representatives of DEFA and the Soviet film studio, Lenfilm, who on September 28, 1970, met to assess

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the film’s rough cut.3 Among the most fervent discussants in the room was Anton Ackermann, an East German hardliner and political supervisor of the project. Ackermann argued that such juxtaposition of a figure of authority and an artist’s agenda offers no educational value to socialist viewers.4 The Lenfilm delegation, too, agreed that the film’s focus should remain on revolutionary art and the lower classes’ suffering; in line with that argument, the partners demanded that the ending be cut.5 Five months later, Alexander Dymschitz, once a Soviet officer in occupied Berlin and DEFA cofounder who now served as Lenfilm’s dramaturge, sealed this judgment with the words: “This film elevates the figure of an artist who has devoted his art to the people—it should not end with the words of a Grand Inquisitor.” In the wake of intellectual protest in Eastern Europe of the late 1960s, Dymschitz worried that “if this ending remains, then the Grand Inquisitor will be invested with a symbolic meaning that would oppose the entire film’s concept of history, as well as its aesthetic style.”6 Dymschitz critiqued not only Goya’s historical representation, but much more its affinities to the visual language of the 1960s Eastern European New Waves that, as discussed later, scrutinized daily life under communism and emphasized the experimental potential of art. Lenfilm representatives were mostly uncomfortable about Goya’s resonance with the recent expulsion of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn from the Soviet Union of Writers in 1969, which resulted in his inability to accept his 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature and in an ensuing international scandal.7 Despite Ackermann’s and Dymschitz’s criticism, DEFA director Konrad Wolf and Bulgarian scriptwriter Angel Wagenstein stood their ground in the name of art. Both prominent socialist filmmakers, they insisted that the film’s ending was a tribute to the artist himself. “In my opinion,” Wolf clarified, “we cannot construe the ending as a belated explanation of complex historical events, as ends to our goal to educate the viewer. On the contrary, this ending should awaken the idea of what Goya should represent today to us.”8 This statement alluded to questions that many DEFA filmmakers shared with colleagues throughout Eastern European cinemas in the 1960s and 1970s: How can film art respond to social reality and its crises? What is the role of the artist within late socialism? In the face of progressive films in the West, how would socialist filmmakers position themselves and their art? Though not openly voiced at the Goya discussion, such issues reverberated in the preceding years of private correspondence, negotiations of the film script, and deliberations on the film’s message as an artist biopic. Considering their yearlong work, DEFA dramaturge Walter Janka, Wolf, and Wagenstein, therefore, did

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not budge from the contested ending. To them, precisely the closing shots of the film made it relevant to 1970s socialist audiences. Indeed, this view strongly resonated with a younger DEFA generation, as seen from Egon Günther’s private letter to Wolf after Goya’s premiere: “The film has a sublime ending. Never before have I so clearly seen to what extent one can provoke the viewer to ponder, reflect, and to take a position. When the Cardinal, here I mean the Grand Inquisitor, announces that he condemns Goya to be forever forgotten, the entire Earth, everywhere, where people are able to think—in other words audiences in the entire civilized world—would innately respond that Mr. Cardinal bitterly deceives himself.”9 (Figure 4.1.) The relentless debates that Goya provoked among established party hardliners and artists of older and younger generations are emblematic of the narrative and aesthetic concerns that underlined artistic production in late socialism. Though not immediately apparent, yet alluded to in Günther’s perception of Goya’s edgy message, Wolf’s other similar biopics’ tongue-in-cheek agenda, unconventional cinematography, and involvement of the director as an author attest to an influence by earlier developments in Eastern European cinemas: the Polish and the Czechoslovak New Waves of the 1950s and 1960s, and the Soviet poetic filmmaking reaching into the 1970s. These waves participated in a transnational phenomenon across geopolitical divides and brought a belief in filmmaking as a committed and socially critical activity.10 Di-

Figure 4.1. Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (1971). The Grand Inquisitor condemning the painter in the last sequence of the film. Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Arkadi Sager.

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rectors such as Andrzej Wajda, Aleksander Ford, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Miloš Forman, Miklós Jancsó, Andrei Tarkovsky, Tengiz Abuladze, and others who were celebrated at European film festivals for their avantgarde style and clear focus on their country’s history and politics, came to epitomize the position of the dissident artist who actively resisted the cultural hegemony of the Soviet regime. These filmmakers’ fruitful exchanges with the West not only delivered a “new mode of European belonging,” but also coined a unique style and documentary aesthetics that received international recognition and reception.11 Back home, many of these directors were criticized as both politically and aesthetically compromised by their ties to the West or embrace of Western film movements, such as the Italian Neorealism or the French Nouvelle Vague. Their contribution to European cinema, though, remains unquestioned. But where is the place of DEFA filmmakers among the heterogeneous New Waves? Did East German artists respond to the global avant-garde movements? While some film scholars agree that modernist cinematic influences had also entered the Babelsberg studio in the early 1960s (via experimentation carried out by the banned films of 1965), the Kahlschlag has been seen as the end of the nascent East German New Wave.12 Other scholars have rightly argued, “The selfunderstanding of DEFA directors was not, at least until its last decade, that of auteurs” and that New Waves pictures share with certain DEFA films a few common aspects, yet differences prevail.13 This chapter, however, demonstrates that as DEFA turned to work with neighbors in the East, GDR filmmakers continued the dialogue with the Polish and Czechoslovak New Wave cinemas and Soviet poetic modernism on a subtler level. Like those movements’ masterpieces, 1970s East German pictures often direct their attention to everyday life detail, de-heroicized characters, and subjective approach to reality, yet they certainly do not share the New Wave filmmakers’ daring avant-gardism, or self-irony and grotesque representation of social problems.14 The poignant affinity of DEFA biopics of the 1970s and 1980s with the earlier European New Waves lies elsewhere, namely in their broader exploration of the precarious relationship between artist and society, in their vanguard if covert political analysis, and in their function as a space of aesthetic escape. DEFA filmmakers found various ways of embedding opposition to the status quo, which certainly differed from their Polish, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian colleagues. This chapter’s analysis by no means disregards the well-researched endorsement among DEFA filmmakers of the GDR’s policies, yet it argues for a more perceptive approach to artistic production processes in

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late socialism. Rather than relying on bold aesthetic experimentation or taking a critical tone, DEFA biopics adopted a new strategy for close collaboration between film director and writer to inject clandestine political criticism into biopics. This became possible by the opening of the KAGs to external advisers, especially in the case of prestige international coproductions, as in the example of Goya. Along this vein, a clear response to European art-house cinemas was DEFA directors’ increasing determination to actively shape, cowrite, or even singlehandedly author the screenplay. This often resulted in the willing or unwilling identification of the filmmakers with their character (artist or scientist) and imbued the films with a self-reflexivity typical of the cinematic New Waves. DEFA filmmakers shared with the filmmakers the Polish and the Czechoslovak New Waves a specific to socialist cinemas industrial context that distinguished them from Western European auteurs in France, West Germany, or Italy. The latter were not bound to a state-run enterprise and could allow themselves, therefore, an outright criticism of institutionalized power both in form and content. In Eastern European New Waves, at the same time, criticism was channeled in such diverse ways that attempts to find a common denominator for their artistic or political goals have foundered. What the state-run industries of the period shared were productions structures. As scholars agree, most Eastern European New Waves originated within a specific film school, even though their self-definitions relied on a transnational impetus. At the same time, national film traditions could not be fully eclipsed: they always served the avant-garde directors as a foil to create a new artistic form. For instance, the “Polish School,” the term often preferred to “Polish New Wave” or “Cinema of Moral Concern,” as Paul Coates shows, was linked to the Łódź Film School precisely to argue from within that “we have a film school—but that is not enough.”15 Though officially sanctioned, film schools in the East offered space for the emergence of filmmaker circles similar to the editors of Cahiers du Cinéma, the magazine that became a forum for the French Nouvelle Vague. In the same vein, Czechoslovak New Wave directors, according to Peter Hames, gravitated around Otakar Vávra, one of the founders of the Prague Filmová a televizní fakulta, Akademie Múzických Umění (Film and Television School of the Academy of Performing Arts, FAMU).16 Vávra was also instrumental in the restructuring of the Czechoslovak film industry into artistic production units. His followers, Věra Chytilová, Jiří Menzel, and Jan Schmidt—all identified as leading names of the Czechoslovak New Wave—embraced his approach to cinema, where

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“the screenplay or the source material plays a dominant role.”17 With Kurt Maetzig we already saw a parallel leading figure both at DEFA and the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen (hereafter: GDR Film Academy) in Potsdam where most DEFA film professionals were trained. The restructuring of all Eastern European industries into artistic production units and KAGs, as explored in the previous chapter, was another significant step to enable modernist film aesthetics and an opportunity to redefine the collective understanding of film art imposed by state socialism as a complementary model to the auteur in the West. Despite the considerable autonomy of project generation within Eastern European film creative units, the figure of a director as a sole artist and a decision maker is unthinkable in the Polish, Czechoslovak, or East German cinemas until the late 1980s. Virtually all avant-garde directors in the East worked in such units or took the route of coproductions and eventually emigrated. Within those units, the director might at times have functioned as primus inter pares (first among equals), but the prolonged process of film assessment at various stages remained a major hurdle. Thus, as Coates demonstrates in his discussion of the picture that became programmatic for the Polish School, Wajda’s Popiół i diament (Ashes and Diamonds, 1958, Poland), the director’s intervention into the screenplay, as well as “some concession on his own part” became crucial for the realization of the project.18 In other words, New Wave filmmakers, too, experienced firsthand the constraints of the system in which they operated; many of them saw collaborative work on the script as a way to alleviate scrutiny and censorship. The growing collaboration between a DEFA director and one or more authors becomes of utmost importance for biopics in coproduction because it evidences a new form of behind-the-scenes artistic engagement. Cowriting enabled internal discussions on narrative and content earlier in the process and ensured not only consensus but also more artistic control over the film’s message. Biopics, moreover, provided fruitful terrain for such discussions between director and author, because they often were screen adaptations of literary works that were already successful on the market, or were planned as vehicles of such texts. Writing together was not reserved for the director and script author, but sometimes also involved the KAG dramaturge or literary advisers, which could lead to either stricter self-censorship or to increased interest in the release of the picture. Consequently, the strategy of screenplay coauthoring could culminate during postproduction in a collective effort to negotiate a film’s release despite censorship, as in Goya’s case. Thus, coauthoring comprises an evolution of the KAGs’ effort to support the

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institution of the writer in its own right, which—as we saw in the previous chapter—was constantly contested within DEFA as a studio trying to combine political and commercial agendas. After the introduction of more dramaturgical control over the KAGs in the late 1960s, cowriting was the only way to boost the artists’ negotiation power in the context of rigorous assessment and bans. One reason was that the post-1965 policy that an already approved script could not be altered at the stage of production, as was the case in the 1950s. Another reason was that, as we will see with Goya, the director understood the need to be involved together with the authors in the scripting phase in order to boost the film’s chances for approval. The active cooperation between the filmmakers thus complicates the image of the DEFA director as a flagship institution in both film production and negotiations and sheds light on the crucial involvement of other important agents: coauthors, dramaturges, and even external advisers, who ultimately shaped the aesthetic message of a film. In addition to cowriting, the turn to a genre such as the biopic provided a weighty counterpart to the entertainment-driven and usually politically compliant Indianerfilme and utopian pictures. Not unlike these two genres, the biopic was also meant to fulfill an important ideological function, namely to reclaim the intellectual legacy of famous European artists and scholars. Yet often the genre allowed filmmakers to resituate themselves within the pre-socialist literary, artistic, and intellectual traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and from this vantage point to debate existing relations between artists and the state. Historical biopics were uniquely positioned within East German cinema. On the one hand, party stalwarts saw their potential as vessels for appropriating German and European cultural heritage. Biographical films played an important role in the GDR’s quest for recognition in the 1970s, supporting its attempt to define a national identity in a divided Europe, and in its cinematic competition with the West. In this sense, DEFA biopics reinterpreted the UFA Künstlerfilm (artist film) and Geniusfilm (genius film). During the Third Reich the artist film had fulfilled the cultural mandate to demonstrate “the inheritance of European art” and thus resonated with the GDR state’s image of itself in the late 1950s as “guardian of the nation’s cultural heritage.”19 Manuel Köppen maintains that, under Nazism, these genres combined three main ingredients: artistic tradition, a fascination with genius, and the justification of war.20 Even after East Germany’s diplomatic sovereignty in 1972, the GDR authorities sought to demonstrate the moral superiority of their ideological system over the democracy in the “other”

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Germany. On the other hand, to artists who pondered their own position in late socialism, biopics were an arena in which to challenge the status quo by spatially and temporally relocating contemporary stories, conflicts, and questions. Moreover, via coproduction projects, filmmakers could enjoy budgets that were more generous and allowed them to create cinema of high cultural status. To these artists, recreating the past meant entering a dialogue with previous cinematic traditions or experimenting like their Eastern European colleagues, but by relocating their critique from the present. Many DEFA filmmakers sought to validate their artistic project by choosing as subjects exemplary scholars, scientists, and intellectuals from the past instead of making ideologically loaded Gegenwartsfilme (films about contemporary GDR society). In this respect, DEFA biopics shared with their predecessors, i.e., the artist film and the genius film, the aim of representing the tempestuous world of an artist who, entrapped in political or social vicissitudes, still sought what Schulte-Sasse calls an “imaginary wholeness.”21 Thus, while GDR cultural functionaries saw the nationalist potential of biopics, an international spirit of aesthetic innovation drove the filmmakers. Like the artist and genius films of the Third Reich, DEFA biopics were instrumentalized in fulfilling the state mandate to boost national identity and to assert the GDR as a legitimate heir to European revolutionary thought and culture. Seán Allan, therefore, sees the genre as a contested category within DEFA due to its twofold engagement with the European heritage and with the critical evaluation of the role of art in contemporary GDR society.22 Yet in their cooperation with other filmmakers on a biopic, East German directors also sought to demonstrate that human knowledge and talent exceeded national boundaries. Their aim was not to elevate an artist or a genius above the masses, but, on the contrary, to show a human face beneath the surface of a grand biopic; a human who in his struggles would appeal to the average moviegoer. “In Goya, we see not the ingenious painter,” Wolf maintained upon directing the large-scale multinational coproduction, “but rather the contemporary who differed from others via his great emotional power and imagination, but who was also rooted in reality and faced its conflicts, willingly or not, if only in the attempt to break free.”23 Along these lines, the intense self-reflexivity found in the strong identification between film director or scriptwriter and character also distinguishes DEFA biopics from their predecessors. As Allan points out, the genre had evolved throughout DEFA’s existence, from the studio’s 1940s “efforts to engage with the traditions of German classical humanism” in UFA style to its emergence as a “key player for internationalizing East

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German cinema” in the 1970s and 1980s.24 Larson Powell also suggests that influences from other Eastern European traditions, notably Soviet film, are crucial for our understanding of the DEFA biopic.25 He points specifically to the Soviet auteur films emerging in the 1960s, such as Andrei Tarkovsky’s and Tengiz Abuladze’s oeuvre. Powell scrutinizes at length the model these films offered to DEFA filmmakers in the 1970s by way of highlighting the subtle criticism encoded in the unconventional use of image and sound. Indeed, with its tradition within Soviet cinema, the genre often appealed to avant-garde filmmakers who—not unlike their counterparts in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia— sought to rewrite it. Biopics played an important role in the cinematic output of the Soviet Union, where examples of the genre, as Marsha Siefert reckons, totaled 130.26 These films not only celebrated well-known Russian artists and scientists, but also, and primarily, sought to interpret the zeitgeist that had once shaped their work and—in the early incarnations—to translate it into socialist realism. Soviet biopics until the 1940s were conceptualized as opulent ideological masterpieces that were quite similar to the genius film of the Third Reich.27 The Soviet version emphasized a positive hero, as in the period’s most popular feature, Chapayev (1934, dir. Georgi and Sergey Vasilyev, USSR), an ode to a legendary Red Army commander. Similar biopics from the Stalin era included Vladimir Petrov’s Petr I (1931, USSR), and Sergei Eisenstein’s Aleksander Nevsky (1938, USSR) and Ivan the Terrible I (1945, USSR), all films extolling strong leaders whom common folk feared and followed. Soviet socialist realist biopics came aesthetically even closer to the genius film, as Peter Kenez maintains, after World War II, when more than two thousand UFA Trophäenfilme (trophy films confiscated by Soviet authorities in occupied Berlin) were uncritically screened for several years in the USSR and enjoyed wide popularity.28 While studying at the Soviet State Film Institute of Cinematography in Moscow (VGIK), both Wolf and Wagenstein had seen examples of the early Soviet genre and its reincarnations in 1950s cinema. The way the biopic genre borrowed from previous iterations and recycled aesthetic traditions from Eisenstein to Third Reich pictures attests to its transnational trajectory and form, but also to its plasticity and potential for a multilayered message. In the mid-1960s and especially after the global protests of 1968, the conceptualization of the Soviet and Eastern European artist biopic evolved to channel dissident thought. Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966/1971, USSR), about a medieval Russian icon artist, became a model for several biographical films in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and

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Hungary.29 Such self-reflexive pictures provided a critical commentary of the artist as a lonely figure, less concerned about material life or social quarrels, but often also isolated in an ascetic manner. Two examples are Andrzej Wajda’s Wszystko na Sprezedaż (Everything for Sale, 1969, Poland) and Konrad Wolf’s Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (The Naked Man in the Stadium, 1974, GDR). After the ban and belated release of Andrei Rublev, filmmakers experimented with biopics conceived as coproductions in order to circumvent political pressure. For example, Soviet filmmaker Igor Talankin succeeded in directing a prestige coproduction with U.S. partners about the life of the well-known Russian composer, Tchaikovsky (1970, USSR/United States).30 Yet it was not until the 1980s that the biopic proliferated as a genre in Soviet cinema when coauthorship becomes a trademark in such productions. During this period, Soviet filmmakers coproduced the TV series Niccolo Paganini (1982, dir. and coauthor Leonid Menaker) with Bulgaria; Ocalic Miasto (To Save a City, dir. and coauthor Jan Łomnicki, 1976) with Poland; and Az élet muzsikája—Kalman Imre (Kalman Imre, György Palásthy, 1985) with Hungary.31 The Soviets made also a significant number of biopics with Western partners, which suggested an increase in production and aesthetic values of the genre.32 DEFA and its Eastern European partners in Poland and Czechoslovakia chimed in in the early 1970s by releasing several biopics that paid tribute to classical icons of European culture, art, and science. Most of these films were conceived as coproductions with multinational film crews, which marked the transition of the biopic from a symbol of national cinema to a collaborative international project. For instance, Goya brought together actors and technicians from seven socialist countries: USSR, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Romania. Indeed, the film had no precedent in Eastern European cinemas with its monumental production and actors who all acted in their native languages. Copernicus (1973, dir. Ewa and Czeslaw Petelski, Poland/GDR) and Johannes Kepler (1974, dir. Frank Vogel, GDR) both explored the lives of European scientists and critics of social injustice. While Copernicus was initiated by the Polish director duo and DEFA provided mostly technical expertise and shooting locations, Johannes Kepler was initially conceptualized as a coproduction with equal participation by East German and Czechoslovak filmmakers. Due to political objections by East German functionaries, the latter never materialized as a joint project but, nevertheless, DEFA again relied on mostly Eastern European actors for this biopic. Another common strategy that these biopics shared with Goya was their directors’ coauthorship of the script.

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For instance, Ewa and Czeslaw Petelski worked closely with writers Jerzy Broszkiewicz and Zdzisław Skowroński on Copernicus, while Frank Vogel coauthored the script for Johannes Kepler with Manfred Freitag. Similarly, director Horst Seemann cowrote his 1976 biopic of the famous composer, Beethoven—Tage aus einem Leben (Beethoven—Days in a Life, GDR) with authors Günter Kunert and Franz Jahrow. This film also relied on a multinational crew and even included as its star Goya’s lead actor, Donatas Banionis, as well as several Polish and Czech or Slovak actors, e.g., Leon Niemczyk, Eva Jiroušková, and Vítězslav Jandák. The multinational crew and strategy of coauthoring as key markers of DEFA artist biopics of the 1960s and 1970s made in cooperation with Poland and Czechoslovakia, both set them apart from the experimental agenda of Eastern European New Waves and, simultaneously, allowed these biopics to continue the artistic project of these earlier movements. On the one hand, the director as an auteur central to the project in arthouse cinema in East and West gives way to an international team of actors who carry out an internationalist message of the biopic. On the other hand, precisely the active involvement of the director in coauthoring the film script bears traces of the auteur’s function as the source of the film’s meaning, message, and aesthetic form. In addition to the idea of the biopic as joint project among national studios, the strategy of coauthoring enabled multiple artists to weave their voices into the story and to find an outlet for their own struggles and dilemmas, which resulted in the self-reflexivity that, as mentioned above, became trademark of this genre. Together, director and scriptwriter created a message about the function of art and the artist that was translated into a multilayered text. Starting with the emergence of this model throughout Goya’s long production history during the 1960s, we can establish a trajectory to one of DEFA’s last biopics, the East and West German coproduction Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (The Ascent of Chimborazo, dir. Rainer Simon, 1989). Here, too, the director coauthored the script with writer Paul Kanut Schäfer in order to narrate Alexander von Humboldt’s life-changing journey to Ecuador and the eponymous volcano in the Andes. The analyses of these films’ scripting phases and prolonged production histories will help us see the mobilizing potential of directors and writers where artists and cultural officials aspired to invest different stakes in biopics. Moreover, this trajectory demonstrates a significant evolution of the coauthoring strategy. To begin with, the “I” of the auteur becomes “we”—a development that we observe in both Wolf’s and Simon’s directorial work. Second, the DEFA directors and writers of Goya and Die Besteigung des Chimborazo develop

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a strong identification with the artist and scientist at the center of their pictures. The New Waves’ directors, too, frequently identified with an urban intellectual defined by freedom of movement and speech; the artist or the aristocrat, for instance, offered apt examples as individuals “concerned above all with [their] inner universe and by the general state of the world.”33 In the same vein, as we will see in our subsequent discussion, the understanding of the lead character as a channel for clandestine criticism is vital to the agenda of DEFA filmmakers. Finally, the medial self-reflexivity that defines Goya (in the unique abstraction of his art by montage) transforms into a more outright act of weaving in the filmmakers’ personal encounters and experiences in Ecuador into the fabric of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, an act that enhances its daring aesthetic style and openly demonstrates the New Waves’ influence. The collective nature of DEFA biopics went beyond collaboration on the script to also impact their completion and distribution. Together with the coauthoring strategy, the form of coproduction, as seen in the case of Goya, implicated external advisers, such as Marta Feuchtwanger, in the shaping of the script as well as in the film’s subsequent distribution. Reminiscent of the cultural mediators’ role discussed in chapter 2, Feuchtwanger worked hard to bring Goya to the U.S. market. Feuchtwanger’s crucial involvement both in scripting the screen adaptation of her deceased husband’s novel, but also of its international circulation, foregrounds the key importance of coauthoring not just for the realization of the film, but also for its position within European cinema. At the same time, as we will see toward the end of this chapter, in the course of its production Die Besteigung des Chimborazo turned from a German-German coproduction that involved South American partners into a gateway for Simon’s long-lasting cooperation with Ecuadorian partners. Here, too, the distribution and reception of the film abroad was strongly influenced by the collaborative nature of the project and the ties between the partners that emerged in the process of writing and filming. In what follows we will see the processes at work that defined these collaborative projects—from the vital coauthoring during scripting to unexpected routes for distribution of these biopics.

Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis When in 1963 Konrad Wolf agreed to direct an adaptation of the prominent German Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger’s eponymous novel, the director and his colleagues at DEFA faced several challenges. One

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of them was to find partners for the expensive prestige coproduction that, as we saw in the opening discussion of this chapter, was conceived as one of the most important joint projects to demonstrate international socialist solidarity. Goya’s complex nine-year-long production history and the subsequent discussion of the film’s rough cut demonstrated the high stakes that this film had in the eyes of the artistic production unit as well as Soviet and East German party stalwarts. The second challenge was to make the literary work relevant to the present context. Feuchtwanger, a Jew and leftist intellectual himself, had considered his work a protest of Nazism and its persecution of Jewish and communist artists who were critical to the regime. Indeed, he began writing his novel entitled Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis in 1943 during his and his wife’s exile in France and the United States. Wolf and his colleagues, Bulgarian Jewish writer Angel Wagenstein, and East German dramaturge Walter Janka also shared the experience of exile and persecution for their communist conviction by the Nazi regime. Consequently, they aspired to critique with their biopic the universal struggle of an artist against an authoritarian regime. This critique had to bring the reality of past and present conflict with the power closer to their audience. Using “we” to refer to his coauthors and partners in devising the film Goya, Wolf described how they sought to translate Feuchtwanger’s story into the present: “Goya and Feuchtwanger pointed our collective deliberations again and again to the question: How can art have a stronger, more intense impact on our time’s struggles and conflicts? We gradually became aware that we had to work out the controversies of the time period in each individual character in our film, so we would be able to speak to our present.”34 Despite this clear agenda, the film narrative remains, at first glance, locked in the past, and parallels to the artists’ situation in the mid-1960s emerge only on a more subtle level. Wolf’s picture is set in the Spanish monarchy of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as reflected in Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes’s (1746–1828) art. Following closely the novel’s narrative, we witness Goya’s passions and delusions, his thirst for prestige and recognition as contrasted by his grief and ailment at the sight of the Spanish people being drowned in their own blood. His existential decision to break free from the Spanish court of King Carlos IV (1748–1819) and to embrace a new aesthetic form (different from courtly portraiture) draws the royals’ wrath and the Inquisition’s persecution, and his work is banned. His new freedom leads him back to the common folk, in the countryside, where he leads a simple and contented life, yet he soon is devastated by the demons of the Peninsular War between Napoleon’s

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France and Spain. In the second part of the film, Goya’s prints Caprichos and Desastres de la guerra assume a central role through their depiction of suffering, war, and injustice, as well as the artist’s indirect criticism of the Inquisition’s encroaching power over the people. Moreover, the film’s unambiguous ending, as discussed earlier, underscores not the artist’s alienation from politics, but rather his mission to give his people a voice in and through his art. Thus, Goya transgresses the constraints imposed by the concrete historical period with its surreptitious comment on the artist’s universal responsibility in an oppressive regime and thus puts its finger on a key concern in late socialism, namely the relationship between the individual and the higher echelons of power. Wolf’s film depicts Goya (Donatas Banionis) as an artist who finds himself caught in a dilemma between the conventional artistic practices prescribed by those in power, on the one hand, and experimental art, on the other. He attempts a change within established power structures without openly challenging the status quo. For instance, he disagrees with the aesthetic choices of King Charles IV (Rolf Hoppe) and his wife, Maria Louisa (Tatyana Lolova), when they coerce him into creating decorative art, yet he does not give up work on their commissioned family portrait. Even though he engages in an act of resistance by depicting the royals with their imperfections, his art is still interpreted as loyalty to the crown. He remains helpless when the Inquisition acquires his critical paintings; instead of punishing him for them, however, the Inquisition invites him to the tribunal of another artist, the singer Maria Rosario (Carmen Herold). At the same time, Goya disagrees with the poet Gaspar de Jovellanos (Ernst Busch) who sees art as a politicized act. When they first meet, Jovellanos advocates the idea that “no artist can abstain from politics” and reproaches Goya for his bold “experiment[s] with grandiose, overwhelming truths.”35 In response, Goya asserts that the political message of an artwork should not take priority over its aesthetic function. Goya’s perspective privileges the art for art’s sake credo of the European New Waves and thus stands in stark opposition to the concept of “art as a weapon” as no one less than the director’s father, Friedrich Wolf, once put it.36 At the end of Goya’s conversation with Jovellanos, Agustin Esteve (Fred Düren), therefore, intervenes to suggest a new understanding of art.37 The painter’s enlightened friend and alter ego, as Wolf often described Esteve, opens Goya’s eyes to an aesthetic that does not serve imposed ideals but conceives of art as made for people’s sake, in other words for the audience.38 Like the New Wave directors, Wolf seeks to provoke his viewers and to force them to see beyond the plane of the wide screen. Esteve argues that art has to be socially

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engaged, and that this engagement needs to be equally reflected in both form and content: “Clear things can be depicted only by clear lines. Yet people are not clear. The wicked, the dangerous, the seductive cannot be represented by the old means of expression.”39 This statement introduces a new concept of the relationship between art and reality that breaks with traditional realism and legitimizes subjective means for the depiction of the existing sociopolitical reality, means so akin to the New Wave filmmakers’ visual language. At the end, Goya, persecuted by the Inquisition and rejected by royalty, implements this concept in his Caprichos engravings, thus escaping in an imaginary world of art. What is more, the painter not only embraces Esteve’s idea of subjective authenticity in art, but also experiments with a collective mode of art production: his friend and Goya work together to create and distribute prints of the Caprichos to the people of Spain. In a sense, this reflects director Wolf’s experience with this coproduction, especially in regard of the scripting phase that also represented a collective effort (Figure 4.2). Goya’s scriptwriting process, which extended from 1963 to 1969, comprises a complex model of coauthorship on various levels by literary authors, seasoned screenwriters, and readers. The process involved a Bulgarian author, an East German dramaturge, a U.S. script adviser, as well as Soviet writers and, finally, the film director himself. To some extent, this model was enabled by the structures established in the KAGs

Figure 4.2. The painter listening to the people in Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (1971). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Arkadi Sager.

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analyzed at length in the previous chapter. For instance, in KAG Heinrich Greif, director Wolf had worked closely with dramaturge Walter Janka and coauthored several films with writer Wolfgang Kohlhaase. This was common practice for Wolf, who often partnered with writers and cowrote screenplays for his films.40 The script development of Goya is of particular interest here because it exceeds the familiar boundaries of the KAG and involves an external script adviser, thus setting the stage for subsequent negotiations over the film in terms of censorship and approval for distribution. Indeed, it was the multilayered system of screenplay assessment at the East German studio that allowed external and internal forces to affect Goya’s evolution. Script development and approval at DEFA comprised a protracted process during which dialogue and scene composition were assessed several times for their compliance with ideological and aesthetic expectations. Coproductions were subject to even stricter controls because they would be distributed internationally and represent the values of the GDR abroad. Since 1955 every DEFA script went through five stages of development in preproduction: Skizze (film idea, five pages), Exposé (a treatment of the film idea including motifs and character descriptions, twenty pages), Filmerzählung (narrative of conflicts and sample dialogue, fifty pages), Szenarium (literary screenplay including all dialogue), and Drehbuch (final film script including framing, camera positions, and set design).41 At the initial stages the text had to be approved by an internal authority—the KAG dramaturge, the DEFA dramaturge in chief, the DEFA artistic committee—but the last two required also the consent of an external agency—the Central Film Administration and the GDR Ministry of Culture. Most work was typically done on the literary screenplay that had already been introduced at DEFA by the Soviet film administration in the 1940s in order to control the film process. This text constituted the blueprint of the planned production, with all dialogue and scenes enumerated and organized chronologically. Until the mid-1960s, scriptwriters or literary authors and literary advisers worked together to ensure the quality of the text. This literary screenplay differed from the Regiebuch (continuity script), which was more technical in nature and usually composed by the director and film architect or camera man, as well as from the optional optisches Drehbuch (storyboard) that included elaborate detail, such as drawings of frames and shot composition, and served as a guide during film shooting. Once the literary screenplay was circulated to all relevant DEFA and state institutions, filmmakers committed themselves to complete the outlined project without deviating from the proposed dialogue. Though initially

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only the director was responsible for the final script, in the late 1960s the entire artistic collective, including directors and dramaturges, began working together to ensure that the literary screenplay would pass all internal and external reviews.42 This required months or even years of cooperation. Nevertheless, teamwork between the director and the writers often generated creative results that sometimes circumvented the various levels of censure, as was the case with Goya.

Collaborating on the Goya Script When Goya was released in 1971, Wolf was credited as director and Wagenstein as the sole author of the film. However, both Wolf and Wagenstein acknowledged in interviews and personal statements their significant collaboration with Janka, the KAG dramaturge who first proposed to adapt Feuchtwanger’s novel. Both filmmakers also consulted with the novelist’s widow, California-based Marta Feuchtwanger.43 During the seven years of script development, Wagenstein explained, two additional writers also collaborated on this screenplay: Wolfgang Kohlhaase, one of DEFA’s most experienced authors, and Soviet writer Anatoli Grebnev, who worked on fine-tuning the dialogue.44 Kohlhaase’s and Grebnev’s work was of a technical nature due to the fact that the script had to be translated from Bulgarian into Russian and German to be made available to the actors. While such linguistic adaptation of dialogues might remain officially unacknowledged, we need to account for the significant differences between the scripting processes of Goya and earlier coproduced projects, such as Der schweigende Stern. As we saw in the previous chapter, finding authors who satisfied all participants in a coproduction and the cultural functionaries in their respective countries was often a long-winded process. Despite the much higher stakes with Goya and harsh criticism along the way, director and authors worked together to stabilize the project and, consequently, no writers were replaced as in the case of Der schweigende Stern. Still, the question arises as to why the scripting phase was so long and why Janka and Feuchtwanger went uncredited in the official coproduction, despite their contributions during the seven-year process of revising and rewriting the screenplay. How to explain this lack of recognition? Some answers are provided by the detailed correspondence between Marta Feuchtwanger, a well-known persona among exiled Germans, who continued to live in the United States, and Janka, a former publisher with a politically compromised past. While their exchanges significantly shaped Goya’s screenplay, the contributions of Feuchtwanger

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and Janka remained clandestine as Wolf and Wagenstein sought approval for the screenplay. Both the correspondence and the controversies shed light on Wolf’s and Wagenstein’s plea to preserve the film’s original ending, comprising the image of the Grand Inquisitor and the signature of Goya—an ending that, as it turns out, was not their own (Figure 4.3). DEFA dramaturge Janka sought to produce the film adaptation of Lion Fechtwanger’s novel Goya in order to reflect on his own predicaments with the socialist regime. A committed communist who spent ten years in exile in Spain, France, and Mexico, Janka returned to the GDR in 1946 and began work in one of the most important publishing houses in East Berlin, Aufbau. He was convicted for treason for his collaboration with Wolfgang Harich in publishing critical to the GDR state literature; both men were tried and imprisoned in 1957. Janka went to

Figure 4.3. Moscow, 1971. From left to right: director Konrad Wolf, DEFA dramaturge Walter Janka, Charlotte Janka, and Marta Feuchtwanger. Photographer: Günter Linke. Rights holder: Filmmuseum Potsdam. Photo print: Akademie des Künste.

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Bautzen II, a prison for political dissidents and international spies, established in 1956 by the East German Ministry of State Security.45 In this context, he wrote to prominent intellectuals whom he knew from his work as the head of El Libro Libre, the main publisher for exiled German writers during World War II, which was based in Mexico City. Janka had published works by the best-known exiled authors, such as Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Anna Seghers, Egon Erwin Kisch, Lion Feuchtwanger, André Simone, and even Alexander Abusch who by the time of Janka’s arrest had made a career as a member of the SED Central Committee and a minister of culture in the GDR (1958–61).46 In the spring of 1962, after his release from prison, Janka contacted Marta Feuchtwanger to acquire the rights for Goya, subtly suggesting his motivation behind the idea for film adaptation: “I would rather make a film about Bautzen. But no one would have allowed that. Moreover, no one would want to make that film, because they all were afraid of losing their positions. But we could do it indirectly while hiding behind Feuchtwanger. And his story is quite something! We ourselves could have never come up in a short time with such a story about art and power, the human spirit, and the Inquisition.”47 Together with Katia Mann and other leftist German exiles who were well regarded in the GDR, Feuchtwanger had been active in supporting Janka’s release from political imprisonment.48 She therefore responded positively to Janka and, to increase the GDR bureaucrats’ curiosity, pointed out that the rights had already been solicited several times by producers in Hollywood and Western Europe, but the film has not yet materialized. In a next step, Feuchtwanger accepted DEFA’s modest offer of 25,000 East German marks and emphasized her interest in the artistic qualities of the production rather than in profit.49 Since she admired Soviet cinema, Feuchtwanger envisioned an aesthetically engaging coproduction with the USSR. Janka who was at the time encouraged by DEFA to find partners in the West, reminisced, “Mrs. Feuchtwanger saw from the beginning further than all of us.”50 Following Feuchtwanger’s wish, Goya eventually became a coproduction with Lenfilm. Moreover, Janka himself became a primary channel for Feuchtwanger’s amendments of the script, which he received in their correspondence. Marta Feuchtwanger agreed to work with DEFA on the condition that she would be able to suggest amendments to both the script and the completed film—a step that became key to her involvement during the scripting and completion, as well as at the premiere of the film, where she was the guest of honor. Initially, Feuchtwanger’s amend-

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ments of the text were sent to Janka who mediated them to Wagenstein and Wolf. In his official correspondence to her, Janka used vigilant language. In February 1963, for example, Feuchtwanger received the twelve-page concept paper via mail—“a gesture to our mutual understanding and agreement,” as Janka laconically explained—followed by Wagenstein’s screenplay.51 Of course, this was also a step to ensure her approval and to be able to continue with the longer version of the script. “With confident tactfulness,” Janka maintains, Feuchtwanger carefully read and commented on all stages of the literary adaptation, from the treatment to the literary script.52 She took over this task as a deputy of her deceased husband and, therefore, her amendments were respected and implemented by the DEFA filmmakers. For instance, on June 2, 1962, months before she placed her signature on DEFA’s contract, she mentioned to Janka that her husband’s last project was a Goya sequel and that she hoped to see Wolf’s film embrace it.53 In this sequel, Feuchtwanger had planned to relate Goya’s subsequent fate and art to the present moment, which of course, resonated with Janka’s agenda. This vision was, indeed, later granted, as we will see in certain amendments of the script. In October 1964, once she had read Wagenstein’s script, Feuchtwanger reiterated her hopes and demanded several changes that resonated with her husband’s idea of a sequel: You are aware of Lion Feuchtwanger’s desire to write a second book about Goya. He wanted to comment on Goya’s deep investment in the fate of those who suffered and were devastated by war. Goya saw the untold suffering, humans turning into beasts, on both sides of the battle. He saw the madness and had to turn it into art, so he wouldn’t go mad himself. . . . Under no circumstances—and this is my only significant objection—should Goya’s romantic escape be the ending of this film, as it is in the current screenplay. I believe that you yourselves would come to the same conclusion after you return to the novel, namely, that Feuchtwanger has not really changed the historical truth.54

This and subsequent letters illustrate Marta Feuchtwanger’s growing influence on the scripting process via Janka’s mediation. The film’s ending, the significance of the Desastres de la guerra, and the portrayal of the Spanish Inquisition were recurrent points in her intervention. To be sure, Feuchtwanger’s suggestions guided Wolf’s own interpretation of the novel and, as he admitted in later interviews, he always implemented her ideas.55 Further evidence is supplied by the comparison of the 1964 script to which Feuchtwanger referred in the above-quoted letter and the final version of 1967, both found in Wolf’s personal archive.56

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The 1964 version of the script envisioned several scenes of Goya’s grotesque encounters with the Inquisition, bloodshed on the streets of Madrid, and a dreary ending with an ailing, deaf Goya escaping to the mountains. In the final version from March 1967, however, which includes Wolf’s handwritten notes and amendments, Feuchtwanger’s demands were meticulously incorporated: first, the Inquisition invited Goya to a tribunal instead of using physical force; second, the original scenes of revolutionary action were replaced by a montage of Goya’s Desastres de la guerra; and third, the film’s ending was changed to underline Goya’s struggle as an artist.57 Feuchtwanger’s amendments, though clandestine to East German censors, exercised a crucial influence on directorial decisions and on the adaptation’s aesthetic message. As Wolf admits, it was Feuchtwanger’s idea to bring the horrors of war via Goya’s prints Desastres de la Guerra as well as the painting The Second of May 1808.58 Such examples of how Feuchtwanger shaped the visual translation of her husband’s novel onto screen go beyond script approval and demonstrate the inextricable unity of script and visual representation. Janka, too, emphasizes the “multilayered nature of her creative and critical cooperation” on the film.59 He cites numerous instances of editorial work on the text, revisions of scenes, discussions of the dialogue, and suggestions for music and style after Feuchtwanger had seen Mikhail Kalatozov’s innovative camera work in Letyat Zhuravli (Cranes Are Flying, 1958, USSR). The dramaturge’s staggering examples provide a picture of Feuchtwanger’s far-reaching and continuous work at every stage of the scriptwriting process, from the germination of the adaption until the final 1969 screenplay version. Moreover, the precedent that such close work with an adviser or author set for DEFA is sealed with the words: “I reported about our collaboration with Marta Feuchtwanger in greater detail because it represents a methodological model for our work—and because I also acknowledge this cooperation’s exceptionality.”60 Indeed, the team spirit that defined this coproduction changed not only the trajectory of the film’s genesis and distribution, but also the self-understanding and creative agendas of the other three artists involved in the scripting process—Janka himself, Wagenstein, and Wolf. Each of them brought into this project a different perspective on Feuchtwanger’s story, as shaped by their own respective experiences of exile and work within their respective state-controlled film industries, yet we will see how their teamwork under the auspices of Martha Feuchtwanger crystalized into an understanding of the artistic project that would continue to shape their own work.

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Walter Janka’s own role as an experienced DEFA dramaturge who channeled many literary adaptations and, above all, as a mediator during the scripting stage, should not be underestimated. Born in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I, he grew up as a committed communist, fought in the Spanish Civil War, and escaped persecution under the Third Reich. Shaped by his exile in Mexico and his work with authors across continents, his international experience and flair led him to the position of DEFA managing director in 1948. Little is known of Janka’s intervention in the studio’s business at the time, outside of Günter Jordan’s account of his reputation as a “partner of the artists” and an “insider in DEFA business like no other.”61 As discussed in chapter 2, Janka was a major figure in the interzonal film exchange during 1948 and 1949. Already at that time, as a studio head, he led numerous successful negotiations with Western partners and authors, as well as with the Soviet authorities.62 During his second DEFA mandate as dramaturge, Janka realized some of the most important films DEFA made in the period, mainly by using his contacts to exiled writers and their families. This is evident in projects in which he acted as supervisor and mediator of discussions of the screenplay, including adaptations of novels by other authors he had published in Mexico, such as Die Toten bleiben jung (The Dead Always Stay Young, 1968, dir. Joachim Kunert), an adaptation of Anna Seghers’s work, and Lotte in Weimar (1975, dir. Egon Günther), an adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novel. Janka found an outlet for his international aspirations in coproductions and habitually established and maintained networks with the artists he had worked with.63 During the filming of Die antike Münze (The Ancient Coin, 1965, dir. Vladimir Yanchev), a coproduction with Bulgaria and one of the only pictures released in 1965 after the Kahlschlag, he met Angel Wagenstein. According to the Bulgarian-Jewish author, they connected over their shared experiences of persecution both by the Nazi regime and by communist functionaries in their respective countries. This is how they decided to collaborate on the screenplay for Goya.64 Wagenstein’s initial decision to join Goya was motivated by his own lifelong experience of persecution, his close friendship with Wolf, and his frustrated attempts to express his artistic agenda domestically. Born in 1922 into a Jewish communist family, Wagenstein befriended Konrad Wolf in the 1950s during their studies at the Soviet State Institute of Cinematography. By the time he began work on Goya’s script, he had coauthored two other films with Wolf, Sterne (Stars, 1959, Bulgaria/ GDR) and a 1966 TV production based on Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella Der kleine Prinz (The Little Prince). In addition to his close per-

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sonal ties to Wolf and Janka, with Goya Wagenstein had also wanted to explore his family roots in sixteenth-century Spain and the Ladino folk tradition of his youth.65 Upon his agreement to adapt Feuchtwanger’s novel, however, another incident added to his determination to weave in Janka’s trial and imprisonment into Goya’s story and to ultimately write a film narrative that resonated with the contemporary fate of artists in Eastern Europe after 1968. As writer for the Bulgarian/Czech coproduction Aesop (1970, dir. Rangel Vulchanov), shot during the 1968 Prague Spring and subsequently banned, Wagenstein was harshly critiqued and expelled from the Bulgarian Communist Party.66 Of course, he was not able to openly reflect on this experience that, fatefully, had connected him even more to Janka and Feuchtwanger. However, when asked to contribute to a 1971 volume celebrating the premiere of Goya, he made sure to critique the endless revisions and rewriting, undertaken “sometimes for the sake of a small word” to satisfy censors’ demands and to “completely alter the meaning.”67 His account is not only resentful, but also in accord with Janka’s and Wolf’s essays in the same collection, which thematized the collective nature of the script process, as well as the mutual support the artists saw in each other, despite their national or cultural differences. During the long genesis of the script, Wagenstein’s understanding of the creative process shifted. Although he displayed vehement opposition to Feuchtwanger’s text changes in 1963, as reflected in Janka’s correspondence with her, the Jewish-Bulgarian author later came to view Goya as a project grounded in collective filmmaking.68 Wagenstein accepted numerous suggestions and amendments by East German and Soviet filmmakers and became aware of the teamwork that Goya required. Upon the film’s release in 1971, he viewed the scripting process for the coproduction as a complex symbiosis, acknowledging not only Feuchtwanger’s authorship but also the labor contributed by writers in three different languages. To Wagenstein, this multiplicity of languages translated into an “international flair” of the film during its shooting phase and release.69 He viewed the collective nature of the scripting process as a lived ideal of socialist solidarity, and he maintained that the collaboration continued to shape Wolf’s directing in Russian and German and the actors’ performances in “German, Russian, Polish, Spanish, Hungarian, Gypsy, and Serbo-Croatian . . . as well as Lithuanian.”70 At the same time, the writer’s awareness of the need for teamwork was dictated by the oppressive political situation in the socialist bloc, as described earlier. His encounter with Czech and East German filmmakers at a time of aesthetic experimentation censored by

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state structures inevitably informed his own writing agenda. Moreover, Wagenstein’s artistic development mirrored the evolution of the Goya project itself, as well as the director’s own path to conceptualizing and completing this film. For DEFA director Konrad Wolf, Goya had enormous significance as an “aesthetic experiment,” as he repeatedly called the film in interviews.71 Wolf saw great potential in the international production, but he was less interested in making an ostentatious historical film than in experimenting with a storyboard and thus achieving Massenwirkung (influence over the masses).72 For Wolf, the appeal of reaching a young, vibrant, international audience was inseparable from his perception of filmmaking as an artistic experiment. At the same time, he conceived his so-called experiment in terms of the artistic team’s work as an entity, such as his close collaboration with dramaturge Janka, writer Wagenstein, and adviser Feuchtwanger. Wolf’s cooperation with architect Alfred Hirschmeier on the storyboard provided further opportunities for carefully planning and weaving the artistic idea into each frame and shot. Both developed a visual draft of each scene and an iconography that would maximize the audience’s identification with the painter. Later, during the actual shooting, this gave Wolf some space for improvisation, and he was able to reconceptualize or reshoot important scenes from various angles while honoring the overall blueprint.73 Another aspect of Wolf’s concept of film as a collective project was his conviction that any cinematic work feeds on a past tradition and participates in the continuous flow of pictures. As a VGIK alumnus who regularly traveled to the USSR and maintained his contacts to former colleagues, Wolf was influenced by classical and contemporaneous Soviet cinema, and specifically, as already mentioned, by directors such as Sergei Eisenstein and Andrei Tarkovsky.74 For instance, Wolf’s cinematic use of crowd scenes at the beginning of Goya and in the tribunal scenes, his meticulous reconstruction of each scene in the storyboard, and his attention to extreme close-ups and the facial representation of affect are reminiscent of Eisenstein’s cinematic theory and techniques. In addition, as Larson Powell suggests, Wolf’s Goya and Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1966, USSR) shared the agenda of creating a film that would attract international acclaim while engaging with an “artist’s development from disengagement to concern with the people and a committed message” via his art.75 Although Andrei Rublev was not officially released in the GDR, it was screened internally for DEFA filmmakers, and interviews related to the film in Soviet film journals were accessible to Wolf.76 Therefore, it is hardly a coincidence that the East

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German director and his team borrowed from Andrei Rublev’s aesthetics in terms of mise-en-scène and shot composition, nor that both films climax in a programmatic montage of the artists’ work and include an “ending underpinned by non-diegetic music.”77 Thus, Wolf adopted Tarkovsky’s idea to survey the artist’s most challenging ideas in a pastiche of artifacts accompanied not by a controlling voiceover, but rather by music that suggested connections between themes in the biopic.78 Of course, such an invitation of the viewers to reflect on these ideas without guiding them in the process was, in its own right, a borrowing from the Nouvelle Vague, but in the context of socialist filmmaking it gained a new dimension—depriving the censors of a palpable language to critique. The parallels between the filmmakers along these lines ran even deeper: cognizant of the difficulties for their controversial projects, both directors sought to offset criticism by stressing their films’ collaborative nature via script coauthoring and importance within state socialism.79 Nevertheless, Tarkovsky’s and Wolf’s films represented an artist who gradually disengaged from his service to oppressive power structures and dedicated his art to the people—an agenda that in both cases was attacked as subversive. In other words, even under the guise of compliance with socialist realism, this agenda could not escape the attention of DEFA and Lenfilm hardliners at the rough-cut screening in 1970. And yet, like Tarkovsky’s masterpiece, and despite an initial unfavorable assessment, Goya’s premiere at a renowned international film festival was not halted. More importantly, the dialogue that Wolf established not only with Tarkovsky but also with his contemporaries in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are key to understanding of the project’s constant vacillation between political approval and criticism.

Goya between Political Mandate and New Wave Cinemas Like its screenplay, Goya’s production was shaped by negotiations and tensions that stemmed from the urgency for the biopic as a genre attending to GDR’s recognition and its critical potential similar to biopics of the New Waves. Once Janka sent the finalized screenplay to Hans Bentzien, GDR minister of culture after Abusch between 1961 and 1965, the big-budget film was put on hold because sufficient financial resources could not be mustered by DEFA alone.80 Over the following two years, from February 1964 until March 1965, Janka and Wolf sounded out partners in West Germany, France, and Spain for signs of interest in a coproduction. However, most producers “expressed a strong reservation toward material that could be described as a ‘serious historical genre’ ” and were especially cautious about making artist films as

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“in recent years they had difficulties in distributing them on the film market.”81 Beyond economic considerations, could this unwillingness have also been a response to a film that seemingly tackled specifically Eastern European issues? Was the film’s message perceived as rather too conservative, too caught up in its own political context? On paper, Goya certainly exhibited tendencies foreign to both mainstream and arthouse cinema in the West (complex and fraud with political content dialogues, overly long static scenes) where film art had moved on from grand historical costume dramas. Yet Wolf, Janka, and Wagenstein had conceived the film for international export, and—as we will see later— it did, indeed, earn acclaim not only in Europe, but also in Japan and, to a limited extent, even in the United States. Goya and its screenplay, indeed, come closer to Eastern European New Waves than to Western art-house or commercial cinema. As Larson Powell suggests, “in Central and Eastern Europe the politique des auteurs had a particular sharpness about it: it became politics of the nation in contest with socialist internationalism.”82 Certainly, the preoccupation with and rewriting of national histories was a trademark of the Polish, Hungarian, and Czech cinematic avant-garde of the 1960s and 1970s.83 Many of these films were either historical dramas that transposed and thus camouflaged conflicts of the present into the past, or films that translated the burning questions of history, especially in regard to World War II, into the present forlorn every day in socialism. The response to history, however, led to a “double personality” or “two political positions” that marked the tension within New Waves cinemas, namely between artistic innovation and limitations thereof in the context of a state-owned film industry without any alternative.84 Film bureaucrats were not always averse to assessing a film in terms of its projected commercial success, given the fact that cinema’s task under socialism was to draw the masses into the cinemas and to educate them into socialist ideals, but also simply given economic interests especially with coproductions and films for export. As Jonathan Owen shows, Czechoslovak New Wave films, though experimental, were often tolerated by authorities precisely because of the prestige that they earned at foreign film festivals.85 Czech scholar Michal Bregant, quoted by Owen, even goes as far as to suggest that “the state needed positive representation on the outside and the so-called young cinema of the Sixties, which got an exceptionally positive reception around the world, was used as evidence of the liberal basis of communist cultural politics.”86 In other words, Bregant argues that the New Wave films—despite their critical or subversive value and aesthetic innovation—were appropriated within the dominant stream. Indeed, as we follow Goya’s protracted

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production, we see such an example for contained criticism. Similarly, Peter Hames maintains that the Eastern European New Waves, targeted existing socialism, yet “they were not ‘underground’ films produced on behalf of the working class or in ‘resistance’ to the system, but films paid for by the government.”87 Hames’s point is well taken: virtually all feature films in Eastern Europe were to be distributed through the official channels or shown at festivals. Their production, consequently, outside of the system of state-owned film studios, was impossible. At the same time, bureaucrats perceived these films as a sort of art film made by an elite and destined to be consumed by a similar elite—for example, filmmakers at festivals—and not by the masses. While directors of the New Waves were often encouraged to submit their work to international festivals, a common measure of censorship was to limit their films’ distribution to a handful of cinemas, so domestic audiences’ access was restricted. Alternatively, where reception was not to be halted, the socialist governments tried to appropriate these films in propagandistic tone. A prime example was Wajda’s 1958 Popiół i diament (Ashes and Diamonds), but later works by Wajda or Jerzy Skolimowski, as Paul Coates demonstrates, were usurped by Polish censors.88 As we will see in Goya’s case, such practices were commonplace at DEFA, too. Moreover, in the context of proliferating subversive literature in the 1960s, many avant-garde directors turned to adaptations, yet, as scholars agree, the interpretation and reception of political criticism were often possible only for readers familiar with the adapted texts. While this was a form of self-protection on the filmmakers’ part, specific references to the Polish or Czechoslovak context did not translate easily across the East-West divide. This is why, Owen suggests, “criticism could be slipped into commercial or, in the case of Czechoslovakia, officially approved genres provided it did not derail the overall thrust.”89 These tensions between encoding and foregrounding a critical message, indeed, reverberated in the fraud with conflict internal screening of Wolf’s finished biopic of Goya, but they also shaped its entire production history. The essence of Wolf’s project was captured in politicized language already at the scripting phase and its ideological value was continuously foregrounded by those in power. In May 1966, dramaturge Klaus Wischnewski wrote to the new DEFA studio director, Franz Bruk. In his letter he suggested the official agenda of the studio, namely to appropriate Janka’s and Wolf’s project within the GDR’s state propaganda: The film Goya may become a great and effective testimony to our socialist and humanistic mission. In spite of some reservations commonly expressed by Western producers, such as “the genre is inappropriate,” “too

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serious,” and “the American biopic of Goya seven years ago was a flop,” it has the potential to achieve international acclaim. . . . Furthermore, the film could aid us in acquiring the rights for other important works from our literary heritage that are now sold for West Marks to incompetent West German directors (Thomas Mann!). Instead, these projects can be given to us in the future so we can adapt them according to our national concept and duty.90

Rejecting earlier market considerations proceeding from partnering with West Germans (Artur Brauner), Wischnewski announced Goya’s new iteration: a coproduction with Eastern European countries with the aim of producing a film for markets exclusively in Soviet satellites, including Asian and South American states. The Central Film Administration took the project into its hands and attracted no less than Anton Ackermann as project adviser. Ackermann brought into sharp relief the old socialist realist perspective of art as a weapon. According to Ackermann, the Central Film Administration, and the GDR Ministry of Culture, Goya was supposed to represent a “valuable socialist film of the historical genre,” a film that would show the “big artist with the revolutionary masses.”91 Goya’s viability as a monumental production, however, hinged on political factors. As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, by the late 1960s the film’s message about the social role of art had become quite contentious as it resonated with the sociopolitical context not only in the GDR, but also throughout the entire socialist bloc, where artists had started publicly addressing their struggles for freedom of expression and their isolation from politics.92 As he related in several interviews, Wolf began shaping the storyboard for the film under the influence of several contemporaneous Soviet films, among which were modernist examples such as Eldar Shengelaia’s Arachveulebrivi Gamopena (An Unusual Exhibition, 1968, USSR) and Tengiz Abuladze’s Vedreba (Entreaty, 1967, USSR).93 Once completed, Goya met the Lenfilm officials’ refusal to approve the distribution. Alexander Dymschitz, as mentioned above, demanded not only reediting of the closing shot, but also reshooting of a scene in which Goya is plagued by his ghosts, a scene involving complex modernist montage and the use of dissonant music. Lenfilm’s managing director, Ilya Nikolaevich Kisselev, drew on Dymschitz’ criticism and insisted on substantial revisions of the tribunal scene. In Maria Rosario’s revolutionary song before the Inquisition, Kisselev saw an “overdone solo performance” that focused on the individual as opposed to the group. He also read Goya’s predicaments with the Grand Inquisitor at the end of Wolf’s film as a subversive statement along the lines of

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“I am an anti-communist. Even though all of you think I am a communist. The Caprichos reveal his [Goya’s] inner artistic attitude.”94 Indeed, such remarks behind closed doors illustrate the above-described tension that Polish and Czech modernist directors also encountered within their respective state-owned institutions. Nevertheless, in both contexts the films were not prevented from release, but rather reappropriated within the socialist power discourse. Ironically, Martha Feuchtwanger played a central role for both the film’s promotion as a masterpiece of socialist film art and its subsequent international distribution. Feuchtwanger’s dual role for establishing Goya’s reputation as a classic of socialist artists’ struggle and as a cultural mediator in the promotion of Goya in the United States and the West became evident in heavily orchestrated state visits in the GDR and the Soviet Union. She had visited East Germany during the final stages of scriptwriting in spring 1969 to finalize the text with Wolf and Janka, but her visit in summer 1971 was taken to another level.95 This prominent guest’s journey began in July, in East Berlin, where she received the Goldener Stern der Völkerfreundschaft (Golden Star of People’s Friendship)—the highest honor awarded in the GDR to intellectuals and politicians who promoted socialist ideals abroad.96 Feuchtwanger’s visit was meticulously reported on television as she toured important sites of German history and heritage, such as Sanssouci, and met with formerly exiled writers and artists such as Alexander Abusch and Hermann Budzislawski. She then departed for the Soviet capital as one of the guests of honor at the seventh Moscow Film Festival. Once again she was a TV sensation, and as Manfred Flügge observes, “for the first time since Stalin’s era a foreign visitor was escorted and driven to the Kremlin.”97 Feuchtwanger was the guest of honor at the Moscow Film Festival for Goya’s choreographed premiere. The film’s screening in an overcrowded cinema was preceded by a long speech that mentioned her generosity, after which she was invited on stage, where she was presented with a huge bouquet and surrounded by the actors in the coproduction.98 Undoubtedly, both the GDR and the USSR played up Feuchtwanger’s visit to the advantage of their own ideological agenda, which overshadowed the prolonged debates on the film’s contested ending. While Wajda received the golden award for directing, and while films from the USSR, Italy, and Japan carried away the top honors, Goya received the jury’s special mention prize. Although this was certainly a modest recognition for a nine-year-long coproduction realized by seven socialist countries, the prize nevertheless positioned DEFA alongside accomplished international masterpieces (Figure 4.4).

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Figure 4.4. Moscow, 1971, press conference on Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis. From left to right: Marta Feuchtwanger, Donatas Banionis, and Konrad Wolf. Photographer: Günter Linke. Rights holder: Filmmuseum Potsdam. Photo print: Akademie des Künste.

Feuchtwanger’s Role as Cultural Mediator Feuchtwanger continued to actively mediate between DEFA and interested parties in the United States for the release of the cinematic adaptation of her husband’s novel. Without her promotional efforts, Goya’s distribution in the United States would have been unthinkable. Detailed correspondence in Feuchtwanger’s and in Wolf’s archives suggests that she made efforts to promote Goya primarily among intellectual circles.99 More importantly, Feuchtwanger’s mediation followed negotiations over the GDR’s recognition after the Four Power Agreement on Berlin of September 1971, the month when Goya premiered in GDR cinemas. During these negotiations, Wolf traveled the Western hemisphere to show his film in Sweden, France, Finland, Italy, and even Japan. Just before the Basic Treaty between East and West Germany that brought sovereignty to the GDR in December 1972 was signed, Wolf wrote a letter to Feuchtwanger sharing with her his success with

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Goya. He even hoped to visit Feuchtwanger in her “legendary castle” in California, a dream and a “sheer miracle,” as he rightly put it. Toward the end of the letter, however, he lamented that the film mostly appeared in special screenings for selected audiences and thus did not reach the masses, as he had envisioned. The director turned to his patron in California with the plea that she take part in DEFA’s ongoing negotiations with Columbia Pictures in New York; the company had already received a subtitled copy but remained silent. “It is of utmost importance,” Wolf wrote in closing, “that the film receives a swift distribution to a wide international audience.”100 His letter unexpectedly set the wheel in motion, even though commercial distribution within the United States needed time. Marta Feuchtwanger’s investment in Goya, therefore, went well beyond her intervention during scriptwriting. In fact, she became a cultural ambassador for DEFA films in the United States. While chapter 2 focused on mediator figures in the film industry such as film financier Mehl and producers Brauner, Koppel, and Durniok, Goya’s reception history sheds light on a different type of mediation between East and West. DEFA’s partners in the 1940s interzonal film exchange or in license trade had primarily financial and business-related motives. In contrast, Marta Feuchtwanger was driven by personal motives and used her connections to spread the word about the “other” German cinema. At times, she was aided in this role by GDR authorities, yet often she had to fight with them for faster delivery of the material and to enlighten them in the different priorities that governed the U.S. film business circles. Nevertheless, after the GDR recognition she received her own personal copy of the film in 1973 and put it to use.101 Initially, she recommended Goya to Max Laemmle, a German exile who owned a theater chain and distributed European masterpieces in the United States, but this plan failed due to the Soviets’ objection.102 The creative mediator found another way. Feuchtwanger had earlier arranged for screenings of Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children, 1961, dir. Peter Palitzsch, Manfred Wekwerth, DDR), DEFA’s quite controversial adaptation of Bertolt Brecht’s eponymous play, at American universities.103 After the success of Mother Courage, Feuchtwanger applied the same strategy to Goya’s promotion. She wrote to several universities, and the University of Alaska agreed to extend an invitation to DEFA director Wolf—and that was the miracle he had been waiting for.104 In the meantime, Feuchtwanger organized a closed screening at the highly respected American Film Institute in Los Angeles, where she tried to win the support of prominent German exiles.105 Goya officially premiered in

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March 1975 at the University of Southern California, where it proved to be “an extraordinary success,” according to the dean of graduate studies, and was subsequently shown at the University of Alaska and the State University of New York.106 Feuchtwanger’s mediation role gained diplomatic scale when she intervened before the U.S. Embassy in East Berlin for Wolf’s visit to Alaska as well as Villa Aurora in California.107 The director was able to witness the screenings of his work in Alaska and California and even to meet with the exile community of Feuchtwanger’s friends in Los Angeles. Wolf’s visit made waves as both the Committee for Friendship with the GDR in New York and the embassy of the GDR in Washington followed suit and organized their own screenings of Goya.108 After the film’s successful reception among academics, cineastes, and intellectuals, the newly established embassy of the GDR in Washington, DC, contacted Feuchtwanger to extend thanks and to introduce their institution as her new partner.109 Marta Feuchtwanger continued to work on the U.S. version of the film, as her DEFA contract postulated, with the cooperation of Wolf; by 1977 she had succeeded in bringing a synchronized version to several large U.S. cities.110 Thus, although Wolf’s film never reached the masses in the West, as was his wish, it significantly impacted the GDR’s image and presentation abroad.

Goya’s Legacy in DEFA Biopics Goya’s production strategies, financial vicissitudes, experimental aesthetics, and international reception reverberated in subsequent DEFA biopics. DEFA and Eastern European artists continued to question their relationship to power, to revise their artistic project, and to imbue their biopics with covert political messages. Though not officially coproduced, Horst Seemann’s Beethoven—Tage aus einem Leben (1976) cashed in on the widespread acclaim that the multinational cast in Wolf’s film had enjoyed. Like Goya, Seemann’s film “sought to demythologize the concept of the artist,” as Seán Allan points out, by depicting the composer not as a distant genius, but “as a finite being of flesh and blood.”111 At the same time, Beethoven’s ambiguous ending was vividly debated among DEFA board members, while film reviewers celebrated its layered reflection on the role of artists within socialist society.112 As a sequel to Goya and Beethoven, DEFA contemplated in 1977 a biopic on Prussian dramatist Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811).113 Thematically, Kleist’s life story resonated with Goya’s struggle against rigid power structures and Beethoven’s quest for individuality. In terms of conceptualization,

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several DEFA professionals involved in Goya’s production—dramaturges Klaus Wischnewski and Dieter Wolf, as well as former DEFA studio manager Albert Wilkening—supported the project. However, in the wake of the Eighth East German Writer’s Congress in May 1978 and the subsequent expatriation of Wolf Biermann, a prominent dissident songwriter, many DEFA artists began questioning their relationship to the GDR state and even considered relocation to the West. Given this atmosphere, the Kleist biopic was rejected at the screenplay stage; all efforts to attract Yugoslavian or Polish partners for a coproduction had failed as well. Seven years later, following the relative liberalization of film policy in the mid-1980s, Hermann Zschoche was able to realize one of DEFA’s last artist biopics, Hälfte des Lebens (Half of Life, 1985), whose subject was the German poet Johann Friedrich Hölderlin. Zschoche’s film shares with Goya and later scientist biopics several elements in terms of production history and aesthetics. Zschoche himself wrote the script, crafting a controversial narrative of the poet’s isolation and recurrent depression whose bleak ending came under the scrutiny of the film’s reviewers.114 Released thirteen years after Goya, this biopic nevertheless touched the same nerve as the texts of Wolf, Janka, Wagenstein, and Feuchtwanger: the artist’s struggle for freedom of expression against an authoritarian regime. DEFA artist biopics of the 1970s had warned against the growing discord between GDR artists’ agenda and their state-imposed mandate, between social expectations and individual desire. By the 1980s, however, the genre had shifted in favor of an increasingly subjective, more introverted representation of the artist as an individual rather disengaged from the state’s expectations.115 One of the young DEFA directors who revamped the DEFA biopic in the 1980s was Rainer Simon, Wolf’s assistant director in his autobiographical picture Ich war neunzehn (I Was Nineteen, 1968). Though not directly involved in Goya’s production, Simon learned his métier from Wolf and heard plenty about his negotiations with film functionaries, coproduction partners, and censors. Most importantly, Wolf taught Simon an inclusive approach to filmmaking, which he implemented in his subsequent films. “I have always tried to involve as many colleagues as I could in the conceptual work on the film and in the process of screenplay writing,” Simon admitted before describing his close relationship to Wolf as his mentor with the phrase “Film is teamwork [emphasis and English term in original].”116 In 1983 Simon embarked on making his own biopic, Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, which like Wolf’s film would grow into a coproduction, this time among East Germany, West Germany, and Ecuador.

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Goya and Die Besteigung des Chimborazo share several similarities that reveal Wolf’s influence on his assistant director. On the narrative level, both films focus on a universal genius as a human being with strengths and weaknesses and on the discrepancies between rigid court norms, on the one hand, and artistic freedom of expression or passion for scientific truth on the other. Goya and Humboldt are strong-willed characters who harbor an innate rejection of authority, yet both attempt to escape their conflict with power—not by revolutionary means, but by retreating to the mountains where the privileges and the constraints of high society are exchanged for the company of simple and sincere people. On a cinematic level, both films are defined by a slowly evolving chronological plot, interrupted by flashbacks or abstract montage, extreme close-ups of the characters, and the recurrent motif of the return to nature. On a production level, the multiplicity of languages spoken in both films (Spanish, French, and German in Die Besteigung des Chimborazo), as well as shooting locations (Simon’s film was shot in East and West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, France, Colombia, and Spain) served to increase production and entertainment values and to appeal to wider international audiences. For all its similarities to Goya, Die Besteigung des Chimborazo also bears the marks of a younger generation of DEFA directors who more radically attempted to come to terms with their contemporaneous political situation. Kollektiv 63 (Collective 63), as they named themselves, wanted to create critical films about real life—life as seen on the street, unembellished and unidealized. These young filmmakers’ approach was clearly inspired by the Italian Neorealism of the 1950s and the French cinéma vérité of the 1960s, two movements that extolled everyday aesthetics and privileged authentic dialogue, lay performers, and the veracity of street action. French auteurs, such as Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut, as well as Italian neorealist directors Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, and Michelangelo Antonioni, also significantly shaped Collective 63’s new aesthetic. In his memoirs, Simon recalls his colleagues at the GDR Film Academy in Potsdam taking their handheld cameras to factories and parks, shooting on location with actors and with amateurs—with GDR citizens.117 In addition to Western avant-garde movements, this new generation watched and discussed progressive Soviet cinema of the 1960s as present in the works by Mikhail Romm, Sergey Bondarchuk, and Sergei Yutkevich. And, of course, Simon and his peers had seen Andrzej Wajda’s Popiół i diament and Milos Forman’s Černý Petr (Black Peter, 1964, CSSR) and openly admired the innovative work of the Polish and Czechoslovak New Waves.118 The young film students at the GDR Film Academy in

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the early 1970s drew on all these influences to combine fictional with documentary elements of storytelling in the so-called DEFA dokumentarer Spielfilm (documentary feature film). The documentary feature film was an attempt to reform the Gegenwartsfilm by refocusing it on individual stories, social problems, and more-subjective camerawork, thus freeing it from the remnants of socialist realism. Wolf who at the time was their professor at the GDR Film Academy, initially praised this innovative movement, yet he also quickly realized the ideological trap in such free art. He thus challenged the young directors to find their unique style in a statement of implicit warning: [Lothar] Warneke’s, [Roland] Gräf’s, and [Rainer] Simon’s films mirror the facts of our life. They find inspiration and creative impulse in the detail, in everyday reality, and thus they are on the right path! Indeed, they still need to reach a level of creativity, where a multiplicity of observations—something an author or a director cannot easily recreate—has to flow into a wider artistic statement, into the big idea, into their distinctive signature. I believe that they might be still under the spell of their “first love” of detail, yet this neat fascination with everyday poetics does not encompass enough the time-shaping sociopolitical background or the urgent moral questions.119

Twelve years later Simon succeeded in finding his own signature, yet not without first experiencing deep disappointment with the ideologically imposed limitations on the Gegenwartsfilm and witnessing the collapse of Collective 63. “We were no dogmatists,” Simon reminisced in 2001, yet over the years he became aware of the naiveté with which this group had approached their cinematic careers.120 After a series of screenplays for Gegenwartsfilme were brutally rejected, Simon resolved to make only films set in the past. From his Collective 63 days, as well as from his work with Wolf, he kept the understanding that film art is collective and the conviction that the director shares equal responsibility for the screenplay with the writer. Simon’s first successful experimental film was Das Luftschiff (The Airship, 1983, GDR), the fictional story of a lunatic genius and Icarus-like innovator, Franz Xaver Stannebein. Set at the turn of the twentieth century and narrated from his grandson Chico’s perspective, the plot revolves around the fairy tale–like escapades of the inventor in Germany, Spain, and South America. Stannebein’s dream to build an airship is appropriated by the military at first, and then shattered by disbelief and ridicule. Borrowing generic elements from the family saga, children’s film, and costume drama, the film displayed a stunning array of unusual (at least for DEFA films) characters and innovative visual and sound

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aesthetics clearly influenced by the experimental Czech and Polish New Waves.121 Das Luftschiff was a key film in Simon’s career not only from an artistic point of view, but also in terms of production strategies. The film attracted the attention of two well-known investors who at the time traded DEFA licenses with the West German television broadcaster ZDF: Erich Mehl and Manfred Durniok. Mehl and Durniok had invested in a company under the name Allianz Filmproduktion that subsequently sponsored Simon’s trip to Spain to shoot some of Das Luftschiff ’s most important scenes; even more importantly, they facilitated the director’s longstanding work with ZDF for his Die Besteigung des Chimborazo project and later films. Toro-Film, the official coproducer of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, was one of the smaller subsidiaries of Allianz Filmproduktion. As Simon recalled, at that time DEFA-Außenhandel had increased its lucrative business with West German partners in the 1980s, which became more and more visible to the directors themselves and encouraged them to seek support for multinational projects.122 For all these reasons, Das Luftschiff can be seen as a predecessor of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, the film that Simon himself saw as a personal watershed since it profoundly changed the trajectory of his artistic career, as well as his entire understanding of filmmaking (Figure 4.5).

Figure 4.5. Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1989). Director Rainer Simon in conversation with lead actor Jan Josef Liefers. Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Wolfgang Ebert, Dietram Kleist.

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Die Besteigung des Chimborazo Simon’s path to Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, the last film he would make before East Germany’s collapse in 1989, was a hard one. First, the filmmaker wanted to resume his work with literary author Paul Kanut Schäfer, a partnership that for DEFA seemed quite problematic. In 1980 both artists had coauthored the screen adaptation of Jadup (published in 1975 in East Berlin), Schäfer’s critique of the GDR novel. Due to its provocative message, Jadup und Boel ( Jadup and Boel, 1980/1988, GDR) was subjected to prolonged discussions at the screenplay stage, but Simon and Schäfer’s team still managed to squeeze it through the various stages of censorship, mainly because Simon had been commissioned to make the film by the chief DEFA dramaturge. As Simon explains, many films in the 1980s, as well as throughout DEFA’s history, did not emerge organically from a director’s idea, but came from the dramaturge’s table.123 Janka’s idea to adapt Goya is a case in point. Once Jadup und Boel was completed, however, top SED functionaries banned the picture just after its premiere in 1980. The film was shelved until the gradual warming of the political situation in 1988.124 The second obstacle on the artists’ “hard path to knowledge” with their Humboldt project was that the scientist’s legacy had already been harnessed in support of the GDR state. To avoid a breach with the politicized public discourse surrounding Humboldt, Simon and Schäfer chose to focus on the anthropologist’s journey to Cuba, another socialist country. Once they began to research Humboldt’s biography and to weigh decisions about plot and characterization, however, they faced a dilemma. On the one hand, Simon and Schäfer were fascinated by the “Prussian gone wild,” with his “otherness and homosexuality.”125 On the other hand, the Central Film Administration and the Humboldt Research Committee at the GDR Science Academy expected an ideologically innocuous picture.126 Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) was an iconic figure in German history, cultural production, and self-understanding, and, therefore, as Nicolaas Rupke explains, “with each major shift in politics, a new image of Humboldt was created.”127 According to Rupke, both East and West Germany appropriated the leading scientist of the nineteenth century for their own national projects—he was seen either as a revolutionary figure, an aristocrat turned commoner by choice, or as a world traveler, universal genius, and mediator among nations and continents.128 In both East and West Humboldt was the “good German” who represented an ideal of universal learning and nonmilitaristic ac-

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tions, the pursuit of scientific success, and, ultimately, the revival of the German humanist heritage to address contemporary concerns. While Gregor Schuchardt argues that the scientific discourse on Humboldt in the GDR was, in fact, less driven by state mandates than by the quest for a more general theory or thesis in his work, this is hardly true of the depictions of Humboldt in media and film.129 As Allan has pointed out, East German cinematic output on Humboldt’s persona and work was made highly contingent on the socialist state project to recuperate Humboldt’s dream of a world without borders—in other words, to parade the GDR’s internationalism as part of its plea for recognition in the West.130 And yet, as Allan himself argues, the classic socialist expression of this project, Karl Gass’s 1960 documentary Kosmos. Erinnerungen an Alexander von Humboldt (Kosmos—Remembering Alexander von Humboldt, GDR), could not be more different from Simon’s 1989 film.131 Die Besteigung des Chimborazo comes closer to Goya’s critical representation of the dilemmas that an artist faces in his entanglement with power. Humboldt’s escape at age thirty from Prussian society, which suffocated him with its norms, replicated Goya’s journey to the mountain as a sage. Each film’s criticism of current political predicaments could be read as a critique of the stagnated socialist state, yet the filmmakers managed to convince functionaries of the opposite, namely that Die Besteigung Chimborazo and Goya would elevate the image of the GDR abroad. This motivation, together with the strategy of coauthoring the script and seeking coproduction with others, was the key to the successful realization of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, as it had been for Goya. One difference, however, as we will discuss later, remained in the reception of both films. While Goya was clearly appropriated within the official discourse of the GDR after its recognition in 1972, as we saw in the attempts to distribute it in the United States, the premiere of Simon and Schäfer’s film was eclipsed by the historical moment of Berlin Wall’s fall. Thus, Die Besteigung des Chimborazo’s fate was to remain a powerful visual commentary on the artists’ rebellion against the ailing authoritarian regime. Die Besteigung des Chimborazo depicts Alexander von Humboldt (Jan Joseph Liefers) following his resolute departure from his position in the Prussian government to travel the world. His life is narrated from 1788 until 1802, from his aspirations as a nineteen-year-old to escape his dull existence in Prussia to the culminating moment of his Latin American expedition: the unsuccessful attempt to climb Chimborazo on June 23, 1802. Although the film follows Humboldt’s life in roughly chronological order, the biographical episodes do not form a unified stream

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of narration, thus emphasizing the discrepancy between Humboldt’s personal desires and social obligations. The film opens with stunning close-ups of an erupting volcano and lava masses, followed by a peaceful, romanticized view of the remote peak and aerial shots of the mountain. By depicting the ancient eruption of Chimborazo (thirteen centuries before Humboldt’s expedition), the opening evokes a universal time continuum and elevates the story above the short-term demands imposed by family and state. Die Besteigung des Chimborazo ends with similar shots of the peak, which remains distant, veiled in clouds, while Humboldt gazes at his unfulfilled dream. The narrative takes us on a journey from Henriette Herz’s salon in 1788 Berlin, where Humboldt and other guests complain and joke about Prussia as the suffocating corset of Western Europe. Contemporaries could have interpreted these sarcastic conversations as a critique of the GDR state, yet Simon made sure to buffer any provocative statements by filling the screen with well-designed costumes and, more importantly, well-known physiognomies. As Michael Grisko suggests, some of the GDR’s most important film critics and historians were cast as salon guests—a gesture that he reads as subversive, yet we may also interpret it as a strategy to guide the film over censorship hurdles.132 The salon scenes convey Humboldt’s increasing alienation from court life and his desire to break free, both reminiscent of Goya’s plight. After touring the Netherlands and England, Humboldt finds his travel companion, Aimé Bonpland (Olivier Pascalin), in France and both of them head to Spain. At the Spanish court in 1799—the year when Goya achieved the highest rank available to a court painter—Humboldt is graced by King Carlos IV’s (Helmut Straßburger) benevolence and receives authorization for his expedition to the Americas. His ambition to reach the summit of Chimborazo becomes the heart of the second part of the film, where he meets and falls in love with Carlos de Montúfar (Luis Miguel Campos), a free spirit and Humboldt’s soul mate. Together with their indigenous leader, Pacho (Pedro Sisa), all three men attempt the ascent with the locals’ blessing. The film ends with closeups of the wounded and bleeding faces of the mountaineers, whose eyes nevertheless remain bright with anticipation as they slowly progress through the snow. Simon and Schäfer imbued their film with striking contrasts on the visual level that mirror the protagonist’s interior conflicts. As Grisko mentions, this correspondence between form and content gave the film a documentary-like quality (in the spirit of the documentary feature film) and challenged generic boundaries, positioning Die Besteigung

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des Chimborazo at the intersection of historical drama, adventure, and biopic.133 Locked in relentless conflict with his older brother, Wilhelm, and distressed by his mother’s indifference to his scientific passions, the young Humboldt longs to escape his conformist environment in the Prussian bureaucracy and to travel to distant shores and continents. Accordingly, Die Besteigung des Chimborazo contrasts the claustrophobic, cluttered spaces of the Old World with long shots of wide-open Andean landscapes accompanied by numinous indigenous music. This contrast is further underscored by frequent flashbacks to Humboldt’s youth in Berlin, presented in black-and-white sequences, tinted later by hand, that are set against the vibrant color sequences in Ecuador. Frequent montage as well as abrupt cuts at the end of some scenes disrupt the narrative flow. The visual distinction between old and new worlds, and European and indigenous cultures, places Humboldt’s candid interaction with the indigenas (indigenous people) at the core of the cinematic narrative. Shot on location in the village of La Moyta, Ecuador, Simon’s film enlists indigenous people as lay actors and offers an ethnographic view of their culture, lifestyle, and everyday practices. Humboldt enters a dialogue with the indigenous people not as a scientific genius confronting his subjects, but as a person fueled by youthful curiosity

Figure 4.6. Film crew and film critics involved in the making of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1989). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Wolfgang Ebert, Dietram Kleist.

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and egalitarian convictions. Moreover, Simon’s character finds freedom in Ecuador, where he indulges his passion for experimentation and openly lives his homosexuality.134 The image of the liberated scientist in Die Besteigung des Chimborazo and the motifs of travel, exploration of exotic landscapes, and intercultural encounter appealed to a generation of younger moviegoers in the GDR and the Eastern bloc—an appeal this coproduction unequivocally shared with Goya.

The Writing Team of Paul Kanut Schäfer and Rainer Simon In a film treatment dated March 30, 1982, Paul Kanut Schäfer envisioned Chimborazo “not as a museum-like exhibition of German heritage,” but as an inspiration for youth to “create their own life, develop their own character, and to leave a meaningful impact on society.”135 Indeed, this agenda connected their film not only to the European avant-garde movements’ impulse, but also to Wolf’s own desire to reach out to the younger audiences with Goya. Though Schäfer and Simon sought to foreground the young Humboldt’s adventures, there was nevertheless an attempt to locate Die Besteigung des Chimborazo within the discourse of Humboldt’s legacy and Enlightenment project as important to the socialist cause. In other words, as in Goya’s case this biopic again had to be appropriated by the power discourse. In 1984 the head of the already mentioned Humboldt Research Committee, Kurt Biermann, recommended the picture as a “reclamation of Humboldt’s legacy” and “an asset of utmost importance for our foreign policy in communicating the GDR’s maintenance of Humboldt’s heritage.”136 The authors of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo had to respond to these demands, and one way to do that was to claim authenticity and historical truth, at least for the justification of their project. In addition, as we saw already, they had learned from the time they worked on Jadup und Boel that criticism had to be contained and encoded. Schäfer and Simon pursued their work on the script with meticulous precision, as is evident in a volume they cowrote and coedited.137 To compile their own Humboldt biography, they researched his diaries and studied thirteen other important personalities depicted in the film, such as Henriette Herz, various Prussian leaders, and the scientist’s travel companions. Schäfer and Simon’s first literary script looked like a scrapbook, because the text was interspersed with images of the above-mentioned personalities and excerpts from letters by Humboldt, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christoph Martin Wieland, and other contemporaries, as well as sketches and maps from the researcher’s

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trips.138 Particular attention was given to Humboldt’s early letters, where he reflected on the oppressive nature of Prussian society and its norms, which motivated his journeys. The coauthors also collected catalogues featuring technical innovations and measuring apparatuses invented during Humboldt’s time, images and postcards illustrating early nineteenth-century fashions, samples of Humboldt’s writings and diaries, and other evidence of contemporary life. This was not the first time Simon had worked with a literary author and cowritten the script for a film. The director coauthored with Günter Kaltofen a screenplay of the fairy tale Wie heiratet man einen König (How Do You Marry a King, 1968, GDR). In the case of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, however, his teamwork with Schäfer extended beyond the scripting process. It was Schäfer’s idea to develop a film about Humboldt, since he had edited and published Humboldt’s Die Wiederentdeckung Amerikas (America’s Rediscovery) in 1959. Simon not only respected Schäfer as a coauthor, but also wanted him to participate in decisions about casting and scouting for shooting locations, and, in a sense, to join him in following in Humboldt’s steps as both authors internalized their project as symbolic of their artistic legacy. Simon’s teamwork with Schäfer on Die Besteigung des Chimborazo’s script is well documented in his autobiography, Fernes Land, as well as in his diary of their trip to South America. The director repeatedly refers to “us” or “Schäfer and I” when he talks about the stages of making both Jadup und Boel and Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, which suggests his conceptualization of film authorship as shared responsibility—a position shaped, as we recall, during his apprenticeship with Wolf.139 The director-writer cooperation began with outlining the plot and creating the literary screenplay, and ended with scouting trips to France, Spain, Cuba, and Ecuador to look for shooting locations. Schäfer’s involvement in Die Besteigung des Chimborazo was unprecedented for a DEFA screenwriter, whose responsibilities, as we have seen earlier, usually ended with the approval of the screenplay; after that stage, the director consulted with his set architect and cameraman on the final script or the storyboard. Schäfer, however, not only participated in the selection of shooting locations, but also met indigenous people in Ecuador and helped cast them as extras. Specifically, when Simon recounts their trip to Ecuador in this diary, the director uses “us”—atypical language for a journal—to give voice not only to his own, but often also to Schäfer’s experiences in Colombia and Ecuador, as captured in numerous quotes.140 Despite their age difference of nineteen years, Simon and Schäfer developed a close friendship that grew out of their working relationship

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and was grounded in an understanding that author and director shared responsibility for the entire film. Simon and Schäfer understood their work on Die Besteigung des Chimborazo as a collaborative project, and—like Wagenstein and Wolf in the 1960s—they were open to being inspired by others. When they first contemplated their Humboldt film in 1983 the only place where DEFA would be permitted to film in South America was socialist Cuba, which became the focal point for the entire plot. However, Cuban filmmakers declined to participate in a DEFA coproduction, which meant a complete change of course. The writer duo decided to make a film about Humboldt’s youth and hoped to purchase from a Western crew footage of mountain scenery and volcano eruptions. Instead, with their West German partners’ support, Simon and Schäfer contacted the Asociación de Cineastas de Ecuador (Association of the Filmmakers of Ecuador; ASOCINE). On their first trip to visit Quito, the capital of Ecuador, and Chimborazo in 1987, Simon and Schäfer met Ecuadorian filmmakers and viewed a few documentaries by the brothers Gustavo and Igor Guayasamin, including Los Hieleros del Chimborazo (The Chimborazo Climber, 1977, 22 minutes). The short focused on the life of indigenous people called hieleros (ice merchants) who climbed the highest volcano in Ecuador to collect and sell ice, which deeply impressed the East and West German team. After the screening, Simon noted in his diary, “I realized that I could approach this world only with the utmost modesty, and how important for the success of our film would be our Ecuadorian colleagues’ help and support.”141 The German filmmakers entered a productive working relationship with ASOCINE, which became a partner in the coproduction and supplied the opening shots for the film. In his autobiography Simon referred to the contribution made by the indigenous people, the native population of La Moyta, to the design of some film scenes. This contribution came primarily from the decision to shoot spontaneously with non-actors, as Simon explains.142 Gradually, the director became more and more involved with the lifestyle of the indigenous people, as he concedes in the frequent vignettes interspersed throughout Fernes Land. As Simon himself admits, his initial identification with Humboldt during the process of researching his character led him to develop a deep admiration for the indigenous culture.143 Indeed, Simon’s and Schäfer thoroughgoing identification with their character as an intellectual—similar to Wagenstein’s or Janka’s identification with Goya—played a role in their aesthetic decisions during production and in the final cut of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo.

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Figure 4.7. Actors Luis Miguel Campos (Carlos Mantúfar) and Jan Josef Liefers (Alexander von Humboldt) among indigenous people in Peru on the set of Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1989). Courtesy DEFA-Stiftung/Wolfgang Ebert, Dietram Kleist.

Simon’s and Schäfer attachment to Humboldt’s ethnographic project intensified during their first trip to Ecuador and shaped numerous scenes in their film. For instance, the director included an episode that reflected his own encounter with the indigenous people, namely Humboldt’s conversation with an old woman before his expedition to Chimborazo. Another personal experience that Simon wove into his cinematic narrative was his own ascent to Tayta Chimborazo (Father Chimborazo), as he calls the mountain, using the name in the Andean Ecuadorian dialect of Kichwa (Quechua), and his visual impressions of the setting.144 Moreover, moved by the simple local life, which was far removed from the familiar East German context, Schäfer and Simon embarked on a mission to improve the locals’ standard of living by making generous and equal payments to each extra in the film. In his autobiography, Simon describes the intensification of this sense of connection with the Ecuadorians. When he returned to screen his film in Quito and La Moyta, Simon’s life intertwined with those of the indigenous people. He was invited to celebrations, gave talks, befriended several families, became a godfather to children, and even visited locals

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in the hospital. Simon and Schäfer’s fascination with the people and landscapes of Ecuador, in their own words, stemmed from the worldview of artists entrapped in the GDR. Without a doubt, their experiences shaped their depiction of Humboldt’s longing to escape oppressive Prussia. The coauthors’ close identification with their protagonist and their serious investment in the project was perceived, as studio head Dieter Mäde put it, as a “very personal endeavor” at every stage of this production.145

Production History and Reception Paul Kanut Schäfer submitted his film exposé on January 11, 1983, under the working title Humboldt in Cuba, which he and Simon, as already mentioned, originally envisioned as a DEFA-Cuban coproduction. However, once Cuba refused to cooperate, the project was frozen.146 In January 1987 Wolfgang Hammerschmidt, a representative of the West German broadcaster ZDF, visited Babelsberg to express interest in several coproductions with DEFA, including a film on Humboldt’s legacy.147 This visit put Simon and Schäfer’s shelved film back on the table. Hammerschmidt offered his assistance in two ways: first, he had contacts to Colombia and Ecuador, and second, he would involve ToroFilm as a partner to help with production costs. With that in mind, Simon also brought into the negotiations Peter Ulbrich, secretary of the East German Union for Film and Television Workers, who had recently met Ecuadorian filmmakers at the Leipzig documentary film festival. On May 2, 1987, Ulbrich wrote to ASOCINE and asked for local filmmakers’ expertise and assistance in welcoming the East/West German crew and helping them to find shooting locations.148 Menzinger was ready to accompany Simon and Schäfer to Ecuador and to cover travel and lodging costs.149 In June 1987 Simon, Schäfer, and Menzinger embarked on their first trip to Ecuador, followed by a trip to France and Spain in July 1987. One year later, the film crew landed in Quito, prepared to shoot all necessary scenes by mid-August. After the trip to Ecuador, the film crew continued to Paris, Madrid, the North Sea, Jena, Dresden, and Czechoslovakia, and returned to Potsdam. However, even though the rough cut of the film was accepted on January 27, 1989, nine months passed before the film’s premiere on September 7 of that year, just two months shy of the Wende (the fall of the Berlin Wall), and the peaceful revolution in the streets of East Germany. Though the film was not censored, as evidenced by various discussions within DEFA

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and the rather favorable Central Film Administration assessment, its distribution was delayed due to technical problems: the high cost of producing copies for West German distribution, synchronization into English, and subtitling into Spanish.150 The interval between production and final distribution was crucial for the film’s reception. On the one hand, the casting of multinational actors in leading roles (West German Liefers, French Pascalin, and Ecuadorians Campos and Sisa) promised international acclaim. At the same time, the German reception was overshadowed by the events of German Reunification. One day after Die Besteigung des Chimborazo’s official release in GDR cinemas, the Berlin Wall fell and everyone was in the streets celebrating. To Simon and Schäfer’s disappointment, the film’s message was shamelessly appropriated by those in power. The head of the Artistic Production Department at the Central Film Administration wrote a detailed assessment of the film, positioning Simon’s aesthetic experimentation within its “historical context” of Marx’s Communist Manifesto (written ten years after Humboldt’s death!) and Georg Forster’s and Hegel’s revolutionary thought. He further asserted that Die Besteigung des Chimborazo “points to the productive force of an allaround developed, well-educated personality” and “the role of this personality in our society under the consideration of revolutionary evolution of the productive powers.”151 This convoluted assessment only exposed East German functionaries’ inability to recognize the film’s appeal to a young and broad-minded generation. DEFA-Außenhandel, on the other hand, emphasized the exotic character of the film, as well as the profits to be expected from its distribution within the socialist bloc—agendas that were quickly obliterated by the Wende.152 The positions of both the Central Film Administration and DEFAAußenhandel could not be more different from Simon and Schäfer’s view of their artistic message. As Simon reminisced twenty years after the film’s premiere in a 2009 interview, his Humboldt biopic transcended generic borders and became a film about the journey into a new world, in metaphorical and concrete terms.153 Simon and Schäfer’s social critique reverberated most clearly in a scene that might have reminded viewers of Goya’s struggle. At King Carlos IV’s court, Humboldt wondered “I really don’t get it, why should I ask a king for permission to travel somewhere?”154 As Simon concedes, “One could not say it clearer,” referring to his critique of the GDR regime. “We assumed that this sentence would be erased at the approval of the film’s rough cut. But that was really shortly before the Wall came down and this really didn’t bother anyone anymore.”155 The disappointment that the

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GDR cultural officials’ misinterpretation and misappropriation of the film brought to Simon, was, nevertheless, compensated by the reception of his work in Ecuador, as well as by the door Die Besteigung des Chimborazo opened for his continuing cooperation with South American filmmakers. In his autobiography, Simon allotted just one short paragraph to the GDR premiere of his life-changing project, while he devoted ten pages to the depiction of the celebrations that accompanied Die Besteigung des Chimborazo’s premieres in Quito and La Moyta. There, the screenings turned into local festivals, as lay actors and their families brought food and danced in jubilation. Ironically, the indigenous people’s intimate and sincere relationship to Die Besteigung des Chimborazo reflected the journey of Simon himself who, like Humboldt, felt at the time alienated from the pompous performances back home at Berlin’s Kino International.156 Simon returned to South America and made three other documentaries for German television with Ecuadorian filmmaker Alejandro Santillán: Die Farben von Tigua (Tigua’s Colors, 1994), Mit Fischen und Vögeln reden (Talking to Fish and Birds, 1999) and Der Ruf der Fayu Ujmu (Fayu Ujmu’s Calling, 2003). He also organized film workshops, festivals, and photo exhibits recording his impressions of indigenous art, both in unified Germany and in Ecuador. Without Die Besteigung des Chimborazo’s legacy, Simon’s engagement in the dialogue between South American indigenous cultures and German society would be unthinkable. In that sense, this successful East/West German coproduction with Ecuador translated the ideal of lived solidarity not into ideological, but rather into artistic terms.

Conclusion DEFA biopics were not only conceived as international showcases of East German cinema; they also opened the door for GDR filmmakers and audiences to other temporal, geographical, and cultural contexts and thus invited comparisons and reflections. To return to Egon Günther’s reaction to Goya, even though the biopic genre was not conceived as subversive or dissident, it provoked important dialogue on contemporaneous issues. Filmmakers like Wolf and Simon not only celebrated well-known European artists and scientists, but also sought to link the zeitgeist that had once shaped their work to the contemporaneous socialist reality. In that sense, biopics like Goya and Die Besteigung des Chimborazo carried on the spirit of internationalism in a new

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way: by contrasting the rigid sociopolitical environment in the East to imaginaries housed in the biographies of great European minds and in artistic experimentation. Even though artist and scientist biopics had been exploited in German cinema since the 1930s, in the last decades of the GDR they were reconceived under the influence of 1960s Soviet cinema and the contemporaneous New Waves in Czechoslovakia and Poland, France, and Italy. By recontextualizing salient DEFA coproductions from the 1970s and 1980s within European cinema, this chapter has returned to the question of the East German studio’s ambition to participate in European cinema in its own right, which is the uniting theme of the book. What united the DEFA biopics of the 1970s with those made with East and West European partners in the 1980s was the implementation of a coauthored screenplay for the continuous yet cautious reiteration of the conflict between state and artists. The turn to the past in order to make it relevant for the present was a symptom of filmmaking under political pressure in all Eastern European countries. The creators of DEFA biopics, however, went farther in exploring coauthoring strategies and in increasing the agency of mediators, such as Marta Feuchtwanger, or writers, such as Paul Kanut Schäfer, in shaping the artistic message and delivering it to audiences. Thus, the two projects presented here were able to explore in bolder terms the relationship between intellectuals and the state in late socialism. Wolf’s and Simon’s filmmaking teams introduced a new understanding of film authorship and challenged the generic boundaries of the DEFA biopic. The self-reflexive character of both Goya and Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, together with their deliberate appeal to broader and younger audiences, suggested the growing disengagement of filmmakers with their state-imposed mandate and their passion to continue on the hard path to knowledge and insight.

Notes 1. Quoted from Art Is a Weapon (documentary, Andrea Simon, 2017). 2. Paul Kanut Schäfer and Rainer Simon, Die Besteigung des Chimborazo: Eine Filmexpedition auf Alexander von Humboldts Spuren (Cologne, Germany: VGS, 1990), 8. 3. Founded in 1908 in St. Petersburg (“Leningrad” between 1924 and 1991) and nationalized in 1918, Lenfilm was the oldest film company of the Soviet period, and was the second largest after Mosfilm (which was founded in 1920). 4. Protokoll der Rohschnittabnahme des Films “Goya” [Assessment of the film Goya’s Rough Cut], September 28, 1970 ( = BArch DR 117/BA/I-3358). 5. A summary of this debate can be found in the assessment prepared in February 1971 by the head of the artistic committee at Lenfilm, Ilya Nikolaevich Kisselev, who was

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6. 7.

8. 9. 10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

Cinema of Collaboration present at the 1970 meeting. He endorsed Ackermann’s view in favor of cutting the ending. “Einschätzung des farbigen 70-mm-Spilefilms “Goya,’ ” February 17, 1971 ( = BArch DR 117/BA/I-3358). Alexander L. Dymschitz, letter to Irina Pavlovna, chief dramaturge of the Lenfilm studio, February 17, 1971 ( = BArch DR 117/BA/I-3358). Angel Wagenstein, in Mariana Ivanova, “Interview with Bulgarian Screenwriter Angel Wagenstein. December 2007, Sofia, Bulgaria.” Goya, dir. Konrad Wolf (1971; Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2010), DVD. Protokoll der Rohschnittabnahme des Filmes “Goya.” Egon Günther, letter to Konrad Wolf, February 27, 1971, Konrad Wolf Archive, Berlin Academy of Arts, file 239. On the exchange among New Wave cinemas in Europe, Asia, North America, and South America, see Katie Trumpener, “La guerre est finie: New Waves, Historical Contingency, and the GDR Kaninchenfilme,” in Michael Geyer, ed., The Power of Intellectuals in Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 113–37. Ewa Mazierska and Michael Goddard, eds., Polish Cinema in a Transnational Context (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2014), 1–20; Imre, A Companion, xvii. See Schittly, Zwischen Regie und Regime, 101–63; Trumpener, “La guerre est finie,” 117; Heiduschke, East German Cinema, 77–83. For an alternative view, see Jennifer Creech’s argument against seeing the Kalhschlag as “the end of DEFA’s potential as a medium of critical resistance” and discussion of influences on DEFA films of the 1960s by the French and West German New Waves in Mothers, Comrades and Outcasts in East German Women’s Films (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2016), 22, 41–61, 82–83. See Powell, “Wind from the East,” 224. Sigrun D. Leonard makes a similar argument about other genres, including comedies, Gegenwartsfilme (films about contemporary GDR society) and films for the youth, in “Testing the Borders: East German Film between Individualism and Social Commitment,” in Post New Wave Cinema in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, ed. Daniel J. Goulding (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1989), 51–101. See Coates, The Red and The White, 16–47, 18–19. Drawing from discussions of contemporaries and directors, Coates justifies the term “Polish school” as opposed to “Cinema of Moral Concern.” He maintains that, although misleading at time, “the term ‘school’ is worth preserving . . . to highlight the idea of common agenda” and because it “proclaims solidarity long before the Solidarity movement’s existence” (19). Peter Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema: Theme and Tradition (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 15–31 (16). See also Peter Hames, The Czechoslovak New Wave (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 11–34. Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, 16. Coates, The Red and The White, 35–40 (37). Manuel Köppen, “Der Künstlerfilm in Zeiten des Krieges,” in Kunst der Propaganda: Der Film im Dritten Reich, ed. Manuel Köppen and Erhard Schütz, 2nd ed. (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2008), 57–87, 58. See also Seán Allan, “Representations of Art and the Artist in East German Cinema,” in Silberman and Wrage, DEFA at the Crossroads, 87–105 (87). Köppen, “Der Künstlerfilm in Zeiten des Krieges,” 59. Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich, 15. Seán Allan, “ ‘Ich denke, sie machen meistens nackte Weiber’—Kunst und Künstler in Konrad Wolf’s Goya (1971); and “Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (1974),” in Film

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25. 26.

27. 28.

29.

30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39.

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im Sozialismus—die DEFA, ed. Barbara Eichinger and Frank Stern (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2009), 342–67. Ruth Herlinghaus, ed., Goya: Vom Roman zum Film (Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Künste, 1971), 13. Allan, “Representations of Art.” For an extended discussion of scientist biopics and their critical reception in the GDR, see Seán Allan, “DEFA und die Globalisierung der europäischen Aufklärung,” in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 45–60. Larson Powell, “Breaking the Frame of Painting: Konrad Wolf’s Goya,” Studies in European Cinema 5, no. 2 (2008): 131–41. Marsha Siefert, “Russisches Leben, Sowjetische Filme: Die Filmbiographie, Cajkovskij und der Kalte Krieg,” in Leinwand zwischen Tauwetter und Frost: Der osteuropäische Spiel- und Dokumentarfilm im Kalten Krieg, ed. Lars Karl (Berlin: Metropol, 2007), 133–70. Peter Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society from the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (London: IB Tauris, 2001), 145–50. For example, Soviet moviegoers enjoyed the UFA biopic of Johann Strauss’s life, Unsterblicher Walzer (Immortal Waltz, dir. E.W. Emo, 1939) and two Mozart biopics, Es war eine rauschende Ballnacht (It Was a Gay Ballnight, 1939, dir. Carl Froehlich), as well as Wen die Götter lieben (The Life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1942, dir. Karl Hartl). See Kenez, Cinema and Soviet Society, 191–97. Due to overt criticism and religious themes, Tarkovsky’s biopic was banned in the Soviet Union and screened later at the Cannes Film Festival in 1969 where it won the prize of the international film critics. On its impact on Eastern European biopics, see Mazierska and Goddard, Polish Cinema, 60, 276; András Bálint Kovács, Screening Modernism: European Art Cinema, 1950–1980 (Chicago London: University of Chicago Press, 2007, 67–70. Siefert, “Russisches Leben,” 152–53. See Izabela Kalinowska, “Poland–Russia: Coproductions, Collaborations, Exchanges,” in Mazierska and Goddard, Polish Cinema, 134–52. For instance, Frühlingssinfonie (Spring Symphony, 1983, dir. Peter Schamoni) was a West German coproduction with Austria and Switzerland in cooperation with DEFA. In the early 1980s three socialist nations (the USSR, GDR, and Cuba) joined forces with France and Great Britain for the coproduction of Anna Pavlova (1983, dir. Emil Loteanu), a television series aired in the East and West. The Central European tradition of the biopic continued with auteur films such as Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983, France/Poland) and Korczak (1990, Poland/Germany/UK), and Milos Forman’s Amadeus (1984, USA/France/Czechoslovakia) and Goya’s Ghosts (2006, US/ Spain). András Bálint Kovács, “Who Is the ‘Individual’ in Modern Cinema,” in Kovács, Screening Modernism, 67–70 (69). Konrad Wolf, Konrad Wolf, 1925–1982 (Frankfurt, Germany: Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde, 1983), 19. Goya, dir. Konrad Wolf (1971; Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2010), DVD. Wolfgang Jacobsen and Rolf Aurich, Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf: Biographie (Berlin: Aufbau, 2005), 275–77. Compare to “Das Experiment ‘Goya.’ Gespräch für Sonntag vom 21.6.1970,” in Konrad Wolf, Direkt in Kopf und Herz: Aufzeichnungen, Reden, Interviews (Berlin: Henschel, 1989), 194–98, 196. “Gespräche mit Konrad Wolf,” in Herlinghaus, Goya, 127. Goya, dir. Konrad Wolf (1971; Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2010), DVD.

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40. Konrad Wolf coauthored the script of Lissy (1957, GDR) with Alex Wedding; Professor Mamlock (1961, GDR) with Karl Georg Egel; and Der geteilte Himmel (Divided Heaven, 1964, GDR) with Christa and Gerhard Wolf, Willi Brückner, and Kurt Barthel. Konrad Wolf also worked on a team with Wolfgang Kohlhaase on three films: Ich war neunzehn (I Was Nineteen, 1968, GDR), Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (The Naked Man in the Stadium, 1974, GDR), and Solo Sunny (1980, GDR). 41. For the original document postulating these phases in January 1955, see Stefan Haupt, Urheberrecht und DEFA-Film (Berlin: DEFA-Stiftung, 2005), 153. 42. For a detailed description of the process and examples, see Juliane Scholz, Der Drehbuchautor USA-Deutschland: Ein historischer Vergleich (Bielefeld, Germany: Transcript, 2016), 270–82. 43. Compare to Wolf, Direkt in Kopf und Herz, 196; Wolf, Konrad Wolf, 1925–1982, 20; and Angel Wagenstein, “Sechs Caprichos über ‘Goya,’ ” in Herlinghaus, Goya, 7–10. 44. Wagenstein, “Sechs Caprichos über ‘Goya,’ ” 9. 45. See Heike Schneider, ed., Walter Janka. Zum Kreuze kriechen kann ich nicht! Erinnerungen und Lebenszeugnisse (Berlin: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2014), 37–47. 46. Flügge, Die vier Leben, 375. 47. Quoted in Ingrid Poss and Peter Warneke, ed., Spur der Filme: Zeitzeugen über die DEFA (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2006), 274. 48. Flügge mentions a 1958 letter Marta Feuchtwanger written to Walter Ulbricht, the SED’s first secretary and head of the GDR, yet her plea was not granted. Flügge, Die vier Leben, 375. Compare to Schneider, Walter Janka, 45–47. 49. Jacobsen and Aurich, Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf, 343. 50. Walter Janka, “Kein Experiment ‘Goya’ und kein Wettlauf,” in Herlinghaus, Goya, 17. 51. Ibid., 18. 52. Ibid., 19. 53. Quoted in ibid., 20. The preserved correspondence between Marta Feuchtwanger and Walter Janka can be found in the Konrad Wolf Archive, Art Academy, Berlin, file 597. Later correspondence from the 1970s onward can be found in the Marta Feuchtwanger Papers, Collection no. 0206, Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, Special Collections, USC Libraries, Los Angeles, CA (hereafter MF Papers). 54. Letter by Marta Feuchtwanger to Janka, October 8, 1964, Konrad Wolf Archive, Art Academy, Berlin, file 597. 55. Wolf, Direkt in Kopf und Herz, 196. Compare to “Der arge Weg der Erkenntnis. Gespräch über die Konzeption des 70-mm Farbfilm ‘Goya,’ ” in Wolf, Konrad Wolf: 1925– 1982, 19–20. 56. Konrad Wolf Archive, file 527. 57. Ibid., file 641. 58. Wolf, Direkt in Kopf und Herz, 196–97. 59. Janka, “Kein Experiment ‘Goya,’ ” 23. 60. Ibid. 61. Günter Jordan, “Die Unterwerfung oder der Fall Walter Janka: Recherchen zum Jahr 1948/49,” in Schenk and Richter, apropos: Film 2001, 262–95 (286). 62. For a detailed account of Janka’s function at DEFA 1948–49, see ibid. 63. For instance, he functioned as a dramaturge in Hamida (dir. Jean Michaud-Mailland, 1966, GDR/Tunisia) and Anflug Alpha 1 (Alpha 1’s Arrival, 1971, dir. János Veiczi, GDR/Hungary). 64. Mariana Ivanova’s interview with Angel Wagenstein, December 17, 2007, Sofia, Bulgaria. 65. Art Is a Weapon (15:00’’)

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66. Mariana Ivanova’s interview with Angel Wagenstein, December 17, 2007, Sofia, Bulgaria. 67. Wagenstein, “Sechs Caprichos über ‘Goya,’ ” 9. 68. Janka, “Kein Experiment ‘Goya,’ ” 20. 69. Wagenstein, “Sechs Caprichos über ‘Goya,’ ” 8. 70. Ibid. 71. See five interviews with the director, “Gespräche mit Konrad Wolf,” in Herlinghaus, Goya, 11–14, 126–29, 157–60; Wolf, Direkt in Kopf und Herz; Wolf, Konrad Wolf, 1925–1982. 72. Wolf, Konrad Wolf, 1925–1982, 19. 73. Wolf, Direkt in Kopf und Herz, 197. 74. For a detailed discussion of Soviet cinema’s influence on Wolf, see Powell, “Breaking the Frame of Painting.” 75. Ibid., 133. 76. Herlinghaus, Goya, 154–55. 77. Powell, “Breaking the Frame of Painting,” 133. 78. In 1962 Tarkovsky stated that he planned to depict the artist as a person, in his everyday life, which will not include painting. Only “the last part of the film (in color) will be solely devoted to Rublev’s icons. We will show them in detail (as in a popular scientific film). The on-screen demonstration of the icon will be accompanied by the same musical theme which sounded in the episode of Rublev’s life corresponding to the theme during which the icon was conceived.” Quoted and translated by Robert Bird, Andrei Rublev (London: BFI, 2004), 37. 79. In an early interview, Tarkovsky had stressed his film’s reflection on the artist’s role and responsibility within society as follows: “I link my creative plans to the question of the artist’s relationship to the nation and its time, where the artist does not exist in isolation, but is the conscience of society, the pinnacle of its imagination, and the mouthpiece of its talent. These issues are the basis of the screenplay The Passion According to Andrei which I am currently writing together with Andrei Komchalovsky. This screenplay tells the life of the genius Russian artist, Andrei Rublev, whose memoralisation was urged by Vladimir Lenin in his first decrees.” Quoted and translated by Bird, Andrei Rublev, 24. Compare to Wolf’s statement in an interview with Ruth Herlinghaus in 1971, where he admits influences by contemporaneous Soviet historical films and biopics and points to their shared agenda of representing the artist rooted in the contemporary moment and struggle of the masses; see Herlinghaus, Goya, 11–14. 80. Jacobsen and Aurich, Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf, 341. 81. Letter by DEFA dramaturge Klaus Wischnewski to Felix Guggenheim, Marta Feuchtwanger’s agent, in which he asked for an extension of DEFA’s rights to adapt Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel to the screen; March 15, 1965 ( = BArch DR 117/BA I/3358). 82. Powell, “Wind from the East,” 235. 83. Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, 22–31; Coates, The Red and The White, 16–47; Jonathan L. Owen, Avant-Garde to New Wave: Czechoslovak Cinema, Surrealism and the Sixties (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2011) 8–10; Mazierska and Goddard, Polish Cinema, 4–7. 84. Coates, The Red and The White, 46. 85. Owen, Avant-Garde to New Wave, 12. 86. Ibid., 12. 87. Hames, Czech and Slovak Cinema, 76. 88. Coates, The Red and The White, 35–42, 74–115.

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89. Owen, Avant-Garde to New Wave, 77. 90. Letter by Klaus Wischnewski to managing director Franz Bruk, May 16, 1966 ( = BArch DR 117/BA I/3358). 91. Quoted in Jacobsen and Aurich, Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf, 346. See also their discussion of Ackermann’s involvement and of the GDR state officials’ stakes in the project, 341–46. 92. See Walter Janka’s interview where he mentions Rudolf Slánský’s process in Poland, in Poss and Warnecke, Spur der Filme, 275. 93. Herlinghaus, Goya, 12–14. 94. “Einschätzung des farbigen 70-mm-Spilefilms ‘Goya,’ ” February 17, 1971 ( = BArch DR 117/BA I/3358). 95. Flügge, Die vier Leben, 377–79. 96. Ibid. In the preceding year the recipients were Anna Seghers and GDR minister of education and high-ranking party functionary Paul Wandel. In the following year, composer Dmitri Shostakovich and Cuban leader Fidel Castro were honored. 97. Ibid., 381. 98. Ibid., 381. 99. MF Papers; Konrad Wolf Archive at the Academy of Arts, Berlin, file 1066. 100. Letter by Konrad Wolf to Marta Feuchtwanger, July 15, 1972, MF Papers. 101. Letter by GDR minister of culture Hans-Joachim Hoffmann to Marta Feuchtwanger, 1973 (no further date); and an earlier letter by DEFA-Außenhandel (unsigned) to Marta Feuchtwanger, November 1, 1972, MF Papers. 102. Letter by Feuchtwanger to Wolf, July 9, 1973, where she reports that she won Laemmle’s interest in the U.S. distribution of the film. Compare her report about Laemmle’s negotiations with a Soviet distributor from July 23, 1974. Konrad Wolf Archive, file 1066. 103. See correspondence between Marta Feuchtwanger and Garry Smith at the College of William and Mary, March 11–May 10, 1974, as well as a poster advertising the film’s screening at the University of Southern California, April 19, 1974, MF Papers. 104. Letter by Robert W. Hiatt, president of the University of Alaska, May 2, 1975, MF Papers. 105. Letter by Feuchtwanger to Wolf, February 27, 1975, MF Papers. In another article, Feuchtwanger maintained that the film received high acclaim among the entire German exile community, including Arnold Schönberg’s family. Compare to Marta Feuchtwanger, “In einer ganz anderen Umgebung,” in Wolf, Konrad Wolf, 1925– 1982, 42. 106. Letter by Harold von Hofe to Marta Feuchtwanger, March 10, 1975, MF Papers. 107. Letter by Wallace W. Little, first secretary for Press and Culture, U.S. Embassy, March 12, 1975; and letter by Marta Feuchtwanger to Konrad Wolf, March 26, 1975, MF Papers. 108. Letter by Max Kurz, general secretary of the Committee for Friendship with the GDR, New York, to Marta Feuchtwanger, June 18, 1975; and letter by Sonja Elm, cultural attaché, GDR embassy in Washington, DC, July 2, 1975, MF Papers. 109. Letter by Feuchtwanger to Sonja Elm, November 13, 1972, MF Papers. 110. Letter by Wolf to Feuchtwanger, January 17, 1977, where he discussed the East German Embassy’s readiness to assist her for the synchronization and assured her of his wish that she take his place and supervise the U.S. cut. Compare to Feuchtwanger’s letter to Wolf, December 14, 1977 where she reported Ludwig Fischer’s praise of the film after a screening in Minneapolis. Konrad Wolf Archive, file 1066. 111. Allan, “Representations of Art,” 101, 103.

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112. Journalist Rosemarie Rehan, for example, maintained: “My feeling is that Beethoven is out on the street not just for his own cause, but to challenge the viewer, and the public in general, to look after those artists whose lot it is to embody a unique, fragile humanity,” in “Nachdenken über Ludwig B.,” Wochenpost, 11 Nov. 1976, quoted in Allan, “Representations of Art,” 104. 113. Wolf, Gruppe Babelsberg, 141–45. 114. Fred Gehler, “Hälfte des Lebens,” Sonntag, no. 19, 1985. 115. Allan, “Representations of Art,” 103–5. 116. Rainer Simon, Fernes Land: Die DDR, die DEFA und der Ruf des Chimborazo (Berlin: Aufbau, 2005), 87. See ibid., 88–89, for discussion on Wolf as personal friend and mentor. 117. Rainer Simon, “Kollektiv 63: eine Spurensuche in Erinnerungen und Dokumenten,” in Schenk and Richter, apropos: Film 2001, 29–39. 118. Rainer Simon, Fred Gehler, Hannes Schmidt, ed. Rebellen, Träumer und “gewöhnliche Leute”: Werkstattgespräch und Dokumentation (Berlin: Betriebsschule des DEFA Studio für Spielfilme, 1990), 10–11. 119. Quoted in Jacobsen and Aurich, Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf, 353. 120. Simon, “Kollektiv 63,” 30. 121. For a detailed discussion of the film’s aesthetics and production history, see Alle Barnert, ”Die Flüge des Franz Stannebein: “Das Luftschiff (1982/1983),” in Die Zeit, die Welt und das Ich: Zum filmischen Werk von Rainer Simon, ed. Michael Grisko (Berlin: DEFA-Stifutung, 2016), 123–41. 122. Mariana Ivanova’s Interview with Rainer Simon, October 24, 2017. 123. Simon, Fernes Land, 212–14. 124. For a detailed discussion, see Simon, Fernes Land, 168–88. 125. Barbara Eichinger, “Zwischen Kontinenten, Film und Realität—Der Regisseur Rainer Simon zu seinen Filmproduktionen. Ein Gespräch am 17.2.2007 in Potsdam mit Barbara Eichinger,” in Eichinger and Stern, Film im Sozialismus, 201–35 (202). See also Simon, Fernes Land, 212. 126. See Barbara Eichinger, “Die Besteigung des Chimborazo—oder eine Reise durch Jahrhunderte, politische Systeme und Kontinente,” in Eichinger and Stern, Film im Sozialismus, 182–200. 127. Nicolaas A. Rupke, Alexander von Humbold: A Metabiography (Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang, 2005), 17. See specifically chapter 4 of Rupke’s work for the East German reception and appropriation of Humboldt, and chapter 5 for the West German version thereof (105–73). 128. Ibid., 141. 129. Gregor Schuchardt, Fakt, Ideologie, System: Die Geschichte der ostdeutschen Alexander von Humboldt Forschung (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2010), 3–17, 314. 130. Seán Allan, “Kosmopolitische Fiktionen. DEFA und der Globalisierungsprozess der europäischen Aufklärung,” in Wedel et al., DEFA International, 45–59 (48–49). 131. Ibid., 55. 132. See Michael Grisko, “ ‘Die Macht eines Volkes liegt in seinem Wissen,’ Mit Humboldt und Simon die Welt entdecken oder Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (1988/1989),” in Grisko, Die Zeit, die Welt und das Ich, 168–80 (176). DEFA film historians in these scenes include Erika Richter, Michael Hanisch, and Günter Agde, as well as film journalists Jutta Voigt, Rosemarie Rehahn, Margit Voss, Regine Sylvester, and others. 133. For a detailed analysis of montage techniques and visual devices, see Grisko, “Die Macht eines Volkes,” 172–74.

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134. Simon mentions his representation of Humboldt as “other” and “homosexual” as one of his film’s most important aspects; see Eichinger, “Zwischen Kontinenten,” 202. 135. Several script versions and exposés can be found in the Rainer Simon collection in the Filmmuseum Potsdam. This exposé was quoted in Eichinger, “Die Besteigung des Chimborazo,” 183–84. 136. Quoted in Eichinger, “Die Besteigung des Chimborazo,” 185. 137. Schäfer and Simon, Die Besteigung des Chimborazo. 138. Ibid., specifically “Literarische Filmerzählung,” 10–110. 139. Simon, Fernes Land, 168–88, 212–14, 246–55, 261. 140. See Simon’s depiction of his and Schäfer’s first trip to Ecuador in 1987 in Schäfer and Simon, Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, 120–34. 141. Simon, Fernes Land, 247–48. 142. Simon, “Drehtage am Chimborazo,” Neue Berliner Illustrierte, August 4, 1989, 12–15. 143. Simon, Fernes Land, 264–86. 144. Ibid., 250–53. 145. Dieter Mäde, “Stellungnahme zum Film ‘Die Besteigung des Chimborazo,’ ” April 16, 1989 ( = BArch DR 1-Z/46). 146. Exposé by Paul Kanut Schäfer, January 11, 1983; letter by Dieter Mäde to Jorge Fraga, Department of Cinematography, Cuban Minister of Culture, January 20, 1983 ( = BArch DR 117/29720). 147. The three other film projects negotiated as DEFA coproductions with ZDF were screen adaptations of novels. The first two were by exiled author Anna Seghers, Transit (Transit Visa) from 1944 and Die Toten bleiben jung (The Dead Stay Young) from 1949, and had to be directed by Frank Beyer, who had relocated to the West after Biermann’s affair. The third project was based on Alfred Andersch’s Sansibar oder der letzte Grund (Flight to Afar, 1957). Memo by Gert Golde, May 21, 1987 ( = BArch DR 117/29720). 148. Letter by Peter Ulbrich to Pocho Alvares, president of ASOCINE, May 2, 1987 ( = BArch DR 117/29720). 149. Rainer Simon, report about the trip, “Zu den Ergebnissen der Recherchenreise für Alexander von Humboldt–Spielfilm ‘Besteigung des Vulkans,’ ” July 23, 1987 ( = BArch DR 117/29720). 150. Eichinger, “Die Besteigung des Chimborazo,” 190–93. See also Simon, Fernes Land, 244–78. 151. Friedemann Spangenberg, “Einschätzung zu ‘Die Besteigung des Chimborazo,’ DEFA-Spielfilmstudio, zur staatlichen Zulassung am 10.5.1989,” May 3, 1989 ( = BArch, DR 1-Z/46). 152. Helmut Diller, “Stellunghame zur Staatlichen Zulassung des Films ‘Die Besteigung des Chimborazo,’ ” May 8, 1989 ( = BArch, DR 1-Z/46). 153. Eichinger, “Zwischen Kontinenten,” 209. 154. Die Besteigung des Chimborazo, dir. Rainer Simon (1989; Berlin, Germany: Absolut Medien, 2014), DVD. 155. Ibid., 209. 156. Simon, Fernes Land, 276–86.

Epilogue

HERITAGE, CONTINUITY, AND COLLABORATION

Perhaps we have reached a point where we are ready to deal with this kind of film, a film that does not deal exclusively in black and white and shows the thousands of shades of grey. In the grey zone things get interesting. —Andreas Dresen, “The GDR at the Movies: Reality and Myth,” 20101

Heritage, collaboration, and continuity are key concepts in this book’s agenda to acquire a more nuanced understanding of DEFA’s project within the broader framework of European cinema. I have applied these three lenses to East German film simultaneously in order to allow us to see beyond a “black and white” representation, to borrow from the above quote. Cinema of Collaboration opened with a discussion of DEFA’s inheritance and appropriation of UFA’s legacy in the form of business and personal alliances. This heritage provided an impetus for collaboration and film trade with European partners and had an impact on DEFA as an institution. On the one hand, the studio was firmly rooted in the socialist project; it was a state-sponsored company that continued to carry out its official mandate to educate and entertain. On the other hand, by embracing the UFA heritage—not in word but in deed—and renewing contact with French studios, East German filmmakers could fulfill their state-given mission to build a didactic cinema while cultivating an international market presence. The memory of alliances, such as the prewar ideal of Film Europe, convinced DEFA filmmakers of the value of multinational joint projects, both with French and West German partners as well as with socialist states.

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Second, Cinema of Collaboration analyzed East German filmmaking in terms of strategies for collaboration driven by economic, commercial, and aesthetic motives. By tracing the history of film-license trade deals and DEFA’s dialogue with cultural mediators such as Erich Mehl, Artur Brauner, and Marta Feuchtwanger, the book established the validity and value of business relations as a means for achieving a political and economic presence outside the Iron Curtain. DEFA’s collaborations with other European filmmakers, as chapters 2 and 3 demonstrated, were forged through various practices: from developing a specific mode of production with an emphasis on the collective nature of filmmaking within socialist industries (KAGs), to specific strategies for cooperation on the script among directors and writers. From the 1970s on, as we saw in chapter 4, the desire for collaboration was complemented and complicated by the self-reflexivity present in most cinemas of the Eastern bloc. The genre of the biopic exemplified this introspective turn and posed the universal question of the artist’s role in a society, a question that continued to engage filmmakers after 1990. This brings us to the third key concept of this book: continuity. DEFA offers an example of the continuous interplay of state and non-state actors and the cross-border current of pictures and people. The consciously sought continuity with past and present, domestic and international aesthetic traditions, such as the Künstlerfilm of the Nazi period or the science fiction pictures of the Soviet Union, evidences that DEFA directors did not operate in isolation, but readily borrowed from colleagues and entered a dialogue on European cinema via aesthetic and genre innovation. At the same time, East German filmmakers’ special attention to the artist biopic, as discussed in the last chapter of this study, may be highlighted as an unexpected case of continuity with post-1990 German film. In closing this study, therefore, we will investigate the case of a director who worked closely with his screenwriter to make a picture about a subject with whom he strongly identified. This inquiry may yield new channels through which to trace DEFA’s legacy in contemporary German cinema. Andreas Dresen, who in 1991 graduated from the East German film academy named after Konrad Wolf, was only briefly employed at DEFA, completing a year-long internship in 1986. Though he has only reluctantly talked about DEFA’s influence on his work, his most recent picture reveals a stunning continuity with the last generation of East German directors. Dresen’s “artist and worker biopic,” Gundermann, was released in the summer of 2018, more than two decades after the dissolution of DEFA

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and other state-run film industries in Eastern Europe.2 A tribute to Gerhard Gundermann (1955–98), a poet, musician, and coal miner from the GDR province, the biopic was celebrated in Germany and in Europe as one of Andreas Dresen’s best pictures.3 It differs from many films made about the GDR since 1990, mainly because it is an honest and disconcerting look at an artist who was also for a time complicit with the Stasi. Dresen’s decision to film in Babelsberg and on location in Lausitz, the largest coal-mining region in the former East Germany, raises important questions about authenticity and nostalgia, as well as about the relationship between local stories and global narratives within contemporary European film. Gundermann was not internationally acclaimed, but rather firmly rooted in East German life through manual labor, the rhyme of his poetry and the tune of his songs, and perhaps most strikingly—by his outright commitment to communism. His utopia eventually led him to join the SED and spy for the Stasi, the GDR secret police, but also to question their double standard and lack of integrity. “The singing digger driver,” as he was known to GDR audiences, was soon excluded from both organizations and ostracized for his strong individual views. This tension shapes the two temporal planes of the film: the formation of the band around the talented signer in 1975 and their successes, and in contrast, the artist’s exposure as a Stasi informant twenty years later. The disclosure of Gundermann’s history of compliance with the system and his attempt to come to terms with what that meant is juxtaposed on screen with his struggle to cope with German Reunification and subsequent loss of his job, while at the same time continuing to make music and create meaning through art. This duality turns him into a symbol of the GDR artist unmoored by rapid political change, evoking the experience of DEFA employees who were dismissed after 1990; his art is rendered passé and in the mass media he is reduced to a puppet of the state. In one flashback, Gundermann (Alexander Scheer) announces on screen, “I’m gonna look in the mirror for as long as it takes until I start to believe in myself and my life.”4 The scene invites neither nostalgia nor pity. The character’s self-questioning gesture and the open selfreflexivity in Dresen’s biopic instead recall the project of DEFA artist and scientist films. What Gundermann shares with these pictures is a retrospective view that enables the film to articulate current social issues and to center the viewers’ attention on an artist as a driving force at a particular historical moment. In this sense, Gundermann recalls Konrad

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Wolf’s elderly Goya, characterized by his battle with self-doubt and his approach to art as escape, as well as Rainer Simon’s idealist Alexander von Humboldt, whose life story of constant quest the singer’s life mirrors. Although this parallel with DEFA films was not a conscious choice of the director, in a 2014 interview Dresen admitted: “I have been influenced by Eastern cinema. By that, I don’t just mean DEFA, but also Eastern European cinema. I will always carry these roots—this way of telling stories—around me.”5 Indeed, in most of his films Dresen has reflected on the GDR past and has portrayed characters born in East Germany who were about to make the transition to post-1990 reality. His oeuvre evokes continuity with the DEFA traditions in terms of realistic aesthetic, narrative geographies, and casting choices. For instance, his staple cast includes former DEFA actors such as Henry Hübchen, Horst Rehberg, Corinna Harfouch, and Horst Westphal, as well as younger actors born in the GDR, such as Milan Peschel and Steffi Kühnert. Dresen’s post-1990 cooperation with one of the best-known DEFA screenwriters, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, yielded four films in four different genres. When asked about influences on his métier, Dresen readily cited Konrad Wolf’s work with Kohlhaase on Solo Sunny (1980, GDR) and Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (1974, GDR)—two pictures that dared to depict controversial artists in contemporaneous GDR society.6 Thus, the maker of Gundermann displays several instances of continuity with the DEFA artist biopics that extend beyond aesthetic choices. Dresen is well-known for his preference for teamwork and coauthoring the script, as well as for his willingness to let actors or literary writers collaborate on the story. Wolke 9 (Cloud 9, 2008, Germany), for instance, was coauthored by four writers and several cast members. His third project with Kohlhaase, Whiskey mit Wodka (Whiskey with Vodka, 2009, Germany) paid tribute to former DEFA director Frank Beyer, who came up with the idea of the film, but was never able to realize it. Similarly, Als wir träumten (As We Were Dreaming, 2015, Germany) engendered Dresen’s and Kohlhaase’s close collaboration with Clemens Mayer, a Leipzig-born author whose novel about coming of age in East Germany during the Wende they adapted for the screen. The production of Gundermann was a continuation of such practices. Dresen conceived of the picture in 2006 when he approached Laila Stieler, his preferred scriptwriter and coauthor in six previous films. Both studied at the GDR Film Academy between 1986 and 1990–91, learned their craft from the best DEFA filmmakers, and had difficulty transitioning to a career in unified Germany.7 Writing the script for

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Gundermann was a challenge that took ten years to complete. The reason for the film’s protracted genesis, as explained by the director, was the specificity of making a biopic about an artist from the former East who was either unknown to most film producers or whose involvement with the Stasi was perceived as too risky a topic. “What made me angry,” Dresen shares when he thinks back on their ten-year-long work, “was that as an East German, one had to justify why one wanted to tell a story from their own life experience.”8 During this decade Dresen and Stieler created eight versions of the script, experimenting with witness interviews, animation, intertitles, and archival material. Above all, both professionals resisted the temptation to create a film that might be later seen as a nostalgic resurrection of a childhood hero. Looking back at life in the GDR through a specific lens, nevertheless, played a role in the film’s creation: Stieler and Dresen consciously involved the musician’s wife and partner on stage, Conny Gundermann, who consulted them on all script versions and suggested amendments from her own memories.9 Dresen’s strong identification with Gundermann recalls Wolf’s and Simon’s investment in their own characters, but his relationship to his subject is very different, not least because their careers overlapped. Dresen grew up in the GDR hearing Gundermann’s songs and admired the artist’s openness and ability to capture any human experience in simple words. Consequently, Dresen admitted, he was disappointed when he witnessed Gundermann’s exposure as a Stasi informant on TV in 1995.10 At the same time, the filmmaker and his lead actor, West Germany–born Alexander Scheer, independently discovered a universal appeal in Gundermann’s poetry, poetry that sang of an all-too-human nature. To celebrate the premiere of the artist biopic, Dresen, Scheer, and another actor in the film, Axel Prahl, performed Gundermann’s songs during a tour of several former East German cities, including Berlin, and gave several interviews and concerts on radio and TV. This retelling of Gundermann’s story on screen and via his music can be interpreted in two ways: We may construe it as an attempt to shape the perception of GDR art and people in the current European imaginary— an attempt that suggests Dresen’s continuity with DEFA artist biopics’ corrective and self-reflective agenda. Or, we can consider such public performances by former East and West Germans conscious of their divided past as an attempt to come to terms with and contribute to a collective identity.11 Both interpretations point to Gundermann’s value as a heritage film, as it has been repeatedly identified in reviews and even by the filmmakers themselves.12

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Gundermann consciously enters a post-2006 wave of heritage films about the former GDR or artists in totalitarian regimes, and Dresen himself sees Gundermann as a response to this movement even though it is still in its early stages.13 Similar films have been recently made by Christian Petzold and Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck or Pawel Pawlikowski who have engaged cinematically with stories of artists and intellectuals under the communist regime. Some of their works translate the aesthetic of socialist cinemas into a new context, such as Petzold’s Barbara (2012, Germany) or Pawlikowski’s Zimna Wojna (Cold War, 2018, Poland, UK, France). Other films, such as Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006, Germany) and Werk ohne Autor (Never Look Away, 2018) seek to tell individual stories set in communism by using the conventions of mainstream cinema. Most of these films project an illusory or spectral past on screen, which raises questions about the changing interpretation of the previous decades’ history. It might seem a contentious statement to call the works of Petzold, von Donnersmarck, and Pawlikowski heritage cinema, since all of these filmmakers were born in or grew up in Western Europe. Yet, the creation of an imagined past in heritage cinema today has two functions. On the one hand, as Daniela Berghahn and Randall Halle suggest, such films might reflect “a certain nostalgia to be part of a specific national heritage.”14 At the same time, heritage cinema relying on stories labeled as national, as Andrew Higson has argued, can also become a potent vehicle for “citizens to come to terms with the history of their own nation, histories of other nations, and indeed, the shared, but often internecine history of Europe.”15 Indeed, heritage does not equal national or even German or European history. Instead, we can view heritage as a way to valorize the past in contrast to historical or public discourses. “Heritage is concerned,” Berghahn maintains, “with the preservation and conservation of aspects of the past that represent those values and traditions most cherished by a particular (national) community.”16 If common European culture as such exists, then its history has been negotiated on screen in various and multifaceted ways since the medium’s inception on the continent. The project of current heritage films such as Gundermann that have already been produced and circulated within a European network of cultures, languages, identities, and spaces, as well as worldwide, intersects with another Cold War project, namely the cooperation of cinematic industries between 1946 and 1992 as we have seen it in the present study.

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Thus we have come full circle: from the challenge of seeing DEFA as European cinema to Gundermann as a heritage film and artist biopic in dialogue with DEFA traditions. Already in 2010, while conceiving his biopic, Dresen had spoken about “a film that does not deal exclusively in black and white and shows the thousands of shades of grey.”17 Telling the story of a GDR singer in a heritage film, such as Gundermann, goes against the grain of walling off the GDR past and cinema, an attitude mentioned in this book’s introduction.18 And there is something else that can be discerned in Dresen’s understanding and translation into his films of what he calls “the thousands of shades of the grey”: his sensible approach to the past.19 This approach has roots in his own lived experience as an East German as well as his experience as a student of DEFA directors. Unlike others, Dresen, Stieler, and Kohlhaase have access in various degrees to a shared past of lived experiences, but also of moving pictures. Their engagement with the GDR past is not a historicizing gesture; it is one of departure and a vantage point from which to reassess life and art under socialism. In a similar vein, Cinema of Collaboration has argued that East German films and DEFA itself may be viewed in black-and-white terms, but can also be appreciated for the nuances of gray they reveal, both in terms of continuity with previous traditions and in building a network of cooperation. My exploration of cross-cultural, cinematic, and artistic exchanges has responded to a set of desiderata in the history of DEFA and has engendered a story of transnational exchanges and cooperation, of private arrangements and cultural mediators crossing geopolitical borders. DEFA as an institution entered such exchanges as an agent in its own right. As we saw in the four chapters of this book, the studio developed several strategies in order to sustain its role in the cinematic business: initiating coproductions, trading in film licenses, and nurturing teamwork on an interpersonal level. In tracing these strategies, the book has stressed DEFA’s agency, but it has also devoted ample attention to its partners: state and non-state actors, studio managers, independent producers, and artistic production units or individual writers or intellectuals. In the process, it has foregrounded the contribution of many marginalized or forgotten figures who facilitated collaboration within the studio itself or between DEFA and other entities. It is my hope that this monograph will inspire other scholars to broaden the scope of my inquiry by tapping into new sources and discovering more connections between the former socialist cinemas and artists within and outside of Europe.

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Notes 1. Andreas Dresen, “The GDR at the Movies: Reality and Myth,” New Zealand International Review 35, no. 3 (2010): 29–30 (30). 2. Anke Westphal, “Interview mit Regisseur Andreas Dresen: Wenn die DDR so wild gewesen wäre,” epd Film, August 20, 2018, retrieved January 25, 2019 from https:// www.epd-film.de/meldungen/2018/interview-mit-regisseur-andreas-dresen. 3. “Germany’s Pandora Film Opens Box Full of Cinematic Treasures,” Variety, May 11, 2018, retrieved January 25, 2019, from https://variety.com/2018/film/spotlight/ germanys-pandora-film-opens-box-full-of-cinematic-treasures-1202803717/; Bénédict Prot, “Biopic Gundermann in Post-Production,” Cineuropa.org, April 5, 2018, retrieved January 25, 2019 from https://cineuropa.org/en/newsdetail/351196/; Hanns-Georg Rodek, “Deutscher Filmpreis: Stasi-Film ‘Gundermann’ triumphiert mit secs Lolas,” Die Welt, May 3, 2019, retrieved June 17, 2019 from https://www .welt.de/kultur/kino/article192910163/Deutscher-Filmpreis-Stasi-Film-Gunder mann-triumphiert-mit-sechs-Lolas.html. 4. Andreas Dresen, Gundermann, DVD, Pandora Film, 2019. 5. Brigitta B. Wagner, “Not a Bad Heritage: An Interview with Andreas Dresen,” in Wagner, DEFA after East Germany, 13–23 (23). 6. Ibid., 22. 7. See the interview conducted by Hiltrud Schulz of the DEFA film library in February 2011, “Laila Stieler: Writing about Daily Life,” retrieved January 24, from https:// ecommerce.umass.edu/defa/memories/6400. 8. Westphal, “Interview mit Regisseuer Andreas Dresen.” 9. Ibid.; see also “Conny Gundermann: ‘Andreas Dresen verletzt Gundi nicht, der liebt den auch,’ ” MDR.De, August 18, 2018, retrieved January 25, 2019, from https:// www.mdr.de/kultur/andreas-dresen-conny-gundermann-mdr-kultur-trifft-100 .html. 10. Ibid. 11. In an earlier interview, Dresen recalled, “We wanted to reform GDR society for one thing. So did pretty much all leftists and artists. In my group of friends, we spoke openly and intensely about our criticism of the GDR. . . . We wanted to make films that provoked and improved society. I tried to make films of this sort in film school, and if I had worked at DEFA, I would have tried to do the same there, too.” See Wagner, “Not a Bad Heritage,” 18. 12. Günter Platzdasch, “Film zu DDR-Sänger Gundermann: Wegen prinzipieller Eigenwilligkeit,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, August 28, 2018, retrieved January 24, 2019, from https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/kino/heimatfilm-gunderm ann-von-andreas-dresen-ueber-einen-ddr-saenger-15758589.html; Christoph Dieckmann, “Dylans Genosse. Ein deutscher Heimatfilm: Andreas Dresen erzählt das Leben des Songpoeten und Proleten Gerhard Gundermann,” Die Zeit, August 16, 2018, retrieved January 24, 2019, from https://www.zeit.de/2018/34/gerhard-gunder mann-liedermacher-ddr-heimatfilm; Westphal, “Interview mit Regisseur Andreas Dresen.” 13. Dresen, “The GDR at the Movies,” 30. 14. Daniela Berghahn, “Rewriting History from the Margins: Diasporic Memory, Shabby Chic and Archival Footage,” in Screening European Heritage: Creating and Consuming History on Film, ed. Paul Cooke and Rob Stone (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 85–106 (87). See also Halle, German Film after Germany, 89–128.

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15. Andrew Higson, “Historical Films in Europe: The Transnational Production, Circulation and Reception of ‘National’ Heritage Drama,” in Cooke and Stone, Screening European Heritage, 183–207. 16. Berghahn, “Rewriting History from the Margins,” 87. 17. Dresen, “The GDR at the Movies,” 30. 18. See Katja Nicodemus’s and Hanno Rauterberg’s interview with Dresen and Stieler who in the wake of the twenty-eighth anniversary of German Reunification, connected their experiences as East Germany–born filmmakers to making Gundermann, “Es gibt keine Absolution, Punkt,” Die Zeit, October 4, 2018, retrieved January 25, 2019, from https://www.zeit.de/2018/41/andreas-dresen-laila-stieler-gundermann-interview. 19. Ibid.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archival Sources Germany Akademie der Künste, Berlin Konrad Wolf Nachlass file 239, file 597, file 641, file 1066 Heinrich Mann Nachlass file 2828 Artur Brauner Archiv, Deutsches Film-Institut, Frankfurt, Germany Bundesarchiv, Berlin (BArch) HV Film DR 1-Z/46, DR 1/4367, DR 1/4433, DR 1/4644, DR 1/4659, DR 1/4701, DR 1/4731, DR 1/6240 DEFA Betriebsarchiv DR 117/21701, DR 117/2543, DR 117/2545, DR117/21801, DR 117/21703, DR 117/21800, DR 177/21735, DR 117/21800, DR 117/2564, DR 117/BA (I) 1927, DR 117/BA (I) 1048, 117/BA (I) 1150, DR 117/BA (II) 1780, DR 117/BA (II) 1781, DR 117/BA (III) 1781, DR 117/BA (II) 1782, DR 117/BA (III) 3443, DR 117/23355, DR 117/23433, DR 117/23290, DR 117/19126, DR 117 BA/I-3358, DR 117/29720, DR 133/581, DR 133/609 Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, Berlin (SAPMO) ZK Kultur DY 30 IV/2/2-02682 Bundesarchiv Koblenz Henrich Mann Nachlass, Aktennotiz IV B 5—463/53

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Karl Heinz Pepper, letter to Diedrich, November 1957. DEFA-Außenhandel, letter to Erich Mehl, February 29, 1964. Erich Mehl, letter to Ralf Schenk, March 14, 1994.

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Interviews Emsbach, Eleonore, Artur Brauner Archiv, Deutsches Film-Institut, Frankfurt, Germany, November 17, 2015. Ott, Gabrielle, Lugano, Switzerland, June 15, 2015. Ott, Gabrielle, Lugano, Switzerland, July 11, 2016. Schenk, Ralf, DEFA Foundation, Berlin, November 20, 2015. Simon, Rainer, Berlin, Germany, October 24, 2017. Wagenstein, Angel, Sofia, Bulgaria, January 17, 2007.

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DVD Editions Dresen, Andreas, dir. Gundermann. 2018; Berlin, Germany: Pandora Film, 2019. DVD. Maetzig, Kurt, dir. The Silent Star. 1960; The DEFA Sc-Fi Collection, Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2005. DVD. Simon, Rainer, dir. Die Besteigung des Chimborazo. 1989; Berlin, Germany: Absolut Medien, 2014. DVD. Staudte, Wolfgang, dir. Der Untertan [The Kaiser’s Lackey]. 1951; Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2007. DVD. Wolf, Konrad, dir. Goya. 1971; Amherst, MA: DEFA Film Library, 2010. DVD.

Websites Cineuropa, https://cineuropa.org/ DEFA Film Library, https://ecommerce.umass.edu/defa/ DEFA-Stiftung, www.defa-stiftung.de/ Gabrielle Ott’s website, https://www.gabrieleott.ch/library Filmzensur, http://www.filmzensur-ostwest.de/ Manfred Durniok Productions, http://www.durniok.com/

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Durniok, Manfred. Manfred Durniok—Films & Friends. Berlin: Das neue Berlin, 1996. Flügge, Manfred. Die vier Leben der Marta Feuchtwanger. Biographie. Berlin: Aufbau, 2008. Hardt, Ursula. From Caligari to California: Erich Pommer’s Life in the International Film Wars. Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1996. Jacobsen, Wolfgang. Erich Pommer: Filmproduzent zwischen Kunst, Industrie und Unterhaltung. Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2017. Jacobsen, Wolfgang, and Rolf Aurich, eds. Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf: Biographie. Berlin: Aufbau, 2005. Jacobsen, Wolfgang, and Jörg Schöning, eds. Erich Pommer: Ein Produzent macht Filmgeschichte. Berlin: Argon, 1989. Ludin, Malte. Wolfgang Staudte. Hamburg, Germany: Rowohlt, 1996. Netenjakob, Egon, Eva Orbanz, and Hans Helmut Prinzler, eds. Staudte. Berlin: Wissenschaftsverlag Volker Spiess, Edition Filme, 1991. Novotny, Ehrentraud. Gojko Mitić. Berlin: Henschel, 1976. Schneider, Heike, ed. Walter Janka: Zum Kreuze kriechen kann ich nicht! Erinnerungen und Lebenszeugnisse. Berlin: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 2014. Tremper, Will. Grosse Klappe: Meine Filmjahre. Berlin: Rütten & Loening, 1998. Wolf, Konrad. Konrad Wolf, 1925–1982. Frankfurt, Germany: Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde, 1983.

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SELECT FILMOGRAPHY

Apachen (Appaches, 1973, GDR/Romania/Soviet Union) Director: Gottfried Kolditz; screenplay: Gottfried Kolditz, Gojko Mitić Production Companies: DEFA; Buftea Studios (Romania); Mosfilm (USSR) Premiered: June 29, 1973 (GDR); April 15, 1974 (Hungary); November 1, 1976 (West Germany) Das Fräulein von Scudéri (Mademoiselle de Scudéry, 1955, GDR/Sweden) Director: Eugen York; writer (novella): E.T.A. Hoffman; screenplay: Joachim Barckhausen, Alexander Graf Stenbock-Fermor Production Companies: DEFA, A.B. Pandora Film (Stockholm, Sweden) Premiered: July 29, 1955 (GDR); November 24, 1955 (West Germany) Der schweigende Stern (The Silent Star, released in the West as First Spaceship on Venus, 1960, GDR/Poland) Director: Kurt Maetzig; writer (novel): Stanislaw Lem; screenplay: Jan Fethke, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, Günter Reisch, Günther Rücker, Alexander Graf Stenbock-Fermor, Kurt Maetzig Production Companies: DEFA, Zespół Filmowy/Iluzjon (Poland) Premiered: February 26, 1960 (GDR); March 7, 1960 (Poland); September 9, 1960 (West Germany); January 29, 1962 (Sweden) Der Untertan (The Kaiser’s Lackey, 1951, GDR) Director: Wolfgang Staudte; writer (novel): Heinrich Mann; screenplay: Wolfgang Staudte, Fritz Staudte Production Company: DEFA Premiered: August 31, 1951 (GDR); October 19, 1951 (Austria); October 3, 1956 (France); March 8, 1957 (West Germany) Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel/Les aventures de Till L’Espiègle (The Bold Adventure, 1956, GDR/France) Director: Gérard Philipe, in collaboration with Joris Ivens; writer (novel): Charles de Coster; screenplay: René Barjavel, Joris Ivens, René Wheeler Production Companies: Ariane-Films (Paris), DEFA Premiered: November 7, 1956 (France); January 4, 1957 (GDR); April 5, 1957 (West Germany)

Select Filmography

263

Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (The Ascent of Chimborazo, 1989, GDR/West Germany/Ecuador) Director: Rainer Simon; screenplay: Paul Kanut Schäfer, Rainer Simon Production Companies: DEFA; Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (West Germany); Toro-Film (West Germany) Premiered: September 7, 1989 (GDR) Die Elenden (Les Misérables 1958, GDR/France/Italy) Director: Jean-Paul Le Chanois; writer: Victor Hugo (novel); screenplay: JeanPaul Le Chanois, Michel Ausdiard, René Barjavel Production Companies: Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma (France); DEFA; Serena, P.A.C. (Italy) Premiered: March 12, 1958 (France); January 16, 1959 (GDR); January 29, 1960 (West Germany) Die Hexen von Salem/Le Sorcières de Salem (The Crucible, 1957, GDR/France) Director: Raymond Rouleau; writer (play): Arthur Miller; screenplay: Jean-Paul Sartre Production Companies: Films Borderie (France); CICC (Compagnie Industrielle et Commerciale Cinématographique, France); DEFA Premiered: April 26, 1957 (France); April 26, 1957 (GDR); March 31, 1959 (Sweden) Die Söhne der großen Bärin (The Sons of Great Bear, 1966, GDR) Director: Joseph Mach, writer (novel and screenplay): Liselotte Welskopf-Henrich Production Companies: DEFA, Bosna Film (Yugoslavia) Premiered: February 18, 1966 (GDR); September 22, 1966 (Hungary); February 10, 1967 (West Germany) Die Schönste (The Most Beautiful, 1957, GDR/Sweden) Directors: Ernst Rechenmacher (Ernesto Remani); second cut (1959), Walter Beck; screenplay: Artur Kuhnert, Ilse Langer, Ernst Rechenmacher, Heinz Kalau (1959) Production Companies: DEFA, A.B. Pandora Film (Stockholm, Sweden) Premiered: May 24, 2002 (Germany) Eolomea (1972, GDR/USSR/Bulgaria) Director: Herrmann Zschoche; screenplay: Herrmann Zschoche, Angel Wagenstein Production Companies: DEFA; Mosfilm (USSR); Boyana Film (Bulgaria) Premiered: September 21, 1972 (GDR); February 8, 1983 (Hungary); April 29, 1995 (TV premiere, West Germany) Goya, oder Der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge, GDR/ USSR/Bulgaria/Yugoslavia, 1971) Director: Konrad Wolf; writer (novel): Lion Feuchtwanger; screenplay: Angel Wagenstein, Marta Feuchtwanger (uncredited), Konrad Wolf Production Companies: DEFA; Lenfilm Studio (Soviet Union); Boyana (Bulgaria); Bosna Film (Yugoslavia) Premiered: July 1971 (Soviet Union); September 16, 1971 (GDR); November 2, 1973 (West Germany)

264

Select Filmography

Gundermann (2018, Germany) Director: Andreas Dresen; screenplay: Laila Stieler Production Companies: Pandora Film Produktion (Cologne) in co-production with kineo Filmproduktion Peter Hartwig (Potsdam Babelsberg); Leuchtstoff (RBB/MBB); Arte Deutschland TV (Baden-Baden) Premiered: August 13, 2018 (Germany); March 10, 2019 (USA) Herzkönig (King of the Heart, 1947, Germany) Director: Helmut Weiss; screenplay: Helmit Weiss Production Company: CCC-Film (Berlin) in cooperation with DEFA Premiered: August 25, 1947 (West Germany); March 11, 1949 (GDR) Im Staub der Sterne (In the Dust of Stars, 1976, GDR/Romania) Director: Gottfried Kolditz; screenplay: Gottfried Kolditz Production Company: DEFA Premiered: July 1, 1976 (GDR); October 15, 1977 (Poland); May 8, 1978 (Hungary) Leuchtfeuer (Navigating Light, 1954, GDR/Sweden) Director: Wolfgang Staudte; screenplay: Wolfgang Staudte, Werner Jörg Lüddecke Production Companies: DEFA, A.B. Pandora Film (Stockholm) Premiered: December 3, 1954 (GDR) Morituri (1948, West Germany) Director: Eugen York; screenplay: Gustav Kampendonk Production Company: CCC-Film (Berlin) in cooperation with DEFA Premiered: September 24, 1948 (GDR and West Germany) Signale – Ein Weltraumabenteuer (Signals: A Space Adventure, 1970, GDR/Poland) Director: Gottfried Kolditz; screenplay: C.U. Wiesner, Gottfried Kolditz Production Companies: DEFA, Zespół Filmowy/Iluzjon (Poland) Premiered: December 6, 1970 (GDR); May 20, 1971 (Poland); September 29, 1972 (Hungary) Spielbank-Affäre (Casino Affair, 1957, GDR/Sweden) Director: Arthur Pohl; writer (memoir): Hans Oettinger; screenplay: Arthur Pohl Production Companies: DEFA, A.B. Pandora Film (Stockholm, Sweden) Premiered: September 13, 1957 (GDR); October 30, 1957 (West Germany) Trübe Wasser/Les arrivistes (Muddy Waters, 1960, GDR/France) Director: Louis Daquin, writer (novel, La Raboilleuse): Honoré de Balzac; screenplay: Louis Daquin, Klaus Wischnewski Production Companies: Société Nouvelle Pathé Cinéma, DEFA Premiered: April 8, 1960 (France); May 13, 1960 (GDR) Ulzana (1974, GDR/USSR/Romania) Director: Gottfried Kolditz; screenplay: Gottfried Kolditz, Gojko Mitić Production Companies: DEFA, Mosfilm (USSR), Filmstudio Bucuresti (Romania) Premiered: May 16, 1974 (GDR); December 5, 1974 (Hungary); June 30, 1975 (Poland); November 14, 1976 (TV premiere, West Germany)

INDEX

Note: Page references with an f are figures. Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel (The Bold Adventure [1957]), 36, 59f, 60, 68, 70 Abich, Hans, 16, 83, 100 Abuladze, Tengiz, 181, 186, 205 Abusch, Alexander, 107, 125, 196, 202, 206 Academy of Arts (East Berlin), 22, 82 Ackermann, Anton, 106, 141, 179, 205 adaptation, 47, 60–64, 69, 70, 80, 81, 100, 104, 113, 115, 131, 134, 135, 143, 165, 183, 189, 199, 204, 208; coproduced, 97; Goya, 189, 194–98, 207; Jadup und Boel, 214; fairy-tale, 16, 18, 106; Karl May, 153, 163, 167; literary, 24, 71, 112, 134, 197, 199, 214 Aelita (Aelita: Queen of Mars [1924]), 132 Aesop (1970), 200 Affaire Blum (The Affair Blum [1948]), 93 Agde, Günter, xii, 139 Aleksander Nevsky (1938), 186 Allegret, Marc, 50 Allianz Filmproduktion, 213 Allied Control Council, 92 Along Came Jones (1945), 113 Als wir träumten (As We Were Dreaming [2015]), 236 Altariba, Béatrice, 65

American Film Institute, 208 Americanization, 40, 45 Andrei Rublev (1966), 186, 187, 201, 202 anti-Americanism, 41, 42, 51, 59 antifascist agenda, 11, 55, 110; films, 7; ideology, 96; society, 22 Die antike Münze (The Ancient Coin [1965]), 199 anti-Westerns, 154 Antonioni, Michelangelo, 211 Apachen (1973), 129, 161 Arachveulebrivi Gamopena (An Unusual Exhibition [1968]), 205 Arca Film Holding, 88, 109 ARD (German broadcaster), 111, 113–15, Ariane Films, 57, 63, 69, 70, 262 Arnold, Jack, 131 artist biopics, 24, 178, 179, 186, 188, 210, 225, 234, 236–37, 239. See also biopics; scientist biopics artistic production units, 123–68. See also KAGs Ärztinnen (Woman Doctors [1984]), 115 Asociación de Cineastas de Ecuador (Association of the Filmmakers of Ecuador [ASOCINE]), 220, 222 Asteroidenjäger (Asteroid Hunter [Reisch]), 148 Astronauci (The Astronauts [1951]), 134 The Astronauts (Lem), 130, 131, 135, 136

266

Index

Aubert, Louis, 43, 46–48, 57 Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts (Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing [1973]), 115 auteur, 181–83, 186, 188, 211; auteurist, 8, 10, 18, 28; politique des auteurs, 203 avant-garde, 181–83, 203; directors, 183, 186; movements, 181, 218 Az élet muzsikája—Kalman Imre (Kalman Imre [1985]), 187 Babelsberg studios, 1, 2, 34, 36, 40, 50, 55, 59, 62, 161, 235 Ballmann, Herbert, 58 Banionis, Donatas, 188, 191, 207f bans on film coproductions, 82–83, 86, 87, 102, 184 Barbara (2012), 238 Barthel, Erich, 113 Basic Treaty (1972), 207 Beck, Walter, 101 Beethoven-Tage aus einem Leben (Beethoven-Days in a Life [1976]), 188, 209 Bentzien, Hans, 110, 202 Berlin Blockade (1948), 92–94, 96, 99 Berlin Ecke Schönhauser (Berlin Schönhauser Corner [1957]), 112 Berlin Wall, 17, 71, 84, 215, 222, 223 Bernard, Raymond, 61, 64 Die Besteigung des Chimborazo (The Ascent of Chimborazo [1989]), 28, 188, 189, 210, 211, 213, 213f, 214–18, 217f, 218, 220, 221f, 225; production of, 222–24; release of, 223 Besuch bei Van Gogh (Visiting Van Gogh [1985]), 134 Beyer, Frank, 115, 145, 232, 236 Biermann, Kurt, 218 Biermann, Wolf, 210, 232 bilateral agreements, 5, 19, 35, 55, 57, 90 biopics, 24, 27, 28, 139, 143, 167, 168, 178–232. See also artist biopics; scientist biopics

Blier, Bernard, 64 Bleiweiß, Celino, 115 Blum-Byrnes agreement, 54–56 Bockshorn (1984), 115 Böhm, Rudolf, 58 borders, 157, 215; geopolitical, 4, 14, 69, 71, 80, 86–87, 100, 116, 239; national, 5, 71, 114; zonal, 94; European, 87; crossing, 11, 15–17 Borgelt, Hans, 89, 114 Braun, Wernher von, 26, 139, 140 Brauner, Artur, 15, 22, 83, 91, 94, 95, 96, 97, 100, 109, 116, 205, 208, 234 Brecht, Bertolt, 172, 208 Broszkiewicz, Jerzy, 188 Bruk, Frank, 204 Buddenbrooks (1959), 112 Buddenbrooks (Mann), 16, 97, 100, 103 Budzislawski, Hermann, 206 Bulgaria, 20, 23, 69, 115, 121, 124, 125, 128, 131, 134, 155, 159, 161, 187, 199 Busch, Ernst, 191 Byrnes, James, 54, 55 Cagliostro (1929), 48 Cahiers du Cinéma, 182 Campos, Luis Miguel, 216, 221f Cannes Film Festival, 58 Čapek, Karel, 131 Caval, Gaston, 49 CCC (Central Cinema Company), 88, 95, 96, 98, 109 censorship, 19, 27, 69, 83, 86, 94, 99, 103, 110–113, 128, 135, 144, 183, 204, 214, 216 Central Film Administration (Hauptverwaltung Film), 69, 127, 141, 145, 146, 152, 193, 205, 214, 223 Černý Petr (Black Peter [1964]), 211 CGE (Compagnie de Générale des Eaux), 1, 2 children’s films, 112, 171, 212; books, 163 China, 22, 115, 136

Index

Churchill, Winston, 6 Chytilová, Věra, 182 Ciné-Alliance, 46 Ciné-France, 43, 61 cinéma de qualité, 37, 64 cinéma vérite, 211 cinemas: Czechoslovak, 5, 19, 20; Eastern European, 17–21; in East Germany, 3, 8, 11; European, 4; GDR (German Democratic Republic), 6; Germany, 39; Hungary, 19; Nazi, 12, 39, 45; Poland, 18, 19, 20; popularizing East German cinema (Mehl), 110– 13; Soviet Union, 18; Weimar, 44 Clouzot, Henri-George, 50 coauthor(s), 28, 184, 190, 219, 222, 236 coauthoring, 27, 183, 188, 189, 202, 217, 219, 225, 236 coauthorship, 10, 28, 187, 192 Cold War, 2, 3, 4, 26, 164, 165, 238; acceleration of, 81; antagonism, 94; collaborations during, 87; competition, 125, 157; cultures, 5; Die Elenden, 60–71; European cinemas of, 9; film exchanges during, 86; movement from East to West, 15; politics, 116; time frames, 14 collaborations, 23–28, 233–39; Brauner, Artur, 96; during the Cold War, 87; Die Elenden, 37 (see also Die Elenden); forms of, 71; Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge [1971]), 194–202; PathéParis, 35. See also Film Europe Collective 63 (Kollektiv 63), 211, 121 Colombia, 211, 219 Columbia Pictures, 140, 208 Constantin, 111 continuity, 233–39 Copernicus (1973), 187 coproduction, 38, 218; Die Elenden, 60–71; French-German, 40–49;

267

GDR (German Democratic Republic), 87; German nationalism, 49–54; Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge [1971]), 182; postwar French-German, 54–59 costume drama, 24, 212 The Crucible (Miller), 36 Cuba, 155, 214, 219, 220, 222 cultural exchanges, 8, 10, 14–17 cultural mediators, 15; Feuchtwanger, Marta, 207–9; Mehl, Erich, 113–16 Czechoslovakia, 9, 22, 26, 28, 38, 49, 87, 124, 127, 131, 154, 157–61, 186, 222; cinemas, 19, 20; New Waves, 5, 181, 182; programming policies, 154 Daquin, Louis, 36 Dau, Werner, 101f de Balzać, Honoré, 36 de Coster, Charles, 36 DEFA (Deutsche FilmAktiengesellschaft), 1, 2, 3, 4, 71, 167, 233; agendas, 6; antiNazi messages, 54; artistic production units, 123–68; biopics, 178–232 (see also biopics [DEFA]); coproductions with France, 34–79 (see also Film Europe; France); coproductions with Pandora, 100–104; demise of, 7; Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel (The Bold Adventure [1957]), 68; partners, 70; dokumentarer Spielfilm (documentary feature film), 211; dramaturges, 150, 151, 152; Eastern European cinemas, 17–21; Erich Mehl’s partnership with, 80–122; exchange of films, 9, 10; Film Library, 8; filmmakers, 185; foreign trade, 16; historical dramas, 27; history of, 11–21; Indianerfilme, 155–58 (see also

268

Index

Indianerfilme); joint ventures, 57; lack of resources, 55; motives for cooperation, 23; partnerships, 24; politics, 5; rebuilding domestic markets, 56; showcasing products in the West, 15; Third Reich filmmakers, 12 DEFA-Außenhandel, 84–86, 89, 90, 100, 107, 152, 153, 213, 223 de Goya, Francisco, 178, 190 de Laforgue, Leo, 88, 89 Delorme, Danièle, 65 DeMille, Cecil B., 36, 62, 63 Deppe, Hans, 12 de Saint-Exupéry, Antoine, 199 Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin), 22, 114 Dieterle, William, 56, 95 Diller, Helmut, 90, 111 Directive 55, 92 dokumentarer Spielfilm (documentary feature film), 211, 216 Donnersmarck, Florian Henckel von, 238 Doroga k zvezdam (Road to the Stars [1957]), 132, 141 Dramaturgengruppen (dramaturgical groups), 144. See also KAGs dramaturges, 124, 128, 144, 159, 161, 168; DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft), 150, 151, 152; KAGs (Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppen), 183, 184, 194; Red Circle, 145; Wischnewski, Klaus, 204 Dresen, Andreas, 234, 235, 236, 237, 239 Duda, Milan, 160 Dudow, Slatan, 58, 110, 127 Durniok, Manfred, 15, 22, 84, 114, 115, 116, 208, 213 Duvivier, Julien, 50 Dymschitz, Alexander, 179, 205 Eastern European cinemas, 17–19, 27, 116, 126, 167, 180, 187, 236;

cinematic industries, 124; attractions, 156 Eastern European New Waves, 179, 182, 204 East German National People’s Army, 34 East German Union for Film and Television Workers, 222 East Germany, 1, 184; cinema in, 3, 8, 11, 20; filmmaking, 234; Ministry of State Security, 196; political persuasion through art, 82; popularizing East German cinema (Mehl), 110–13 Ecuador, 210, 211, 217–19, 221, 222, 224 Efremov, Ivan, 131 Eisenstein, Sergei, 186, 201 Die Elenden (1957), 35, 36, 37, 40, 57, 58, 60–71, 67f, 68, 69 El Libro Libre, 93, 196 Eleventh Plenum of the SED (December 1965), 144–45. See also Kahlschlag Emilia Galotti (1958), 112 Engel, Erich, 93 Eolomea (1972), 134 Esposito, Giani, 66 Europa-Filmverleih, 83 European cinema, 1–11, 14, 15, 37, 45, 48, 54, 89, 154, 168, 179, 181, 189, 225, 233, 234, 239; panEuropean cinema, 38, 71; allEuropean cinema, 49; European cinematic culture, 71. See also Eastern European cinemas; Film Europe “European Monroe Doctrine” (1942), 41 export, film, 13, 16, 24, 41, 45, 50, 52, 56, 83–84, 86, 89, 99–100, 111, 114, 140, 146; agenda, 9, 24; department, 21, 24; international, 203; and import, 43, 48, 80, 89, 100; market, 94; volume, 90; zone, 53

Index

FAMU (Filmová a televizní fakulta, Akademie Múzických Umění (Film and Television School of the Academy of Performing Arts), 182 Die Farben von Tigua (Tigua’s Colors [1994]), 224 Fellini, Federico, 211 Fernes Land (Simon), 219, 220 Fescourt, Henri, 47, 61 Fethke, Jan, 138, 139 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 16, 69, 93, 189, 190, 194, 195, 196, 197, 200, 206 Feuchtwanger, Marta, 16, 17, 21, 22, 27, 69, 194, 195f, 197, 207–9, 207f, 225, 234 Feyder, Jacques, 50 Figaros Hochzeit (The Marriage of Figaro [1949]), 112 Film America, 34, 41, 55. See also Film Europe film conferences, Berlin (1928), 46; Brussels (1930), 46; Paris (1929), 46; Sinaia (1958), 125; Sofia (1960), 125; Prague (1957), 125 Film Europe, 2, 14, 24, 25, 34–62, 71, 233; French-German coproductions, 40–49; German nationalism, 49–54. See also Film America; European cinema film exchanges, 14–17; during the 1940s, 90–97; during the Cold War, 86; DEFA-Außenhandel, 100; networks, 86–90. See also interzonal film exchange film festivals, 5. See also Cannes Film Festival; Karlovy Vary Film Festival; Moscow Film Festival; Venice Film Festival film industries, cooperation with, 38. See also collaborations films: international, 44; licenses, 16, 110, 111; licenses to produce, 90; marketable, 45; cinematic culture, 71; cinematographic union, 47. See also genre films Films Borderie, 57, 63, 69, 70, 83, 263

269

First International Cinema Exhibitors’ Conference (1928), 46 Ford, Aleksander, 143, 181 Ford, John, 153 Forman, Miloš, 181, 211 Forster, Georg, 223 Forster, Rudolf, 105 Das Forsthaus in Tirol (The Lodge in Tirol [1955]), 113 Four Power Agreement on Berlin (1971), 207 France, 14, 28, 34, 35, 37–39, 42–58, 60, 62, 63, 68–70, 87, 88, 104, 110–12, 136, 137, 140, 154, 182, 190, 191, 195, 201, 207, 211, 216, 219, 222, 225, 238 Die Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon [1929]), 132 Das Fräulein von Scudéri (Mademoiselle de Scudéry [1955]), 101, 101f, 104, 137 Freitag, Manfred, 188 French Communist Party, 64 French-German coproductions, 40–49; Die Elenden, 60–71; German nationalism, 49–54; postwar, 54–59 French Nouvelle Vague, 154, 181, 182, 202. See also New Waves FRG (Federal Republic of Germany), 1, 13, 22, 25, 28, 104, 105, 112, 140, 146 Friedensrat (Peace Council), 142, 143 Gabin, Jean, 34, 60, 65, 65f Galey, Louis-Émile, 138 Galiński, Tadeusz, 139 Gance, Abel, 47 Gansovsky, Sever, 131, 134 Gass, Karl, 215 GDR (German Democratic Republic), 1, 3, 6, 56, 57, 58, 69, 71, 81, 84, 104, 106, 108, 112, 117, 124, 130, 134, 146, 151, 157, 184, 202, 206, 210, 214, 216, 225, 235; audiences, 101, 112, 138, 152, 159, 166, 218, 235–37; authors, 148,

270 Index

163; censors, 102, 106; cinema, 6, 108, 239; citizens, 157, 211; coproductions, 82, 87; cultural functionaries, 166, 185; demise of, 7; exiles, 196; film exchange with, 87, 110; filmmakers, 181, 210, 224; filmmaking in, 17, 89, 90, 112, 127; film policy, 115, 155, 181; foundational myth, 82, 159; government, 82, 98, 99, 110; ideologues, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70; image abroad, 143, 184, 193, 209, 215; filmmakers, 68–69; imports, 110; (movie) theaters, 84, 152, 154, 207, 223; national cinema of, 13; officials, 115, 139, 143, 151, 167, 224; political recognition of, 81, 82, 103, 166, 184, 202, 207, 208, 215; politics, 117; politicians, 83, 108, 112, 117; press, 81, 140; readers, 130; secret police, 235; socialist project, 58; society, 167, 185, 236; sovereignty, 35, 58, 71, 207; television, 87, 113. See also East Germany GDR Embassy, in Moscow, 141; in Washington, D.C., 209 GDR Film Academy (Potsdam), 183, 211, 212, 236 GDR Ministry of Culture, 98, 107, 110, 124, 125, 136, 144, 193, 205; deputy minister of culture, 139, 141; minister of culture, 163, 202 GDR Science Academy, 214 Die gefrorenen Blitze (Frozen Lightning [1962]), 140 Gegenwartsfilme (films about contemporary GDR society), 185, 212 Geniusfilm (genius film), 184–86 genres, 9, 10, 12, 16, 21, 27–29, 71, 97, 112, 115, 123, 125–127, 130–32; artist biopics (see artist biopics); conventions, 128; costume dramas (see costume dramas); countergenres, 11, 127; DEFA genre

production, 112; entertainment, 127; escapist, 54; films, 20, 111, 151; genre and authorship, 24; historical drama (see historical drama); features, 41; Indianerfilme, 129; popular, 26, 129; socialist, 18; science fiction (see science fiction); scientist biopics (see scientist biopics); suspense (see suspense films); Western (see Westerns); utopian, 130–34, 132, 142, 151, 155 Georgia, 155, 161 German Reunification, 223, 235 Germany Year Zero (1948), 93 Godard, Jean-Luc, 211 Goebbels, Joseph, 2, 39, 51, 52, 53, 92 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 218 Goldener Stern der Völkerfreundschaft (Golden Star of People’s Friendship), 206 Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge [1971]), 27, 28, 69, 178, 180f, 192f, 215, 218, 225; censorship, 183; collaborations, 194–202; coproductions, 182; debates provoked by, 180; Feuchtwanger, Marta, 207–9; KAGs (Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppen), 193; legacy of, 209–13; New Waves, 202–7; United States, 189; The Grand Inquisitor, 179, 180, 180f Graf, Jürgen, 83, 89 Gräf, Roland, 211 Great Britain, 38, 54, 87, 88, 133, 140 Grebnev, Anatoli, 194 Greif, Herinrich, 193 Grémillion, Jean, 50 Grenzkinos, 90 Greven, Alfred, 51, 52 Großstadtgeheimnis (Big City Secret [1951]), 88–89 Guayasamin, Gustavo and Igor, 220 Gundermann (2018), 234, 235, 237, 238, 239 Gundermann, Conny, 237

Index

Gundermann, Gerhard, 235 Günther, Egon, xii, 180, 199, 224 Gussmann, Manfred, 113 Hälfte des Lebens (A Half of Life [1985]), 210 Hallstein Doctrine (1955), 35, 58, 70, 82, 83, 99, 106 Hammerschmidt, Wolfgang, 222 Hardt-Hardtloff, Hans, 159 Harfouch, Corinna, 236 Haskin, Byron, 131 Hawks, Howard, 153 Heimatglocken (Heimat Bells [1952]), 113 Heisler, Stuart, 113 Hellberg, Martin, 112 Hendriks, Jan, 105 Herbier, Marcel, 48 heritage; cultural, 55, 82, 184, 206, 234–38; European, 185; German, 218; humanist, 215; heritage cinema, 237–39; literary, 205; UFA, 234 Herold, Carmen, 191 Herz, Henriette, 216, 218 Herzkönig (King of the Heart [1947]), 96 Die Hexen von Salem (The Crucible [1957]), 36, 60, 68, 70 Los Hieleros del Chimborazo (The Chimborazo Climber [1977]), 220 Hildebrandt, Dorothea, 149, 150 historical drama, 27, 203, 217 Hoffmann, Adolf Peter, 159 Hoffmann, Ernst, 127, 142 Hölderlin, Johann Friedrich, 210 Hollywood, 42, 45; backlashes against, 59; competing with, 47, 151; emigration to, 56; influx of pictures from, 14; marketing, 53; Westerns, 158 (see also Westerns, rise of European) Hoppe, Rolf, 191 Hübchen, Henry, 236 Hugo, Victor, 34, 35, 36, 37, 61, 62, 66, 67, 68

271

Humboldt, Alexander von, 28, 188, 214, 216–20, 222, 236 Humboldt in Cuba (1983), 222 Humboldt Research Committee, 218 Hungarian Revolution (1956), 68 Hungary, 19, 115, 186 Ich war neunzehn (I Was Nineteen [1968]), 210 Ideal-Film, 98, 103, 109. See also Mehl, Erich IFC (Internationale Filmkammer/ International Film chamber), 39, 52–54, 62 Ikarie XB-I (Voyage to the End of the Universe [1963]), 131 imperialism, 158 imports, 89, 100, 110, 152. See also export Im Staub der Sterne (In the Dust of Stars [1976]), 134 Indianerfilme, 18, 27, 126, 127, 128, 145, 154, 155–58, 167, 184; Red Circle, 164–66; Die Söhne der großen Bärin, 158–64 indigenous people, 217, 220, 221, 224 intercultural; dialogue, 24; encounter, 218; interzonal film exchange, 25, 86, 90, 91–94, 96, 97, 99, 103, 112, 208 Interministerial Commission for East-West Film Questions, 82, 99, 100, 113, 114 Internationale FilmhandelsGmbh (International Film Trade Holding), 100 International Treaty Council, 157 internationalism, 3, 23, 26, 442, 49–54, 61, 71, 203, 224; statedriven, 40, 215 interwar period (1918 to 1939), 2, 20 Invaders from Mars (1953), 131 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), 131 Iron Curtain, 6, 14, 39, 82, 126, 166, 234 Italian Neorealism, 19, 125, 181, 211

272

Index

Italy, 38, 43, 52, 54, 55, 58, 87, 88, 110, 154, 182, 206, 207, 225 It Came from Outer Space (1953), 131 Ivan the Terrible I (1945), 186 Jacoby, Georg, 41 Jadup und Boel (Jadup and Boel, 1980/1988), 214 Jakubowska, Wanda, 135, 143 Jancsó, Miklós, 181 Jandák, Vítězslav, 188 Janka, Charlotte, 195f, 197 Janka, Walter, 16, 27, 92, 93, 179, 190, 194, 195f, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 214, 220 Japan, 115, 203, 206 Jeancolas, Jean-Pierre, 47 Jiroušková, Eva, 188 Johannes Kepler (1974), 187, 188 Johannisthal, 92, 127, 128, 141, 144. See also artistic production units; KAGs Jordan, Kurt, 90 Kadr, 146, 148, 149 KAGs (Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppen), 10, 21, 167; administrative control, 150; artistic production units, 123–68; channeling agendas, 126; collective nature of, 234; communication, 158; dramaturges, 183, 184, 194; emergence of, 124, 125, 126–30; external advisors, 182; Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge [1971]), 193; importance of, 26; independent status of, 128; Johannisthal, 92, 127, 128, 141, 144; member hierarchies, 128; outsourcing production, 160; politics, 128; project consolidations, 152; Red Circle (see Red Circle); restructure of, 143, 183; socialism and, 127 Kahlschlag (clearing/ erasure), 128, 144–45, 152, 158, 168, 181, 199. See also Eleventh Plenum

Kalatozov, Mikhail, 114 Kaltofen, Günter, 219 Kameradschaft (Comradeship [1931]), 48 Das Kaninchen bin ich (The Rabbit Am I [1965]), 145 Karl, Günter, 145, 151 Karlovy Vary Film Festival, 18, 143 Karzhukov, Mikhail, 132 Käutner, Helmut, 12 Kazan, Elia, 108 Kieślowski, Krzysztof, 181 Kirch, Leo, 16, 84, 88, 113–15 Kisch, Egon Erwin, 196 Kisselev, Ilya Nikolaevich, 205 Klein, Gerhard, 112, 127 Kleinau, Willy A., 105, 107 Der kleine Prinz (The Little Prince [de Saint-Exupéry]), 199 Kleist, Heinrich von, 209 Klushantsev, Pavel, 132, 141 Knietzsch, Horst, 143 Kohlhaase, Wolfgang, 139, 193, 194, 236, 239 Kolditz, Gottfried, 129, 134, 145–51, 149, 150, 151 Koppel, Walter, 15, 22, 83, 91, 93, 208 Kosmos. Erinnerungen an Alexander von Humboldt (Kosmos— Remembering Alexander von Humboldt [1960]), 215 Kozyr, Aleksandr, 132 Kubaschewski, Ilse, 16, 148 Kubrick, Stanley, 133, 147 Kückelmann, Gertrud, 105, 109 Kugelstadt, Hermann, 113 Kühnert, Steffi, 236 Kunert, Joachim, 199 Künstlerfilm (artist film), 184, 234 La Débâcle (The Downfall [1892]), 71 Laemmle, Max, 208 L’Alliance Cinématographique Européene (ACE; European Cinematic Alliance), 39, 49, 50, 51 Lamprecht, Gerhard, 12

Index

Land an der Havel (The Havel River Country [1957]), 113 Lang, Fritz, 13, 42, 56, 95, 132 La Rabouilleuse (de Balzac), 36 La Revue de Paris, 50 L’Argent (Money [1928]), 48 Leander, Zara, 12 Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others [2006]), 238 Le Chanois, Jean-Paul, 34, 35, 37, 58, 61, 63, 64, 66, 68, 69, 70 Ledoux, Fernand, 65 Lem, Stanislaw, 130, 131, 134, 135, 136, 138 Lenfilm, 178, 179, 196, 202 Les Misérables (1925), 47 Les Misérables (Hugo), 34, 35, 36, 37, 62 Letyat Zhuravli (Cranes Are Flying [1958]), 198 Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh [1924]), 42 Leuchtfeuer (Navigating Light [1954]), 26, 101, 103, 104 licenses, films, 16, 90, 110, 111 Liefers, Jan Josef, 213f, 215, 221f Limonádový Joe aneb Konska Opera (Lemonade Joe, or A Horse Opera [1964]), 154 Lindemann, Alfred, 92 Lipský, Odřich, 154 literary advisers, 12, 26, 124, 183, 193 Lolova, Tatyana, 191 Łomnicki, Jan, 187 Lotte in Weimar (1975), 199 Lourau, Georges, 53 Lubitsch, Ernst, 13 Das Luftschiff (The Airship [1983]), 211, 212 Lukeš, Oldřich, 142 Mach, Josef, 162f Mäde, Dieter, 222 Mader, Julius, 140 Maetzig, Kurt, 12, 26, 123, 124, 127, 129, 132, 133, 137, 138, 139, 140,

273

141, 143–46, 150–51, 183; and KAGs, 123–24, 135, 150 The Magnificent Seven (1960), 154 Mahlich, Johannes (Hans), 137, 141, 142, 159 Mainz, F. A., 100, 140 Malikoff, Nikolai, 48 Mann, Heinrich, 80, 81, 196 Mann, Katia, 196 Mann, Klaus, 115 Mann, Thomas, 16, 17, 97, 100, 103, 196, 199 Der Mann, der nach den Sternen greift: Wernher von Braun (I Aim at the Stars [1960]), 26, 136 May, Joe, 41 May, Karl, 153, 163 Mazurka der Liebe (Mazurka of Love [1957]), 112 Mehl, Erich, x, 15, 21, 23, 25, 80–113; 85f, 101f, 102f, 124, 137, 207, 213, 234; agenda, 26; arrival of, 97–100; cultural mediators, 113–16; DEFAAußenhandel, 84–86; partnership with DEFA, 80–122; popularizing East German cinema, 110–13 Menaker, Leonid, 187 Menzel, Jiří, 182 Menzies, William Cameron, 131 Mephisto (Mann), 115 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 45 Metropolis (1927), 132 Meyer, Rolf, 91 Michael Strogoff (1926), 47 Milestone, Lewis, 62 Miller, Arthur, 36, 71 Millionenfilm, 151–53, 156, 158–64, 165 Ministry of Culture (GDR), 69, 98, 107, 145. See also GDR Ministry of Culture Mins, Leonard, 56 Die Miserablen (The Miserable Ones [1960]), 70 Mit Fischen und Vögeln reden (Talking to Fish and Birds [1999]), 224

274

Index

Mitić, Gojko, 129, 146, 146f, 149, 159, 160 Mongolia, 20, 128, 155, 161 Monfort, Sylvia, 66 Montand, Yves, 58, 68 Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are Among Us [1946]), 91 Morgenstern, Viktor, 132 Morituri (1947), 96 Moscow Film Festival, 206 Motion Picture Export Association of America, 56 Mügge, Vera, 98, 101f, 107 Müller, Hans, 12, 112 multinational actors, 223; cast, 25, 40, 209; companies, 43; coproduction, 187; crews, 11, 20, 47, 61, 161, 187, 188; joint projects, 213, 233 multiple-language versions, 45, 48, 49, 50 Murnau, F. W., 13, 42 musicals, 112 Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children [1961]), 208 Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (The Naked Man in the Stadium [1974]), 187, 236 Nana (Zola), 47 Napoleon (1927), 47 nationalism, 49–54 Native Americans, 21, 24, 27, 156, 164, 165. See also Indianerfilme Nayhus, Graf, 83 Nazi cinema, 12, 39, 45, 234 Nebo zovyot (The Sky Calls [1959]), 132 networks, 2, 13, 22, 25, 28, 46, 64, 86, 100, 111, 199, 239; dramaturgical units, 128; European, 238; film exchanges, 86–90; UFA (Universum FilmAktiengesellschaft), 2, 18; film companies, 100, 110, 123; filmmakers, 114; transnational, 39

New Waves, 167, 179, 180–82, 189, 191, 202, 211, 225; Czechoslovak, 5, 20, 182, 213; directors, 183, 189, 192, 204; Eastern European, 182, 188, 204; filmmakers, 183; Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge [1971]), 202–7; Polish, 5, 182, 213. See also Nouvelle Vague Die Nibelungen sequel (1922–24), 42 Niccolo Paganini (1982), 187 Nickel, Gitta, 115 Niemczyk, Leon, 188 North Korea, 155 Nouvelle Vague, 202. See also New Waves Ocalic Miasto (To Save a City [1976]), 187 Oelschlegel, Götz, 113 Oettinger, Hans, 104 Ophüls, Max, 13 Oppenheimer Group, 111 optisches Drehbuch (storyboard), 193 Oswald, Richard, 48, 95 Ott, Gabriele, 86, 111 Otto, Bernhard, 80, 84 Pabst, Georg W., 13, 48 Pagnol, Marcel, 55 Palásthy, György, 187 Palitzsch, Peter, 208 Paname n’est pas Paris (Apaches of Paris [1927]), 48 Pandora (film company), 87, 102, 107, 108, 110; DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft) coproductions with, 100–104; documentation of, 102f Paramount, 45 Paris Productions, 88 partnerships: DEFA (Deutsche FilmAktiengesellschaft), 24; DEFAAußenhandel, 84–86; Erich Mehl with DEFA, 80–122 Pascalin, Olivier, 216

Index

Pasetti, Peter, 105 Pathé Cinéma, 57, 63, 71, 83, 88, 138 Pathé-Consortium, 43 Pathé-Paris, 35, 36, 41 Pawlikowski, Pawel, 238 Pehnert, Horst, 152, 153, 158 Pepper, Karl Heinz, 83 Peschel, Milan, 236 Petelski, Czeslaw, 187, 188 Petelski, Ewa, 187, 188 Petr I (1931), 186 Petrov, Vladimir, 186 Petzold, Christian, 238 Petzold, Konrad, 129 Pfeuffer, Anne, 106 Philipe, Gérard, 36, 58, 68 Pohl, Arthur, 12, 26, 86, 101, 105, 107, 108 Polák, Jindřich, 131 Poland, 9, 95, 124, 186, 204; cinemas, 18, 19, 20; New Waves, 5, 181 Polanski, Roman, 22 politics: Cold War, 116; DEFA (Deutsche FilmAktiengesellschaft), 5; GDR (German Democratic Republic), 117; Goya, oder der arge Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge [1971]), 202–7; KAGs (Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppen), 128 Pommer, Erich, 13, 42, 43, 44, 44f, 45, 55, 56, 92 Popiół i diament (Ashes and Diamonds [1958]), 183, 211 Porten, Henny, 101f Postnikov, Mikhail, 142 Progress Film-Verleih (Progress Distribution), 7, 89 Protazanov, Yakov, 132 Rabenalt, Arthur Maria, 12 Rachold, Gerhard, 159 Rasch, Carlos, 131 Real-Film Hamburg, 91 Rechenmacher, Ernst (Ernesto Remani), 101

275

Red Circle (Roter Kreis), 126, 127, 128, 129, 149, 150; dramaturges, 145; Indianerfilme, 164–66; mandates, 146; Der schweigende Stern and Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (Signals: A Space Adventure [1970]), 128, 129, 132, 134–43. See also KAGs Reggiani, Serge, 66 Rehberg, Horst, 236 Reich Film Chamber, 52 Reinhardt, Max, 95 Reinl, Harald, 153 Reisch, Carlos, 148 Reisch, Günter, 138, 139 Die Reise nach Kosmatom (Journey to Cosmatom [1961]), 133 Renoir, Jean, 47 Resnais, Alain, 211 Rialto Film, 88, 153 Richter, Dorothea, 145 Robertson, Brian, 94 Rodenberg, Hans, 102 Röhr, Johannes, 101f, 102 Romania, 49, 124, 125, 128, 134, 155, 159, 161, 166, 187 Rosi, Francesco, 110 Rouleau, Raymond, 36 Rücker, Günter, 139 Der Ruf der Fayu Ujmu (Fayu Ujmu’s Calling [2003]), 224 Rundfunk im amerikanischen Sektor (Broadcasting Service in the American Sector [RIAS]), 83 Sag die Wahrheit (Tell the Truth [1946]), 95 Salvatore Giuliano (1962), 110 Santillán, Alejandro, 224 Schäfer, Paul Kanut, 188, 214, 218–22, 225 Scheer, Alexander, 237 Schleif, Wolfgang, 12 Schlöndorff, Volker, 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 Schlotter, Charlotte, 90, 107 Schmidt, Jan, 182

276

Index

Die Schönste (The Most Beautiful [1957]), 101, 108, 110 Schröder, Günter, 150, 151 Schuchardt, Gregor, 215 Der schweigende Stern (The Silent Star [1960]), 26, 127, 133f, 167; Der schweigende Stern and Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (Signals: A Space Adventure [1970]), 128, 129, 132, 134–43 scientist biopics, 18, 24, 168, 210, 225, 235 screenplay, 202, 203, 210, 212, 219; screenplay stage, 210, 214 screenwriter, 135, 192, 219, 234; DEFA, 236; screenwriter duo, 66; writing team, 21, 27, 28, 218–22 script development, 124, 193–94 SED. See Socialist Unity Party of Germany Seemann, Horst, 115, 134, 209 Seghers, Anna, 196, 199, 232 Shengelaia, Eldar, 205 Shinoda, Masahiro, 115 Siegel, Don, 131 Signale—Ein Weltraumabenteuer (1970), 145–51, 146f; negotiations, 148; set design, 149f Signoret, Simone, 58, 68 Simon, Rainer, 28, 188, 210, 211, 213f, 218–22, 223, 236 Simone, André, 196 Siodmak, Robert, 95 Sisa, Pedro, 216 Skolimowski, Jerzy, 204 Skowroński, Zdzisław, 188 Smith, Robert, 135 socialism, 15, 24, 186, 233 Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), 124, 235 Société des Cinéromans, 43 Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966), 155, 158–64, 160f, 162f, 168 Solaris (1972), 131 Solo Sunny (1980), 236 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 179

South America, 52, 108, 111, 125, 189, 205, 212, 219, 220, 224 Sovexport, 89, 114 Soviet Union, 5, 95, 114, 155, 178, 186; cinemas, 18; competition with, 55. See also USSR Spain, 211–13, 216, 219, 222 Der Spiegel, 81, 83, 108 Spielbank-Affäre (Casino Affair [1957]), 26, 86, 101, 104–9, 105f, 108, 109, 111 Spotkania w mroku (Encounters in the Dark/Begegnung im Zwielicht [1960]), 143 Stalker (1979), 131 Stasi (GDR Minisrty for State Security), 140, 235–237 Stark, Lothar, 47 Stärker als die Nacht (Stronger than the Night [1954]), 58 Starski, Ludwik, 135, 137, 138, 139, 143 Staudte, Wolfgang, 12, 25, 80, 81, 82, 98, 101 Steinhauer, Marieluise, 106 Sternberg, Josef von, 56 Sterne (Stars [1959]), 199 Stieler, Laila, 236 Straßburger, Helmut, 216 Strugatsky, Arkady, 131 Strugatsky, Boris, 131 studios: Babelsberg studios (see Babelsberg studios); in European domestic markets, 38; Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 45; Paramount, 45; UFA (Universum Film-Aktiengesellschaft) (see UFA [Universum FilmAktiengesellschaft]); Universal, 45 Sturges, John, 154 suspense films, 24 Sweden, 43 Szenarium (literary screenplay), 193, 219. See also screenplay Tani, Yoko, 136 Die Tänzerin (The Dancer [1989]), 115

Index

Tarkovsky, Andrei, 131, 181, 186, 201, 202 Tchaikovsky (1970), 187 The Ten Commandments (1956), 36, 62, 63 Der Teufel von Mühlenberg (The Devil from the Steel Mountain [1955]), 58 Third Reich, 25, 39, 71, 184, 186; film cartels and, 40; filmmakers at DEFA, 12; persecution under, 199; usurping European markets, 50. See also Nazi cinema Thompson, J. Lee, 26 365 Meter über Berlin (365 Meters above Berlin [1970]), 115 Tobis-Klangfilm, 48 Tok, Hans-Dieter, 147 Toro-Film, 213 Die Toten bleiben jung (The Dead Always Stay Young [1968]), 199 Tourjanski, Viktor, 47 trade press, 42, 46 Trebitsch, Gyula, 93 Tremper, Will, 89, 107, 109 Trenker, Luis, 12 Trophäenfilme (trophy films), 186 Trübe Wasser (Muddy Waters [1960]), 36, 60 Truffaut, François, 211 Tuzar, Jaruslav, 160 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), 133, 147, 148 UFA (Universum FilmAktiengesellschaft), 1, 2, 4, 11, 13, 37, 43, 233; Geniusfilm (genius film), 184; Künstlerfilm (artist film), 184; networks, 18; profits, 52; resources, 51 UFI, 39, 40 Ulbrich, Peter, 222 Ultraschall (Ultrasound [1956]), 113 Ulzana (1974), 161 United States, 16; anticommunist movements, 60; competition with, 55; Goya, oder der arge

277

Weg zur Erkenntnis (Goya or the Hard Way to Knowledge [1971]), 189; imperialism, 158. See also Hollywood Universal, 45 Unser Erzgebirge (Our Erzgebirge [1955]), 113 Unterhaltungsfilme, 53 Der Untertan (The Kaiser’s Lackey [1951]), 25, 80, 81, 82, 84, 98, 113 Urbain, Lucien, 66 USSR, 27, 69, 206. See also Soviet Union utopian films, 126, 130–34, 132, 142, 151, 155 Vedreba (Entreaty [1967]), 205 Veiczi, János, 140 Venice Film Festival, 52 Verhoeven, Paul, 12 Verwirrung der Liebe (Love’s Confusion [1959]), 110 VGIK (The Soviet State institute of Cinematography), 186, 199, 201 Villa Aurora (LA, California), 209 Vietnam, 155 Visconti, Luchino, 211 Vogel, Frank, 187 Volkmann, Herbert, 141 Von Röntgen und seinen Strahlen (On X-Rays and Radiation [1958]), 113 Vrštála, Jiří, 159, 160 Vulchanov, Rangel, 200 Wagenstein, Angel, 23, 27, 179, 190, 195, 198, 199, 200, 201, 203, 220 Wajda, Andrzej, 181, 187, 204, 211 Wallstein, Hans-Joachim, 159, 161 Wandel, Paul, 162 Warneke, Lothar, 211 The War of the Worlds (1953), 131 Wecker, Gero, 88, 100 Weidenmann, Alfred, 112 Weimar Republic, 93; cinema, 12, 40, 44, 52, 95, 107, 132; writers, 81 Wekwerth, Manfred, 208

278 Index

Welskopf-Henrich, Liselotte, 158, 162, 163, 164 Wendland, Horst, 88 Wendt, Erich, 139 Werk ohne Autor (Never Look Away [2018]), 238 Westerns, 9, 15, 21, 27, 113, 125, 126, 146, 152; rise of European, 153–54 West Germany, 1, 82, 110; boycott of GDR, 69; film exchanges, 97 (see also film exchanges) Whiskey mit Wodka (Whiskey with Vodka [2009]), 236 Die Wiederentdeckung Amerikas (America’s Rediscovery [1959]), 219 Wie heiratet man einen König (How Do You Marry a King [1968]), 219 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 218 Wildermuth, Eugen, 100 Wildhagen, Georg, 12, 112 Wilkening, Albert, 16, 125, 137, 138, 141, 142, 143, 162, 210 Willmann, Heinz, 142 Wischnewski, Klaus, 144, 145, 156, 204, 205, 210 Wolf, Dieter, 144, 150, 210 Wolf, Friedrich, 56

Wolf, Konrad, 22, 27, 69, 115, 127, 178–80, 185–95, 195f, 201, 203, 207f, 210, 234, 235, 236, 237 Wolke 9 (Cloud 9 [2008]), 236 World War I, 43, 46, 199 World War II, 39, 54–59, 203 Wszystko na Sprezedaż (Everything for Sale, 1969), 187 Ya byl sputnikom solntsa (I Was a Sputnik of the Sun [1959]), 132 Yanchev, Vladimir, 199 York, Eugen, 96, 101, 101f Yugoslavia, 155 Zajiček, Edward, 135, 139 Zander, Erich, 101f Zar und Zimmermann (The Czar and the Carpenter [1955]), 112 ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, bradcaster in Germany), 111, 114, 115, 213, 222, 232 Zimna Wojna (Cold War [2018]), 238 Zola, Emile, 47, 71 Zschoche, Herrmann, 134, 150, 210 Zubok, Vladislav, 15