Screening Nostalgia: 100 Years of German Heimat Film [1. Aufl.] 9783839414620

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1 Heimat–Towards a Definition
2 Heimat–Film and Genre
The Heimat Film Genre
Genre Film as Heimat
3 Mountain Films
Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light
Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son
Tom Tykwer’s Wintersleepers
4 Nazi Heimat Films
Carl Froelich’s Heimat
Kurt Hoffmann’s Kohlhiesel’s Daughters
Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall
5 Post–War Heimat Films
Hans Deppe’s Black Forest Girl
Hans Deppe’s Green Is the Heath
Sӧnke Wortmann’s The Miracle of Bern
6 Critical Heimat Films
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher
Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum
Edgar Reitz’s Heimat Series
7 Positive (Re-)Discoveries of Heimat
DEFA HEIMAT FILMS
OSTALGIE FILMS
Peter Timm’s The Living Room Fountain
Leander Haußmann’s Sonnenallee
Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin!
WESTALGIE FILMS
Leander Haußmann’s Herr Lehmann
Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators
8 Ambivalent Heimat Films
Hans Sebastian Steinbichler’s Hierankl
Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem
Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s Grave Decisions
9 Hyphenated Heimat
Fatih Akin’s Head On
Angelina Maccarone’s Unveiled
Züli Aladag’s Rage
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index of Film Directors

Citation preview

Alexandra Ludewig Screening Nostalgia

Film

Alexandra Ludewig (Dr. habil.) holds the positions of Associate Dean (Education) and Convener of German Studies at The University of Western Australia.

Alexandra Ludewig

Screening Nostalgia 100 Years of German Heimat Film

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de

© 2011 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Cover illustration: aussi97 / photocase.com Typeset by Alexandra Ludewig Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar ISBN 978-3-8376-1462-6 Global distribution outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland:

Transaction Publishers Rutgers University 35 Berrue Circle Piscataway, NJ 08854

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Contents

Acknowledgements .................................................................................

7

Introduction ................................................................................................

9

1 Heimat—Towards a Definition ........................................................

19

2 Heimat—Film and Genre .................................................................... The Heimat Film Genre ............................................................................. Genre Film as Heimat ...............................................................................

55 63

53

3 Mountain Films ..................................................................................... 75 Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light ............................................................ 86 Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son ............................................................. 93 Tom Tykwer’s Wintersleepers .................................................................. 105

4 Nazi Heimat Films ............................................................................... Carl Froelich’s Heimat ............................................................................... Kurt Hoffmann’s Kohlhiesel’s Daughters ........................................... Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall ................................................................

133

5 Post
War Heimat Films ...................................................................... Hans Deppe’s Black Forest Girl .............................................................. Hans Deppe’s Green Is the Heath ........................................................... Sӧnke Wortmann’s The Miracle of Bern ...............................................

175

140 149 156

187 195 206

6 Critical Heimat Films .......................................................................... Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher ......................................... Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum ....................................................... Edgar Reitz’s Heimat Series .....................................................................

7 Positive (Re
)Discoveries of Heimat ............................................ DEFA HEIMAT FILMS .................................................................................... OSTALGIE FILMS ............................................................................................ Peter Timm’s The Living Room Fountain .............................................. Leander Hauβmann’s Sonnenallee ........................................................ Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin! ..................................................... WESTALGIE FILMS ......................................................................................... Leander Hauβmann’s Herr Lehmann .................................................... Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators .......................................................

8 Ambivalent Heimat Films .................................................................. Hans Sebastian Steinbichler’s Hierankl .............................................. Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem ........................................................ Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s Grave Decisions .........................................

9 Hyphenated Heimat ............................................................................ Fatih Akin’s Head On ................................................................................ Angelina Maccarone’s Unveiled .............................................................. Züli Aladag’s Rage .....................................................................................

235 245 254 261

295 298 311 316 319 322 327 333 337

361 365 370 375

389 400 408 415

Conclusion .................................................................................................. 433

Bibliography ............................................................................................... 439

Index of Film Directors ........................................................................... 473

Acknowledgements

This book is based on my Habilitationsschrift in Cultural Studies, which was submitted to the University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany, in 2008 and has since been revised and updated for publication. It is testimony to a wonderful journey through one hundred years of German film in search of the elusive and ever-changing concepts of Heimat. While my fascination with the subject matter remains unabated, I can sympathize with friends, colleagues, and students who could not appreciate my obsession, and I thank them for their patience and tolerance, and for only smiling wryly and commenting mildly on the ongoing, seemingly neverending project. As this manuscript goes to press, new Heimat films continue to be released and more chapters could be written. But I have promised those closest to me to draw the line and put the pen down. For their restraint despite my shortcomings, I thank Brendan, Leisa, Lisa, Marian, Sabbia, and most of all my parents.

— Alexandra Ludewig The University of Western Australia

Introduction

Heimat is dead—long live Heimat!1 There can be no doubt: the Heimat film genre, assumed to be passé by so many, is alive and well. Who would have thought that this genre—which had been almost unanimously condemned within academic circles, but which seemed to resonate so deeply with the populace—would experience a renaissance in the twenty-first century? The genre’s recent resurgence is due perhaps less to an obsession with generic storylines and stereotyped figures than to a basic human need for grounding that has resulted in a fresh burst of navel-gazing, as well as a passionate debate about issues of past and present, and about belonging to and longing for Heimat and the “other”.2 Or it may be attributed to the awareness that Heimat films from the 1920s to the present are able to provide significant insight into the societies from which they came. Films in this genre warrant being analysed not simply as “some kind of sugar-coated sociology but as narratives which negotiate, no less than the classical texts, the connection between writing, history and ideology”.3 Clearly, the genre aids a socio-historical investigation of the state of German society, as its repositories of memory, history, escapism, and confrontation can be read as indicators of continuity and rupture, of reorientation and revisiting, and of nostalgia and the promise held by the future. Most Heimat films mirror current values and social changes, the reception of traditions, and the yearning for new beginnings which correspond to the time of their release. They form “an archive of human fantasies and desires [which preserve] the imaginary of the past within the present”,4 especially with regard to those films that indulge in what has gone before, in a tightrope act that oscillates between critiquing and revering nostalgia.5 For several decades, this nexus between film and time was construed as a connection between cinema and national psyche, thanks to Siegfried Kracauer’s seminal psycho-analytical reading of film.6 Since the late 1940s, his influence has continually infiltrated scholarship, despite occasional attempts by some academics to avoid it. One such example is Lotte Eisner’s work, which—notwithstanding her claims to the contrary—continues to betray Kracauer’s influence in phrases such as “the German mind”, “the German soul”, and in her references to “inborn German likings”.7 From the earliest days of motion pictures, competing and contradictory ideas of Heimat have permeated German films, making the genre as much a haunted as a haunting one. Whether the films expressed a longing “for a mythical space of innocence”,8 as in Leni Riefenstahl’s Das blaue Licht [The Blue Light, 1932], or the outright rejection of the very possibility of such a “space of innocence”, as in the anti-Heimat films of the 1960s, representations of Heimat have provided images of artistic inspiration, utopia, ideology, and have even acted as a stum9

Screening Nostalgia

bling block. This analysis seeks to investigate a variety of cinematic interpretations of the concept of Heimat, ranging from those of the 1920s right up to the present. In response to Anton Kaes’s book From Hitler to Heimat,9 this study reverses his logic and looks at the topic “From Heimat to Hitler and Beyond” through the inclusion of a wide range of films which cannot easily be labelled “Heimatfilme”—yet which clearly negotiate Heimat as one of their main foci. As Heimat was synonymous, at best, with a utopian idyll and, at worst, with the Fascist theme of the sublime, the genre of Heimat film has been understood as a manifestation of, and vehicle for, escapism and/or ideological infiltration. Heimat may indeed have encapsulated the glorification of the past and a reactionary element, whereby the status quo was affirmed. Heimat films usually feature protagonists who are well served by conforming, supporting, and definitely not attempting to change society. Positive identification with one’s surroundings is idealized, and manifests itself in an allencompassing sense of well-being which relates to family, village, landscape, and/or country. Heimat therefore describes a place or state of complete selfassurance, of harmony with one’s self and surroundings. Films from before the Second World War, such as the early mountain films [Bergfilme] by Arnold Fanck, Riefenstahl, and Luis Trenker, form the starting-point in this analysis, with examples of Nazi and post-war Heimat films following. An examination of the development of Bergfilme from the 1920s and 30s yields results which allow recognition of contemporary examples of this type, while a close look at a mountain film from the 1990s reveals complex interrelationships which indicate that Bergfilme do not constitute a sub-genre of Heimat films restricted to the years of the Weimar Republic; nor are they simply a precursor to the Blut-und-Boden films of the Nazi era.10 Tom Tykwer’s Winterschläfer [Wintersleepers, 1997] is analysed and contextualized both synchronically and diachronically, highlighting the traditions and ruptures in the ways in which aspects of the genre are appropriated. Obviously, Bergfilme as a specific sub-category of the Heimat film genre survived the Nazi era, the post-war years in both East and West, and the “economic miracle” in the Federal Republic. This book provides answers as to why the genre flourished from the 1930s, with Nazi Heimat films allowing the clearest insights into a mindset driven by atavistic fears and a sense of “us and them”. While Fascist ideology was initially most effective at replacing longing with belonging, at seducing through inclusion, and at compensating for loss with new gains, the embracing of its elitist ideas implied the spurning of others. The power of ideological belonging and the psychological might of a Heimat in Nazism were irresistible to those who could be integrated, as cinematic examples from the 1930s and 40s prove, as does the 2004 film Der Untergang [Downfall] by Oliver Hirschbiegel. The emotional drawcard of Heimat is an anthropological constant, explaining the continued success of the seductively romantic formula even after the demise of Nazism. Indeed, the productions of the 1950s—many of them reproductions from the preceding twenty years—embody what is nowadays referred to as the paradigmatic sample, in its truest but also its schmalziest form. These films were regarded with disdain by intellectuals who saw nothing but “cliché-ridden, Agfa-colored images of German forests, landscapes, 10

Introduction

and customs, of happiness and security, [and] deceitful movie kitsch”,11 although the same critics seem oblivious to those crypto-Fascist elements reminiscent of earlier times which clearly still resonated with audiences. As one of the most popular genres in the 1950s,12 Heimat films—and the nostalgia and sentiments expressed within them—seemed to present “a way to disavow the cultural rupture of 1933‒45” by providing identification with references “to state of mind [and] also to actual places, suggesting nation while being specific to region”.13 The public appeared to need this reassurance in the 1950s, when experiences of loss, displacement and expulsion, and exposure to endless scenes of devastation found a counterweight of sorts in the popular media. Going to the cinema was the favourite pastime in West Germany in the 1950s, and escapist Heimat films, which showed idyllic country scenery instead of rubble-strewn cityscapes, were the most popular—even selling well to East Germans. The industry, in both East and West, pumped out kitsch films in quick succession to service this demand, and created colour-rich Heimat experiences on celluloid that captured the audience’s imagination—while also confirming their underlying prejudices and playing to their biases. Film-makers catered to popular tastes and delivered endless variations on a theme of melodramatic love stories set against images of iconic German landscapes, which almost always resulted in happy endings for those who truly belonged. As recently as 2003, Sönke Wortmann’s film Das Wunder von Bern [The Miracle of Bern] proved that 1950s-style Heimat films are still being copied and continue to appeal to large sections of the population, despite their rather uncritical romantic representations of the past. While feelings of nostalgia were initially symptomatic of “a longing for a lost time and a lost home but also for friends who once inhabited it and who now [were] dispersed”,14 belonging soon meant very different things on either side of the Iron Curtain. Contrary to a long-held scholarly conviction, neither the Heimat films of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) nor those of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) were purely escapist or reactionary in their glorification of pre-modern societies. Scrutiny of 1950s West German Heimat films points out clear references to the future as much as to the past, especially with regard to their anti-Semitic sentiments.15 Widening the scope to encompass East German manifestations of the genre as well, new lines of development are uncovered which extend beyond the usual historical film summaries. Reasons for the genre’s demise (which soon followed its heyday, despite creative attempts at renewal and development) are also brought to light. Among the 1950s and 60s efforts to rejuvenate the genre in West Germany are adaptations of historical epics, as well as tourist films and the pornographic Heimat films that brought the genre into disrepute. Condemnation of the Heimat genre by critics was widespread, of its prime generic examples and its bastardizations alike. Accusations of being too formulaic, too sweet, too romantic, too irrelevant were levelled against the Heimat genre as a whole, as well as against its transformations from the 1960s onwards. Indeed, the first two post-war decades saw a regression of sorts, with many directors resorting to glorified depictions of Heimat, as in Ernst Marischka’s Sissi trilogy (1950s). Michael Kammen’s statement that nostalgia “is essentially history without guilt”16 could not be more correct when considering most heritage films. 11

Screening Nostalgia

Nevertheless, these productions, which seemed to yearn for a different time in a less-complicated past, must also be credited with provoking a series of culturally important, radical anti-Heimat films. In the 1960s, a younger generation of West German film-makers produced a flurry of critical Heimat films which rebelled against the deceptive message of German Heimat kitsch, burning bridges and denouncing their cinematic forebears. An analysis of their films challenges the widely held claim that these German directors really operated within a national vacuum, as suggested by both Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who lamented that the “lack [and] the absence of an indigenous tradition”17 with regard to German film-making had resulted in a generation of directors that “had nothing [and] started with nothing”.18 Werner Herzog added to this claim: “[T]here was no real German film. […] We, the new generation of film directors, are a generation without fathers. We are orphans.”19 How could they have “started with nothing” when the very nature of their films was to challenge and contradict traditional Heimat conventions? A closer examination of Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher (1969) and Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum [The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, 1975] demonstrates that these films rebel against the heritage of German cinema and are thus undeniably linked to it. While the directors may have rejected their parent generation, they were not without a rich, albeit problematic, heritage. Thomas Elsaesser, who unmasked these attitudes as a display of typical “family melodrama”, has already deconstructed this myth in part.20 Indeed, inter-textual references abound in Heimat films, and show that the claim of a lack of history is a dramatic pose. In a critical analysis of selected films from the 1960s and 70s, these interrelationships become obvious, allowing for the exploration of theoretical issues of representation and presentation, as well as for practical insights into the state of mind and sense of Heimat in West Germany at that time. Just how much this mindset continued into the twentyfirst century will be illustrated by an examination of Edgar Reitz’s Heimat trilogy. Meanwhile, the rejuvenation of the genre through its radical deconstruction in critical Heimat films could not take place in East Germany. For the Germans on the eastern side of the divide, Heimat in ideology, this time in socialism, was an indisputable truth which shone through all the films that were permitted to be released in the East. After playing to Heimat’s endemic popularity, functionaries in the GDR could not help but continue with the promotion of GDR Heimat, which needed to be loved unconditionally. If at all, critical Heimat films made it to the censors but not to the cinemas.21 The parallel existence of uncritical Heimat myths in East and West Germany alike, which found an audience at all times—ironically a far greater audience than the critical Heimat films could ever hope for nation-wide—may have cemented the perception of Heimat as revanchist propaganda and explains why academia shunned the topic completely for nearly half a decade.22 The first positively received re-evaluation of Heimat, which appeased many academics and became a national and international success, was Edgar Reitz’s Heimat (1984), but film-makers’ engagement with issues of Heimat, identity, and belonging did not stop with Reitz. Throughout the existence of the old West and East Germany, Heimat was a topos for both cinema and television productions, and representations of Heimat have likewise perme12

Introduction

ated films in the unified Germany. Sönke Wortmann’s Das Wunder von Bern [The Miracle of Bern, 2003] and Edgar Reitz’s Zweite Heimat [Second Heimat, 1992] as well as Heimat 3 (2004) are contemporary film productions which demonstrate that the genre is alive and continuing to thrive in the twenty-first century. In contrast to these recent attempts at imitating the conventional patterns of the Heimat genre, other post-unification interpretations of present-day Heimat by a younger generation of German directors have provided new impulses to its development and have thus provoked a certain renaissance and renewal of the genre. Film-makers such as Züli Aladag, Fatih Akin, Andreas Dresen, Vanessa Jopp, Andreas Kleinert, Peter Welz, and many others have discovered Heimat anew, extending the perception of the concept beyond the national sphere and finding heimatesque qualities in a variety of regional, national, and supra-national spaces ranging from urban areas to the seascape. In previous studies, I have examined the subtle rediscovery of Heimat in the lost territory in the East and the way it functions as a symbolic rapprochement, particularly in selected films released since 1990.23 Now, as then, the backdrop of the boundless, timeless forces of nature, which is not dissimilar to the pan-German Alpine Heimat of the Bergfilm, serves as a corrective to the human plight and as an answer to the universal human quest for Heimat. This development is also evident in the popular search for, and discovery of, Heimat in political ideologies, whether Nazism, communism, socialism, or capitalism. Such discovery informed the discourse on Heimat shortly after Germany’s unification (for example, Peter Timm’s Go, Trabi, Go and its sequel), with directors adopting, to a certain extent, the point of view of the former citizens of East Germany, as well as that of their Eastern European neighbours. The “Golden West” as Heimat is a problematic notion; however, since 1989 the requirement for utopias has been strongly supported by a series of films released around the turn of the millennium.24 As if in response, the reverse point of view—a Heimat in the East—has been put forward by other post-unification Heimat films.25 Coupled with this interest in subjective storytelling (which invites a readjustment of the audience’s perspective) are the Ostalgie and Westalgie26 trends of recent years. These latter productions display a renewed interest in reclaiming the past as a lost Heimat by using a selectively positive re-evaluation of times gone by. Nevertheless, while the longing for Heimat is universal, these trends are shown to be divisive. This study builds on the most recent scholarship which has read the Heimat genre as a spatial phenomenon, concerned with not only national, but also wider, supra-national affairs, as well as with basic anthropological quests for identity and identity-construction in the face of the perceived dangers of modernity, progress, change, uncertainty, and recession.27 The undiminished relevance of Heimat in these historiographical exercises is clearly evident. Indeed, negotiating one’s place in a society or community has been of enormous concern in every historical age.28 Each of the analysed variants on the theme of Heimat from the 1920s to the present is documented and contextualized in a new light in the following chapters. They are probed for any underlying political messages, since Heimat and identity as abstract entities have always been susceptible to mythological and ideological (mis)interpretations.29 The first analytical step of my research therefore attempts to reconstruct the evolving definition of Heimat, 13

Screening Nostalgia

linking changing connotations to specific events in German history (from the Baroque era to the present), and even explaining genre itself as a simulacrum of Heimat. The restrictions of genre can indeed be very satisfying, as they allow for a sense of reassurance in the recognition of familiar patterns and provide viewers with a sense of orientation through their certainty in knowing of the telos. Building on this foundation, an overview of the genre of Heimat film follows and is integrated into a discussion of modifications, developments, and fissures. Through a detailed analysis of selected films which represent crucial stages of development in German film history in general and the Heimat genre in particular, the state of Heimat through the ages is reappraised. I have chosen film as a medium for its wide application and reception, as well as its undeniable status as the twentieth century’s most important instrument of mass communication. It is a tool that caters to a broad spectrum of society by offering, on the one hand, escapist melodramas which appeal to large audiences and, on the other, complex idioms which are attractive to the critical reader, while also bearing witness to socio-historical changes. Naturally, the value of such a history of German Heimat films may be considered to be diminished by its absences and insufficiencies. Nevertheless, the flaws in past scholarship on the subject— including the tendency to jump from the films of the 1920s and early 30s directly to the New German Cinema of the late 1960s, as well as the omission of GDR Heimat films, let alone expressions of a longing for a German Heimat by migrant film-makers—have been avoided. In doing so, my study disregards any distinction between “high” and “low” culture, which, as a result of the verdicts of the Frankfurt School, has seen popular German Heimat films and Heimat sex films neglected by scholarship. This book allows for the coverage of soft-pornographic Heimat films and of television productions such as Traumschiff [Ship of Dreams] and Schwarzwaldklinik [Black Forest Clinic], which are relevant to a discussion of Heimat (film) in that they incorporate aspects of the heimatesque as well as the sexual fantasies experienced by many Germans living under post“economic miracle” conditions.30 These variants on the Heimat theme, which have been ridiculed and largely ignored by academia, are analysed and allocated a place on the family tree of the Heimat genre. Likewise, “Der Neue Deutsche Heimatfilm” [The New German Heimat Film],31 which comprises Heimat films made by film-makers of local and international repute, highlights a revived yearning felt by so many dislocated citizens for grounding, refuge, and a place like home. While Ostalgie and Westalgie films fall into this category, powerful stories of diaspora and homecoming come in many guises: looking for Heimat in a certain mentality, such as in Peter Timm’s Der Zimmerspringbrunnen [The Living Room Fountain, 2001], or even in eternity, such as in Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem (2005). Their protagonists’ nostalgic calling for rootedness is shared and expressed by many who feel insecure, ostracized, or rejected in German society, for economic as well as ethnic and racial reasons—among them people with a migrant background32—who grapple with their position within Germany’s socio-economic, political, and cultural realms. With unified Germany reflecting once again on its diverse, multi-ethnic make-up, a realization of distinctions was perhaps reinforced by the increased awareness of the cultural differences that exist between West and East Germans in Ostalgie and Westalgie 14

Introduction

films, and also those between northern and southern Germany, as evident in films by Bavarians such as Hans Sebastian Steinbichler (Hierankl, 2003) and Marcus H. Rosenmüller (Schwere Jungs [Heavyweights], 2006). At the same time, “hyphenated Heimat-leanings” (as in the case of many new Germans and German residents with a migrant background who bridge their place of origin and present sense of Heimat with a hyphen) find expression on a local as much as a European or global level. Whether it is a reference to two or more nation-states (Turkish-German), regions (Sicilian-Swabian), cities (Roman-Berliner), or ethnicity (Kurdish-German), loyalties and longings span concepts and contexts. Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand [Head On, 2004], Angelina Maccarone’s Fremde Haut [Unveiled, 2005], and Züli Aladag’s Wut [Rage, 2006] are films that clearly no longer negotiate Heimat as a singular concept, or as one with national confines. Germany’s film history is thus revealed in its immense richness and complexity, with proper attention given to the multitude of facets that together constitute the complete picture of any genre description. To ensure this diverse set of films illustrates the heterogeneous aspects of German history, I have attempted a seamless coverage of films from all eras. This largely chronological overview allows for appraisals of concurrent as well as consecutive works by referring to parallels as well as to discontinuities in German Heimat films (or one of their sub-genres), which may not be obvious at first glance. The reader is invited to follow these radical juxtapositions in an attempt to unearth references, continuities, and borrowings that may enrich the discourse. By its nature, this study is highly eclectic, drawing upon a broad spectrum of methodologies which range from film history to aesthetics, and from literary and film theory to anthropology. The outcome of this enquiry is a cultural history of Heimat in German film which, for the first time, examines both classics and contemporary releases in a cross-referential rather than a purely chronological manner. It includes romantic Heimat films that are nostalgic for the past, critical and anti-Heimat films that are self-indulgent fantasies, and cinematic depictions of ambivalent and hyphenated Heimat that can be read as the expression of sentiments of loss or of rejection of the status quo. The examination of one hundred years of Heimat films thus informs us about the changing ways in which family, community, and nation, as well as past, present, and future have been imagined, and provides insights into the development of German-language film from the period of the Wilhelminian Empire until well into the twenty-first century.

NOTES 1

Given its many meanings and associations, it is impossible to translate the term “Heimat” into English using only one word. Its basic meaning is “home(land)” and the sense of well-being and identity connected with it. Any translation of Heimat must necessarily be inadequate, because over time it has come to stand for particular ideological and aesthetic concepts, with many competing but also complementary meanings and associations. Accordingly, the term will be left untranslated in order to stress this history of metamorphosis. The un-italicized form

15

Screening Nostalgia

2

3 4 5

6

7

8 9 10

11 12

13

14 15

16

“Heimat” will be used in the following chapters to refer to the concept, whereas italicized forms of the word indicate that a film or book of this title is referred to. This research will follow the complex definitions of Heimat [home(land)] and Fremde [other] as set out in Elizabeth Boa and Rachel Palfreyman, Heimat, a German Dream: Regional Loyalties and National Identity in German Culture, 1890‒1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 1‒30, and Peter Dürmann, Heimat und Identität: Der moderne Mensch auf der Suche nach Geborgenheit (Tubingen: Hohenrain, 1994), pp. 88‒133. Peter Humm et al. (eds.), Popular Fictions: Essays in Literature and History (London: Methuen, 1986), p. 2. Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 1. Kapczynski identifies “a cinematic style that mimics, rather than breaks with, the past”, and continues to point out that many recent film releases from Germany “return to that past ostensibly to critique it [but] simultaneously indulge in nostalgia for the visual conventions of the worlds they represent”. Jennifer M. Kapczynski, “Newer German Cinema: From Nostalgia to Nowhere”, Germanic Review, vol. 82, iss.1 (2007), pp. 3‒5, here p. 4. Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (1947), revised and expanded edition edited by Leonardo Quaresima (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004). Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, translated by Roger Greaves (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 9, 17, and 205. Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (New York: Camden House, 2002), p. 157. Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989). The phrase “blood and soil” was coined by August Winning, previously a Social Democrat. As a political slogan, it was popularized by Nazi agricultural minister Richard Walther Darré and promoted by Walther Schoenichen, the head of the Prussian State Office for the protection of Natural Monuments, who saw the soil of one’s Heimat as a field of force from which hardened racial lines emerge in continual rejuvenation for the battle for existence. Cf. Anna Bramwell, Blood and Soil: Richard Walther Darré and Hitler’s Green Party (London: Kensal Press, 1985), pp. 54‒55. Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat, p. 15. For yearly figures of distribution revenue, see Hans Günther Pflaum and Hans Helmut Prinzler, Film in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Der neue deutsche Film (Munich: Hanser, 1979). Robert C. Reimer, “Picture-Perfect War: An Analysis of Joseph Vilsmaier’s Stalingrad (1993)”, in Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy (eds.), Light Motives: German Popular Film in Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), pp. 304‒25, here p. 320. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. ix. Cf. Julia Anspach, “Antisemitische Stereotype im deutschen Heimatfilm nach 1945”, in Heinz Ludwig Arnold and Matthias N. Lorenz (eds.), Juden.Bilder (Munich: Edition Text & Kritik, 2008), pp. 61‒73. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Vintage, 1991), p. 688. 16

Introduction

17 18

19 20 21

22

23

24 25

26

27

28

29

Wim Wenders quoted in Timothy Corrigan, New German Film: The Displaced Image (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 25. Fassbinder quoted in Eric Rentschler, West German Cinema in the Course of Time: Reflections on the Twenty Years since Oberhausen (Bedford Hills, NY: Redgrave, 1984), p. 97. Werner Herzog, “Die Eisnerin, wer ist das?”, Film-Korrespondenz, 30 Mar. 1982, pp. 1‒2. Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 215. Cf. Jan Palmowski, Inventing a Socialist Nation: Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR, 1945‒1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). This is indicated by the fact that the research register compiled by Eppelsheimer and Köttelwelsch lists no titles on Heimat between 1967 and 1972. Hanns W. Eppelsheimer, Bibliographie der deutschen Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1957 onwards); Clemens Köttelwesch et al. (eds.), Bibliographisches Handbuch der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, 1945‒1969 (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1972). Cf. Alexandra Ludewig, “A German Heimat in the Baltic Region? Contemporary German Film as a European Provocation”, Journal of European Studies, vol. 36, no. 2 (2006), pp. 157‒78, and “Screening the East, Probing the Past: The Baltic Sea in Contemporary German Cinema”, German Politics and Society, vol. 22, no. 2, iss. 71 (2004), pp. 27‒48. Cf. Achim von Borries, England, 2000; Vanessa Jopp, Vergiß Amerika [Forget America], 2000. Cf. Ute Badura, Schlesiens Wilder Westen [Silesia's Wild West], 2002; Andreas Dresen, Nachtgestalten [Nightscapes], 1999; Volker Koepp, Kalte Heimat [Cold Homeland], 1995; Volker Koepp, Kurische Nehrung, 2001. “Ostalgie” is a neologism referring to nostalgia for the disappearing East Germany; it was coined by combining “nostalgia” and the German word for “east” [Ost]. “Westalgie” does exactly the same with regard to the old West Germany (1949‒89). Cf. Johannes von Moltke, “Evergreens: The Heimat Genre”, in Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk (eds.), The German Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002), pp. 18‒28. In this context, Sorlin’s claim that German cinema has looked backwards “with little risk of nostalgia” is challenged in this book. Pierre Sorlin, European Cinemas, European Societies, 1939‒1990 (London: Routledge, 1991), p. 183. Cf. Wendy Everett (ed.), European Identity on Cinema (Exeter: Intellect, 1996), p. 19. “Whenever any of the subjective elements of a sphere of satisfaction are elevated to objective criteria and made into generally binding facts of life, that’s the point at which the ideologization of the term ‘Heimat’ commences.” In the original: “Wenn die jeweils subjektiven Elemente eines Satisfaktionsraums zu objektiven Kriterien erhoben und zu allgemein verbindlichen Lebenstatsachen gemacht werden, setzt die Ideologisierung des Heimatbegriffs ein.” Ina-Maria Greverus, Der territoriale Mensch: Ein literatur-anthropologischer Versuch zum Heimatphänomen (Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1972), p. 46.

17

Screening Nostalgia

30

31 32

Similarly, parodies of the Western genre by Helge Schneider in the 1990s have added a new twist to the engagement with a German Heimat and could also have been included in this discussion. Petra M. Müller and Kirsten Niehaus, “Welcome to the Berlinale 2007”, Medienboard News, vol. 1 (2007), p. 3. This applies to East Germans, who experienced something similar to migration when capitalism came to them, as much as to foreigners who came to Germany.

18

1. Heimat—Towards a Definition

Home is the place where one knows oneself best; it is where one belongs, a space in which one longs to be. Indeed, the longing for “home” seems to be grounded in an inherent need for anchorage and is closely linked to feelings of nostalgia (from the Greek “nostos” = return home, and “algos” = causing pain). Although in English the German loanword “Heimat” is often used synonymously with “home”, many would have claimed up until now that it has been a word particularly ill equipped for use outside the German-speaking community, given its specific cultural baggage. The polysemy of Heimat has most recently been confirmed by two independent surveys. In 2003, an opinion poll of more than one thousand Germans found that thirty-one per cent regarded their place of residence as Heimat, eleven per cent thought of the German fatherland, and six per cent answered that their friends came to mind when thinking about Heimat.1 In 2009, a similar survey found that there had been a considerable shift towards the significance of sentimental memories, with forty-four per cent associating Heimat with the place where they grew up, and thirty-five per cent stating that Heimat for them denotes the place where their loved ones are.2 These responses reveal a celebration of subjectivity and the desire for uniqueness that is afforded by the term “Heimat”. At all times, there have been competing factual, semi-religious, and nostalgic connotations associated with the term that is—as the above feedback indicates—nowadays thought of largely with fondness. One such resoundingly positive understanding of the German term “Heimat” likens it to “an intoxicant, a medium of transport [that] makes people feel giddy and spirits them to pleasant places. To contemplate Heimat means to imagine an uncontaminated space, a realm of innocence and immediacy.”3 While this description of Heimat may raise expectations of an all-encompassing idyll throughout the twentieth century, for most German speakers “there is hardly a more ambivalent feeling, hardly a more painful mixture of happiness and bitterness than the experience vested in the word ‘Heimat’”.4 However, the emotional charge of the idiom is of quite recent origin. Traditionally, the term elicits connotations of origin, birthplace, of oneself and one’s ancestors, and even of an original area of settlement and homeland. This corresponds most neatly with English terms such as “native land”, “land of my birth”, “land of my forefathers”, “native shores”, and “Mother country”. Added to the German conception of Heimat are its sensitive associations relating, on the one hand, to Romanticism and its idolization of the fatherland and, on the other, to the Nazi blood-and-soil propaganda, which brought Heimat into disrepute for many and added to the difficulties of translating the German word. The multilayered meaning of the word, with all its contested and confronting connotations of familiarity and community, is contained neither 19

Screening Nostalgia

within its simple cognate “home”5 nor within the compound “homeland”. If translated as “home” or “at home”, which are closer to the German “Heim” and “zuhause”, the meaning seems neutralized and loses most of its emotive charge. A comparison with similar terms in Romance languages makes this clear. Speakers of those tongues have an understanding of home and homeland which is strongly associated with the father-figure: the Latin and Italian “patria” and the French “patrie”. To assert a sense of belonging to a smaller entity, however, the Italian language in particular allows for a heimatesque polysemy. In Italian, the notion of “paese” [village] is used, which—when capitalized—refers to one’s country. “Da quale paese proviene?” [Which country/village/town does she come from?] or “Torno al paese” [I go back to the place I came from] approach most accurately the concept to which Heimat’s Germanic root of “heima” refers. For the Teutons, “heima” stood for the traditional space and place of a clan, society, or individual. However, centuries of migration (often following expulsion) have imbued Heimat with ambivalent notions: nowadays, both feelings of belonging and feelings of loss find expression in the term. Despite its semantic opaqueness, Heimat expresses a “longing for a wholeness and unity”6 which for many seems lost, especially following experiences of alienation, exile, diaspora, or migration (physical as well as mental, as in the case of growing up, ageing, maturing, etc.). It is in these circumstances, in which adjustments need to be made and long-standing familiarities become part of the past, that nostalgia for Heimat seems to manifest itself most clearly. Even in the English-speaking world—not least because of global change and the political instrumentalization of home (as in “homeland security” and “homeland affairs”)—this semantic shift of home towards nostalgia is evident, aligning the concept more closely with the German understanding of Heimat and its “element of that which has been lost”.7 Thus Heimat has become a melancholy term that speaks to us of nostalgia and of the past more than of the future. Etymologically, the Germanic root of “heima”, as outlined above, simply denotes an individual’s innate ancestral connection to a people or place. A glance into the Grimmsche Wörterbuch [Grimm Brothers’ Dictionary] also reveals8 (and Walter Jens supports this in his essay on Heimat) a sober understanding of the term with no mention of sentimentality.9 However, an understanding of the Christian “heaven” as an ultimate Heimat has long been a stylistic feature in the German language.10 One intellectual who located Heimat within the more psychological context of well-being was Hegel in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy.11 He declared the concepts of Heimat, heimatlich [homely], and Heimatlichkeit [homeliness] to be essential categories for an individual’s sense of freedom: “The germ of thinking free[ly] lies in the spirit of the sense of Heimat, in this spirit of the imagined Being-with-oneself, in this quality of free, beautiful historicity.”12 Despite this acute observation dating back to the 1820s (Hegel held the lectures between 1822 and 1831, and they were first published in 1837), Heimat remained marginal in people’s perceptions and was not commonly used in the German vernacular during the period of the Enlightenment. If it was employed, it mainly denoted a legal category,13 synonymous with “Elternhaus und Hof” [parental home and estate],14 and later extended to “Geburts- und Wohnort” [place of birth and residence]. In 20

Towards a Definition

judicial terms, it decreed that someone with land also had (land) rights and responsibilities, as opposed to someone who was “heimatlos” [without a home], which was commensurate with “rechtlos” [without rights].15 This legislation was not changed until the middle of the nineteenth century when the Heimatrecht [the right to Heimat] was replaced with a more egalitarian form of social charter.16 The latter was necessitated by the growing mobility of a formerly rural workforce, now increasingly urban and industrialized. It was only with growing industrialization in Germany (and the drastic social changes which followed) that Heimat became increasingly symbolic and emotionally charged as a value that had become threatened for the strata of society that had benefited most from the old order: the landed gentry and the middle class. The loss of Heimat and the old order is reflected in its use as a literary motif, with Heimat gaining importance in the works of Hölderlin, Eichendorff, and Keller. These authors’ writings mirror German selfperception in the nineteenth century, which (especially in association with the Romantic movement and in view of urbanization and industrialization) invested the term with idealized connotations: as an idyllic “Sonntagsheimat” [Sunday heimat], it possessed compensatory and healing functions.17 Overall, the persistent use of the term betrays the underlying notion that, through the celebration of Heimat with its perceived natural associations, one celebrated one’s own good moral qualities.18 Accordingly, Heimat was not constructed “outside of, but around, bourgeois ideals of family, class, gender roles, history, and politics”.19 Eichendorff, in particular, foregrounded the relationship of a person or a people with what they perceived to be their ethnic homeland or part thereof. With the failed revolutions of 1848/49, grand ideas of larger geographic expanses had to be abandoned once more for small claims. One was forced to make do with the provinces, on a more personal and private level as well. In the process, the term became, as a value, even more so a reflection of oneself. This is particularly evident when home and homeland were described in terms of a lyrical locus amoenus, an idyllic place in which the individual can find fulfilment. As such the term began to acquire more and more idealized and unrealistic features,20 while being down-sized. As a locus amoenus, the physical extent of Heimat was limited, implying no more than a region, and indeed mostly a village or an area of similar size. This contrasts sharply with later associations, particularly under the Nazis, when Heimat became synonymous with Reich.21 In the early nineteenth century, Heimat was a very concrete place with clearly defined spatial limits based on individual experience and personal interest, which could also be attributed to the political disunity of the German-speaking areas. Similarly, “Heimat literature was one aspect of a great variety of activities and institutions—in part reactionary, in part practically reformist, in part idealistically utopian—which have sometimes been drawn together under the umbrella title of the ‘Heimatbewegung’ or Heimat movement, and which can be seen as a response to Germany’s rapid modernization.”22 With the increased alienation of modern man from his/her origins, the demand for Heimat in the arts and literature increased, and the aim of many artists was to fulfil as closely as possible the illusory image that urban readers had made up for themselves of the supposedly eternally unchanging and constant, intact world of Heimat and of the mountains—an alternative world to their unsatisfying urban everyday life.23 Heimat was the 21

Screening Nostalgia

paradigm of Heile Welt [intact world], a perfect environment, constructed in popular literature, not as a means of critically engaging with reality but rather as a vehicle for dreaming. The wars between Prussia and Austria (1866) and Prussia and France (1870) led to the politicization of the notion of Heimat. The birth of the German nation in 1871 saw the term become charged with a nationalistic character and equated with Vaterland [fatherland]. In this context, the association of Heimat with positive values such as Heimatliebe [love of one’s native country/land], Heimattreue [loyalty to one’s native country], Heimaterde [home turf], and Erdverbundenheit [connection with the soil] began to be used in contrast to negative concepts such as Heimatlossein [to be homeless] or Fremdsein [to be foreign].24 The most important “oppositions in the discourse of Heimat set country against city, province against metropolis, tradition against modernity, nature against artificiality, organic culture against civilization” and thereby “fixed, familiar, rooted identity against cosmopolitanism, hybridity, alien otherness, or the faceless mass”.25 Already in the nineteenth century, these dualisms had gained momentum as Heimat and Fremde [otherness], as well as Heimat and Heimatlosigkeit [homelessness], became increasingly politicized.26 Thus, at the core of the difficulties in translating this German term “lies the sediment of a troubled history of the Germanspeaking lands [...], tensions between regional and national identities” and the rapid development of an industrial and increasingly urban society that resulted in 48 per cent of the German population in 1907 living “outside their place of birth”.27 As if to compensate for the loss of one’s Heimat, Heimatkunst [regional art] had emerged as a dynamic category in the arts from the 1850s onwards, advocating and categorizing the “art forms dealing with provincial and rural life”.28 This is evident in Wilhelm Ganzhorn’s Heimat song “Im schönsten Wiesengrunde” [In the most beautiful meadow, 1851], just as it is in Heinrich Riehl’s Naturgeschichte des Volkes [Natural History of the Volk, 1851‒69].29 Germany’s rapid industrialization and modernization seemed to increase “the intensity of people’s longing for the slower rhythms of the past, for continuity, social cohesion and tradition”,30 and this was expressed in regional art. The emotional investment aided the process of appropriation as undertaken by national-conservative circles in the 1890s, by which time the transfiguration and glorification of Bauerntum [peasant culture] had become a staple element of the Heimat genre.31 With such clichés, Heimat literature and painting were soon associated with lowbrow entertainment. The trivialization and ideologization of Heimat, which continued well into the first half of the twentieth century, have brought into disrepute all subsequent renditions depicting provincial idylls. The mere presence of genre-specific motifs would have raised suspicion among, and provoke rejection by, critical audiences. However, the abuse of Heimat film and literature by some authors should not be allowed to stand in the way of the appreciation of a rich genre which pre-dates Nazism and which has enriched cultural life. Only recently have critics seemed more mindful of the consequences of tracing every developmental strand of the Heimat genre back to Nazism, when in “the 1990s, a series of important works began reappraising facets of the pre-1914 era, which had previously been co-opted all too easily into linear arguments about the continuity”.32 Indeed, it is not difficult to find examples of an enthusiasm for Heimat that is less concerned with völkisch elitism 22

Towards a Definition

[National Socialist elitism] and more with nature itself and its preservation. Rapid industrialization of large regions within Prussia led to a newfound environmental awareness during the second half of the nineteenth century. Local efforts to protect certain landscapes such as the Siebengebirge, through the Beautification Society (founded in 1869), the Society to Save the Siebengebirge (formed in 1886), as well as the Prussian State Office for Natural Monument Preservation (established in 1904), are examples of local community and state levels which attest to a sensitivity towards homeland that is divorced from nationalistic intent. Thomas Lekan argues that “far from an ‘agrarian-romantic’ strategy to pacify the masses through preindustrial imagery”, it was more “preservationists’ desire to imagine Germany in the natural landscape [which] articulated a form of middle-class paternalism designed to manage industrial and urban modernity through cultural reform, not to reject it altogether”,33 thus showing that popular alternatives to the militarization of nature and Heimat were in existence throughout the second half of the nineteenth century and have been ever since. As a metaphor distanced from change and political intrigue, the rural environment was seen as a stabilizing influence for traditions and a sense of community. At the same time, however, sympathies for Heimat and its reactionary values lent themselves to the exclusion of outsiders as well as the encouragement of national ideologies. As Lekan states, Heimat provided “a framework for negotiating the differences between national, regional, and local identities [...] in which Rhinelanders, Swabians, and Saxons retained their provincial distinctiveness while contributing to the German nation as a whole”.34 Alon Confino terms Heimat a “common denominator of variousness”, which gave Bismarck’s political creation the emotional appeal of the familiar hometown, linking the personal via the emotional to the political.35 As such, Heimat was not an escapist project but a means of connecting disillusioned citizens who may have felt lost among the political mainstream of modernity. The 1903 foundation statement of the Bundes Heimatschutz [Confederation of German Homeland Protection] makes it clear that such groups concerned with homeland protection were advancing a nationalistic project, as is evident in their demand for “the preservation of German characteristics in structural memorials, natural landscape, animal and plant world, folk art, customs, habits, festivals and costumes”.36 While such stipulations did not initially seem relevant to workers and the lower socio-economic classes, by the First World War at the latest, national and regional projects seemed to bring together disparate interest groups under the banner of homeland and fatherland, united against outside evil.37 This “in-group versus out-group” logic was well established by the turn of the century, when authors such as Adolf Bartels were able to rely on popular support whenever they voiced nationalistic propaganda. Under the banner of pedagogical-political activism, Bartels’ understanding of Heimat formed a political programme which was directed against the mixing of European cultures,38 while his contemporary Friedrich Lienhard was one of the first to introduce the blood-and-soil nexus of Heimat: “Heimat is a solid ground with roots and bulbs, with plants and life, and organisms; and an immersion into their healthy truth and warmth is salvation from industrial and other constructed problems.”39 Here the understanding of Heimat and nationalism is dominated by vitality, ethnicity, and political practicality (as opposed to reason, theory, and diplomacy), with 23

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the policy “to go through the fresh open country [rather] than through the rooms of theory”.40 This was, in effect, an early expression of antidemocratic, anti-modern, and latently anti-Semitic tendencies. For Lienhard, just as for Bartels, everything rural was healthy, while modernism and urbanism had produced decadent, sick, and unworthy people. In the lead up to the First World War, Bartels prepared a publication on the link between origin (Stamm), race, and blood, entitled Der Siegespreis: Eine politische Denkschrift [The Winner’s Tribute: A Political Deliberation, 1914].41 In it, Bartels couples aggressive pro-nationalism and Heimatliebe with ideas of expansion and colonization. Although his book was banned shortly after its publication, it certainly heralded a new tendency in the Heimat movement that would find keen followers less than two decades later. In 1923, Eduard Spranger’s essay “Der Bildungswert der Heimatkunde” [The Educational Value of Heimat Studies] was instrumental in preparing the way for the Nazis: “We’re talking about ‘Heimat’ when a speck of earth is being considered from the point of view of its all-encompassing meaning for the experience of the people living there. Heimat is liveable, experienced total connectedness with the soil.”42 In his analysis of this foundation text of National Socialist doctrine, Ahrens remarks, accurately, that the definition of Heimat in Spranger’s essay “already contained characteristics of the NSconcept of Heimat, such as for example the language of religion, the superelevation as well as the völkisch blood-and-soil element”.43 This logic was a continuation of the dichotomy of national-völkisch German values [not in the sense of “folkish”, but rather racial, nationalistic, anti-Semitic] and the perceived European modernism, and was further politically instrumentalized by the National Socialist propaganda which picked up on Bartels’ logic and created a blood-and-soil mysticism44 in order to utilize an emotive response towards German territories.45 The intention was to capitalize on the grand German understanding of empire, which had been inflated into the concept of Lebensraum [National Socialist justification of the expansion of German territory].46 Accordingly, the distinction between Heimat and fatherland was dissolved, and the result was coupled with the creation of images of enemies47 and developed international objectives. Heimat became associated with ambitions for expansion, was clearly linked to aspirations of colonialism and European warfare, and fed on visions of holistic and organic identity.48 These Reich visions died a slow death, and really only came to an end around 1945, although the Treaty of Versailles had tried to bring about a radical shift in German Heimat understanding. From 1918, Heimat necessarily had to refer to a much smaller territory, and for many Germans it came to be associated with sentimentality, as it implied a sense of loss, either impending or historical. Following Germany’s territorial losses after the First World War, Heimat was connected with feelings of nostalgia, and not just for those who had physically or psychologically lost their Heimat. The latter was especially true for many Jewish-German intellectuals, for whom the growing alienation from what they perceived as their real or potential Heimat also led to an identity crisis.49 Heimat’s nostalgic contours thus became related to expulsion, emigration, assimilation, or exile.50 Following the defeat of Germany and growing social tensions within the newly founded Weimar Republic, many Germans were susceptible to any24

Towards a Definition

thing likely to raise their self-esteem. Heimat was used in this context for political gain by right-wing factions in order to politicize and ideologically manipulate large sections of society. A growing trend towards the nationalization of Heimat rhetoric during the 1920s has been well documented.51 In addition, under conditions of extreme political instability which were driven by hostilities towards the French and inflamed by the brief flaring of Rhenish separatism (which reached a climax in the autumn of 1923 during the French occupation of the Ruhr), a radical-nationalist version of preservationism managed to strengthen its hold.52 Concerns for the protection of nature and Heimat emerged with renewed vigour during the years of the Weimar Republic and “formed the basis of a unified German Volksgemeinschaft (national community) that would transcend local, class, and political divisions”.53 Lekan also points out that in the late 1920s, a more technocratic vision of the environment gained momentum over that of the purists as “Weimar’s anaemic economy forced preservationists to demonstrate the ‘material’ benefits of nature protection, such as the appeal to tourists, in their pleas for saving scenic landmarks.”54 Nature once again became a national focus, with Heinz Haake, “an ‘Old Fighter’ of the NSDAP [Nazi Party] since 1921”, simultaneously becoming governor of the Rhineland and head of the Bund Deutscher Heimatschutz [Confederation of German Homeland Protection] in 1933.55 In an early example of Gleichschaltung [NS unification, elimination of opposition], Haake’s ideas and activism clearly linked Heimat preservation and landscape planning with the protection of Lebensraum, whereby he “hoped to purify racial habitat, boost birth-rates, and root the population in the soil […] linking Heimat activities more closely to the regime’s core values of economic performance, racial improvement, and militarist expansion”.56 The fruits of this preparation of the ground were soon to be harvested by the Nazis. The Fascist quest “for a purified Heimat legitimized plans for racial cleansing through elimination of foreign and degenerate people as well as for territorial expansion as a form of Heimat protection”,57 thus masking as well as linking militarism and elimination policies. Likewise, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, as well as the editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, Alfred Rosenberg, and Reichsbauernführer [Reich Leader of the Farmers’ Union] Richard Walther Darré, promoted the atavistic elements of the Heimat myth. It provided an anti-modern historical reference point for identification purposes in these times of change and uncertainty.58 The fact that the Heimat term was nebulous enough to invest it with their preferred meaning aided this exercise.59 National Socialist ideas were characterized by their calculated intention to appeal to people’s emotions rather than their intellect. Nazi demagogues happily borrowed and misappropriated images, emblems, and symbols from a variety of areas, including nationalist-imperialistic beliefs, Germanic-Nordic myths, blood-and-soil cults, race ideology, pseudo-romanticism of rural and agrarian lifestyles, and the ever present dichotomy of Heimat and the corrupting “other”.60 The Heimwehren or Heimatwehren [Militia and/or Home Guard], which were formed (chiefly in Austria) as bourgeois and rural organizations for civil protection during the first few years after the First World War, and which emerged from the Abwehrverbände [organizations set up to defend Austrian citizens against potential attacks by the Yugoslavs in the south], offered to cooperate with National Socialist organizations.61 The fact that the 25

Screening Nostalgia

underlying ideas of Heimat coincided with Volk ideas and ideals about heim ins Reich [home (in)to the empire] aided this ideological and programmatic rapprochement of Nazis on either side of the Alps.62 Nazi propaganda went as far as treating Heimat, Deutschland, Österreich, Volk, and Reich as synonyms,63 and “völkisch” came to be used ubiquitously to denote an overarching connectedness to Heimat. The use of the term “völkisch” increased to such an extent that one critic remarked tongue in cheek: “‘Volk’ is used now as often in reading and writing as salt is when eating, you add a pinch of Volk to everything.”64 Numerous publications dating from 1933 to 1945 attest to this trend. Virulent examples of racial vilification are evident in the two major journals of Alfred Rosenberg’s Nationalist Socialist Kulturgemeinde [Cultural Community]—Kunst und Volk [Art and the Nation/People] and Volkstum und Heimat [Nationhood and Heimat]—as well as a series of other books sponsored by the Kulturgemeinde, which featured “NordicGermanic folklore and other related ‘racial’ issues […] primarily dedicated to traditional folk art, Nordic-Germanic symbols, and folklore derived from German peasant ancestors”.65 The intent of these publications was of course to serve the desired ideology; reaching an academic as well as a popular audience was the aim of all variations of Heimat folklore, from science to kitsch in the visual arts.66 “Idealized Alpine panoramas and village celebration [...] took their place in a Nazi Kulturkampf [culture war] in which the homeland militated against the New World, undergoing political instrumentation to rise up as pastorale militans.”67 Thus the term became fashionable in the context of Nazi ideas of protection, but also, and above all, in the context of Nazi expansion and annexation between the 1920s and 1945. This was aided by the desirable qualities with which Heimat was associated. Designated as the place where one lives or would like to live, Heimat was inappropriately imbued with emotions that could be exploited by those aiming to expand territory, with the use of the terms “Heimat” or “Lebensraum” no longer related in many instances to a place or region that was congruent with the legal or national framework of the time.68 Heimat was no longer one’s own birthplace, but had become the desired birthplace of one’s offspring and was thus justification for expansion. No longer a retrograde, nostalgic notion, Heimat had developed into a utopian and aspirational concept. Simultaneously, with the increased emphasis on body image and general health, which was promoted in Ufa film productions such as Nicholas Kaufmann and Wilhelm Prager’s Wege zu Kraft und Schönheit [Ways to Strength and Beauty, 1925], German Heimat and folk were transformed into images of superiority which linked blood and soil. To this end, Nazi ideology was aided by the close bond between German national identity and the notion of its basis in ethnicity, which had been perpetuated by many German philosophers during the previous century. “In particular Johann Gottfried Herder’s ideas of the Volk (people) forming a Blutsgemeinschaft (community of blood), and the Volksseele (national soul) and the Volksgeist (national spirit) forming a specific historical individuality”69 gave credibility to this connection. Herder argued that nations are pre-political, and that their roots lie in culture, language, and ethnicity; accordingly they are organic, rather than artificially constructed. Herder did not believe in superiority per se; however, J. G. Fichte and others (most notably the Nazis) took Herder’s logic one step further by elevating the German collective identity above everyone else’s. This 26

Towards a Definition

fuelled the understanding of Germany as a “particularly unique and original nation [which] had to be on guard against being contaminated by other nations. Salvation lay solely in the vigorous defence of its own culture and language (regarded as the original language of mankind, the Ursprache).”70 This notion of ethnic superiority went widely uncontested among German intellectuals in the nineteenth century; “even the liberal Theodor Mommsen argued that the idea of the nation was firmly linked, not to political traditions and institutions, but to the Volk”, which he saw as a collective individuality.71 In typically ethnocentric fashion, Mommsen and many of his colleagues subscribed to a hierarchy of peoples and nations according to the degree of progress which they had achieved. “There were higher cultures and higher peoples (to which Germany, of course, belonged) and there were primitive nations (such as the Slavic and, in particular, the Russian nation) who were mentally and physically inferior.”72 This understanding of German preeminence lent itself to an aggressive stance in political interactions, which was justified as a “healthy egoism of the German people” and was soon used to justify expansionist foreign policy moves.73 Ethnic nationalism found supporters in Germany even after the sobering experience of its performance in the First World War. Advocates of a German Volksgeschichte [national history] were especially busy during the years of the Weimar Republic salvaging the remnants of German self-respect and identity in the face of defeat and international humiliation. Adolf Helbok was just one of many academics from that period who continued to defend Germany’s territorial ambitions based on its right to exert pressure, and legitimized by its unique position as “an organic community of people united by blood and language and tied to a specific soil”.74 The circle of this logic was not broken until much later and, following Hegel’s philosophical conviction that reason and history are identical, the rise of Nazism was seen as another logical step in the right direction. This understanding was reinforced with reference to other schools of thought such as Darwinism, and was slowly transformed into a Social Darwinian principle, advocating that the Nazis’ belief in racial character was supposedly grounded in “objective laws of the natural world; German past, present, and future were thus eternally connected by blood”, whereby people, nation, and landscape symbolized by blood and soil “would renew themselves in a neverending cycle of birth, growth, death, and rebirth”.75 Lekan concludes the summary of his argument with reference to the poet Karl Broegger: “Nothing can take away our love and faith in our land. We are sent to preserve and shape it. Should we die, it is the duty of our heirs to preserve and shape it. Germany will not die.”76 The fate that had been bestowed on the Aryan type was also put into a religious context: “Nazis used organic metaphors of Ewigkeit, or eternity, to recapture what Benjamin termed ‘Messianic’ time, a simultaneity of past and future in an instantaneous present.”77 The concept of Hitler as the Messiah and the people of Germany as the chosen ones being led to their promised land was not just a Glaubensbekenntnis [confession of faith] but also a cry for action and justification for aggression. Thus Heimat became both myth and reality, a powerful sentiment that lent itself to assimilation into the blood-and-soil rhetoric. By advocating the Germans’ connection to their primordial Lebensraum and by couching it in terms of the thousand-year Reich, they could as a result feel invincible, at least in spirit. Indeed, the National Socialist movement seized upon Heimat for all its emotive 27

Screening Nostalgia

qualities, while also employing pseudo-logical arguments along the lines of “what is beautiful cannot be evil”, as suggested by Karl Giannoni of the Austrian Heimatschutz movement in 1933, and misappropriating Kantian ideas in the process: “‘The beautiful is the symbol of good’ […] holds true in the negative as well, and we can say: ‘The ugly is the symbol of evil.’”78 The demise of Nazism notwithstanding, the history of the appropriation of the term “Heimat” and its beautiful projections did not stop interest groups from establishing and/or exploiting a link between Volk, Heimat, and territory. Even during the Cold War period, West German national consciousness remained for the most part “consistent with and strengthened by the ideas of regional Heimat and a common European home”.79 Again and again, Heimat has been emotionally hijacked to lobby for or against migration policies or the establishment or movement of borders, borrowing from the nineteenthcentury juxtaposition of Heimat with Fremde.80 In this context, the term has undergone several stages of instrumentalization since 1945. One such transformation rendered Heimat synonymous with feel-good images and ideas at home in popular culture, an escapist vehicle of dreaming and reassurance, while another use of the term relates to the ideas of the Heimatvertriebenenverbände [associations for expellees from occupied territories], referring to the concept in the context of their lost homelands. For the latter, Heimat has become a pseudo-legal category of territorial identity and a political tool. Not least to escape any such logic, some intellectuals—even prior to Nazism—coquetted with their lack of Heimat, which they perceived as liberation rather than as a loss. Stephan Zweig articulated this very personally: “[A]s an Austrian, as a Jew, as an author, as a humanist and pacifist, my house and livelihood have been overturned three times, […] but I don’t lament this”. He instead assures that “it is precisely the homeless person who becomes free in a new sense, and only he who has no ties no longer needs to show consideration for anything or anyone.”81 Likewise, the multi-ethnic author Ödön von Horváth rejoiced in a manner reminiscent of Zweig: “I have no Heimat and do not suffer as a result, but take pleasure in my homelessness, for it frees me from an unnecessary sentimentality.”82 For psychoanalysts, Heimat has always had the meaning of a repair kit for the soul, filling any voids with dreams and desires to overcome emotional hardships and losses. They have identified a need for Heimat in contemporary society that has arisen from a loss of orientation and belonging, whereby notions of Heimat become a balm for one’s feelings of self-worth.83 Bausinger states that the heimatesque [Heimatliche] “has always had a compensatory character”.84 Zweig and Horváth, with their arguments against the need for a Heimat—which, however, had been born out of the experience of exile and thus the loss of their Heimat—influenced many post-war intellectuals in the second half of the twentieth century to reject the term on similar grounds or to transform it semantically, just as Ilya Ehrenburg did when he spoke of Berlin in the 1920s as his “Zeitheimat” [temporal Heimat].85 A sense of loss was overwhelming for most Germans after the Second World War: if not the loss of their homeland, as was the case for the many exiled and the millions of expelled ethnic Germans, then it was the loss of their Heimat in terms of the destruction that surrounded them. To make matters worse, this loss was not mournable. On the one hand, it was deemed inappropriate in view of the role Germany had played in the destruction 28

Towards a Definition

wrought throughout Europe (and far beyond) during the war. On the other hand, the term “Heimat” was also shunned for its Nazi connotations. Leftwing intellectuals in particular were vehemently opposed to the use of this concept for many of the following decades. In the late 1940s and 50s, the bad press given to repatriation organizations, the “Heimatverbände” [Heimat associations], which claimed their members’ “Recht auf Heimat” [right to one’s Heimat], intensified the rejection of the term and concept.86 The organizations dealing with expelled ethnic Germans from the former eastern provinces of the German Reich were heavy users of this logic and seemed to monopolize the vocabulary of Heimat for the Far Right: Heimattreue Schlesier [staunchly loyal Silesians], Heimattreffen [Heimat gatherings], or Heimatvereine [Heimat associations] are just a few examples of the compound nouns which indicate that the term was still being used in the political and ideological sense. Not least due to the tireless and, as time progressed, less and less realistic pursuits of expellee groups, Heimat was seen as something which could aid healing. Not only did the experience of loss dominate the minds of most Germans, so too did the reality of a new era, which was faster, more modern, more industrial, and which needed to be compensated for by the proliferation of folkloric images and paradisiacal places. The term “Heimat” had become a “floating signifier used for anything that provides the utopia of a wished-for experience of shelteredness and harmony, an experience of disalienation in a spatially conceived world”,87 and the German people required much in the way of healing. However, this deeply personal and psychological need many Germans felt for a sense of Heimat had to be weighed up against the fact that the term (rather than the desire) had been tarnished and that Heimat had thus lost its semantic innocence.88 This was especially crucial, as most expellees did not feel a new sense of freedom, but instead desired compensation, which they achieved by imagining a utopian concept of a glorified past.89 Particularly in the second half of the twentieth century, the term “Heimat” became an article of faith which often obstructed realistic access to the phenomenon, even for some scholars.90 Torn between nostalgia and revisionism, it was predominantly the expellees in Europe who, confronted with redrawn maps without a realistic chance of change, turned the term “Heimat” into a political controversy and a commodity. Their understanding of Heimat was revanchist, regressive, and focused once again on territory and expansion.91 Expellee groups vigorously monopolized the term, keeping it well within the familiar realm of meaning by using it just as the Nazis did, when they repeatedly demanded that Germans should aspire to regain the hereditary and ancestral native soil of all German peoples.92 Owing to their vocal lobbying,93 the term “Heimat” fell once again into disrepute and remained anathema for left-wing politicians and intellectuals for nearly two decades following the Second World War. This was in stark contrast to the boom of the Heimat genre in film and literature in the 1950s. Dispossessed peoples who had lost their Heimat dominated much of the new Heimat literature produced at this time. Their works, often dealing autobiographically with the loss of Heimat, and mostly of minor literary quality, were driven by political engagement, self-pity, and self-referentiality, and were written mainly as a body of eyewitness accounts or preserved through oral history. Their “concept of Heimat is used in its 29

Screening Nostalgia

current stereotyped way, where the outlook onto the Heimat of one’s birth and residence—along with the numerous reflections on the human right to Heimat—underpins the retrospective”.94 Following the influx of expelled Germans from the Eastern territories, literary production focused heavily on the loci of the lost homeland. While the Heimat genre boom responded to this existential need, it was naturally suspect for many intellectuals. Even then, when “talk [was] almost exclusively about the acceleration of time and of the ‘disappearance of space’”,95 it did not seem timely or appropriate to talk about Heimat, particularly when using loaded images of the lost Heimat or of a proto-Fascist Alpine Heimat. Both territories appeared corrupted, just as “space” or “room” remained loaded words for Germans, reminiscent of NS terminology (including talk about Greater Germany, expansion into Eastern Europe, “People without room to expand”, “Generalplan Eastern Europe”), with the whole semantic field apparently contaminated for evermore.96 In fact, all things Heimat seemed to be considered ideology-laden, disreputable, and distorted by glorification.97 Many authors treated the term with suspicion and some irony. This is evident in the writings of West German and East German intellectuals98 as well as Austrian and Swiss-German authors. In his speech “Die Schweiz als Heimat?” [Switzerland as Heimat?] from 1974, Max Frisch shares one of his childhood memories with the audience: “I was born in Helios Street […] Neighbourhood as Heimat; my first school house is part of it […] so is a butcher where I was allowed to catch flies for my frog, as well a sewerage tunnel […]; I stand here bent over, a young lad, bare-foot in the stinking sewage, frightened by the echo of my own voice and then this other sound, when they, the gang up there, who are testing my courage, whistle down through a shaft into the great silence, this terrifying silence between individual drops, in the distance that much-too-little hole showing daylight—fear then, and overcoming the fear for the sake of belonging: better to wade through the shitty 99 water than to be an outsider in the neighbourhood.”

With his references to the butcher and sewage, as well as his painful desire to be a part of Heimat and not stigmatized as an outsider, Frisch recalls the double bind of Heimat. The desire “to belong” implies the fact that some do not and that the construct feeds on exclusion—or, as Boa and Palfreyman aptly put it: “Heimat thus contains within itself its negative and other.”100 This was also expressed by Hans Magnus Enzensberger in his poem “Alte Heimat” [Old Heimat], in which he recalls his childhood under National Socialism in a little village full of swastikas. Upon his return he is confronted with a sense of loss and recognition, mixed memories, and ambivalent feelings. “The lilac still blooms near the garden fence, / […] Yes, you still recognize the butcher’s wife. […] Very dull hours return from the past. / You shiver and you laugh. You are touched. / And the lilac still blooms near the garden fence.”101 Heimat may bring back bad memories too, but nostalgia gets the better of most of these recollections over time. For most West Germans, the sense of loss and the need for escapist ideas subsided with the “economic miracle”. The fiscal reality meant that they no longer seemed to require compensation. Life became plentiful and carefree for many, despite the Cold War. There was no need for Heimat “as a meaningful point of reference for one’s life with regard to a non-threatening 30

Towards a Definition

social and spatial environment in post-war development”, in the same way that “technical and economic progress was also culturally agreed upon and appeared worth striving for”.102 Consequently, Heimat was barely mentioned in mainstream German society during the 1960s.103 Only after the first signs of economic stagflation in the early 1970s (though from the safe position of a working Ostpolitik)104 did left-wing intellectuals dare to incorporate the Heimat discourse into their thinking, among them Willy Brandt, Martin Walser, and Günter Grass. Grass was an authoritative voice who warned about the dangers of leaving the term “Heimat” to the demagogues and pleaded strongly for a new definition.105 This re-evaluation prepared the ground for the slow rehabilitation of Heimat that has been taking place ever since: a rehabilitation that was officially declared successful by Bondy in 1975.106 Towards the second half of the 1970s, Heimat experienced—as the weekly magazine Der Spiegel noted in a review of Ina-Maria Greverus’ work—a surprising renewal from (formerly) dissident minds.107 In her book, Greverus, a Frankfurt cultural anthropologist, explored the complexities of Heimat with all its political, social, and cultural connotations when she defined the trend towards emotional investment in the term as “an individual’s emotional affinity to a socio-cultural region, which provides, or appears to provide, a sense of identity, security, and of taking part in defining one’s lifestyle”.108 While Greverus’ attempt to incorporate the term into a social anthropology (which at times flippantly drew parallels and analogies between animal and human group behaviour) was applauded as much as it was criticized,109 it clearly marked a successful step in the direction of reclaiming the term for the political left in West Germany. Der Spiegel popularized this trend, referring to Heimat as an emotional category revived by the formation of the Greens and other parties. Heimat grounded in this way stressed the environmental degradation and exploitation of the treasured pastures, forests, and natural landscapes that had come to capture the German imagination, with regard to feeling at ease in their country.110 Greverus aptly defined Heimat as an active process of acquisition pursued by an individual, thereby highlighting that it may be found anywhere, even within cities if one opens oneself up to one’s surroundings and engages willingly in social interactions fostered by a common language, place of residence, shared interests, and the like. Moreover, Greverus’ definition accounted for the acquisition of second and third Heimats, as well as for changes in selfunderstanding, resulting in the shift of Heimat sympathies. This post-modern arbitrariness of Heimat may also have provoked a reassessment of Heimat: “Now is the time when Heimat is being spoken of again as of something manageable, something identifiable”,111 albeit meaning different things to different people. As if in response to this emerging trend, Edgar Reitz’s internationally popular film series Heimat (1980‒84) and its sequels (1988‒92 and 2004) have been responsible for a renaissance of the concept in all strata of German society.112 However, despite Reitz’s subtle ironies and concessions to intellectuals from both the left and the right wings of the spectrum, the rehabilitation of the term has remained extremely difficult owing to more than one hundred years of overuse, commercial and political misuse, sentimentalization, and superficialities.113 Reitz’s Heimat came on the back of a wave of anti-Heimat novels which were intended as a protest against the corruption of the term “Heimat” as much as an attempt to reclaim 31

Screening Nostalgia

Heimat in the second half of the twentieth century.114 This trend in West Germany and Austria during the 1960s and 70s resulted in many highly acclaimed anti-Heimat novels, such as Thomas Bernhard’s Frost (1963), Josef Winkler’s trilogy about the Austrian region of Kärnten,115 and Franz Innerhofer’s Schöne Tage [Nice Days, 1974].116 Bernhard’s Frost, Gerhard Fritsch’s Fasching [Carnival, 1967], and Hans Lebert’s Die Wolfshaut [Wolf’s Skin, 1960] all feature villages that are anti-Heimat in nature. Lebert’s village of Schweigen and Fritsch’s Styrian village are places of silence and torment, where secrets of the Nazi period haunt the villagers and where a lack of clear moral guidelines and courage transforms the villages into seas of despair. Gerhard Roth’s novel Der Stille Ozean [Still Ocean, 1980] makes this clear with a quote from Hermann Melville: “Now that everything is covered in snow, I have the feeling here in the countryside as if I were at sea. In the mornings when I get up I look out of my window as if out of the porthole of a ship on the Atlantic.”117 Roth describes an extreme landscape that transmits feelings of eternity, timelessness, and escapism. “The hero is braving the elements; he wants to return to nature: as flight into the wilderness also means stepping out of manmade history, the history that man is responsible for. Every pilgrimage into the wild also has an historical touch.”118 For the protagonist Ascher, a doctor who faces court action for negligence, the retreat into nature is self-healing. However, this critical engagement paved the way for post-modern transformations of Heimat, including Robert Schneider’s Schlafes Bruder [Sleep’s Brother, 1992]119 and Reitz’s second and third instalment of the Heimat trilogy. Indeed it was not until the 1980s that Heimat regained wider acceptance as a positive value, thus overcoming the strictly dismissive mood of the 1960s and 70s;120 nevertheless rejection remained as much a feature as the embrace of the new popularity of the term. The discussion itself became part of a post-modernist discourse, with the concept being claimed and rejected by different interest groups often for identical reasons. Heimat, “that ‘noun’ in the Mitscherlich sense, whose polysemy or breadth of connotation lets it be easily (mis)understood” had become “a paradigm of ‘new confusion’”.121 Feelings of ambivalence abounded, and German author Siegfried Lenz wrote tongue in cheek in 1981: “Heimat, that is the place where one’s eyes moisten of their own accord, […] where language may be replaced by vague feelings […], I admit that this word has got a bad name, that it was misused.”122 Despite this acknowledged contamination, the author admits to the temptation the concept holds for defining an individual’s identity: “For me Heimat is not just the place where the dead are buried; it is the little corner of comfort, it is the place in which one feels safe, safe with regard to language, with regard to feelings, yes, even in silence one feels safe”, and “it is the speck of earth where one is recognized; and that’s probably what everyone would like one day: to be recognized and that means: to be welcomed back”.123 Welcomed back as well-known visitors from yesteryear were also Heimat films and literature from the 1950s, which saw a revival in the consumption of Heimat some twenty-five years later. The 1951 film Grün ist die Heide [Green Is the Heath] became the most popular television programme of 1980, and the novels Kirchberger Idyllen [Kirchberg Idylls] and Das Kind der Gewalt und die Sterne der Romani [The Child of Violence and the Stars of the Romani] were also very well received.124 Heimat’s rediscovery was emotive and sensual. 32

Towards a Definition

Accordingly, the German weekly paper Die Zeit referred to Heimat in sensory terms as a series of nostalgic memories evoked by images and smells: “Heimat smells: of resin and hay, of potatoes roasted in the fire, of leather, baking cakes, roasting almonds, of freshly caught smoked flounder and Pomeranian stuffed goose”, but—expressing a certain ambivalence—it also smells “of sweat, pig manure, soot and smoke: in any case it smells and, as such, bears witness to life”.125 The renaissance of the concept (in literature in particular) was undeniable in the 1980s. “Without a doubt: Heimat is booming”, noted Pott in his publication in 1983,126 an observation that was based on sales evidence, such as that of Horst Bienek’s Gleiwitzer Tetralogie [Gleiwitz Tetralogy], which followed in the footsteps of Bernhard, Winkler, and Innerhofer to create a successful synthesis of Heimat-novel elements and anti-Heimat characteristics.127 However, it must be noted that the connotations of the term had changed significantly during its revival. What used to be a political lever in the pursuit of “Recht auf Heimat” [right to one’s Heimat] and was associated with “proximity to kitsch […] idyll of banality […] postcard lyric and arbour poetry, peace, end of workday, felt slippers”128 could only with difficulty overcome the image of a rose-tinted view of the provinces. The idea of Heimat was deemed by many to be a flight into the unpolitical and uneconomic, or a flight from reality and responsibility.129 Heimat was ambivalent, problematic, in need of inverted commas and footnotes. In 1985, a further attempt was made by academics to rehabilitate the term in the publication Neue Erkundungen eines alten Themas [New Explorations of an Old Topic].130 However, the territoriality of the concept was never overcome. In their publication from the year 2000, Boa and Palfreyman emphasise the physicality of the concept, identifying the core meaning of Heimat as “home” in the “sense of a place rather than a dwelling”.131 Others define Heimat in more abstract terms, claiming “there is one Heimat available to us everywhere: that which we make for ourselves in language”.132 This understanding may have helped to include East Germany once more in the national discourse after November 1989. With the new realities of the late 1980s, German national identity was at a crossroads. Selfconfident voices keen to annex Eastern Germany and to turn to a new page in post-war politics alternated with more hesitant voices. The ensuing differences led to a re-examination of state and self. In this context, Greverus’ understanding of Heimat, as a cultural anthropologist, stands out as the most relevant. She sees Heimat as being intricately linked to identity, and points out that it gains particular importance when considering selfdefinition: “Who am I? Where do I belong?”133 Heimat seems to be of greatest importance when it is perceived as a problem or a challenge; as such it became a “hot topic” for German society in the mid to late 1980s. There has always been a tendency for individuals to seek this kind of reassurance through a sense of belonging, whether to a group or a place. Following Greverus’ logic, this trait of humans was said to be shared with most animals inasmuch as they require a marked area and clearly defined group to withstand threats from the outside. In the animal kingdom, Heimat may be equated with “Verteidigungsraum”, that is, a defended area, which as a home/“Heim” guards the nest as well as the sleeping and resting area.134 Greverus claims that this desire for a physical and territorial manifestation of animal-Heimat is also alive in many humans. Heimat is strongly related to 33

Screening Nostalgia

ideas of place and territory, “as all human activity, [...] takes place in a concrete or imaginary space. It is always a particular space which people fill with values and even their utopian fantasies still aim at a concrete place.”135 The urge human beings feel to place themselves in defined and personally experienced spheres of identity136—a room, house, village, or region—has been reinforced by recent fears about the disintegration of social and religious frameworks or values: “Man, released from a transcendental world creation and world order, was elevated to be creator of the historical world, yet at the same time was thrown back onto a determination by this very same selfcreated world.”137 Often this innate desire for belonging manifests itself in the establishment of, or desire for, a territory. However, Heimat does not necessarily describe a fixed physical category; it is much more a fluid psychological category that ensures stimulation and identification, which is clearly what Siegfried Lenz was alluding to. Heimat developed into a sense of community, especially at times of increasing mobility and the dissolution of national borders as part of European Union integration. Some commentators were surprised at this trend: “It is quite amazing how sturdy the country, heimat and also the nation are. Wherever people came from, the majority came from a tangible home with doors, windows and a roof. The concept of the supranational urban tribes [...] of the post-modern nomads found everywhere by the pop-theorists in the 1990s”138 turned out to be more a theoretical construct than a reality. Grounding and reassurance remained fixtures in most people’s lives despite, or indeed because of, rapid change. In this context, discussions about dominant German identity [Leitkultur], as well as changes to Germany’s migration policies, indicate that the idea of Heimat had become complicated in a country of immigration and was no longer easily understood as relating solely to Germany or a part thereof. With the increasing movement of migrants into or within Europe in the second half of the twentieth century, Heimat evoked far-reaching connotations. For Turkish guest workers in Germany, as much as for transient service providers in the European Union, concepts such as Ur-Heimat [original Heimat] and Wahlheimat [Heimat of choice], Herkunftsland [country of origin], or permanenter Wohnsitz [permanent domicile] have brought the term “Heimat” back into mainstream discourse, along with many international associations, as it could relate to Turkey, Greece, or other countries of migrant origin. However, changed realities in the labour market, economic migration, or a lack of family networks may have generalized the concept associated with homeland, green pastures, and rural bliss. Thus Heimat may be the here and now, the past, utopia, the beyond: at a time of constant change everything can be Heimat.139 Above all, during the current period, which has seen increases in divorce rates as well as lower birth rates, a stable point of reference such as a Heimat has gained in importance. Similarly, with the decreasing value placed on national frameworks by the European Union, in favour of transnational and global areas of competence and responsibility, an indirect homogenization of cultures and organizations has provoked a backlash in certain quarters. Many minority groups fear their status will be further diminished as categories such as nationality, ethnicity, or sexuality lose more and more relevance; the reality of globalization in twenty-first-century Western societies, and the accompanying sense of homelessness and loss in a rapidly and constantly changing environment, have unsettled many citizens. A long34

Towards a Definition

ing for a place of one’s own, one’s origins, a place that provides stability, orientation, perspective, and solace has perhaps been the dominant goal of the contemporary self-titled global citizen. The object of such yearning may once again be covered by the broad term “Heimat”. Germany’s unification in 1990 undoubtedly became the most obvious turning point in academic as well as popular navel-gazing exercises. One month after the historical event, historian Karl-Heinz Janßen, working for the German weekly Die Zeit, warned of renewed efforts to whitewash Germans’ historical guilt.140 Others feared a resurgence of German nationalism,141 or diagnosed an attempt to sanitize and relativize German history.142 There have been national and international intellectuals “warning against renewed efforts by largely conservative and male historians to use re-unification to reestablish an apologetic national history”143 that would incorporate a larger, pre-1945 understanding of homeland. At the same time, however, the introduction of a national day of remembrance for the victims of National Socialism (27 January, first commemorated in 1996), as well as the allocation of funds for the Holocaust memorial in Berlin indicated that the many victims of the Holocaust would not be forgotten. The same year saw the Goldhagen debate in Germany, following the publication of Harvard historian Daniel Goldhagen’s book Hitler’s Willing Executioners,144 which was met with condemnation by most academics in Germany and across the world, yet which achieved popular success with many sales—above all in Germany. This success must be contrasted with the sales of publications about German victims, including German prisoners of war, victims of the area bombings and of Soviet occupation,145 and not forgetting the accounts of crimes committed against millions of German refugees and expellees.146 Both topics “have been largely ignored by German historiography”147 and have remained for some an “unmastered chapter in European contemporary history. The general ignorance about the crimes committed against millions of German refugees and expellees reveals the shortcomings of teachers, historians and journalists....”148 As if to compensate for this shortcoming, 1995 saw a controversial public display of solidarity with German victims, when many prominent German politicians and artists, among them Alfred Dregger, Klaus Rainer Röhl, Ulrich Schacht, Heimo Schwilk, and Rainer Zitelmann, signed a statement in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung “denouncing the view that 8 May signified a liberation from Nazi tyranny [as also] Germans had been victims of the Second World War and that 1945 marked the beginning of the division of Germany and the ‘expulsion terror’ against Germans from the ‘German East’”.149 This point of view has enjoyed great support among public figures, if its topicality since 1995 is anything to go by. Furthermore, the need to integrate East and West Germans into a unified country was largely responsible for the revival of the Heimat concept. Parallel to this development, the popularity of the PDS150 and subsequently “Die Linke” [The Left] in the eastern states of Germany can be explained to some degree with reference to Heimat. The sense of loss—not only of the old political system, but also of familiar consumer items and landscapes which have since made way for shopping complexes and redevelopments as well as new industries and structured tourism—has led many to feel nostalgic about the past. Ostalgie developed as a consumer culture and compensatory phenomenon that bears many similarities to the idea of Heimat. Blickle correctly 35

Screening Nostalgia

points out that “by celebrating their local beer, their local detergent, their local soccer clubs, their Trabi, their tree cakes [Baumkuchen], their East German Heimatroman [Heimat novel] and their Ostalgie”, many former East Germans actually integrated themselves “into German Heimat traditions”, even though they thought that they were “defining themselves against Germany as a whole”.151 With this trend, which has been notable since the early 1990s and supported mainly by East Germans, the unified Germany has experienced another Heimat trend on a more united front. With the start of the new millennium, a new patriotism, which has found expression in painting, literature, film, and music alike, has also been noted, initially with some concern. Der Spiegel spoke of patriotic stomach pain with reference to Berlin’s pop band Mia, whose song about “Eros” and “Fatherland”, as the magazine claimed, seems to describe a new self-confidence in showing love for one’s homeland: “I feel you next to me and am enjoying / your hand in my hand / what I know now and have just realized / I am no longer a stranger in my land.”152 Songs by German pop bands, increasingly featuring lyrics sung in German rather than the more marketable English,153 have been released on CDs published in a series called “Neue Heimat”.154 A widespread enthusiasm for Heimat in musical terms was also evident in the wake of the 2006 and 2010 FIFA Football World Championships. Herbert Grönemeyers’ FIFA hymn “’s wird Zeit, dass sich was dreht” [It’s about time that something changes], performed together with Amadou and Mariam from Mali, was not just a reference to the football—it also alluded to Germany’s relationship to Heimat. Germany, as the host of the 2006 Championships, presented itself as a colourful, open, and light-hearted society with a Heimat concept that embraced visitors from around the world.155 Unimaginable until then, the German flag was displayed with self-confidence and nonchalance on cars and houses, painted on faces, and printed onto clothes, transforming the country into a sea of black, red, and gold for weeks. Fans were everywhere, celebrating and cheering the German team and Heimat in a new show of patriotism. This fresh and fun-filled German patriotism surprised Germans far more than the many international visitors.156 However, it was well prepared for with a government advertisement campaign entitled “Du bist Deutschland!” [You are Germany!]. The fruits of this campaign were apparently harvested four years later during the 2010 FIFA Football Championships in South Africa, when Germany became “Schland”. Derived from the sloppy pronunciation of the football fans’ chorus of “DeutSCH-LAAAND” (as noted by the popular German TV presenter Stefan Raab),157 this concept was popularized by the German band Uwu Lena with their hit “Schland, oh, Schland”.158 As a fond reference to a national Heimat, this abbreviation of “Deutschland” proved catchy, as it has a pleasant ring to German ears, being reminiscent of “Schlaraffenland” [land of milk and honey] and “Schmand” [a rich sour cream or quark]. Schland also has the sound of a smallish entity which is neither threatening nor threatened, and has proved attractive to large sections of society (apart from football fans), who were happy—at least in the short term—to claim a new, inclusive name for German Heimat. In contrast to the playful nature of pop music, which was received with a smile, the retro-heimatesque antics in the visual arts, such as those by Norbert Bisky, were frowned upon. The paintings by Bisky were said to show an undeniable Nazi chic and monumentalism: often portraying young, blond, ath36

Towards a Definition

letic boys and, in the case of his 2001 painting “Kein Sturm hält uns zurück” [No storm will hold us back] even depicting a young man raising his right arm “suspiciously”, as noted by Der Spiegel.159 His “flaxen blonde boys, romping in the dunes” are clearly meant as provocations, polarizing viewers with their ambiguous pictorial idioms.160 Similarly, his artist colleagues Tim Eitel and Neo Rauch were accused of adopting a style reminiscent of Nazi aesthetics. Whether these works are meant to be post-modern pastiches playing with old taboos, or were intended as provocations or as expressions of a reorientation or naivety, the trend has had its critics, both within Germany and abroad: “More and more since reunification a sometimes audacious, thoughtless and ignorant use of words and values has penetrated into everyday life. [...] They dare once more.”161 As if stepping out of the shadow of the past, these German painters and songwriters, as well as some film-makers and authors seemingly emancipate themselves from a “Leiden an Deutschland” [Sorrow for Germany], a phrase coined by Thomas Mann in 1946,162 and embrace a new national pride. Botho Strauß lamented in his famous column “Anschwellender Boxgesang” [Rising War-Cry] in Der Spiegel in 1993: “Am I not born in my Fatherland?”163 With a heimatesque mindset, however, returned the peace of mind to call upon a territorial Heimat, albeit one that is more akin to the love of, and nostalgia for, one’s origins, such as that expressed by Günter Grass in relation to Danzig, by Walter Kempowski for Rostock, Thomas Mann for Lübeck, Siegfried Lenz for Masuren, Uwe Johnston for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, or by Martin Walser in relation to the Lake Constance region. A closer examination of their works and their way of dealing with Heimat clearly shows that they are referring less to a geographical location than to a community, a regional dialect, a class conscience, or a memory of childhood.164 Here Ernst Bloch’s explanation comes to mind that “Heimat is a mirage which seems to represent childhood and which is radiant in our memory, but it is a place where no-one has ever been.”165 For Bloch it is the manifestation of a yearning rather than a concrete place or time.166 Significantly, the patterns of lost Heimat or feelings of security and innocence—associated with children and childhood—emerge as a constant in psychological research and resonate with public sentiment when looking back at the studies undertaken in 2003 and 2009 which were discussed at the beginning of this chapter. As with any memory or recollection, these connotations of Heimat depict a transformation of reality as interpreted by a particular individual and distorted over time in personal memory.167 For everyone, the nostalgic gaze is informed by the experiences of ageing, and Horst Bienek recognized that “we are all exiles in the sense that we were driven from childhood out into the adult world”.168 When Martin Walser referred to Heimat as “the most beautiful name for backwardness”,169 the meaning alludes not just to a state of “mental backwardness” but also to those who were able to stay back, to remain spatially and mentally in their birthplace or childhood (as conveyed by the German term “zurückbleiben”), if not physically, then emotionally. Can Heimat be defined conclusively for today? The polysemy of the notion has proved a constant, and different values continue to arise anew at every juncture of this analysis. Every director and every era has had an answer, albeit a personal one, which in many instances has been short-lived, revised and renewed. Heimat is in the eye of the beholder and is therefore a 37

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fluid concept: one that changes with environmental, societal, and personal shifts. It is in this indefinability of Heimats (plural) that the term’s productive dimension lies, and this study traces these changes by looking at paradigmatic examples from German cinema which document the genre’s multiple transformations. NOTES 1

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Results of a survey conducted by Emnid quoted in Ursula Hildebrand, “Heimat ist, wo ich mich wohl fühle, Themenblätter im Unterricht”, Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, no. 25 (2003), p. 1. Results of the TNS-Research quoted in Der Spiegel, 25 (2009), p. 62. Eric Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home: Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son (1934)”, New German Critique, no. 60, Special Issue on German Film History (1993), pp. 33‒56, here p. 37. Edgar Reitz, “The Camera Is Not a Clock (1979)”, in Eric Rentschler (ed.), West German Filmmakers on Film: Visions and Voices (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), pp. 137‒41, here p. 139. The word “simple” needs to be contextualized with a view to recent changes in the term’s meaning, even in English. For the digital generation the term “home” denotes several different functions and actions in the computer world: the “Home” key on computer keyboards controls cursor movement, and a “home page” is the main page of a web page system on which the index is usually displayed. Florentine Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close: Carl Froelich’s Heimat”, in Robert C. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000), pp. 109‒32, here p. 109. In the original: “Element des Verlorenen [...] ein melancholischer Begriff.” Edgar Reitz quoted in Johannes Waechter and Jan Weiler, “Interview mit ‘Heimat’—Regisseur Edgar Reitz, ‘Das Fernsehen ist kein narratives Medium mehr’, Der gebürtige Hunsrücker hat sein Lebenswerk vollendet: 54 Stunden ‘Heimat’, das größte Filmprojekt aller Zeiten, Ein Gespräch mit dem erschöpften Genie”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 Sep. 2004. “1) heimat, ‘the land/country or even just the local area of one’s birth or of permanent domicile’ […] 2) heimat, ‘place of birth or established residence […]’ 3) heimat, ‘even the parental home and estate is called “heimat” in Bavaria. […]’ and it is from this that the meaning of ‘house and home’, everything you possess, is derived in the first place, not just in Bavaria but also especially in Switzerland.” In the original: “1) heimat, das land oder auch nur landstrich, in dem man geboren ist oder bleibenden aufenthalt hat […] 2) heimat, der geburtsort oder ständige wohnort […] 3) selbst das elterliche haus und besitzthum heiszt so, in Baiern. [...], woraus der sinn haus und hof, besitzthum überhaupt sich ausbildet, auzser in Baiern namentlich auch in der Schweiz.” Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, “Heimat”, Deutsches Wörterbuch, vol. 10 (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1877), p. 865. Walter Jens, “Nachdenken über Heimat: Fremde und Zuhause im Spiegel deutscher Poesie”, in Horst Bienek (ed.), Heimat: Neue Erkundungen eines alten Themas (Munich: Hanser, 1985), p. 14.

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12 13

14 15

16 17 18 19 20

In 1494, Johannes Geiler von Keisersberg (1445‒1510) wrote in a treatise on the pilgrim: “Death guides you to the Heimat [here spelt heinmut] of your fatherland, to eternal salvation.” Grimm quoted in Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (New York: Camden House, 2002), p. x. In his interpretation of the quote, Blickle explains: “Fatherland here stands for the Father’s—that is, the Christian God’s—land; in other words, for the Christian religion’s paradise”, which in English is also referred to as “external home” (p. x). This meaning of Heimat is, moreover, reflected in Friedrich Schiller’s use of Heimat in Die Räuber [The Robbers, 1781], when the protagonist Karl remarks at the sight of his father’s wandering ghost: “I will have masses read so that this lost spirit may be sent to his Heimat.” [Ich will Messen lesen lassen, den irrenden Geist in seine Heimath zu senden.] Friedrich Schiller, Die Räuber, in Herbert Stubenrauch (ed.), Schillers Werke: Nationalausgabe, vol. 3 (Weimar: Hermann Bröhlaus Nachfolger, 1953), p. 112. Heimat is likewise associated with heaven and/or religion in Ernst Moritz Arndt’s ballad “Trost in Christo” [Comfort in Christ], and Achim von Arnim’s poem “An Odoardo” [To Odoardo]. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Werke in 20 Bänden: Auf der Grundlage der Werke von 1832‒1845, neu ediert, E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel (eds.), Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, vol. 18‒20 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1969‒71). Ibid., vol. 18, p. 175. “The term ‘Heimat’ retained a strongly legal meaning well into the 19th century in Germany (and even longer in Austria and Switzerland), which was manifest in the individual right(s) of domicile.” In the original: “Heimat hatte bis in das 19. Jahrhundert in Deutschland, länger noch in Österreich und in der Schweiz, einen stark rechtlichen Charakter, der sich in den einzelnen Heimatrechten äußerte.” Andrea Kunne, Heimat im Roman, Last oder Lust? Transformation eines Genres in der österreichischen Nachkriegsliteratur (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1991), p. 7. Cf. Grimm, “Heimat”, p. 685. Hermann Bausinger, “Heimat und Identität”, in Konrad Köstlin and Hermann Bausinger (eds.), Heimat und Identität: Probleme regionaler Kultur, 22, Deutscher Volkskunde-Kongreß in Kiel vom 16, bis 21, Juni 1979 (Neumünster: Wachholtz, 1980), p. 12. Cf. “Heimatlos ist also […] ein Synonym für besitzlos.” (Heimatlos is therefore […] a synonym for being without/having no property/possessions.) Andrea Kunne, Der Heimat-Begriff: Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung in verschiedenen Funktionsbereichen der deutschen Sprache (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1995), p. 103. Cf. Michael Neumeyer, Heimat: Zu Geschichte und Begriff eines Phänomens (Kiel: Geographisches Institut, 1992), p. 12. Cf. Thomas B. Ahrens, Heimat in Horst Bieneks Gleiwitzer Tetralogie: Erinnerungsdiskurs und Erzählverfahren (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), p. 9. Blickle, Heimat, p. 20.’ Ibid. “Locus amoenus” is a term derived from the interpretation of medieval poetry. “Literarischer Topos, fiktive Landschaft aus bestimmten stereotypen Elementen (Hain, Quelle usw.) zusammengesetzt, Requisit und Kulisse insbes. der Schäferdichtung und Idylle (Theokrit, Vergil); gelangte aus antiker und spätlat. Dichtung in die mal. Literatur (Minnesang, insbes. Pastorelle, aber auch Epik), vgl. Minnegrotte im ‘Tristan’ (Gottfried von Straßburg) und v. a. barocke Literatur (arkad. 39

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21

22

23

24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

Poesie); konnte auch christl. als Paradieslandschaft umgedeutet werden, wobei die Vorstellung des ‘entlegenen Gartens’ hereinspielt.” [Literary topos, fictional landscape consisting of particular stereotypical elements (forest grove, spring, etc.), props, and scenery, particularly those related to pastoral poetry and idyll (Theocritus, Vergil), came out of ancient and late Roman poetry (Latin eclogues—Vergil) into picturesque literature (Minnesang—courtly love poetry, especially pastoral but also epic); cf. the Minnegrotto in ‘Tristan’ (Gottfried von Straßburg) and a wide range of other baroque literature (Arcadian poetry); could also be re/interpreted from a Christian perspective as a paradisiacal landscape, in which the idea of a remote garden is evoked.] Günther Schweikle (ed.), MetzlerLiteratur-Lexikon (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984), p. 284. Cf. Klaus Garber, Der locus amoenus und der locus terribilis: Bild und Funktion der Natur in der deutschen Schäfer- und Landlebendichtung des 17. Jahrhunderts (Cologne and Vienna: Böhlau, 1974). Müller provided evidence for this shift in his comparison of “Heimatkunde” [local history] entries in the Brockhaus editions of 1931 and 1937. Cf. Carola Müller, “Der Heimatbegriff: Versuch einer Anthologie”, in Karl Konrad Polheim (ed.), Wesen und Wandel der Heimatliteratur: Am Beispiel der österreichischen Literatur seit 1945, Ein Bonner Symposium (Bern: Peter Lang, 1989), pp. 207‒63, here p. 225. Elizabeth Boa and Rachel Palfreyman, Heimat, a German Dream: Regional Loyalties and National Identity in German Culture, 1890‒1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 2. In the original: “dem illusionistischen Bild, das sich der städtische Leser von der vermeintlich ewig unveränderlichen, ewig unversehrten Welt der Heimat und der Berge, dieser Gegenwelt zu seinem unbefriedigenden städtischen Alltag, macht, möglichst genau zu entsprechen.” Michael Wegener, “Die Heimat und die Dichtkunst: Zum Heimatroman”, in Gerhard Schmidt-Henkel et al. (eds.), Trivialliteratur: Aufsätze (Berlin: Literarisches Colloquium, 1964), pp. 53‒64, here p. 57. “The opposition grows out of the dissatisfaction with the present and orients itself—turning towards the past or towards the future—towards a better, more ‘intact’ order of living space as ‘Heimat’.” In the original: “Die Opposition erwächst aus der Dissatisfaktion in der Gegenwart und orientiert sich—rückwärts oder vorwärts gewandt—an einer besseren, ‘heileren’ Ordnung des Lebensraumes als ‘Heimat’.” Ina-Maria Greverus, Auf der Suche nach Heimat (Munich: Beck, 1979), p. 64. In German “the opposite of Fremde [the alien, the foreign, the strange] is, by no coincidence, Heimat. English, fittingly, does not have an easy translation for either Heimat or Fremde.” Blickle, Heimat, p. 17. Boa and Palfreyman, Heimat, p. 2. Ina-Maria Greverus, Der territoriale Mensch: Ein literaturanthropologischer Versuch zum Heimatphänomen (Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1972), p. 32. Boa and Palfreyman, Heimat, p. 1. Ibid., p. 2. Cf. Ahrens, Heimat in Horst Bieneks Gleiwitzer Tetralogie, pp. 12‒13. Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001), p. 16. For a contemporary example, see Marianne Hofmann, Es glühen die Menschen, die Pferde, das Heu (Frankfurt: Insel, 1997). Geoff Eley, “Book Review—Thomas M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885-1945”, German Politics and Society, iss. 71, vol. 22, no. 2 (2004), pp. 56‒65, here p. 56. This reas40

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33

34 35

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sessment in historiography deals in particular with the “unsettling modernity of many aspects of policy making under the Third Reich, particularly in areas of regional economic planning, welfare initiatives, popular leisure, and public health. Until [recently], any linking of National Socialism to arguments concerning ‘modernization’ had remained controversial and usually tendentious.” Ibid. Thomas M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885‒1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 24. Ibid., p. 7. Alon Confino, “The Nation as Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory, and the German Empire, 1871‒1918”, History and Memory, vol. 5, no.1 (1993), pp. 43‒86, here p. 54. In the original: “die Erhaltung deutscher Eigenart in baulichen Denkmälern, Naturlandschaft, Tier- und Pflanzenwelt, Volkskunst, Sitten, Gewohnheiten, Festen und Trachten.” Bundes Heimatschutz quoted in Greverus, Auf der Suche nach Heimat, p. 8. Cf. “[S]o nachhaltig und eindeutig faßbar der Widerstand gegen das vaterländische Heimatgefühl zunächst war, spätestens mit dem Ersten Weltkrieg wird die Nation in die Identität auch großer Teile der Arbeiterschaft—nicht etwa nur unter Führung— eingeschmolzen. Die rationale Ausrichtung stabilisiert die Heimatbewegung, gibt dem ‘Heimatschutz’ und der ‘Heimatpflege’ nach 1918 einen neuen Aufschwung.” Bausinger, “Heimat und Identität”, p. 15. Cf. “europäische Mischkultur”. Adolf Bartels, “Heimatkunst: Ein Wort zur Verständigung”, Grüne Blätter für Kunst und Volkskunst, Munich/Leipzig, 8 (1904), p. 19. In the original: “Heimat ist ein fester Boden mit Wurzeln und Knollen, mit Pflanzen und Leben, mit Organismen; und ein Versenken in ihre gesunde Wahrheit und Wärme ist Rettung vor Mechanismus und konstruierten Problemen, falls es mit rechter Reife geschieht.” The argument continues: “as sustained and clearly comprehensible as the resistance to the patriotic Heimat sentiment was initially, by the First World War at the latest the nation was fused into the identity of large sections of the work force—not just amongst the leadership. The rational organization stabilized the Heimat movement, giving the ‘Homeland Protection’ and the ‘fostering of Heimat’ after 1918 a new impetus.” In the original: “Der enge Zusammenhang zwischen Körper und Geist ist jedem Modernen geläufig. Der enge Zusammenhang zwischen Volkskörper und Volksgeist wird im flutenden Weltverkehr leicht aus dem Bewußtsein verloren. Wenn aber Körper und Geist, Volkskörper und Volksgeist innig miteinander zusammenhängen, so ist auch die Poesie, sofern sie unverkünstelte und ehrliche Lebensäußerung ist, untrennbarer Bestandteil der jeweiligen Persönlichkeit und ihres jeweiligen Volkstums. Das ist unser kindereinfacher Grundgedanke.” [The close connection between body and soul is familiar to every modern man. The close connection between the body of the nation and the soul of the nation is easily lost from the consciousness in the flux of global activity. If, however, body and soul and the body of the nation and the soul of the nation are intimately linked, so too is poetry, as long as it is an expression of natural and honest feelings, an inseparable part of one’s personality and his respective national traditions. This is our childishly simple premise.] Friedrich Lienhard, “Hochland”, in Heimat: Blätter für Litteratur und Volkstum, vol. 1 (Berlin/Leipzig: Heimatverlag Georg Heinrich Meyer, 1900), pp. 1‒10, here pp. 1‒2. With “high coun41

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try”, he introduces a metaphor for his vision for Germany: a pristine high country from which one sees clearer, further, and towards a brighter future. Ibid., p. 6. In the original: “Sollte nicht der Weg zu Leben und Beseelung jeder Art weit eher über frisches Land gehen als durch die Zimmer der Theorie?” Ibid., p. 2. In a precursor to his essay “Heimatkunst” (1900), Adolf Bartels wrote: “by connecting itself to the primeval, mighty and elevated features of the native soil it (the new consciousness of ‘Heimat’) portrayed itself as essentially aristocratic, albeit with the tendency to preserve the extraordinary and capable qualities present within the local people, in order to make as many of them as possible strong and free.” In the original: “indem es [das neue Heimatgefühl] sich an das Ursprüngliche, Starke und Hohe auf dem Heimatboden anschloß, warb es wesentlich aristokratisch, mit der Tendenz freilich, das Besondere und Tüchtige in allen Heimatgenossen zu erhalten, möglichst viele von ihnen zu starken und freien Menschen zu machen.” Adolf Bartels, “Heimatkunst”, in Heimat: Blätter für Litteratur und Volkstum, vol. 1 (Berlin/Leipzig: Heimatverlag Georg Heinrich Meyer, 1900), pp. 10‒19, here pp. 18‒19. In the original: “Von Heimat reden wir, wenn ein Fleck Erde betrachtet wird unter dem Gesichtspunkt seiner Totalbedeutung für die Erlebniswelt der dort lebenden Menschengruppe. Heimat ist erlebbare und erlebte Totalverbundenheit mit dem Boden. Und noch mehr: Heimat ist geistiges Wurzelgefühl.” Here quoted from a later edition: Eduard Spranger, Der Bildungswert der Heimatkunde, Mit einem Anhang “Volkstum und Erziehung” (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1952), p. 14. In the original: “In dem darin dargelegten Heimatbegriff waren bereits zahlreiche Merkmale der nationalsozialistischen Heimatvorstellung enthalten, wie beispielsweise die Sprache der Religion, das Überhöhende sowie das völkische Blut-undBoden Element.” Ahrens, Heimat in Horst Bieneks Gleiwitzer Tetralogie, p. 19. Cf. Herwart Vorländer, “Heimat und Heimaterziehung im Nationalsozialismus”, in Peter Knoch (ed.), Heimat oder Region? Grundzüge der Didaktik der Regionalgeschichte (Frankfurt: Moritz Diesterweg, 1984), pp. 30‒43, esp. pp. 37‒38. Saul Friedländer, Kitsch und Tod: Der Widerschein des Nazismus (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1986). Cf. “zur Lebensraumidee gesteigerte […] Großdeutsche[…] Reichsgedanke […]”. Peter Gutjahr-Löser et al. (eds.), Politisch-pädogogisches Handwörterbuch, Berichte und Studien der Hanns-Seidel-Stiftung (Munich: Olzog, 1980), p. 169. “The nationalist motto ‘Blood and Soil’, which had already been used by August Winning in 1926 in order to symbolically substitute ‘blood’ for race and ‘soil’ for peasant culture, became […] an integral part of Nazi ideology. By establishing a pseudo-biological connection between the people and their territory this motto, together with race theory and anti-Semitism, provided an opportunity for selfelevation and ventilation of frustrations against an imaginary enemy.” In the original: “Die völkische Formel ‘Blut und Boden’, die bereits August Winning 1926 als Verbindung des Symbolwertes ‘Blut’ für Rasse und ‘Boden’ für Bauerntum verwendet hatte, wurde […] zu einem integralen Bestandteil der NSIdeologie. Indem sie einen quasi-biologischen Zusammenhang zwischen der Bevölkerung und dem Territorium herstellte, lieferte sie mit der Rassentheorie und dem Antisemitismus gleichzeitig eine Möglichkeit der Selbstwertsteigerung und des Abreagierens an einem imaginären Feind.” Dieter Kramer, “Die 42

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politische und ökonomische Funktionalisierung von ‘Heimat’ im deutschen Imperialismus und Faschismus (1)”, Diskurs 3 (1973), iss. 3/4, pp. 3‒22, here p. 18. Cf. “Vorstellungen von ganzheitlicher und organischer Identität”. Anne Fuchs, Die Schmerzensspuren der Geschichte: Zur Poetik der Erinnerung in W. G. Sebalds Prosa (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004), p. 19. This ambivalence, as well as the double bind of the Heimat relationship, is evident among German-Jewish authors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Cf. Fuchs, Die Schmerzensspuren der Geschichte, p. 115. Cf. John Williams, “‘The Chords of the German Soul Are Tuned to Nature’: The Movement to Preserve the Natural Heimat from the Kaiserreich to the Third Reich”, Central European History, 29, no. 3 (1996), pp. 339‒84, here p. 344. Cf. Eley, “Book Review—Thomas M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature”, p. 59. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 110. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature, p.150. Eley, “Book Review—Thomas M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature”, p. 61. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature, pp. 179 and 203. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 110. Manfred Rauh, “Anti-Modernismus im nationalsozialistischen Staat”, Historisches Jahrbuch, 107 (1987), pp. 94‒121. Cf. “as far as political convictions and discrimination are concerned [Heimat] presents a complete vacuum, it is at the mercy of every catchword that is linked to these needs (for a place of safety and certainty.” In the original: “in Bezug auf politische Überzeugungen und Urteilsfähigkeit bietet [Heimat] ein völliges Vakuum, allen Parolen ausgeliefert, die an diese Bedürfnisse [nach Geborgenheit und Überschaubarkeit] anknüpfen.” Vorländer, “Heimat und Heimaterziehung im Nationalsozialismus”, p. 31. Cf. Rolf Geissler, “Dichter und Dichtung des Nationalsozialismus”, in Hermann Kunisch and Hans Hennecke (eds.), Handbuch der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur, vol. 2 (Munich: Nymphenburger, 1965), p. 409. Cf. Walter Wiltschegg, Die Heimwehr (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1985), pp. 275‒88. As late as the 1990s, German “Schlagermusik” [popular music, hit music] benefited from the marketing of Heimat. The Nabtal-Duo was able to climb to the top of the charts with the “Kufstein-Lied”. Andrea Bastian, Der Heimat-Begriff: Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Untersuchung in verschiedenen Funktionsbereichen der deutschen Sprache (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1995), p. 136. For example, in compounds such as “public festival [Volksfest], national comrade (NS) [Volksgenosse], national community [Volksgemeinschaft], rooted in national sentiment [volksnah], unpatriotic [volksfremd], descended from the people [volksentstammt].” In the original: “‘Volk’ wird jetzt beim Reden und beim Schreiben so oft verwandt wie Salz beim Essen, an alles gibt man eine Prise Volk: Volksfest, Volksgenosse, Volksgemeinschaft, volksnah, volksfremd, volksentstammt.” Victor Klemperer, Die unbewältigte Sprache: Aus dem Notizbuch eines Philologen, “LTI” [Lingua Tertii Imperii/Sprache des Dritten Reiches] (Darmstadt: Joseph Melzer, 1946), p. 38. Christa Kamenetsky, “Folklore as a Political Tool in Nazi-Germany”, Journal of American Folklore, vol. 85, no. 337 (1972), pp. 221‒35, here pp. 221‒22. 43

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78 79 80

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Cf. Max Hilbert Böhm, W. W. Riehl: Die Volkskunde als Wissenschaft (Tubingen: Laupp, 1935). Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 43. Cf. Ernst Bloch, Heritage of Our Times, translated by Neille and Stephen Plaice (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), p. 48. The idea of Lebensraum goes back to Hans Grimm in his novel Volk ohne Raum (Munich: Albert Langen, 1926), who in turn had borrowed it from the geographer Friedrich Ratzel (1901). Cf. Friedrich Ratzel, “Der Lebensraum: Eine biogeographische Studie”, in K. Bücher et al. (eds.), Festgaben für Albert Schäffle (Tubingen: H. Laupp, 1901), pp. 101‒89. While Grimm’s point of reference was a Colonial Empire, the Nazis used the idea with reference to the “Heimat im Osten” [Eastern European Homelands] and their intent to bring it back to the Reich. Cf. Ina-Maria Greverus, “The Heimat-Problem”, in Helfried W. Seliger (ed.), Der Begriff “Heimat” in der deutschen Gegenwartsliteratur (Munich: Iudicium, 1987), pp. 9‒27, here p. 10. Stefan Berger, The Search for Normality: National Identity and Historical Consciousness in Germany since 1800 (New York: Berghahn, 2002), p. 24. Cf. Johann Gottfried Herder, Auch eine Philosophie der Geschichte zur Bildung der Menschheit, 1774, edited by Hans-Georg Gadamer (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1967), and Hans Schleier (ed.), Johann Gottfried Herder und progressive bürgerliche Geschichts- und Gesellschaftstheorien zwischen 1720 und 1850 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1979). Berger, The Search for Normality, p. 24. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 24‒25. Cf. Albert Wucher, Theodor Mommsen: Geschichtsschreibung und Politik, Göttinger Bausteine zur Geschichtswissenschaft, 26 (Gottingen: Frank Dührkohp, 1965), pp. 65, 80‒82, and 210. Droysen quoted in Günter Birtsch, Die Nation als sittliche Idee: Der Nationalbegriff in Geschichtsschreibung und politischer Gedankenwelt Johann Gustav Droysens (Cologne and Graz: Böhlau, 1964), pp. 30‒112 or 123‒25, 163. Adolf Helbok, Was ist deutsche Volksgeschichte? Ziele, Aufgaben, Wege, Mit 19 Karten (Berlin/Leipzig: de Gruyter, 1935), p. 3. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature, p. 251. Broeger quoted in Lekan (ibid., p. 251) with reference to Reinhold Hoemann, “Aufgaben und Pflichten der Führer der Gemeinde betr. Landschaftspflege und Landschaftsgestaltung”, 1, in Archiv des Landesverbandes Rheinland, 11136, p. 21. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature, p. 251. Cf. Benedict Anderson’s discussion of messianic time in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), p. 24. Karl Giannoni, “Heimatschutz: Rückschau und Ausblick”, quoted in Blickle, Heimat, p. 133. Berger, The Search for Normality, p. 79. “Heimat is associated with the feminine, with staying at home, Fremde with the masculine, with going out into the world.” Blickle, Heimat, p. 86. Originally, the term to be contrasted with Heimat was “Elend” [destitution], derived from the Old High German term “elilenti”, which would be translated today as “Fremde”. In the original: “... als Österreicher, als Jude, als Schriftsteller, als Humanist und Pazifist [hat man] mir dreimal Haus und Existenz umgeworfen, [...] Aber ich beklage das nicht; gerade der Heimatlose wird in einem neuen Sinne frei, und nur 44

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83

84

85 86 87 88

89

90

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der mit nichts Verbundene braucht auf nichts mehr Rücksicht zu nehmen.” Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers (Stockholm: Bermann-Fischer, 1944), pp. 9‒10. In the original: “Ich habe keine Heimat und leide nicht darunter, sondern freue mich meiner Heimatlosigkeit, denn sie befreit mich von einer unnötigen Sentimentalität.” Ödön von Horváth, “Fiume, Belgrad, Budapest, Preßburg, Wien, München”, Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971), p. 9. “After 1945, Heimat represented a new political and cultural orientation, and Heimatfilme, too, seemed to serve as social and psychic balm.” Heide Fehrenbach, Cinema in Democratizing Germany: Reconstructing National Identity after Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), p. 151. In the original: “das Heimatliche [...], wo es ausdrücklich genannt und ins Bewußtsein gehoben wird, immer schon kompensativen Charakter hat.” Hermann Bausinger, Volkskultur in der technischen Welt (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1961), p. 87. Ilja Ehrenburg, Visum der Zeit (Leipzig: Paul List, 1929), p. 70. Cf. Ahrens, Heimat in Horst Bieniks Gleiwitzer Tetralogie, p. 27. Blickle, Heimat, p. 17. In the original: “… semantische Unschuld”. Hans-Georg Pott, “Der ‘neue Heimatroman’? Zum Konzept ‘Heimat’ in der neueren Literatur”, in Hans-Georg Pott (ed.), Literatur und Provinz: Das Konzept ‘Heimat’ in der neueren Literatur (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schönigh, 1986), pp. 7‒22, here p. 8. Cf. Vilém Flusser, Bodenlos: Eine philosophische Autobiographie (Dusseldorf: Bollmann, 1992); Christiane Ehrhardt, Ruhelos: Opfer der SS-Organisation ‘Lebensborn e.V.’, Filmdokumentation ARD, 12 Jan. 1995; Walter Mehring, Staatenlos im Nirgendwo: Die Gedichte, Lieder und Chansons, 1933‒1974 (Dusseldorf: Claasen, 1981); Eva Brück, Im Schatten des Hakenkreuzes: Kindheit und Jugend, 1926‒1949 (Freiburg: Ahriman, 1993). In the original: “Das Wort Heimat ist zu einem Glaubensbekenntnis geworden, das auch dem Wissenschaftler oft den realen Zugang zu diesem Phänomen verbaut.” Greverus, Der territoriale Mensch, p. 31. “We have lost our Heimat. Those without a Heimat are strangers on this earth. God placed man in his Heimat. To forcibly separate man from his Heimat means to kill him spiritually. We have suffered and experienced this fate and for this reason we feel compelled to demand that the right to Heimat is recognized and realized as one of the fundamental God-given human rights.” In the original: “Wir haben unsere Heimat verloren. Heimatlose sind Fremdlinge auf dieser Erde. Gott hat die Menschen in ihre Heimat hineingestellt. Den Menschen mit Zwang von seiner Heimat trennen, bedeutet, ihn im Geiste töten. Wir haben dieses Schicksal erlitten und erlebt, daher fühlen wir uns berufen zu verlangen, daß das Recht auf Heimat als eines der von Gott geschenkten Grundrechte der Menschheit anerkannt und verwirklicht wird.” Charta der deutschen Heimatvertriebenen (1950), quoted in Klaus Weigelt, “Heimat—Der Ort personaler Identitätsfindung und sozio-politischer Orientierung”, in Klaus Weigelt (ed.), Heimat und Nation: Zur Geschichte und Identität der Deutschen (Mainz: von Hase & Köhler, 1984), pp. 15‒25, here p. 18. Cf. Anon., “Das ganze Deutschland muß es sein”, Der Schlesier, 31 (1955), quoted in Alexander Mitscherlich and Gert Kalow (eds.), Hauptworte‒Hauptsachen: Zwei Gespräche: Heimat, Nation (Munich: Piper, 1971), p. 68. 45

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97 98

99

It has been noted repeatedly that the radical “Recht auf Heimat” stance was put forward by only a small minority of expellees, “yet the image of the expellees is still largely defined by the veterans of the Sudeten German welfare and cultural association for those Germans born in the eastern areas of the former Reich”. In the original: “[d]och das Bild der Vertriebenen wird immer noch weitgehend von den Veteranen der Sudetendeutschen Landsmannschaft (SL) bestimmt.” Franz Neubauer, “‘Tu Oma den Gefallen’, Das ‘Recht auf Heimat’ ist den meisten Sudetendeutschen egal”, Der Spiegel, 21 (1996), pp. 32‒35, here p. 33. In the original: “Heimatbegriff wird dabei in seiner gängigen Formelhaftigkeit benutzt, wobei die Blickrichtung auf Geburts- und Wohnheimat— gleichzeitig mit den zahlreichen Reflexionen auf das Menschenrecht ‘Heimat’—die Retrospektive untermauert.” Greverus, Der territoriale Mensch, p. 40. In the original: “fast nur noch von der Beschleunigung der Zeit und vom ‘Verschwinden des Raumes’ die Rede ist”. Karl Schlögel, Promenade in Jalta und andere Städtebilder (Munich: Hanser, 2001), p. 29. In the original: “Raum ist belastet. Raum hat zu tun mit Großraum, Ostraum, ‘Volk ohne Raum’ und mit ‘Generalplan Ost’. […] Das ganze Wortfeld scheint für immer kontaminiert.” Ibid. Cf. Pott, “Der ‘neue Heimatroman’?”, p. 7. Cf. “Dem Wort Heimat begegnete ich zuerst als Kind im Gesang. Ich mochte es nicht: Die Haiiimat hat sich schön gemacht und Tauuu blitzt ihr im Haaar ... oder unsre Haiiimat, das sind nicht nur die Wiesen und Feeelder ... Pionierlieder, Marschgesänge der FDJ, Heimatkunde, die Friedensheimat, die durch unsere tapferen Soldaten geschützt werden müsse, und immer nur wurde die Schönheit der Heimat besungen, auch wenn sie noch so kaputt und verseucht war. Ins Jubilieren des Chores mochte ich nicht einstimmen, weil ich den Tönen misstraute. Mit Heimat wurde uns bedingungslose Liebe zum Staat und eine grenzenlose Verehrung abgefordert. Heimat war etwas makelloses, strahlendes, der Inbegriff glückverheißendes Lebensraumes. Ich habe früh daran gezweifelt, wohl weil ich beizeiten hinter den Idyllen Katastrophen gesehen habe. Der Begriff Heimat klang in Deutschland immer bedrohlich. Künste aller Zeiten und aller Sparten haben Unsägliches beigetragen zu dessen Verkitschung, Trivialisierung und Verharmlosung. Aus Verlogenheit entstanden falsche Heimatgefühle. Mit dem Heimatbegriff, der in ‘Blut & Boden’ gipfelte, wurde Krieg geführt. Natürlich liebe ich bestimmte Landschaften. Aber Heimat, wenn ich den Begriff schon gebrauche, wäre für mich der Ort, wo ich leben und arbeiten kann, wo man meine Sprache versteht, wo ich Freunde habe, wo Landschaften sind, die mir entsprechen, in denen ich aufgehoben bin, die mir auch Widerstand leisten, die ich nicht nur bestaune. Heimat ist für mich Kultur, die ich annehmen kann, weil sie mich annimmt. Sie hat etwas mit Heim zu tun, mit Zuhausesein. Heimat ist für mich niemals die ganze Welt, denn ich bin kein Welteroberungstourist. Wenn ich von Heimat spreche/schreibe, dann meine ich Welt (Gesellschaft). [...] Ich sehe Heimat mit dem Blick des Störenfriedes und glaube, dass ich einen Sinn fürs Komische und Groteske habe—dieser Sinn rettet mich (und meine Erzählfiguren) vor Lüge und Heimattümelei. Hinter jeder Schönheit, hinter jeder Liebe eröffnen sich Widersprüche und Abgründe. Sie gehören zum Leben, zu meiner Heimat.” Kerstin Hensel, “Dem Glück misstraut”, Prisma, July 2003, p. 6. In the original: “In bin in der Helios-Straße geboren […] Quartier als Heimat; dazu gehört das erste Schulhaus […] so wie eine Metzgerei, wo ich Fliegen 46

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100 101

102

103

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fangen darf für meinen Laubfrosch, ferner ein Tunnel der Kanalisation […]: hier stehe ich gebückt, ein Knirps, barfuß im stinkigen Abwasser, erschreckt durch den Hall der eigenen Stimme, und dann dieser andere Hall, wenn sie, die Bande da oben, die deinen Mut prüft, durch einen Schacht hinunter pfeift in die große Stille, diese Schreckenstille zwischen einzelnen Tropfen, in der Ferne das viel zu kleine Loch mit Tageslicht—Angst also, auch Überwindung der Angst um der Zugehörigkeit willen: lieber durch das Scheißwasser waten als im Quartier ein Außenseiter sein.” Max Frisch, “Die Schweiz als Heimat? Rede zur Verleihung des Großen Schillerpreises”, in Max Frisch, Die Schweiz als Heimat? Versuche über 50 Jahre, edited by Walter Obschlager (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1990), pp. 365‒73, here p. 365‒66. Boa and Palfreyman, Heimat, p. 20. In the original: “Am Gartenzaun blüht immer noch der Flieder, / […] Ja, auch die Metzgerin erkennst du wieder. […] Sehr alte taube Stunden kehren wieder. / Du fröstelst und du lachst. Du bist gerührt. / Am Gartenzaun blüht immer noch der Flieder.” Hans Magnus Enzensberger, “Alte Heimat”, in Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Leichter als Luft: Moralische Gedichte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999), pp. 67‒68. In the original: “als ein sinnstiftender Lebensbezug zu überschaubar erfahrener sozialer und räumlicher Umwelt in der Nachkriegsentwicklung […], wie der technisch-ökonomische Fortschritt auch kultureller Konsens war und erstrebenswert erschien.” Rainer Krüger, “Wie räumlich ist die Heimat—oder: Findet sich in Raumstrukturen Lebensqualität? Gedanken zum gesellschaftstheoretischen Diskussionsstand um die ‘Krise der Moderne’ und die Bedeutung der Regionalforschung”, Geographische Zeitschrift, 75/3 (1987), pp. 160‒77, here p. 161. The average citizen desired gratification, in Germany just as in Austria and Switzerland, and, increasingly, the purchase of a block of land away from the urban environment was sought as a balance. “The urban prosperity of the late seventies encouraged the acquisition of holiday homes in backward regions, and as a result the Burgenland, the Wald area, the Mühl area and East and South Styria came into fashion.” In the original: “Die städtische Prosperität der späten siebziger Jahre brachte es […] mit sich, den Ankauf von Zweithäusern in den zurückgebliebenen Regionen zu fördern, und das Burgenland, das Wald- und Mühlviertel und die Ost- und Südsteiermark kamen in Mode.” Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, Bruchlinien: Vorlesungen zur österreichischen Literatur 1945 bis 1990 (Salzburg: Residenz, 1996), pp. 403‒18, here p. 405. This new fashion was perfectly summed up in Peter Handke’s Über die Dörfer [Across the Villages] (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1981). Ostpolitik refers to Willy Brandt’s efforts and successes in a dialogue with Poland, part of which involved Brandt’s recognition of the German-Polish border in 1971. Cf. Peter Bender, “Deutsche Ostpolitik”, in Ewa Kobylinska and Rüdiger Stephan (eds.), Deutsche und Polen: 100 Schlüsselbegriffe (Munich: Piper, 1992), pp. 437‒42, here p. 439. Brandt’s role in improving relationships with the FRG’s Eastern neighbours cannot be underestimated, although the German Constitutional Court ruled in 1975 that the recognition of the Polish-German border—the central part of the Ostverträge—was not automatically binding for a reunified Germany. Cf. Dietrich Strothmann, “‘Schlesien bleibt unser’: Vertreibungsliteratur und das Rad der Geschichte”, in Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Die

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105

106 107 108 109 110 111

112

113

114

115

116

Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten: Ursachen, Ereignisse, Folgen (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1995), pp. 265‒76, here p. 227. “Heimat […] a mass commodity of demagogues […] But I considered it a mistake to leave the term ‘Heimat’ in all its changeability to the demagogues. It would be a disastrous error on the part of the intellectuals, if we were now to say, out of sheer revulsion towards this propagandistic misuse, that we will have nothing more to do with it. We have to define it anew.” In the original: “Heimat […] ein Massenartikel der Demagogen. […] Aber ich hielt es für falsch, den Begriff Heimat in seiner Wandelbarkeit den Demagogen zu überlassen. Es wäre auf intellektueller Seite ein verhängnisvoller Fehler, wenn wir aus lauter Abscheu vor diesem demagogischen Mißbrauch nun sagten, daß wir nichts mehr damit zu tun haben. Wir haben ihn neu zu definieren!” Günter Grass quoted in Mitscherlich and Kalow (eds.), Hauptworte‒Hauptsachen, p. 25. François Bondy, “Die rehabilitierte Heimat”, Neue Deutsche Hefte, 22/1 (1975), pp. 107‒12. Anon., “Heimat—unter grüner Flagge”, Der Spiegel 30 (1979), p. 134. Greverus, Auf der Suche nach Heimat, p. 13. Cf. Manuela Fiedler, Heimat im deutschen Film: Ein Mythos zwischen Regression und Utopie (Alfeld/Leine: Coppi, 1997), p. 10. Anon., “Heimat—unter grüner Flagge”, p. 134. In the original: “Jetzt ist die Zeit, in der wieder von Heimat gesprochen wird, als von Überschaubarem, Identifizierbarem.” Bondy, “Die rehabilitierte Heimat”, p. 112. In relation to the national reception of Reitz’s opus, Thomas Brussig reflects: “Die Linken waren verwirrt, daß Heimatgefühle nicht zwangsläufig mit Verlogenheit einhergehen, die Rechten waren verwirrt, daß Heimat nicht zwangsläufig Idyll ist. Indem der Heimatbegriff weder schwarz noch weiß verstanden wurde, sondern in eine Ambivalenz gestellt wurde, war er plötzlich wieder lebensfähig und glaubwürdig wie nie zuvor. Der Begriff ‘Heimat’ taugte plötzlich zum Gegenstand hochproblematischer Auseinandersetzungen. Heimat war plötzlich etwas, das sich zugleich lieben und verfluchen ließ.” Thomas Brussig, “Heimat”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 30 Dec. 2001. Cf. “Kaum ein Begriff ist in den letzten 100 Jahren so strapaziert, so kommerziell und politisch mißbraucht, so sentimentalisiert und verflacht worden wie der Begriff der ‘Heimat’.” Konrad Buchwald, “Heimat heute: Wege aus der Entfremdung. Überlegungen zu einer zeitgemäßen Theorie von Heimat”, in Hans-Georg Wehling (ed.), Heimat heute (Berlin: Kohlhammer, 1984), p. 43. “The term ‘anti-Heimat novel’ does indeed contain the element of inversion of the traditional, partially trivialized and/or ideologically burdened Heimat novel, it does not, however, encompass variants in which the transformation aims mainly at the linguistic/formal and less at the ideological/subject matter.” In the original: “Der Terminus ‘Anti-Heimatroman’ enthält zwar das Element der Umkehrung des traditionellen, teilweise trivialisierten und/oder ideologisch belasteten Heimatromans, umfaßt aber nicht Varianten, bei denen die Transformation in der Hauptsache auf Sprachlich-Formales und weniger auf Ideologisch-Inhaltliches zielt.” Kunne, Heimat im Roman, p. 17. Josef Winkler, Menschenkind: Roman (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979); Der Ackermann aus Kärnten: Roman (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1980); Muttersprache: Roman (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982). Franz Innerhofer, Schöne Tage (Salzburg/Vienna: Residenz, 1974). 48

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117 In the original: “Jetzt, da alles mit Schnee bedeckt ist, habe ich hier auf dem Lande das Gefühl, als wäre ich auf See. Morgens, wenn ich aufstehe, schaue ich aus meinem Fenster wie aus dem Bullauge eines Schiffes auf dem Atlantik.” Gerhard Roth, Der Stille Ozean: Roman (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1983), p. 5. 118 In the original: “Der Held ist in der Natur, er sucht die Natur: Flucht in die Natur bedeutet ja auch, aus einer vom Mensch gemachten, zu verantwortenden Geschichte herauszutreten. Jeder Gang in die Natur hat auch einen ahistorischen Zug.” Schmidt-Dengler, Bruchlinien, p. 410. 119 Robert Schneider, Schlafes Bruder (Leipzig: Reclam, 1992). 120 Cf. Jean Améry, “Wieviel Heimat braucht der Mensch?”, in Jean Améry, Jenseits von Schuld und Sühne: Bewältigungsversuche eines Überwältigten (Munich: Szczesny, 1966), p. 92. 121 In the original: “jenem ‘Hauptwort’ im Sinne Mitscherlichs, dessen Polysemie bzw. Konnotationsbreite ihn heute leicht als Paradigma, neuer Unübersichtlichkeit’ (miß-) verstehen läßt.” Jürgen Bolten, “Heimat im Aufwind: Anmerkungen zur Sozialgeschichte eines Bedeutungswandels”, in Pott (ed.), Literatur und Provinz, p. 23. Cf. Mitscherlich and Kalow (eds.), Hauptworte‒Hauptsachen. 122 In the original: “Heimat, das ist der Ort, wo sich der Blick von selbst näßt, […] wo Sprache durch ungenaues Gefühl ersetzt werden darf… […], ich gebe zu, daß dies Wort in Verruf gekommen ist, daß es mißbraucht wurde.” Siegfried Lenz, Heimatmuseum: Roman (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 1981), p. 120. 123 In the original: “Heimat, das ist für mich nicht allein der Ort, an dem die Toten liegen; es ist der Winkel vielfältiger Geborgenheit, es ist der Platz, an dem man aufgehoben ist, in der Sprache, im Gefühl, ja, selbst im Schweigen aufgehoben, und es ist der Flecken, an dem man wiedererkannt wird; und das möchte wohl jeder eines Tages: wiedererkannt, und das heißt: aufgenommen werden….” Ibid., p. 120. 124 Bolten, “Heimat im Aufwind”, p. 38. 125 In the original: “Heimat riecht: nach Harz und nach Heu, nach Kartoffelfeuern, Leder, Kuchenbacken, gebratenen Mandeln, nach fangfrischen Räucherflundern und pommerscher Spickgans. Oder sei’s Schweiß, Schweinemist, Ruß und Rauch: sie riecht jedenfalls und kündet damit vom Leben.” C. Graf von Krockow, “Heimat”, Die Zeit, no. 41, 5 (1984), p. 73. 126 In the original: “Zweifellos: Heimat hat Konjunktur.” Pott, “Der ‘neue Heimatroman’?”, p. 8. 127 Cf. Ahrens, Heimat in Horst Bieneks Gleiwitzer Tetralogie, p. 2. 128 In the original: “Nähe zum Kitsch […] Idylle der Banalität […] Postkarten- und Gartenlaubenpoesie, Friede, Feierabend, Filzpantoffeln.” Pott, “Der ‘neue Heimatroman’”, p. 9. 129 Cf. Ibid. 130 Bienek (ed.), Heimat. Cf. Manuela Gunter, “Bücher zum Thema Heimat”, Widerspruch, no. 14 (1987), pp. 121‒41, here p. 121. 131 Boa and Palfreyman, Heimat, p. 1. 132 Rafael Newman, “A Selective Summary of the Content”, Eurozine, Jan.‒Feb. 2002, http://www.eurozine.com/article/2001-11-29-du-en.html, retrieved Apr. 2003, p. 1. 133 Greverus, “The Heimat-Problem”, p. 9.

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134 Jakob von Uexküll, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen: Ein Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten, Bedeutungslehre (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1958), pp. 74‒76. 135 In the original: “da sich alles menschliche Handeln, selbst das nur gedachte und geplante Handeln, in einem konkreten oder vorgestellten Raum abspielt. Es ist immer ein bestimmter Raum, den der Mensch mit Werten besetzt und auch seine utopischen Phantasien zielen noch auf einen konkreten Raum.” Greverus, Der territoriale Mensch, p. 51. 136 Cf. Mitscherlich and Kalow (eds.), Hauptworte‒Hauptsachen. Quoted in Greverus, ibid., p. 1. 137 In the original: “Der aus einer transzendenten Weltschöpfung und –ordnung entlassene Mensch wurde zum Schöpfer seiner geschichtlichen Welt erhöht, jedoch gleichzeitig auf eine Determination durch eben diese selbstgeschaffene Welt zurückgeworfen.” Ibid. 138 In the original: “Es ist schon verblüffend, wie solide das Land, die Heimat und auch die Nation sind. Woher man auch kam, man kam überwiegend aus einem klar zu fassenden Heim mit Tür, Fenster und Dach. Das Konzept der übernationalen urban tribes etwa, der postmodernen Nomaden, wie sie (nicht nur) die Poptheorie der Neunziger Jahre überall zu entdecken meinte, von diesem und anderem sind erst erste Bruchstücke an die Gefilde der ernsten europäischen Literatur geschwemmt worden.” Frank Keil, “Und alle lieben Europa: 33 Dichter sprechen in Hamburg über ihren Kontinent”, Frankfurter Rundschau, no. 23, 3 Feb. 2003, p. 13. 139 In the original: “Hier und Jetzt, die Vergangenheit, die Utopie, das Jenseits [...] alles kann die Heimat sein.” Pott, “Der ‘neue Heimatroman’”, p. 10. 140 Karl-Heinz Janßen, “Von deutscher Schuld. Warum Deutschland den Schatten der Vergangenheit nicht entfliehen kann”, Die Zeit, no. 47, 16 Nov. 1990, p. 48. 141 Ernst Schulin, “Schlußbetrachtung”, in Ernst Schulin (ed.), Deutsche Geschichtswissenschaft nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, 1945‒1965 (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1989), p. 275; Konrad H. Jarausch, “Kritische Perspektiven zur deutschen Vergangenheit”, in Konrad Hugo Jarausch and Mathias Middell (eds.), Nach dem Erdbeben: (Re-) Konstruktionen ostdeutscher Geschichte und Geschichtswissenschaft (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 1994), p. 28. 142 Kurt Sontheimer, “Wider die Leisetreterei der Historiker”, Die Zeit: Literaturbeilage, no. 45, 4 Nov.1994, p. 15. 143 Berger, The Search for Normality, p.111. In this context, Berger refers to attempts at portraying Nazism as a modernizing force, as a legitimate response to Bolshevism, as well as “a resurgent emphasis on portraying the Germans as victims of Hitler rather than perpetrators of crimes”. Ibid., p. 112. 144 Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Knopf, 1996). 145 Cf. Hubertus Knabe, Tag der Befreiung? Das Kriegsende in Ostdeutschland (Berlin: Propyläen, 2005). This publication contradicts Richard von Weizsäcker’s central belief: “The eighth of May, 1945 was a day of liberation. It freed us all from the inhumane system of NS-tyranny.” In the original: “Der 8. Mai [1945] war ein Tag der Befreiung. Er hat uns alle befreit von dem menschenverachtenden System der nationalsozialistischen Gewaltherrschaft.” Richard von Weizsäcker, Bulletin des Presse- und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung vom 9.5.1985, no. 52, p. 441.

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146 Cf. Micha Brumlick, Wer Sturm sät. Die Vertreibung der Deutschen (Berlin: Aufbau, 2005). 147 Berger, The Search for Normality, p. 138. 148 Alfred Lehmann, “Die Kriegsgefangenen”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 10 Feb. 1995, pp. 13ff. 149 Berger, The Search for Normality, p. 138. 150 The PDS—and since “Die Linke”—is the successor to the GDR’s Socialist Unity Party (SED). 151 Blickle, Heimat, p. 47. 152 In the original: “Ich fühl dich bei mir und genieße / Deine Hand in meiner Hand / Was ich jetzt weiß und noch nicht wußte / Bin nicht mehr fremd in meinem Land.” Mia’s song text quoted in Christoph Dallach et al., “Patriotische Bauchschmerzen. Die international abgehängten Deutschen mühen sich um eine ‘normalisierte’ nationale Identität”, Der Spiegel, 49 (2004), pp. 184‒88, here p. 184. 153 “Until now […] records by musicians from Germany singing in German were categorized in the shops either as ‘folk music’ or as ‘Schlager’ (German hits). In the aftermath of the ‘New German Wave’ that swept through the country’s discos two decades ago, very few artists or bands have managed to sing in their native tongue and inspire fans beyond the leather-shorts brigade for any length of time.” Simone Kaiser, “Brand New German Sounds”, Deutschland: Forum on Politics, Culture and Business, no. 3 (2005), pp. 62‒65, here p. 63. 154 Neue Heimat, vol. 1 (Feb. 2002), Audio CD; Neue Heimat, vol. 2 (July 2002), 2 Audio CDs; Neue Heimat, vol. 3 (Apr. 2003), Audio CD; Neue Heimat, vol. 4 (Mar. 2004), Audio CD. In their advertisement, the production company claims: “All in all New Heimat is proving, for the fourth time already that, in the German federal states, apart from the usual suspects, innovative music is being made and heard on an international level.” In the original: “Alles in Allem beweist die Neue Heimat bereits zum vierten Mal, dass in deutschen Landen neben den üblichen Bekannten auch innovative Musik auf internationalem Niveau gemacht und gehört wird!”, http://www.woernmuc.de/html/neue_heimat.html, retrieved Mar. 2005. 155 The motto of the games: “Die Welt zu Gast bei Freunden” [A time to make friends] was said to reflect the openness and friendliness experienced by many. 156 “[D]er fröhliche deutsche Patriotismus, der die Welt, aber am meisten die Deutschen in Staunen versetzte, [hat] eine nachhaltige Veränderung im Bewusstsein der Nation [ausgelöst].” Eckhard Fuhr, “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland?”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 1‒2 (2007), pp. 3‒7, here p. 3. 157 In May 2010, Stefan Raab wanted to ridicule the soccer fans’ chant on his TV show, highlighting the “Schland” pronunciation. This is now considered the moment of birth of the “Schland” phenomenon. Cf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2E1KkmDCOw, last retrieved Sep. 2010. 158 The spoof band Uwu Lena is made up of eight German students from the Catholic city of Muenster, with the band’s name being a play on the word “vuvuzela” (which had only just entered the German vocabulary in mid-2010) and the name of the retired German soccer legend Uwe Seeler. Uwu Lena used the melody of “Satellite”, the song performed by Lena Meyer-Landrut, winner of the Eurovision Song Contest held in Norway in May 2010.

51

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159 “[B]lond lads, one raising his right arm in a suspicious fashion”. In the original: “blonde Knaben, einer hebt verdächtig den rechten Arm”. Dallach et al., “Patriotische Bauchschmerzen”, p. 184. 160 Harald Fricke, “A Nostalgia for Oils: The German Miracle Art”, Deutschland: Forum on Politics, Culture and Business, no. 2 (2005), pp. 41‒47, here p. 42. 161 In the original: “Verstärkt durch die Wiedervereinigung ist ein manchmal dreister, leichtfertiger und geschichts-verdrängender Umgang mit Worten und Werten in den Alltag eingedrungen. Viele von gesellschaftlichen Umbrüchen Verunsicherte klammern sich wieder an scheinbar sichere Elemente aus einer vermeintlich heilen Welt. Sie trauen sich wieder.” Alfred Hilsberg quoted in Dallach et al., “Patriotische Bauchschmerzen”, p. 185. 162 Thomas Mann, “Leiden an Deutschland”, Tagebuchblätter aus den Jahren 1933 und 1934 (Los Angeles: Pazifische Presse, 1946). 163 In the original: “Bin ich denn nicht geboren in meinem Vaterland?”, Botho Strauß, “Anschwellender Boxgesang”, Der Spiegel, 6 (1993), pp. 202‒7, here p. 204. 164 Günter Grass’s work expresses an acute sadness over the loss of a language, the dialect of the region, and the Polish-German symbiosis in Danzig. Cf. Günter Grass quoted in Mitscherlich and Kalow (eds.), Hauptworte‒Hauptsachen, p. 22. 165 In the original: “[Heimat ist] etwas, das allen in die Kindheit scheint und worin noch niemand war.” [Heimat is a mirage which seems to represent childhood, and which renders it radiant in our memory, but it is a place where no one has ever been.] Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, in Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1959), p. 1628. 166 Cf. “Heimat is often associated with innocence and childhood, a state usually linked to a mother figure. Notions of an idealized mother and an idealized feminine are constitutive in expressions of Heimat.” Blickle, Heimat, p. 17. 167 Jeffrey Prager, Presenting the Past: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Misremembering (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 70. 168 In the original: “Vertriebene sind wir alle in dem Sinne, daß wir aus der Kindheit in das Erwachsenensein hinausgetrieben wurden.” Horst Bienek, Beschreibung einer Provinz: Aufzeichnungen, Reflexionen, Materialien, Dokumente (Munich: Hanser, 1983), p. 79. 169 In the original: “der schönste Name für Zurückgebliebenheit”. Martin Walser, Heimatkunde: Aufsätze und Reden (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968), p. 50.

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2. Heimat—Film and Genre

Films, like other texts and cultural products in general, have been used in attempts to define and redefine nationhood, to imagine and construct communities.1 In the years before television and the internet, cinema offered a uniquely effective means of reaching the masses—and of manipulating their opinions and actions. The supremacy of the image over the written word seems confirmed with the advent of moving pictures in households: from television and private film cameras to video technology, computers, and internet services, with video links now commonly used for entertainment (for example, YouTube) or telecommunications (for example, Skype). The power of this audio-visual medium lies in the fact that it is so much more immediate and intense than most literature,2 making it very attractive to private users— and also to artists and ideologues as a method of communication and, at times, of deception. “This weapon [film], which cries out to be used, is the best instrument for propaganda.”3 Lenin, Mussolini, and Goebbels shared this belief and eagerly exploited its possibilities, and subsequent dictatorships— as well as liberal democracies—have utilized the medium (and continue to do so) to promote their agendas. Thus, film has become a means of delivering the justification of territorial or ideological claims, of responding to the shifting configurations of any given imaginary community, and of solidifying a nation’s policies; not only does it touch masses of people, it also stirs their emotions. Feature films in particular “reach a much larger popular audience than, say, speeches, conference papers, or books; they also tend to move and manipulate spectators in a more direct emotional way”.4 Their power as part of mass media has to be clearly recognized in connection with their ability to influence public opinion on a deeply psychological level. “[F]ilms—as complex fictional constructs—offer ambivalent perspectives and contradictory attitudes that resist simple explanations and call for multiple readings. Fictional films are able to unlock the viewers’ hidden wishes and fears, liberate fantasies, and give material shape to shared moods and dispositions. Films can thus be seen as interventions in cultural and political life”,5 which they simultaneously shape and are shaped by. This is evident in the framework within which film-makers operate, in the way they define but also respond to socio-historical and political realities, and in the way they call on popular genres: frameworks of conventions which guide and are guided by expectations. “Understood as transmission belts between industry and audience expectations, film genres encrypt historically specific anxieties and wish fantasies.”6 Genre films necessarily operate from within their own historical condition and intimate by their very conventions the way they are to be consumed, encoding within themselves their “ideology, of how, by whom, and for whom” they were produced.7 “By taking recourse to generic conventions, 53

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a text invariably becomes inscribed with the history of those conventions, with the history of the cultural repertoire on which they draw, and with the history of the relationships they bear with other [...] generic discourses.”8 From Wilhelminian Cinema (1895‒1918), Weimar Cinema (1918‒33), and Nazi Cinema (1933‒45), to the national cinemas of East and West Germany, and thereafter, the Heimat film genre has epitomized this nexus between nation and narration. The promises it has held out to the individual in its most conciliatory form—particularly evident in Nazi Heimat films, but also in most 1950s Heimat films and 1990s unification films— have been those of rebirth, regeneration, and reinvention, of integration, affirmation, and consolidation within a community: bait enough for the majority of viewers to agree with the Heimat films’ appeasing message. The directors of these films, through their choice of genre, subscribe explicitly to working within a given schema, as well as to promoting this harmonious relationship of conformity on a societal level. Indeed, their message is comforting, as these films, in the main, “produce satisfaction rather than action, pity and fear rather than revolt [and thus] serve the interests of the ruling class by assisting in the maintenance of the status quo”.9 At other times, for example, in the 1970s and again in the years since the terrorist attacks on the United States on 11 September 2001, film-makers have employed playful but provocative departures from the generic norm in order to advance social debate or stimulate dissent. This objective is evident in the workings of the films which form part of the New German Cinema, just as it is in contemporary critical and ambivalent Heimat films. Irrespective of its social intent, and in its traditional form as well as in its related subsets and sister genres, the Heimat theme has taken on the foremost concerns of society. This has certainly differed according to the time and place of production, as genre films are “akin to a mass-produced ritual, wherein cultures see their fantasies acted out on screen”.10 Within a given arrangement of Heimat-specific elements and formulas, variations have occurred depending on the deep-rooted fears, dominant values, and common desires of a particular period. Especially in one of their latest variants, namely, in Ostalgie and Westalgie films [nostalgia for the former East and West German states, respectively], the construct of Heimat can be compared to the workings of “secular myth[s]”,11 whereby myth-making is seen as an integral part of forging a strong bond within communities. Narrating one’s nation, mythologizing one’s past, and explaining one’s development as a promise and key to an even better future have been instrumental in the formation and consolidation of societies at all times. This may explain the interest of genre films to opinion-makers in general, as genre constitutes “one of the ways in which texts seek to control the uncertainty of communication”.12 It is, however, important to note that any film’s reception remains—despite all attempts at prescribing a certain reading—in the realm of the unpredictable. Films can never reliably communicate a fixed meaning, as their interpretation depends on the specific context, ideology, and objectives of every viewer, and can differ drastically even at one and the same time and place. The history of Heimat film reception is a fitting example of this ambivalence, with praise and disdain, popular acclaim and critical condemnation, at a constant stand-off. Nevertheless, the Heimat film’s potential for propagating values and role models, as well as time54

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specific commentary and future directives, cannot be denied. The ups and downs of this particular genre—including its gradual displacement by other types of films, tastes, and forms, its critical and popular reception, and its creative transformations and latest renaissance—all provide clues about the respective societies from which they came. Indeed, Heimat film as a popular genre allows insight into humanity and history. As Elsaesser points out, the study of the Heimat film genre, in particular, provides for “the most accurate and sensitive barometer of shifts in public opinion across a wide spectrum of social and moral issues”.13 Social and cultural concerns are thus inscribed in the making and breaking of genre films, as conventions are “in play rather than being, simply, re-played”,14 in response to the ways society evolves.

The Heimat Film Genre Jacques Derrida in his essay “The Law of Genre” claims that every text, in this instance film, participates in one or more genres, yet such participation never amounts to belonging, simply because the law of genre implies “a norm, […] a line of demarcation, […] essential purity”,15 something which can never be adhered to. Indeed, there is considerable academic discussion about the uses, injunctions, and limits of genre classification, particularly as a mode of literary-historical analysis, discursive convention, and as a means of historical, philosophical, and theoretical scrutiny. However, claims that the very mark or citation of any genre “unmarks” a text or contaminates it16 do not alter the fact that the category of genre as a classificatory mechanism is extremely popular, and certainly useful, in the analysis of “fertile proliferation”,17 as will become evident in the course of this book. It is in the exploration of resemblance and analogy, as well as identity and difference, in those German films with Heimat as their central theme that these varied texts can be utilized as a means to acquire a sense of evolution. The Heimat film genealogy, like that of other genres, including the Cowboy and Red Indian Western,18 has usually been applied retrospectively, and provides a unifying descriptor for quite heterogeneous films. It seems that the term “Heimatfilm” as a genre classification developed from the existing concept of Heimatkunst [regional art], which was used with reference to novels by Ludwig Anzengruber (1839‒89), Peter Rosegger (1843‒1918), Ludwig Ganghofer (1855‒1920), and Ludwig Thoma (1867‒1921), as well as to village tales by Jeremias Gotthelf, Berthold Auerbach, and Karl Immermann.19 Referred to as Volksfilme rather than Heimatfilme, the first adaptations of works by Anzengruber and Ganghofer date from 1914 and 1918 respectively,20 and mark the unmistakable premiere of the Heimat genre on screen. Parallel to those early examples of literary adaptations, mountainscapes that highlighted aspects of Alpine life for tourists and locals were also captured on celluloid, initially in documentary style, and later with a greater narrative element, leading to what was to become associated with the paradigmatic Heimat visuals—images of rural bliss and nature. Typical soundscapes include church bells, folk music, and cheers associated with happy congregations. Stereotypical associations reduce the 1950s proponents of the genre to popular structural elements such as a plot customarily culminating in a village festival, at which all members of the community, young 55

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and old, rich and poor, come together. In addition, a set of props, a certain iconography, and stock characters come to mind when thinking of films which fit the typical classification. The origins of the genre are thus twofold: they are to be found in the Volksfilme as well as the Bergfilme [mountain films], both of which have coexisted until the present day under the umbrella term “Heimat film”. The term “Volksfilm” was also routinely used with reference to adaptations of folk dramas such as those written by Ferdinand Raimund and Johann Nepumuk Nestroy. Indeed, two popular literary genres, the Dorfgeschichte [village tale] and the Volksschauspiel [folk drama], fed directly into the development of a cinematic convention which came to be widely known as Heimatfilm only towards the 1930s. This label had first been used in reviews dating back to the early twentieth century, when it was applied to a range of films set in rural surroundings and employing plot structures from Heimat literature. Von Moltke quotes an article from 1912, in which the author demanded that the “cinematograph” be pressed into the “service of Heimatkunst” by presenting “the landscapes of the German fatherland and the characteristic beauty of the Heimat”.21 Many reviewers attest to the fact that contemporary viewers were exposed to heimatesque pictures, which were also referred to as “place films”22 from 1906 onwards, or, depending on the level of documentary footage, as “Kulturfilme” after 1918.23 Few of these films have survived until the present; however, as von Moltke points out, their bequeathed titles betray the close link between Heimatkunst and cinema during the first decade of the twentieth century. Heimatliche Scholle [Heimat Soil, 1910] was described “in censorship documents”, as von Moltke uncovered, in terms which anticipate “the constitutive dramaturgical oppositions of many later Heimatfilme, namely, “Peasant boy becomes criminal in the city. Returns home.” 24 Von Moltke also found a proliferation of film titles referring directly or indirectly to Heimat—such as Heimkehr [Homecoming, 1911], Wenn die Heimat ruft [When Heimat Calls, 1915], or the title Heimat, which was used for five different films between 1912 and 1919—indicating that audiences were very familiar with the proto-generic films, to such an extent that a reviewer of the film Die Geier-Wally [VultureWaltraud, 1921] remarked that “one can’t bear to see any more Tyrolean farms, peasants’ huts, open-air dance floors and village inns”.25 Just as in later years (and especially with the Heimat films of the 1950s), much of the Heimat literature and film on the market in the early days of moving images was primarily associated with lowbrow entertainment and regarded as part of a trivial genre. Moreover, the ideologization of Heimat literature, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century, resulted in the depiction of provincial idylls being regarded with contempt by intellectuals. It seems ironic that, although German, Swiss, and Austrian directors shared a proud and respectable tradition of literature and should have been able to choose from any number of Romantic, Realist, Expressionist, or Impressionist works to transform into film, they instead chose the trivial issues represented in Heimat literature. In Adalbert Stifter’s Biedermeier style, or in Theodor Storm’s Poetic Realism, Heimat evoked images of rural life as a pristine cosmos, untouched by social upheaval and withstanding drastic changes brought about by increasing industrialization and urbanization.26 While it is tempting in hindsight to recognize how easily even early examples of Heimat 56

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literature could be used for political purposes in later years, given the way their authors aligned themselves with the popular folkloric literary tradition,27 many village tales or Heimat novels are, nevertheless, far from trivial. Their authors express their love and respect for Heimat, which throughout the nineteenth century was considered a virtue. Consequently, the genre of Heimat literature reached its peak in the nineteenth century when public opinion perceived Heimat to be threatened by industrialization and social transformation. The Heimatkunstbewegung [regional art movement] responded to this public sentiment and had its most ardent followers around the turn of the twentieth century and again in the 1930s.28 All the same, sales of the Heimat classics from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been steady and continuous, a popularity that has recently been confirmed again with the re-release of its classics. Peter Rosegger’s completed works are available in new editions,29 as are the writings of Ludwig Ganghofer and Ludwig Thoma, the north German Fritz Reuter, and the “Heidedichter” [heathland poet] Hermann Löns. Similarly, a multitude of secondary literature examining the works of these authors and their genre confirms the status of Heimat as evergreen.30 The present renaissance of these authors’ popularity may be partly due to the film versions of their novels; in any case, something about their work has continued to attract an audience and to strike a chord with large numbers of German-speaking people. In its idealized form, Heimat fare does make for seductive reading and viewing, confirming as it does the consumers’ sense of privilege. Ganghofer, for example, introduced a mass readership to his idea of the Hochland [highlands] as the ideal environment for the elevation and betterment of human kind. This logic—taken up by pioneer film-maker Arnold Fanck in his Bergfilme—idealized nature and the victorious “Naturburschen” [nature-boys/outdoor lads] who managed to stand up to its might. In cinematic adaptations of Ganghofer’s works and, increasingly, in Fanck’s films, nature became the essential backdrop for stories of camaraderie and love, uniting good and beautiful people as well as eliminating bad influences. Ganghofer’s vision was to determine the visual reality of the Heimat film genre in its early days.31 Since Peter Ostermayr gained exclusive rights to the works of Ludwig Ganghofer in 1918, cinematic adaptations of his novels went on to influence the genre expectations of movie-going audiences as well as television viewers in later years. Ostermayr’s style proved to be of paramount importance for the genrefication of Heimatkunst on screen. “Popularizing the Alps for a mass readership, Ganghofer’s novels […] formulated the locational archetypes of the Heimat genre”, which Ostermayr translated truthfully into cinema’s reality.32 By transferring the Heimat iconography “from the mass medium of the nineteenth century to its twentieth century successor, the cinema”,33 Ostermayr moulded the early hallmarks of the genre: impressive landscape shots which were justified only marginally by the plot. The Volksfilme, Bergfilme, and Heimat films, particularly Peter Ostermayr’s successful cinematic adaptations of Ganghofer novels, suffice to prove that Weimar Republic audiences were already familiar with “a quasigeneric iconography”, a fact which is also supported by “the founding of a production company named Ostmärkischer Heimatfilm in 1926 and the premiere of a ‘great German Heimatfilm’ in 1927”.34 Just prior to the First 57

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World War, the leading Austrian film company of the time, Wiener Kunstgesellschaft [Vienna Artistic Society], produced numerous feature films based on Anzengruber’s literary works, which were criticized as Heimatschnulzen [homeland tear-jerkers] and Volksfilme.35 By the end of the 1920s at the latest, the genre specification “Heimatfilm” was “available to reviewers and the industry alike. […] Indeed, not only practitioners like [Peter] Ostermayr but critics too had begun to apply the term retrospectively by the early 1930s.”36 Johannes von Moltke uncovers multiple references to “Heimat” and “Heimatfilm” in the 1930s. These references not only constitute proof of the widespread use of the concept and genre classification in the period prior to the 1950s, but also are indicative of the proliferation and gradual instrumentalization of the Heimat genre.37As von Moltke convincingly demonstrates in his study of Heimat in German film, “the ‘genrefication’ of Heimat in composites such as Heimatroman [Heimat novel], Heimatliteratur, and Heimatfilm initially depends on readers’ or the audience’s prior familiarity with a whole culture of Heimat”,38 which had already, by the middle of the nineteenth century, consolidated in Heimat literature. This trend had developed out of Romanticism and had a long tradition in Germany, as well as in Austria and German-speaking Switzerland, although claims to its uniquely German character have been made repeatedly, by critics and film-makers alike.39 Thomas Elsaesser writes of the Heimat film genre as “Germany’s only indigenous and historically most enduring genre”.40 Others, such as Tassilo Schneider and Leonie Naughton, identify it as the epitome of the heritage of German cinema by referring to it as “The German Genre” and “authentically German”, respectively.41 However, just like German-language Heimat literature, the Heimat film genre is clearly dominated by Austrian, German (West and East), and Swiss-German proponents, even if the most successful examples were produced in West Germany. Popular success has been evident ever since images of Heimat began to play a crucial part in films—from documentary-style short films experimenting with the new medium to narratives encompassing aspects of Alpine life. Despite the developing generic strictures and structures, the appeal of films showcasing beautiful landscape and wholesome characters has proved to be long-lasting. After the emergence of cinema as mass culture in the Weimar Republic, Arnold Fanck’s mountain films confirmed the potential for Heimat iconography in determining whether a film was to become a blockbuster. The works of Leni Riefenstahl and Luis Trenker also contributed to the popularity of the genre, which was ripe for exploitation by the National Socialist government.42 Heimat films produced during the Third Reich exemplify why many Nazis considered film in general, and the Heimat genre in particular, an important tool for the propagation of their ideology and a means to unify a people. They played a special role in national and patriotic discourse by promoting chauvinistic ideas about the homeland. Most Heimat films in the 1930s and 40s were structured according to the principles of the tradition of the Bildungsroman, which follows the integration of an adolescent protagonist into society. Successful integration is usually achieved after the subject undertakes a journey leading him/her away from the path of virtue and social acceptance, then subsequently returns to the safe haven of an ordered society. In the context of the Second World War and the post-war years, such films 58

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contained the ideologically charged message that “prioritizes the social practice of finding one’s location in a system over any emotional phenomena located within the subject”.43 The Heimat ideal clearly advocates the social integration of individuals and conformist behaviour, in a fusion of “emotional realization and social regimentation”.44 This concept served as an impetus for the genre, as it flourished in the period following the First World War, when the examination of national identity became an important issue, especially for people from the Sudetenland, Upper Silesia, or East Prussia, as well as during the Gleichschaltung [National Socialist term for political processes which forced dissenters into line] of German society between 1933 and 1945, and again thereafter, when it was necessary to help millions of displaced people feel at home in their new locations and situations. Nation formation and social homogenization were paramount after the Second World War, when the need was perceived for refugees, returnees, and displaced people to identify positively with a newly created Federal Republic of Germany.45 Similarly, the idealization of the bond between blood and soil that had been exploited by the Nazis was adapted in the post-war years to emphasize the bonds that supposedly existed between peoples from different regions and generations, in order to aid the establishment of a peaceful country. A less openly exclusive and eliminist reading of Heimat and Volk was favoured during this period, with anti-Semitic and homophobic tendencies only latently displayed,46 thereby ensuring support from large sections of the German-speaking population for the mainly escapist on-screen narratives. Both the rural Heimat in Heimat films and its urban antidote47 in the Trümmerfilm [rubble film] were used as loci for national soul searching, at a time when ruins were still visible and the “economic miracle” was a brittle facade hiding many scars. The quick demise of the Trümmerfilm, as opposed to the popularity of the sugary Heimat tales, attests to the psychological state of many Germans at the time, as much as to the commercial development of the film industry in general. Throughout the 1950s, this predisposition ensured the prevalence of an increasingly mass-produced Heimat genre which displayed surprising continuity. Peter Ostermayr, as producer and director of numerous films between 1910 and 1958, can be credited with having found a winning formula for the Heimat film genre. He started by producing the first silent black-and-white adaptations of Ganghofer’s Hochland environment, and then continued with remakes—first using the new sound technology “as an independent UFA producer” during the Nazi period, then adopting widescreen and colour versions in the 1950s.48 Scholars write of his practices as the “GanghoferSchema”, which was to become part and parcel of the symbolic language of Heimat films.49 The spectators were offered opportunities for identification, by means of point-of-view shots, eyeline-match editing, narrative teleology, and the casting of familiar stars. These techniques continued to be crucial for the success of Heimat films during the 1950s. In this vein, Ostermayr’s trendsetting was happily appropriated as thema con variazone. His colleague Robert Erwin Konrad Lüthge, an experienced Ufa filmmaker who produced films with mass appeal,50 a prolific scriptwriter and producer of melodramas and Heimat films for nearly forty years, from 1919 to 1958, confessed openly to using a recipe—not unlike Ostermayr—in pursuit of popular success: a good blend of love, eroticism, conflict, a happy 59

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ending, and humour.51 He claimed a successful film could be mixed from these ingredients like a good cocktail, and did not regard repetition to be a problem: “May is basically the same every year.”52 His criticism of German film of the late 1940s and early 50s was “that the new German producers have lost the recipe for successful, popular filmmaking”.53 As if to prove the point and provide a remedy, the year he made this claim turned out to be one of his most successful, with his 1951 remake Grün ist die Heide [Green Is the Heath] to become one of Germany’s all-time highest earners. His production company perfected its understanding of audience demands at the time by investing in and creating a cycle of popular films which reacted sensitively to market forces. Their narratives cemented the genre conventions, and seemed to address a need for reassurance and predictability that was responded to by repetition and happy endings. Most Heimat films of this period employ a pseudo-realistic style, although they require the audience to suspend their sense of reality. Their highly selective narratives are mostly constructed with an overt teleology and are therefore ultimately untruthful on closer inspection, as they seem to imply that nature follows a similar path to the stories’ resolutions. By this means, Heimat films, like those from other genres, offer a limited set of ideals and invite certain viewing positions, which are channelled through the institutional and collective means of film consumption in cinemas. Using narrative elements from domestic melodramas, 1950s Heimat films promoted traditional lifestyles and patriarchal households, thereby providing emotional anchors, particularly for female audiences. With the existence of a blueprint, films released after Green Is the Heath were mainly attempts to profit in the wake of its success; after all, “[p]opular cinema is an industrial product driven and marketed in terms of genre and the star system that unquestionably functions in ideological terms”.54 A similar reading of the 1950s Heimat film genre comes from critics, albeit with a strong condemnation of the quality of the films. “Contrived”, “constructed”, “sentimental”, and “repetitive” were terms used by commentators in view of elements which were “repeated in endless variations in the approximately 280 Heimat films from 1950 to 1960”.55 The most common understanding of the workings of these films related to their entertainment value and psychological effects. The general escapism sought by the public in post-war West Germany was served by these films, which resulted in the Heimat genre being shunned by critics who lamented: “The West German contemporary film doesn’t only avoid an objective, functional representation of its own social and political reality, it also obviously avoids any reminder of it [by paying] homage to a rigorous escapism.”56 It is precisely this period that produced the film images now commonly associated with the genre: cues such as those provided within the film (setting, characters and their constellation, plot structure, values, ending, symbols, iconography) or in the form of external metacommunication (the name of the director or main actor, the title, advertisement poster).57 Production pressures, particularly in the early Mangelwirtschaft [deficient and under-performing economy] of the 1950s, led not only to the occasional reappearance of plot elements but also to the recycling of soundscapes, sets, and costumes. Such methods made commercial sense, as “[g]enre films allowed the studios to conceptualise, produce, market, and distribute their products efficiently and rapidly”.58 By recycling costumes and 60

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re-using storylines filmed against familiar backdrops of German landscapes, audiences were assured of recognizable and well-known pleasures. “Thus, repetition was, and still is, a crucial component of any genre”, not only from the industry’s but also from the audience’s perspective,59 with labelling and classification constituting an economic act which is used in production as well as marketing, reviewing, and timing. Any genre classification will aid in finding a particular audience and informing the “discourses of marketing and publicity, together with the whole apparatus of reviewing and listing and recommending, that drives so much of film production”.60 This fact captures adequately the paradox inherent in working with and defining genre: “On the one hand, definitions of genres require stasis and consistency. On the other hand, economic, cultural, and artistic forces inevitably undermine such assumptions.”61 As a result, genre films are trapped in a double bind between artistic intent and commercial lure, and definitions of genre that stress repetition instead of variation consequently seem to fall short.62 Nevertheless, genre films are based on a series of prototypical movies and are commonly reduced to a set of familiar rules such as certain themes, typical actions, characteristic mannerisms, which Rick Altman divides into “semantic” traits (a list of common traits, attitudes, characters, shots, locations, sets, and the like which may be subsumed under thematic or iconographic categories) and “syntactic” ones (which stress the structural relationship between those traits, such as ways in which the semantic building blocks are arranged).63 For most of the 1950s, these ingredients seemed to work for the audience, whereas they were no longer successful in the 1960s. This points to another variable in genre studies, the extra-diegetical aspects—the context of any film’s sociohistorical genesis and reception. By the end of the 1950s, society at large was changing fast and Heimat genre films were threatened with oblivion when they failed to reflect these changes quickly enough. Despite, or indeed because of, the extreme popularity of the early 1950s Heimat films following a standard formula— “simple contents, beautiful landscape, the happy romantic relationship, the concentration of interests in the private sphere,” as well as “representation of the rootedness of the people in the landscape by means of traditional dress and easily understandable customs”64—audiences eventually tired of too much quantity and too little variation and innovation, aesthetically as well as with regard to storyline. Clearly, the films’ appeal vanished when the underlying structures were not updated to contemporary concerns and fashions. Without an innovative impetus, the genre, which was so central to the postwar experience in Austria, West Germany, and East Germany alike, appeared dated and was soon referred to in “apologetic and dismissive terms”.65 In addition, despite some adaptations and transformations, 1950s Heimat films—in the eyes of most notable critics—were unable to overcome the stigma of being rife with “national chauvinism, ‘blood and soil’ ideology, and overwrought emotionalism”.66 Many Heimat films produced in the second half of the twentieth century were remakes of films from the Hitler era that were intended to assist the struggling population in Central Europe by providing them with familiar images and ideals. After all, for many Germans, Heimat in the post-war years “signified an experience of loss, a vacuum that [was] filled with nostalgic memories”.67 When living conditions started to correspond to expectations at the height of the “economic miracle” in West 61

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Germany, the promises and diversions offered by the Heimat films seemed superfluous. The popularity of the genre reached an all-time low. Although there has been a steady decline in the number of Heimat films produced ever since, the genre has survived through the borrowing and adaptation of elements from other sources, with the result that Heimat films have remained a form of artistic engagement and part of political discourse. This status was aided by variations on the two most common prevailing plot structures68 and the timeless attraction of the rural setting. Familiar under-currents include expressions of love for nature, countryside, traditions, and regional customs—and political and propagandist prejudices also persist, ranging from blood-and-soil imagery to a pan-European regionalism. Depending on the presence or absence of issues such as “community, history, gender roles, and consumerism”,69 Heimat films have dealt with ideological messages intertwined with economic and political agendas in both West and East Germany, and, consequently, in Western and Eastern Europe alike. For this reason, the locus of Heimat is interchangeable, that is, “the land itself is only important to the extent that it facilitates the formation of [harmonic] relationships […]. Where one is able to discover a sense of belonging and security— the Lüneburg Heath, the Alps, the Black Forest—is irrelevant” as long as this landscape, as a pars pro toto or shorthand for the country, depicts a wholesome communal setting in contrast to a negative influence elsewhere.70 Clearly lacking in experimental modifications of genre conventions, most Heimat films produced in the decade following 1959 were no longer able to challenge audience expectations and enrich the viewers’ experience. What was needed now was a more creative understanding of genre as a dynamic process, rather than a set of stable rules. The ways in which the genre has renewed itself (in tourism films, Heimat sex films, or anti-Heimat films) does stretch the understanding of the term “Heimat” and reminds us of its often forgotten, but very necessary, fluidity. In the case of the Heimat genre, stress might be placed on visual aspects, and also on the values being promoted or deconstructed. All of these variations and adaptations represent “uses” of the genre; the films discussed thus refer “to a field or economy of genres, and their complexity derives from the complexity of that relation”.71 John Frow speaks accordingly of texts being “performances of genre rather than reproductions of a class to which they belong”.72 The wave of critical Heimat films produced in the late 1960s and 70s constitutes a creative extension to the genre. Those critical and anti-Heimat films provided the genre with new life and showed innovative ways of reviving the Heimat discourse, just as much as they enlivened the artistic scene from which they arose. They were very much a reaction to the dominant culture in West German society. This rebellion against an unadventurous and numbing status quo in the West was succinctly articulated in the Oberhausen Manifesto (1962), and prepared for the arrival of the “New German Cinema”, which demonstrated radically different political and social ambitions to the generation living through the Second World War. In their desire to disassociate themselves from the tainted Heimat concept and any Nazi connotations, directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Volker Schlöndorff revived Volksstücke by dramatists from the Weimar Republic, such as Marieluise Fleisser and Ödön von Horváth, as well as Brechtian alienation techniques with which to criticize pre-Fascist and later crypto-Fascist ideology and lan62

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guage. This brought Fassbinder and Schlöndorff to international stardom as prominent auteurs, and gave German cineastes hope for a new period of cultural rejuvenation.73 However, large parts of the national audience felt disconnected from the intellectually demanding films associated with the New German Cinema and were instead drawn to the cinematic renditions of homeland and history expressed in Edgar Reitz’s Heimat series. Reitz’s achievement clearly marks the advent of a predominantly positive rediscovery of Heimat that formed a guiding principle for the period leading up to 1989 and the subsequent waves of Ostalgie and Westalgie films which bear the unmistakable hallmarks of the Heimat genre. Even the problematization and proliferation of Heimat concepts in contemporary Germany, with their focus on transnational and transcultural notions of belonging, have yielded new insights into the state of society. A proud younger generation of film-makers from Bavaria and Northern Germany alike, with or without a migrant background, has shown that the problems other directors had with the genre have been overcome in recent years. The films of Fatih Akin74 and Marcus Rosenmüller75 are highly acclaimed by both intellectual as well as popular standards, and a new era in the Heimat film genre has dawned. Throughout the last one hundred years, the genre has seen numerous shifts in motifs and paradigms, making the label somewhat less prescriptive than the conventions of other genres. Ever-new variations of the Heimat theme have been tried and, at times, married with other genre characteristics. As a result, the Heimat film genre can be described more along the lines of shared aesthetic codes and storyline motifs, with which very different agendas were pursued at different times. Sociohistorical conflicts are aesthetically transformed and translated into universally understandable images, myths, and constellations. The genre addresses the principal human desire for happiness and identification with one’s natural and social surroundings by offering answers that may aid in attaining or defining these goals. Thus Heimat films tend to respond to a deep human quest or urge that—latent or suppressed—is part of us all and makes the genre curiously timeless.

Genre Film as Heimat Johannes von Moltke, as one of few notable exceptions, has acknowledged the fact that the Heimat film genre continues to provide the template for the production and reception of films today;76 nevertheless, most recent scholarship has yet to embrace the notion of the genre being alive and well, as it tends to regard the Heimat genre as a 1950s trend. Indeed, few critics would describe the genre as thriving in contemporary cinema, although this assessment is most obviously backed by consumer tastes. Distribution rates of German films have grown steadily since 1991. In 2009, German Heimat films by German directors (including Fatih Akin, Andreas Dresen, Leander Hauβmann, Oskar Roehler, Marcus H. Rosenmüller, and Frieder Wittich), together with other German-language films and German co-productions, were able to gain a market share of nearly 30 per cent at German box offices, attracting above the magical one million viewers for a record number of fourteen films, thus confirming the audiences’ positive pre63

Screening Nostalgia

disposition towards home-made fare.77 Fatih Akin’s self-proclaimed Heimat film Soul Kitchen (2009) was among many of these films which were also well received internationally, both in terms of visitor numbers and prizes, confirming the strength of the German film sector despite the world economic crisis. The success was no fluke, with 2008 already setting records with films that featured such heimatesque topics as Die Entdeckung der Currywurst [The Invention of Curried Sausage, Ulla Wagner, 2008] as well as Krabat (Marco Kreuzpaintner, 2008) and Werther (Uwe Janson, 2008). A self-confident use of the term “Heimat” in connection with film had also been evident throughout the first decade of the twenty-first century, with films such as the Swiss-German documentary Heimatklänge [Sounds of the Heimat, Stefan Schwietert, 2007] and a production company calling itself Heimatfilm.78 The continued receptiveness of contemporary audiences to the genre has been primed in part by television (where a steady presence of 1950s Heimat film classics persists, from the Sissi trilogy to Green Is the Heath), and also by newly produced films which have acquired the marketing label of “Heimatfilm”. Typical examples are Oliver Dommenget’s 2006 films Im Tal der wilden Rosen: Was das Herz befiehlt [In the Valley of the Wild Roses: What the Heart Commands] and Im Tal der wilden Rosen: Verzicht auf Liebe [In the Valley of the Wild Roses: Renunciation of Love], described as a “TV Heimatfilm” and a “TV Heimatwestern” respectively.79 Just as filmmakers had catered to a certain psychological disposition in the populace towards conformist and appeasing ideology after the two world wars,80 their colleagues in the post-1989 period81 responded to societal change with the recycling of 1950s films in an attempt to instil a sense of continuity and harmony. In addition, however, quite differentiated cinematic productions have been the subject of contemporary debates about German identity in light of the different ideologies dominating in the past one hundred years,82 particularly the period prior to 1945, but also the post-war years until 1989.83 With Germany’s unification and its ongoing integration into Europe, questions of “German national and cultural identity, the contradiction between economic and military power and cultural feelings of inferiority, racial versus civil definitions of identity and otherness”84 are as relevant as ever. Thus it comes as no surprise that the Heimat film genre that had dominated for most of the twentieth century has been and continues to be revisited and reformed in this context. While the genre was anathema to younger directors for nearly two decades (1960s‒80s), recent releases have been able to utilize the schema and infuse it with current tastes and sensibilities, and films such as Die Siebtelbauern [The Inheritors, 1998], Viehjud Levi [Jew Boy Levi, 1999], and, most recently, Hierankl (2003) as well as Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s Heimat trilogy—Beste Zeit [Best Time, 2006], Beste Gegend [Best Region, 2007], and Beste Chance [Best Chance, 2008]—have achieved critical and commercial success. German and Austrian film festivals and cinemas have been the platform for those Heimat films demonstrating creativity and innovative zest throughout the late 1980s and 1990s,85 which coexisted alongside the fairly unimaginative and generic adaptations of 1950s storylines still dominating German television productions, such as the latest re-working of Peter Sämann’s Die Geierwally [Vulture-Waltraud, 2005] for ARD. Most recently, a new self-confidence in the use of the terms “Heimat” and “Heimat films” 64

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has become obvious in German arts and culture. The 2003 film Heimatfilm! by Daniel Krauss is just one example of producers and directors engaging with the genre and its stigma. Likewise, in 2006, Der Spiegel introduced a review of German-language films at the annual Berlinale under the heading “Die neuen Heimatfilme”.86 Admittedly, this label is applied to films from the German Heimat in general (and not strictly to films corresponding with the genre as such), when the critics laud the evolving German cinema, praising the way it presents itself so self-confidently and how effectively it showcases the land and the people, as well as Germany’s present and past, to international audiences.87 Nevertheless, a closer look at the four German entries vying for a Golden Bear in Berlin’s 2006 competition reveals that two films certainly fit the Heimat bill, namely, Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem and Valeska Grisebach’s Sehnsucht [Longing]. Both are set in the provinces, which the critics labelled “the neglected terra incognita of the German film”, heralding the development of “a new consciousness of Heimat in German film, which had not cared about national identity for decades.”88 The review continues: “If the characters in German films in earlier times often seemed to be uprooted, [...] now they are being pushed almost brutally into reality by scriptwriters and directors.”89 Both the desire for Heimat narratives and the Heimat qualities of the genre in general respond to a need experienced by many today. In a fast-changing, increasingly globalized, and, most recently, terrorized world, a longing for continuity has increased. On the one hand, Heimat narratives respond to this urge: “When the world is without borders and places become arbitrary, then ‘Heimat’ is no longer [an] expression of time. Film is the only art form able to avert the fleeting of time. Even cinema cannot stop time, but it can tell of it. Film can be ‘Heimat’.”90 The film industry has thus cleverly utilized genre as a mental Heimat. When consulting cinema programmes, one cannot help but notice the seemingly eternal recurrence of the same: films released with the clear prospect of being continued. The flood of sequels featuring Harry Potter, the Pirates of the Caribbean, or James Bond clearly indicate that audiences enjoy variations of the familiar. In the company of recognizable protagonists and settings, one is comfortable and comforted, and the same principle applies to genres; a variation of the known is the preferred diet, decked out with up-todate references and some twists and turns which, however, do not undermine the viewers’ general expectations.91 Most genres, like canonical narratives, “have strong and characteristic emotional effects”.92 They are used in the attempt to create illusions “of an unbroken tradition in terms of aesthetic preferences, cultural sensibilities, and social mentalities”.93 In the way they affect the psyche of the viewer, genres themselves provide a sensation of Heimat. Refuge may be found in the recognition of references to canonical texts and in the values being promoted, and an intellectual Heimat may be experienced, according to Elisabeth Bronfen, who describes the function of any culture’s repertoire of images which have been handed down in terms of a protective shield.94 Her witty analysis continues: “[C]inema’s repertoire of stories and images offers us [...] a reliable Heimat. [...] The pact we enter into when we cross the threshold into this virtual Heimat, remains no more but also no less than the promise of a provisional happiness.”95 To a large degree, Heimat films do just that—they rekindle a Heimat spirit in audiences in two ways, first as genre films, and 65

Screening Nostalgia

second as films dealing with Heimat per se. As individuals who have been culturally primed within a national tradition—and whose minds have been conditioned by childhood stories, early picture books, first film experiences, and other cultural products—recognition of narrative patterns, values, and common images inevitably creates a sense of familiarity. Teleological narratives which uphold our universal belief in solvable problems and happy endings, logical progressions, and clear distinctions—as reproduced in many Heimat films—attract our sympathies. Film studies incorporating insight from the disciplines of psychoanalysis as well as neuroscience have long highlighted these mechanisms at work in the way films are received96 and the cinematic identification processes encoded in genre films.97 In the following chapters, this book will contribute to a differentiated view of a genre that has for too long been regarded as the epitome of bad taste and poor technique. Instead, a nuanced analysis will provide glimpses of excellence in many of these films without shying away from exposing the rehashing and recycling of tried and tired old patterns and, indeed, stereotypes. While many strands of the broad Heimat genre split into seemingly incompatible and non-synchronous parts (as is evident from the co-existence of Heimat-Western, Heimat sex films, and award-winning “problem films”, to name just a few), their ability to arouse emotion and to integrate the viewer in an imagined community is a unifying element with immense political potential, making the genre highly palatable to demagogues and populists. This understanding is in accordance with the concept of genre as a dynamic framework which allows not only for hybrid forms and mixed genres but also for new definitions and new purposes of genre, whereby the function rather than the form becomes of paramount interest.98 In defining a genre, it is not conclusively explained; on the contrary, as an ever-evolving form, genre is “not the permanent product of a singular origin, but the temporary by-product of an ongoing process”.99 Notoriously difficult to define, genres are always in flux, with every film subscribing to a particular genre necessarily tending to advance it rather than simply lapsing into a cliché; after all, “the most pronounced criterion for evaluating a [genre] film is how much originality it injects into the formula without totally abandoning the conventions”.100 Thus the following analyses of prime examples of the genre cannot serve as a conclusive inventory, but rather stand as a testimony to its diversity and adaptability, its heterogeneity, and ongoing evolution. Films subsumed here under the broad and complex topic of the history of German Heimat film display continuities, references, and at times repetitious elements, although never without advancing and transforming components and values by picking up on them, or while integrating them into a new context. Changes in society are thus reflected in changes in the genre. One hundred years of Heimat films can inform us about the changing ways in which family, community, and history were imagined, and a Heimat film history is “uniquely suited to an investigation of how ideology and social values interact in the realm of popular culture”.101 Paying attention to particular socio-historical contexts, different examples of the genre will be analysed, as well as precursors, paradigmatic films, samples of re-writing and subversion and reactionary trends. By operating within the same framework of genre references, films can rely on an implicit transportation of meaning 66

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that is part and parcel of a schema.102 In turn, film-makers are able to utilize aspects of a particular genre, “can follow the traditions of the genre and thus reassure audiences; or reject the genre’s conventions and thereby amuse, shock, or disturb viewers”.103 When used in the affirmative, viewers may rest assured that they will be confronted with a familiar plot which carries with it associations and expectations, recognizable structural features, such as the use of day and night, rest and journey, action and repose, home and “other”, stock characters that are familiar incarnations of conventional characters, identifiable historical and geographical settings, genre-typical iconography, including landscape, architecture, dress, soundtrack, kinds of speech, and themes that concern these elements.104 When used as a critical tool, the Heimat film genre, like any other, serves as a backdrop for challenges to its structures, strictures, and “conventions that link the film industry, the individual text, and the historically contingent modes of spectatorship. Like other expressions of the popular, genres therefore do not necessarily represent forms of standardized consumption.”105 They can constitute an “active process of generating and articulating meanings and pleasures within a social system”.106 Heimat films have been produced in a variety of German-speaking countries at different times, including the Wilhelminian Empire, the Weimar Republic, Nazi Germany, the GDR, the FRG, Austria, Switzerland, as well as in the united Germany, and have naturally become rich and heterogeneous to a degree. As a result, the genre has seen numerous transformations and the development of sub-genres, sub-cycles,107 sister-genres, or cousins, depending on the linguistic preference of academic researchers. Likewise, there are countless instances of overlapping, continuities, contradictions, and oppositions which make labelling and conclusive description difficult. Nevertheless, the label of “Heimatfilm” has aided marketing and has proven itself something of an evergreen, providing an insight into the development of German-language film from its beginnings until today.108

NOTES 1

2 3

4 5 6

Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Revival (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981) and National Identity (London: Penguin, 1991), as well as Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), are probably the most distinguished contributors to this discourse on the importance of myth, belief, and selfimage in the formation of group identities. Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 6. Leon Trotsky, Vodka, the Church, and the Cinema, Pravda, 12 July 1923, reprinted in Problems of Everyday Life (New York: Monad Press, 1973), pp. 31‒35, here p. 32. Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat, p. x. Ibid. Lutz Koepnick, The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 100.

67

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7 8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21

22

23 24 25

Terry Eagleton, Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory (London: New Left Books, 1976), p. 48. Tassilo Schneider, “Genre and Ideology in Popular German Cinema, 1950‒1972”, PhD diss. (University of Southern California, 1994), p. 14. Judith Hess Wright, “Genre Films and the Status Quo”, in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), pp. 41‒49, here p. 41. While Wright is certainly correct in this analysis, as well as in her references to genre films being inherently “nostalgic” and usually “present[ing] a greatly simplified social structure”, she has overestimated the ease with which genre films could generally be described, for example, when she claims “all of them are set in the nonpresent”. Ibid., pp. 41‒42. Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis, Film: A Critical Introduction (Boston: Pearson, 2006), p. 363. Barry Keith Grant, “Experience and Meaning in Genre Films”, in Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader, pp. 114‒28, here p. 115. John Frow, Genre (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p. 4. Thomas Elsaesser, “The Heimat-Film”, Deutscher Heimatfilm, II/1‒II/14 (Goethe Institute, London, 1988), pp. 1‒14, here p. 5. Steve Neale, “Questions of Genre”, Screen, Spring 1990, pp. 45‒66, here p. 58. Jacques Derrida, “The Law of Genre”, translated by Avital Ronell, Critical Inquiry, vol. 7, no. 1 (1980), pp. 55‒81, here p. 57. Ibid., p. 59. Ibid. Cf. Rick Altman, Film/Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1999), p. 52. Cf. chapter on “Heimat-Dichtung”, in Gertraud Steiner, Die Heimat-Macher: Kino in Österreich 1946‒1966 (Vienna: Verlag für Gesellschaftskritik, 1987), pp. 24‒41. Johannes von Moltke, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 30. Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld (Jakob and Luise Fleck, 1914) was based on the play by Anzengruber and Der Jäger von Fall (Ludwig Beck, 1918) was based on Ganghofer’s Hochlandroman. Thus Barthel’s claim that the term “Heimatfilm was not yet in usage in the late 1940s” must be regarded as incorrect. Manfred Barthel, Als Opas Kino jung war: Der deutsche Nachkriegsfilm (Frankfurt: Ullstein Sachbuch, 1991), pp. 89‒90. Wilhelm Spickernagel, “Der Kinematograph im Dienste der Heimatkunst”, in Hannoverland: Parteilose Zeitschrift für die Pflege der Heimatkunde und des Heimatschutzes unserer niedersächsischen Heimat 6 (1912), p. 234, quoted in von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 27. Cf. Tom Gunning, “Before Documentary Early Nonfiction Film and the ‘View’ Aesthetic”, in Daan Hertogs and Nico de Klerk (eds.), Unchartered Territory: Essays on Early Nonfiction Film (Amsterdam: Nederlands Film Museum, 1997), pp. 9‒24, here p. 15. Cf. “Die Kulturfilmabteilung der Ufa”, http://www.deutsches-filminstitut.de/thema/dt2t001.htm, retrieved Mar. 2006. Quoted in von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 28. A critic’s comment on Die Geier-Wally (1921) quoted in Johannes von Moltke, “Evergreens: The Heimat Genre”, in Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk (eds.), The German Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002), pp. 18‒28, here p. 20. 68

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26

27

28

29

30

31

32 33 34 35

36 37 38 39

Cf. Michael Wegener, “Die Heimat und die Dichtkunst. Zum Heimatroman”, in Gerhard Schmidt-Henkel (ed.), Trivialliteratur: Aufsätze (Berlin: Literarisches Colloquium, 1964), pp. 53‒64, here pp. 53‒54. Cf. Louis Ferdinand Helbig, Der ungeheure Verlust: Flucht und Vertreibung in der deutschsprachigen Belletristik der Nachkriegszeit (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1988), p. 34. Andrea Kunne, Heimat im Roman: Last oder Lust? Transformation eines Genres in der österreichischen Nachkriegsliteratur (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1991), p. 3. For example, Peter Rosegger, Als ich noch der Waldbauernbub war (Rosenheim: Rosenheimer, 2007), Erzählungen zur Weihnachtszeit [Tonträger] (Mönchengladbach: Power-Station-GmbH, 2006), Mein Name ist Mensch, meine Losung ist Fried’ (Mammendorf: Pro-Literatur, 2006), Als ich die Christtagsfreude holen ging (Würzburg: Echter, 2006), Als ich noch der Waldbauernbub war (Augsburg: Weltbild, 2006), Weihnachten in alter Zeit (Graz: Steirische VerlagsGesellschaft, 2005), Familiengeschichten (sprachlich modernisierte Ausgabe) (Linden: Staackmann, 2005). For example, Rolf Brunk, Anmerkungen zu Hermann Löns (Hermannsburg: Ludwig-Harms-Haus, 2006); Hans Schönecke, ... nur ödet mich das miese Wetter (Gifhorn: Südheide, 2005); Nicole Durot, Ludwig Thoma et Munich (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007); Eva Philippoff, Peter Rosegger—Dichter der verlorenen Scholle: Eine Biographie (Graz: Styria, 1993); Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler (ed.), Peter Rosegger im Kontext (Vienna: Böhlau, 1999); Karl Wagner, Die literarische Öffentlichkeit der Provinzliteratur: Der Volksschriftsteller Peter Rosegger (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1991); Walter Zitzenbacher, Peter Rosegger: Sein Leben im Roman (Graz: Stocker, 1993). Cf. “Themes, locations, characters, configurations, mechanisms of conflict and resolution are subject to a formulaic stiffness. The central theme is love, popular minor themes include the battle against the forces of nature and depictions of hunting.” In the original: “Thematik, Schauplätze, Personal, Konfigurationen, Konflikt- und Lösungsmechanismen sind einer formelhaften Erstarrung unterworfen. Zentrales Thema ist die Liebe, beliebte Nebenthemen der Kampf gegen Naturgewalten und Jagdschilderungen.” Steiner, Die Heimat-Macher, p. 36. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 37. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 28. Eric Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time: Reflections on the Twenty Years since Oberhausen (Bedford Hills, NY: Redgrave Publishing, 1984), p. 107. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 29. Ibid., pp. 29‒30. Ibid.’, p. 7. “We have only one film genre which could be called specifically German, the ‘Heimatfilm’.” Alf Brustellin, “Die andere Tradition. Volker Schlöndorffs Der plötzliche Reichtum der armen Leute von Kombach im Münchner Theatiner”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 Feb. 1971. Cf. Joseph Garncarz and Thomas Elsaesser identify the Heimat film genre as unique to Germany. Joseph Garncarz and Thomas Elsaesser, “Heimat Films and Mountain Films”, in Thomas Elsaesser and Michael Wedel (eds.), The BFI Companion to German Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1999), pp. 133‒34, here p. 133. 69

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40 41

42 43

44 45 46

47

48 49

50

Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), p. 141. Schneider, “Genre and Ideology in Popular German Cinema”. Cf. chapter heading “The German Genre: Heimatfilme 1950‒1960”. Ibid, pp. 144‒208. Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification, and the “New” Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), p. 131. Robert C. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000). Tedd Rippey, Melissa Sundell, and Suzanne Townley, “‘Ein wunderschönes Heute’: The Evolution and Functionalization of ‘Heimat’ in West German Heimat Films of the 1950s”, Jost Hermand et al. (eds.), Heimat, Nation, Fatherland: The German Sense of Belonging (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), p.143. Ibid. Cf. Rachel Palfreyman, Edgar Reitz’s Heimat: Histories, Traditions, Fictions (New York: Peter Lang, 2000), pp. 22‒26. Julia Anspach, “Antisemitische Stereotype im deutschen Heimatfilm nach 1945”, in Heinz Ludwig Arnold and Matthias N. Lorenz, Juden.Bilder (Munich: Edition Text & Kritik, 2008), pp. 61‒73. Examples of urban Heimat are depicted in the Berlin films located in a limited familiar district such as Berlin Ecke Schönhauser [Schönhauser Corner Berlin] by Gerhard Klein (1957). “A group of young people who do not feel part of the GDR socialist dream, identify with their local neighbourhood, Prenzlauer Berg, which forms a base for a young people’s urban Heimat. The hero, Dieter, is forced to leave, but is alienated and rootless in the West. Like so many characters in Heimat films, Dieter returns, and is […] reintegrated into the socialist urban Heimat.” Palfreyman, Edgar Reitz’s Heimat, p. 42. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 43. “Symbol language in Heimat films: the good characters live in the mountains, wear traditional dress, love hunting (i.e. they only kill animals if they have a hunting license), the villains live in the valley, sometimes wear city clothes, and are often active as poachers or commit other sins against nature. If a couple in love find their way to one another, then the all-important kiss often takes place in front of threatening mountain peaks, which simultaneously condone the union and tower protectively over them. In order to belong to the good people it wasn’t even necessary to be a local, because, after all, they didn’t want to alienate potential summer guests from Germany—and they could even provide possible role models.” In the original: “Symbolsprache in den Heimatfilmen: die Guten leben auf den Bergen, tragen Trachten, lieben die Jagd (d.h. sie töten Tiere nur mit dem Jagdschein), die Bösen befinden sich im Tal, tragen manchmal städtische Kleidung, und betätigen sich häufig als Wilderer oder sonstige Naturfrevler. Wenn sich ein Liebespaar zusammenfindet, dann folgt der entscheidende Kuß oft vor dräuenden Berggipfeln, die gleichsam den Bund billigend und behütend aufragen. Um zu den Guten zu gehören, war es nicht notwendig, Einheimischer zu sein, denn schließlich wollte man die potentiellen Sommergäste aus Deutschland nicht vor den Kopf stoßen und sogar Identifikationsmöglichkeiten bieten.” Gertraud Steiner Daviau, “Sprache und Bilder in österreichischen Heimatfilmen der fünfziger Jahre”, in Die Namen der Berge. Anschauungen (2001), http://www.inst.at/berge/perspektiven/steiner.htm, retrieved Aug. 2005. “Ufa-erprobter Gebrauchskonfektionär”. Barthel, Als Opas Kino jung war, p. 97.

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Film and Genre

51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58 59 60 61 62

63 64

65

66 67 68

Lüthge quoted in “Drehbücher: Libbe, Erijotik und Zoff” [sic], Der Spiegel, 16 (1952), pp. 32‒33, here p. 33. “Der Mai ist im Grunde in jedem Jahr gleich.” Ibid. In the original: “daß die neuen deutschen Fabrikanten das Rezept verloren haben, wie man einen erfolgreichen Publikumsfilm macht”. Ibid., p. 32. Jim Kitses, Horizons West (London: Secker & Warburg/British Film Institute, 1969), p. 20. Rippey, Sundell, and Townley, “‘Ein wunderschönes Heute’”, p. 137. In the original: “Der bundesdeutsche Gegenwartsfilm vermeidet nicht nur eine sachliche Darstellung der eigenen sozialen und politischen Realität, er meidet offenbar auch die Erinnerung daran [...]. Der bundesdeutsche Gegenwartsfilm huldigt einem rigorosen Eskapismus.” Lothar Hack, “Soziologische Bemerkungen zum deutschen Gegenwartsfilm, 1966”, in Wilfried von Bredow and Rolf Zurek (eds.), Film und Gesellschaft in Deutschland: Dokumente und Materialien (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1975), pp. 335‒71, here p. 344. Cf. Frow, Genre, p. 104. Pramaggiore and Wallis, Film, pp. 360‒61. Ibid., p. 361. Frow, Genre, p. 13. Pramaggiore and Wallis, Film, pp. 364‒65. One example: “[G]enre movies are those commercial feature films which, through repetition and variation, tell similar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations. They also encourage expectations and experiences similar to those of similar films we have already seen.” Introduction in Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader, pp. xi‒xvi, here p. xi. Cf. Rick Altman, “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre”, in Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader, pp. 26‒40, here p. 30. In the original: “einfache Inhalte, schöne Landschaft, die glückliche Liebesbeziehung, Konzentration der Interessen auf den privaten Bereich, […] Darstellung der Landschaftsverwurzelung des Menschen durch Trachten und leicht verständliche Bräuche”. Steiner, Die Heimat-Macher, p. 46. Cf. Willi Höfig, Der deutsche Heimatfilm 1947-1960 (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1973), p. 104. Steiner added later with regard to the typical Austrian Heimat film: “Landscape as a backdrop for meaningless plots, embellishments with popular songs, that have been composed especially for the film, plus some comedians who accompany the plot and a director of long-standing, who stages all of this.” In the original: “Landschaft als Kulisse für nichtssagende Handlungen, Garnierung mit Schlagern, die eigens für den Film komponiert wurden, dazu einige Komiker, die die Handlung umrahmen, und ein ‘altbewährter’ Regisseur, der dies alles in Szene setzt.” Ibid, p. 57. Sabine Hake, “Introduction”, in John Davidson and Sabine Hake (eds.), Framing the Fifties: Cinema in Divided Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), pp. 1‒9, here p. 8. Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat, p. 15. Ibid., p. 166. These can be described in their barest structure as follows: First, the action revolves initially around a harmonious rural community whose equilibrium is challenged by an outsider. Often, this outsider is a visitor from the city who is perceived as a threat, and is subsequently eliminated, resulting in order being reinstated. Second, the plot is centred on a youth/young adult who leaves the peace71

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69 70 71 72 73

74

75

76 77

78

79 80 81

82

ful rural community and falls prey to the lure of the city. In this case, the films usually end with the return of the prodigal son/daughter with all the accompanying religious overtones. Rippey, Sundell, and Townley, “‘Ein wunderschönes Heute’”, p. 137. Ibid., pp. 142‒43. Frow, Genre, p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Thomas Elsaesser, Fassbinder’s Germany: History, Identity, Subject (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996); Marc Silberman, German Cinema: Texts in Context (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995). Fatih Akin called his 2009 film Soul Kitchen “an audacious, dirty Heimat film [...] about friendship, love, and life in a village-like community”. Cf. Akin quoted in Michael Bodey, “Change in menu as Akin serves up laughs”, The Australian, 28 Apr. 2010. Since Rosenmüller’s films “celebrate life in rural Bavaria and only make use of dialect dialogues, [...] the media tagged the 34-year-old as the highest exponent of the ‘New German Heimatfilm’”. Rüdiger Sturm, “Marcus H. Rosenmüller”, German Films Quarterly, 2009, http://www.german-films.de/en/germanfilmsquarterly/seriesgermandirectors/nicolettekrebitz_1/index.html, retrieved Sep. 2010. Cf. von Moltke, No Place Like Home. Alfred Hürmer in his Annual Report for “German Films. Jahresbericht 2009”, June 2010, http://www.german-films.de/en/publications/germanfilmsquaterly/index.html, retrieved Oct. 2010. For 2009, he reports a record 146.3 million visitors (27.4 per cent of the market) in Germany alone for German-language films and German co-productions. A Cologne-based production company named Heimatfilm, founded in 2003, seeks to give homeless films a home by supporting projects for the big screen that are deemed too risky or unprofitable, and marketing them not just to German-speaking but also to European and international audiences. Screened on ZDF on 29 Jan. 2006, the film was advertised in numerous TV guides with these descriptors. Cf. TV Today, Jan. 2006, pp. 140 and 148. Cf. Anthony Glees, Reinventing Germany: German Political Development since 1945 (Oxford: Berg, 1996). The Heimat film genre reiterates a positive relationship with fundamental features of national and ethnic identity. (National identity: a historic territory, or homeland, common myths and historical memories; and a common, mass public culture. Ethnic identity: a myth of common ancestry, shared historical memories, elements of common culture, an association with a specific homeland, and a sense of solidarity for significant sectors of the population.) Cf. Smith, National Identity, pp. 14 and 21. There is a “sense of being robbed of German cultural identity by that very history, often building an identity on the impossibility of German identity in any traditional Western sense. The two culprits tend to be various manifestations of National Socialism and Americanisation.” John E. Davidson, Deterritorializing the New German Cinema (Minnesota: University of Minnesota, 1999), p. 48. “Because of Germany’s past, the filmmakers’ language had been violated, their subconscious colonized, their ability to develop an identity fully impaired, and their traditions fragmented. In this self-stylization, they became colonised subjects engaged in a ‘minor discourse’.” Ibid., p. 51. 72

Film and Genre

83

84 85

86

87 88 89

90 91

92 93 94

95

Cf. “[C]oncerns of the New German Cinema […]: its role in Vergangenheitsbewältigung, coming to terms with the past, and the quest for a ‘usable’ past as the foundation for a German national cinema.” Barton Byg, Landscapes of Resistance: The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 39. Ibid., p. 46. To list a few examples: Austrian directors Wolfram Paulus (Heidenlöcher, 1986; Die Ministranten, 1990) from Salzburg, Burgenlandian Wolfgang Murnberger (Himmel und Hölle, 1990; Ich gelobe, 1994), and Viennese Houchang Allahyari (Höhenangst, 1994) have successfully adapted the old plot structures for contemporary Heimat films. The young Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky chose the Heimat genre for his second feature film, Die Siebtelbauern [The Inheritors, 1997]. It brought him international success. The film was sold to 50 countries and featured at numerous film festivals around the world, winning many prizes including a Tiger Award in Rotterdam and an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1999. More recently, Hans-Günther Bücking’s Heimat film Jennerwein (2002), set in the Alpine region, revisits the story of the poacher Girgl Jennerwein (1848‒77), who was torn between love and revenge. Lars-Olaf Beier and Martin Wolf, “Die neuen Heimatfilme: Bei den 56. Berliner Filmfestspielen sind deutsche Regisseure so gut vertreten wie seit Jahren nicht‒mit erstaunlich wirklichkeitsnahen und brisanten Geschichten. Auch Hollywood sucht in Deutschland inzwischen eifrig nach Stoffen und Talenten.” Der Spiegel, 6 (2006), pp. 146‒48. Ibid., p. 147. In the original: “vernachlässigte Terra incognita des deutschen Films”. Ibid., p. 147. In the original: “ein neues Heimatbewusstsein im deutschen Film, der sich um nationale Identität jahrzehntelang nicht kümmerte. Wirkten die Figuren in deutschen Filmen früher oft wie entwurzelt, wie Irrläufer in einer Umgebung, die nichts mit ihnen zu tun zu haben schien, so werden sie von Drehbuchautoren und Regisseuren inzwischen fast brachial in die Wirklichkeit entlassen.” Ibid., pp. 147‒48. Edgar Reitz quoted in Richard Kuipers, “Heimat”, Kultur: Magazine of the Goethe Institute in Australia, 10 (2005), pp. 16‒17, here p. 16. “Interessant ist immer nur die Variation von etwas Bekanntem, und das Spiel mit der Aktualität macht den Reiz des Bekannten im Neuen aus.” Peter von Matt quoted in an interview with Rebecca Casati, “Wir wollen das Bekannte”, Der Spiegel, 6 (2007), p. 170. Torben Grodal, Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), p. 161. Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 105. Cf. “Wie ein Schutzschild [fungiert] die Heimat des tradierten kulturellen Bilderrepertoires”. Elisabeth Bronfen, Heimweh: Illusionsspiele in Hollywood (Berlin: Volk & Welt, 1999), p. 16. In the original: “Wie jede andere Bibliothek bietet uns das Geschichten- und Bildrepertoire des Kinos letztlich vielleicht gerade eine so verläßliche Heimat, weil es das eigene Scheitern mit inszeniert. Der Pakt, auf den wir uns einlassen, wenn wir uns über die Schwelle in diese virtuelle Heimat begeben, bleibt nicht

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96

97 98 99 100 101

102 103 104 105 106 107 108

mehr, aber auch nicht weniger als das Versprechen eines provisorischen Glücks.” Ibid., p. 38. Cf. E. Ann Kaplan, “From Plato’s Cave to Freud’s Screen”, in E. Ann Kaplan (ed.), Psychoanalysis and Cinema (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 1‒23. Anne Friedberg, “Theories of Cinematic Identification”, in Kaplan (ed.), Psychoanalysis and Cinema, pp. 36‒45. Cf. Altman, Film/Genre. Ibid., p. 54. Pramaggiore and Wallis, Film, p. 361. Mary-Elizabeth O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), p. 5. Cf. Stephen Neale, Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1980), p. 63. “In the language of psychology a schema is a pattern underlying a surface phenomenon which allows us to understand that phenomenon.” Frow, Genre, p. 83. William H. Phillips, Film: An Introduction (Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 1999), p. 238. Cf. Douglas Pye, “The Western (Genre and Movies)”, in Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader, pp. 145‒46. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 100. John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1989), p. 23. Von Moltke uses this term with reference to “Ferienfilme”. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 132. Cf. Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (eds.), Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: British Film Institute, 1990); Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After: Germany's Historical Imaginary (London and New York: Routledge, 2000).

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3. Mountain Films

German cinema, just like its French counterpart, developed primarily as a spectacle of technological wonder, with the projection machines themselves taking centrestage from 1897. Audience interest was initially derived less from the subjects and objects captured on film than the feat of their recording, storage, and reproduction. Once the novelty value had worn off slightly, the attention shifted to the qualitative aspect of what was being portrayed; “[c]rispness of image, richness of detail and the lifelike quality of movement were the main attractions.”1 This interest in growing technological sophistication was married with increasingly demanding audience tastes for images of exceptional importance and value, such as shots of prominent politicians, noble statesmen, and royals. Germany’s Kaiser Wilhelm II played to this desire for worthy representation, happily posing for cameras from the moment of their arrival in his empire.2 Records dating back as far as 4 March 1897 frequently refer to the existence of documentary-style footage of the Emperor. Although most of this early film material has been lost, Oskar Messter, touted as the founding father of the German film industry, noted in his logbook: “His Majesty proceeds on foot with a large retinue along the jetty towards the steamship, greeting the people shortly before his departure from Stettin on March 4, 1897, splendidly sharp and clear images, his Majesty is clearly recognizable.”3 Whether on horseback, on foot, on ships (usually aboard his own steam yacht Hohenzollern or his sailing yacht Meteor), at train stations, or in automobiles, the Emperor was eager to appear a worthy film subject, not just on official occasions but also in more private settings, showcasing his family, especially his six sons and his dachshunds. The sayings “Seine Majestät brauchen Sonne” [His Majesty needs sun] or “Kaiserwetter” [Kaiser weather]—to appear in the best light—certainly played to the visual media. Initially, Kaiser Wilhelm, who was extremely fond of photographs and paintings of himself, felt the new technology of film was not conducive to his appearance, as it lacked visual elegance with its staccato, fractured images, accompanied by flickering and the noise of the projection machines. Early images of him, such as those taken at the funeral of his grandmother Queen Victoria in London in 1901, were not yet authorized for public release. Indeed, he remained reserved about the possibilities of this new technical innovation, giving preference to still photographers for most of his life. Nevertheless, as an avid admirer of mobility and speed, technical wonders, and progress, he slowly started to take to the medium and, by 1908, had declared it “hoffähig” [worthy of his royal presence].4 He played to the cameras with growing enthusiasm, but also realized the power of the medium when the images of his own extreme mobility resulted in his nickname “Reisekaiser” 75

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[Travelling Kaiser], as he traversed his country from north to south and east to west, usually by train, and internationally on the Hohenzollern. Military pomp and the dedicating of memorials and heroic statues to his grandfather, Wilhelm I, brought him to many towns in Germany as well as to the Mediterranean and to the harsh mountain scapes of Norway’s fjords, where he liked to spend his summers. In 1913, Kaiser Wilhelm II was at the height of his popularity and the many film clips played to large audiences are a powerful reminder of the pomp with which he celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his reign, utilizing film to ensure he remained the “Volkskaiser”. Using the technological trick of superimposing red, green, and blue filters on material shot of the same subject with three cameras, the first colour film was produced, resulting in a short documentary of the wedding of the Duke of Braunschweig and the daughter of Kaiser Wilhelm, Princess Viktoria Luise, hosted by the Emperor in Berlin on 24 May 1913. In September and November that year, Kaiser Wilhelm proudly showed off his shooting skills while hunting wild pig, pheasant, and deer— sporting a hunting hat decorated with either a pheasant feather or a Gamsbart [chamoix beard].5 On one occasion, he allowed a French camera team, Pathé Frères Productions, to accompany him on a deer hunt, which resulted in the film Kaiser Wilhelm II: bei der Hirschjagd in Bückeberg [Emperor Wilhelm II Hunting Deer in Bückeberg, 1913]. As Koepnick points out in his 2007 book Framing Attention, many newsreels shot before the First World War show the Kaiser in casual settings, “chasing deer, hunting down wildfowl, and chatting with hunting mates”, while images from his exile in Holland show the former Emperor in no less heimatesque settings, making hay, helping farmers, “obsessively chopping down trees [and] cutting wood into small pieces”.6 Woodchoppers, hunters, and the forest were soon to become part of classical Heimat film iconography. Despite this popular home-grown subject matter, most of the films widely distributed until the First World War were foreign productions, mainly from France and, increasingly, from the United States. However, considering the increasingly nationalistic rhetoric of the time, German audiences responded particularly well to productions with a uniquely German flavour, especially to those featuring, if not His Majesty, then at least some majestic aspect of nature. The latter, most notably Alpine scenery, soon developed into what is now referred to as mountain films. The genre of the mountain film, or Bergfilm,7 which has existed since the very early years of Wilhelminian Cinema, focuses on mountaineering and, in particular, the struggle of man in, or against, nature. The first known mountain film, depicting the ascent of Mont Blanc in 1900/1 by the American Frederick Burlingham, was lost until the mid-1950s.8 Staying purely documentary in his approach, the pioneer of the mountain film was the Englishman Frank Ormiston-Smith, who led numerous expeditions up the Matterhorn, Jungfrau, and Mont Blanc between 1902 and 1905, and released short films in England with titles such as The Wintry Alps, Picturesque Switzerland, and Northern Ice Sports.9 These factual-style films inspired tourism promoters in Austria to enlist Ormiston-Smith’s services and to produce some twenty short films for advertising purposes between 1906 and 1908. Neighbouring Switzerland followed suit and started to shoot skiing, climbing, 76

Mountain Films

and hiking adventures, initially to emulate the masculine heroism of Austrian and German productions at the time of the First World War, idealizing the pan-German war effort. Following the end of the Great War, mountain films served as advertisements for mountain tourism, using the short documentary style as their preferred formats. It was not until the 1920s and 30s, with the features produced by Dr Arnold Fanck and his company, that the Bergfilm reached its heyday as a truly entertaining and narrative genre. Despite its origins in France and Switzerland, and the fact that most of its films were shot in the Swiss and Austrian Alps, the mountain film genre—like its cousin the Heimat film—has been described as a German phenomenon,10 an anomaly which may be attributed to the fact that, despite international efforts, the genre only established itself as a commercial success with German audiences.11 The most important director of mountain films was Dr Arnold Fanck, and the outstanding actors were undoubtedly Luis Trenker and Leni Riefenstahl, who enjoyed a reputation as daredevils following their appearance in the early mountain films. The production of mountain films was challenging for actors and filmmakers alike in a practical sense; although parts could be shot in studios, filming on location was a longstanding tradition. Limitations due to abrupt changes in weather and light, as well as generally harsh conditions— including bitter cold, wind, humidity, and often extreme brightness and treacherous terrain12—that took their toll on both humans and filming equipment, necessitated, at times, the use of pastiche techniques, whereby actors were filmed in the comfort of well-maintained and easily accessible ski resorts and on serviced slopes. It was the editing process, which interspersed this comfortably filmed material with footage of dangerous and inaccessible locations, often shot using a telephoto lens, that created the illusion that all the filming and action took place under very challenging conditions. Replicating the pioneering spirit, mountains had become the last frontier within Europe, and national narratives were spun around feats of courage and endurance in their conquest. The exploration of the unknown, fused with visions of success and a certain expansionist ethos, proved attractive. Especially at times of uncertainty or threat, the highest peaks were sought out, and surmounting them brought compensation and confirmation. “Geography had reasserted itself as a crucial aspect of the construction of German identity following the dismemberment of the Reich in 1919, and the blank space of the movie screen became a primary site for the (re)construction of this sense of self.”13 Despite the changed socio-historical framework, the genre of the mountain film with its “combination of auratic landscapes, breathtaking atmospheres, and high-pitched emotions”14 has retained its focus on pleasing depictions of nature’s might and beauty to this day. “Set in an enchanted landscape where time and space seem suspended, where the conventions of the fairytale replace the quotidian perception of life”,15 mountains and mountain films continue to evoke awe and pleasure. However, these fairly contemporary perceptions of mountainous terrain contrast starkly with the way mountains were viewed before the eighteenth century. In earlier times, mountains were regarded as a nuisance: they blocked the view and the detection of approaching enemies, hindered progress and passage, and were associated with landslides and mudslides, floods, avalanches, and falling stones that destroyed crops and took lives. The 77

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Alpine region in particular was perceived as a “symbolically laden extraterritorial space within the European continent”,16 but it had also been accorded some metaphysical qualities since Petrarch’s ascent of Monte Ventoux in 1336.17 For the majority, however, the perception of mountains was guided by fear, terror, or at least indifference. The Alps were thought to be chaotic, unstructured, untamed, and imperfect. Ironically, nature was viewed as beautiful only where it was fertile, manageable, and cultivated. The natural ideal, as was evident in baroque garden design, was domesticated and rationally structured. High mountains therefore remained on the margins, aesthetically speaking, as they were seen to be unshapely and uncontrolled by humans. As late as the 1750s, a traveller from Britain would refer to the Alps as “the scrap heap of the world”, where “nature’s misfits were swept together”.18 Mountain peaks were regarded with superstitious unease. As the legend-shrouded world of the mountains was regarded as the territory of trolls and demons, and ghosts were rumoured to live in glacier crevasses and mountain caves, few felt drawn to ascend their peaks. Why would one climb to a place where there is danger and little likelihood of food or shelter? Living in the mountains was born out of necessity rather than pleasure. It meant isolation, especially during the winter months when mountain villagers suffered hunger and boredom. As late as the early 1800s, children from mountain villages were sold as slaves by their parents, as poverty was severe and families with many mouths to feed found it difficult to survive the long winters without casualties. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that the mountains came to be regarded in an entirely new light. This change was due to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s novel Julie ou la nouvelle Héloise, which led to the first tourist interest in Alpine Switzerland. “Back to nature” sentiments and the desire to flee civilization as well as the “low life” of the lowlands saw individuals embarking on mountain explorations as they searched for “solitude à deux” in an intimate dialogue with nature. Wealthy French and English men, in particular, sought out the mountains as a backdrop for spiritual as well as physical transcendence, in sympathy with Rousseau’s protagonist SaintPreux, who was in awe of the freshness of the air in the high mountains, where he could breathe freely and with an unsurpassed degree of lightness and happiness. In a deeply personal pursuit of extreme experiences [Grenzerfahrungen], “the sheer physical exertion on the part of the mountain climber in his attempt to scale [the mountains] refocused the desire for the metaphysical into physical experience”.19 The Alps came to be regarded as a place of initiation, “a necessary stop on the Bildungsreise [journey of discovery] of upper-middle class European men”.20 Indeed, the novelty of these experiences cried out for them to be dramatized and sensationalized. A first endeavour at reproducing the experience was attempted by Englishman Albert Smith, one of the most prominent projection artists of the nineteenth century. Smith had organized an expedition to Mont Blanc in 1851, which served mainly to collect pictures and objects for a mountain “show”.21 The Ascent of Montblanc, employing various illusionary techniques ranging from the laterna magica to dioramas, sound effects, and rolling panoramas, was seen by more than 200,000 spectators in its first two seasons, and it increased the desire of urbanites to experience the Alps.22

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Mountain Films

In the wake of such publicity, mountain tourism started to develop, and provided those from the city with a rewarding opportunity for mobility and travel, and villagers with a new source of income as guides or workers in the hospitality and transport industries. The Alps had thus been absorbed into “the broader consumer culture of modernity”,23 and were also recognized as a source of immediate gratification. After the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848, many members of the young student population, in particular, sought out mountain peaks as substitute goals, where personal, if not social and political, ambitions could be satisfied. In contrast to historical developments (Austria was excluded from Germany’s late formation as a nation-state in 1871), the Alps became the stage on which pan-German interests could be pursued, as was evident in the amalgamation of the German and Austrian Alpenvereine [Alpine clubs] in 1873. Increasingly, the Alps also became a destination for the sick as well as the rich from 1859 on; sanatoriums were built high on the mountainsides, which were considered ideal locations for the open-air treatment of tuberculosis patients.24 As the “absolute opposite of the flatland”, the Alps were seen as a perfect site for losing and finding oneself, “a double movement that echoes throughout the annals of mountaineering from Bénédict de Saussure’s Voyages dans les alpes (1779‒1796) to Pope Pius XI’s Climbs on Alpine Peaks (1923) and beyond”.25 The mountains seemed to promise a possibility of timeless elevation, which ran counter to widespread angst. Against the loss of the old order and the resentment of modernity, this sublime and majestic natural environment provided a response to a “Hunger nach Ganzheit” [hunger for wholeness].26 Mountains became a “primary setting of both literary and visual texts in the Romantic period [and] represented a site of self-discovery and transcendental revelation”.27 Throughout the nineteenth century, the Romantics promoted the solitary as well as the dangerous aspects of mountains, with their poetry, paintings, and compositions inspiring adoration from their many followers to this day. Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings Cathedral in the Mountains (1813), Traveller Looking over a Sea of Fog (1818), and The Watzmann (1824/25), as well as William Turner’s The Passage of the St Gotthard (1804), have influenced the perception of mountains over the past two centuries. These paintings clearly bear the characteristics of the sublime. “Philosophical discourse had constructed the Alpine regions as the locus for the experience of the sublime and the transcendental since they had first become an object of scientific interest in the eighteenth century.”28 A sense of the sublime is evoked by irregularity, diversity, and massive scale, and is experienced when viewing mountains and huge Gothic cathedrals, elevating the soul with a sense of power and infinity. In a metaphorical sense, the high mountains which form the roof of the world served as pagan cathedrals, places of such splendour and magnitude that they were incomprehensible other than through the belief in something greater than humankind, something divine and glorious beyond human understanding. “The sheer immensity of the mountain formations, the freedom of the peaks extending into the open skies, seemed to resist both possession and expression either in language or visual representation.”29 The Alps, with their vast and magnificent panoramas and obscured peaks, evoked feelings of ambivalence. In 1756, Edmund Burke identified the sublime as the strongest emotion our minds are 79

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capable of feeling. This emotion has been linked to adoration, but also to fear. Terror, as Burke put it, is “the common stock of everything that is sublime”.30 The binary emotions of pleasure and pain, of awe and terror, are mirrored in most mountain films, as they “impart to natural forces an uncanny, threatening, and monstrous potential, rendering the Alpine spaces in a gripping and a frequently frenzied manner”.31 At the same time, their “celebrations of Alpine scenery echo the enthusiasms of 18th century nature aesthetics and share the emphases of German romantic landscape painting”.32 The sense of alienation by the industrial world, a major source of inspiration to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Romantics, is still shared by many people today, and may explain the continued popularity of the genre. Now, as then, nature worship was prompted by rapid transformations of the land and landscape, which led many to seek refuge in nature from social change. In the German-speaking countries, industrialization did not take place until the nineteenth century, somewhat later than across the Channel. This period saw the introduction of the new power sources, coal and steam, which enabled the building of infrastructure that greatly aided transport and travel, including the development of an extensive railway system. Similarly, enormous changes in the trades and professions, such as the trend in industry which saw manufacturing businesses run by extended families replaced by mass factory production, led to a sense of alienation. Workers were estranged by machinery and from the fruit of their labour as the production process commoditized humans and work became more and more mechanized and meaningless. In addition, humankind found itself increasingly excluded from nature as common lands were fenced and closed off, and urbanization caused resettlement and the loss of one’s home village. These limitations and losses, along with the rapid industrialization of large regions, led to nascent environmental awareness. Local efforts to protect certain landscapes demonstrated community sensitivity regarding their place of birth, initially quite separate from a nationalistic intent. However, this sentiment opened the way for the increasingly nationalist politics of Heimat, to which some mountain films began to subscribe.33 The promotion of places that were still pristine and, as such, still protected from the tides of change and political intrigue, elevated the value of the entire remaining rural environment, investing it with a stabilizing aura of tradition and a sense of community. One such landscape recognized in this way was the Alpine region. By the late nineteenth century, “the Alps had been fetishized into a visual icon of German cultural identity”,34 and were ripe to be subsumed into the politics of Heimat and their reactionary values which lent themselves to the exclusion of outsiders, as well as to the foundation of national ideologies. This sentiment was expressed in and driven home by mountain films. Since mountain climbers styled themselves as tough fighters battling the elements and proving their stamina, combat was easily integrated into their credo by eager nationalists. War was declared the true purpose in the life of an Alpinist.35 Many mountaineers supposedly dreamt, “even before the time came, it would be their greatest joy and most splendid goal to risk life and limb by being allowed to defend the mountains, their own specific and true Heimat”.36 Following the experience of the First World War, the newly developing genre of mountain films was promoted as a cure “for our weary and dis80

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traught contemporaries. For the veterans of war, for warriors who need[ed] a rest.”37 In the mountain settings, seemingly removed from civilization and time, damaged individuals could heal their mind and body. However, the victorious pose of the mountaineer on top of a peak that was captured in these mountain films was also balm to the soul for the many individuals who experienced a drastic loss of social standing during the economic turmoil of the 1920s. The mountains thus became an ideal stage for the temporary metamorphosis from loser to winner.38 Feelings of ecstasy and jubilation at the sight of mountain panoramas were, however, not only the forte of nationalists; Marxist theorist Béla Balázs noted euphorically in the 1920s “the feeling of ecstasy and inspiration, which is transmitted from the spiritual to the spatial-physical on an ascent above 1,500 metres and in the process is reinforced. […] Elation”.39 Film-makers could thus tap into a reservoir of primal urges and attract visitors of all political colours, thanks to the timeless lure of the Alps. Dr Arnold Fanck (1889‒1974), a geologist from Frankenthal in the Rhineland Palatinate, is widely regarded as the founder of the mountain film. Although his most creative period was during the post-war years (1919‒33), when the film medium had consolidated and expanded and was in the process of adopting longer narratives, Fanck’s style still bears clear hallmarks of the experimental Wilhelminian cinema. As a keen photographer, Fanck had his first taste of film-making with his collaborative work on the short-film documentary Besteigung des Monte Rosa auf Skiern [Ascending Mount Rosa on Skis, 1913], shot in Switzerland, at a time when Germany’s film industry rose “from a small cottage industry to a national one”.40 Parallel to the development of the industry from small, documentary-style films and its increasing commercialization, Fanck grew with the medium and gradually moved on41 to make his first feature film, Das Wunder des Schneeschuhs [The Miracle of Skis, 1919/20, as well as a second part in 1929], which was followed by the publication of a skiing instruction booklet.42 Fanck’s films introduced audiences to a novel means of transport and subsequent sport, skiing. Having shown its usefulness during the First World War,43 skiing slowly metamorphosed from a military skill into an activity which appealed to the public. Fanck, who also ran a ski clinic in Arlberg, saw mountain films as an ideal advertising tool, and in 1920, together with Odo Deodatus Tauern, Bernhard Villinger, and Rolf Bauer, founded the “Freiburger Berg- und Sportfilm GmbH” [Freiburg Mountain- and Sport-film Pty Ltd] to promote Alpine outdoor activities. Their production The Miracle of Skis and its sequel Eine Fuchsjagd auf Skiern durch Engadin [A Fox Chase on Skis through Engadin, 1922] were extremely successful, and have an even broader appeal today.44 These early attempts at fusing together a storyline and skiing action gradually transformed the mountain film genre. Short films grew into feature films, documentaries became fictional narratives, and the solitary master mountain climber turned into the model tourist from the city. By the early 1920s, the new narrative features had marginalized the short-film format and the documentary style, and thus the mountain film genre evolved to become, epitomized in the formulaic storyline nowadays associated with the genre, that which it is renowned for today—the struggle of man and nature, serving the cult of masculinity as much as the glorification of iconographic sites of nationhood. The typical situation depicted in Fanck’s early features centred 81

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on the mountaineer’s recreational triumph over nature, while becoming one with it. The Alpine scenery was never merely a backdrop—it played a central part in the composition of each scene as well as in the development of the action. The mountains shared equal billing with the protagonists, motivating their every move, as well as those of the camera. The dichotomy of man and mountain always favoured nature, rewriting history as fate, with the mountain serving as a “quasi-sakraler Handlungsraum” [quasi-sacred setting],45 as a number of Fanck’s film titles, including Der heilige Berg [The Holy Mountain, 1925/26] and Der Berg des Schicksals [The Mountain of Fate, 1924] suggest. Fanck’s film The Mountain of Fate, the first in which he focused his attention on a climber rather than a skier, inspired Leni Riefenstahl to become an actress, just as he had earlier introduced the architect Luis Trenker to the profession. The advent of these courageous and charismatic actors-cumdirectors, who never used stand-ins for difficult stunts, saw the films’ storylines gradually shift away from the simple duality of the battle between man and mountain to include a rivalry between men for the experience of conquering the mountain and winning the affections of a woman. In The Holy Mountain, the first mountain film produced by the German film company Ufa46 and the first in which Leni Riefenstahl played the lead, the heroic deed no longer merely involves the mastery of mountaineering but also the suppression or sublimation of one’s sexual desires.47 The film, which ends with the death of two male friends who become one with nature in choosing death over a woman, received a scathing review in 1927 from Siegfried Kracauer, who denounced it as “[a] gigantic composition of body culture-fantasy, sunshine idiocy and cosmic capers”.48 Kracauer continued with references to “Naturschwelgerei” [indulgence in nature], “Nebelgebräu” [brewing of fog], “Sentimentalität” [sentimentality], “Narren” [fools], and “Ungeist” [the demonic], while also applauding the shots of nature as “wundervoll” [wonderful] and “mustergültig” [exemplary].49 Indeed, Fanck’s skills as a photographer and his experience as a director of quasi-documentaries overcome the banality of most of his films’ storylines, letting the awe-inspiring scenes, which juxtapose man and nature, shine through. No matter how inane the plot, his cinematography was met with praise from audiences, critics (even Kracauer), and actors alike. His visual style, identified as being related to art movements such as the New Vision (because of its documentary tendencies), New Photography, and New Objectivity (because of its realist aesthetics), makes the conquest of the mountain at the same time a conquest and discovery of technology and modernism.50 Rejecting the lack of atmosphere of the conventional film studio, Fanck took to the great outdoors. His films celebrate nature: whether set among the towering peaks of the Alps or the icebergs of Greenland, each highlights the “seductive force [and] mysterious power which the mountains exude and which force people into inescapable dependency. The mountain rages and demands sacrifices.”51 At the same time, they represented a major challenge: in the 1920s and 30s, there were numerous peaks that had not yet been climbed.52 Like the other few places on earth that remained terra incognita, such mountain peaks acquired the status of an enigma and were associated with ideas of the sublime and the mythical. The mountains were glorified linguistically as well as cinematographically, as is evident in many reviews of 82

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mountain films which refer to them as displays of “Wunder” [wonders], of the “Unsagbaren” [unspeakable], and of “namenloser Schönheit” [as yet unnamed beauty],53 with their effect on the viewer described as overwhelming and emotionally draining. The genre reached its pinnacle, in both popularity and quality, around 1930, with the transition to sound film perceived as a regression, as “the spoken word […] was obviously detrimental to the mute pathos of […] landscape images”.54 Its rise and peak thus coincided with the ascent of National Socialism, leading many critics—inspired in particular by Kracauer’s and Sontag’s critiques—to interpret mountain films retrospectively as expressions of irrationalism and mysticism, which were dangerously close to Fascist ideology. In 1933, Alfred Beierle wrote in a German magazine about the mountain film genre: “Arnold Fanck is the discoverer of the heroic in nature” and “answers mankind’s fateful questions not in the puny language of aesthetics, but—without any compromise—in the unique, living language of blood, which is also the language of the eternal laws of nature”.55 Indeed, the films’ locations coincided with Hitler’s “Lieblings- und Ruheaufenthalt” [favourite place and peaceful getaway],56 the world visible from the Berghof above Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps. This place that offered grand panoramic vistas and commanding views seemed to empower the individual. Similar to the colonizing urge, the view to distant spaces provoked an assumption of authority and power, inviting future appropriation and an alpha mentality. Nazi propagandists were expert at instrumentalizing the mountaineers’ submission to the law of nature, the ethos of the survival of the fittest,57 as well as the mountain landscapes, in order to make political statements, thus implying that Hitler’s vision arose from his unhindered view over his empire.58 Fifty years of academic criticism, however, did not prevent a rehabilitation of the genre which began in the late 1980s.59 Many of the films from the 1920s and 30s have been released on video and, more recently, on DVD, and have since been heralded as seminal examples of German film history.60 There have also been numerous film festivals in recent years which have celebrated Fanck’s oeuvre and promoted a personal cult around him, a cult embraced in particular by his grandson Matthias Fanck, whose attendance, for example, at the “Bergsichten” [mountain views] festival in Dresden in November 2007 increased the general awareness of, and reverence for, the mountain film genre and its most important director. In the following examination of several mountain films, three overarching aspects will be considered: the films’ immanent reality (plot, form, action), the motivation behind their production (why was the content thematized in this particular form at that particular time?), and their reception (including their intended or accidental instrumentalization) from the perspective of the time of their release as well as from today’s viewpoint.61 The Alps in Fanck’s films, formerly seen as the “locus of a Faustian experience”,62 which enabled deeper insight into, and knowledge about, oneself and the world, were eventually reduced to a mere physical challenge. The popularization of skiing, hiking, and climbing had prompted the search for ever-bolder challenges and more remote destinations, which Fanck was keen to depict on screen. In his choice of location, “Fanck showed a commendable disregard for national boundaries”, he shot “wherever the 83

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scenery suited him best”,63 in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, the Italian Dolomites, as well as in Greenland. Snow-covered and remote landscapes, regardless whether they were on the European continent or in the polar regions, served “as a screen upon which individual and national desires and conflicts could be projected, as a stage for the construction and performance of identity”.64 Especially when considering the socio-historical context of their release, Fanck’s mountain films must be viewed from a typically German perspective: the unifying sub-text of Fanck’s dramatic mountain films is Germany’s defeat in the First World War. From his feature Im Kampf mit dem Berg [In the Battle with the Mountain, 1921] to his final Bergfilm, Der ewige Traum [The Eternal Dream, 1934], the landscape represents the military battlefield. It is not an opposing army that needs to be conquered but nature, with the mountain film genre dealing dialectically with motifs of creation and death. The rock massif and the eternal ice provide a fitting backdrop for the ultimate success, as well as the ultimate end.65 Mountains as “Urlandschaften und Alternativ-Friedhöfe” [primeval landscapes and alternative cemeteries]66 seal the fate of masculine heroes who succeed eventually if they possess the right virtues: strength, perseverance, and respect for nature as well as for their fellow mountaineers. Male camaraderie and bonding form the central focus of the narratives; in contrast, the female characters are few in number and ineffectual, serving merely as catalysts for, and spectators of, the action. Mountain films can thus be seen as parables, depicting the triumph of masculine law over feminine nature.67 The dramatic mountain rescues—performed either by teams of mountain climbers or, as in Fanck’s later films, by First World War flying ace Ernst Udet—lend a military sub-text to the dramas, focusing on the necessity for “order and discipline, community and homosocial bonding”.68 In essence, Fanck’s mountain setting can be read as “a stage upon which the drama of the war is replayed, the primary scene of trauma dominated by the figure of the mountain climber [linking] German national identity and masculine identity”.69 As such, Fanck’s mountain films do not correspond with Kracauer’s teleological narrative of Weimar cinema being pre-Fascist, but instead provide ample reason to be read as post‒First World War manifestations of a confirmation of (male) identity and (masculine) heroism. This argument has been largely ignored thus far,70 although Fanck’s most successful films—Im Kampf mit dem Berge [In the Battle with the Mountain, 1921], set to music by Paul Hindemith, Die weiße Hölle vom Piz Palü [The White Hell of Piz Palü, 1928], another silent film, which was some four hours long in its original version,71 Stürme über dem Montblanc [Storms over Mont Blanc, 1930], which marked Fanck’s shift to sound film, and SOS Eisberg [SOS Iceberg, 1932]—pre-date the Nazi period and cannot easily be incorporated into a proto-Fascist lineage. Fanck did not initially seek association with the Reich, let alone with the Nazis, and experienced considerable difficulties as a result. His “resistance” saw him come into conflict with Joseph Goebbels, as Fanck did not want to join the Party and preferred to pursue projects employing French actors and settings, such as in The Eternal Dream, also known as Der König vom Mont-Blanc [King of Mont Blanc, 1934] as well as a Jewish producer, Gregor Rabinowitsch. Ultimately, however, financial pressures may have led Fanck to succumb and shoot a Nazi propaganda film, namely, Ein Robinson [One Robinson, 1938/39] for Bavaria Filmkunst 84

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[Bavaria Film Art], as well as several other questionable pieces. The films Fanck made during the Nazi era were banned by the Allies after 1945, after which he was unable to secure any funds for film projects. This left the pioneer of the genre impoverished and forced to earn a living as a forest worker. When The Eternal Dream was featured at the Mountain Film Festival in Trient (1957), Fanck’s oeuvre underwent a brief renaissance; however, it was not enough to improve his financial situation. In summary, the mountain film genre evolved, with documentary-style mountain and ski films gradually assuming narrative contours. Admirers labelled them “Kulturfilme” [documentary films],72 while critics resorted to censure, alluding to them as “reactionary fantasies which fed on and fuelled anti-modern persuasions”.73 The main themes in Fanck’s mountain films were the sublime quality of the Alps as a backdrop for the confrontation between man and nature, a confrontation imbued with all the hallmarks of heroic deeds and the might of fate. Some of his most heroic images resulted from Fanck’s sheer creativity when confronted with technical limitations. The orthochromatic film material of the time could not adequately distinguish between rock and climber, making both appear bleak and greyish, forcing Fanck to resort to the use of back-lighting techniques which, rather fortuitously, had the effect of glorifying his protagonists. While this pioneer of the medium and genre proved technically inventive, he was, alas, no storyteller. Rather, “Fanck was at heart a still photographer, forever experimenting with different lenses, exposure times and developing baths [...] Influenced by the Renger-Patsch tradition of the New Regionalism.”74 He was able to inject his films with “the textures and tonalities of the photographic print: using slow motion, back lighting, contrasts in scale and strong separation of background and foreground”.75 He also introduced the technique of deep focus [Überschneiden der Standfläche], which results in the viewer being virtually drawn into the image. Rejecting techniques of expressionism—such as “oblique angles, flat surfaces, skewed perspectives, and chiaroscuro lighting”76— Fanck’s Bergfilme are truly innovative, and he advanced both the medium and the genre in a modernist fashion. Fanck’s films did not depict untouched nature as a central theme, but rather man’s struggle with the forces of nature, the synthesis of mountain and machine, as well as the euphoria of using new technology: “Aside from snowy landscapes, layers of cloud and unpopulated spaces, there also appear tourists, health resorts, cars, aeroplanes, observatories, and weather stations in the film.”77 It is perhaps unnecessary to add that Fanck’s films mainly indulged male fantasies, reducing women and mountains to challenges. The Alps as protagonists, however, did not necessarily relegate the male mountaineer to antagonist status. On the contrary, “the figure of the mountain climber […] both narratively and cinematically, belongs to the natural landscape”.78 Thus Fanck’s films appealed to nature conservationists as well as to progressive developers who supported tourism and advocated the conquering spirit displayed in the films. Fanck himself said of his achievements: “Above all I have afforded countless millions of serious people an uplifting, pleasing and really valuable nature experience with my ski mountain films.”79 While the Bergfilm is clearly an important genre of the Weimar period, it is often quite wrongly “spoken of as a precursor of National Socialism”.80 The argument that the genre shows a linear develop85

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ment towards Nazi ideology is reductive and, at times, far-fetched, as it is clear that only a minority of mountain films fit within this logic. One could just as easily see similarities with other genres and ideologies, for example, in the American Western, as both Western and mountain films mediate “natural shapes and melodramatic story lines, sublime wonders and human conquests [...] primal nature with modern technologies”.81 Therefore, Fanck’s films can also be called “vertical Western”, in which the hero moves upwards rather than westwards.82 Nevertheless, most critics choose to ignore such lines of development and concentrate on the Fascism link. Many remain uneasy about the connection between the Bergfilm’s “symbolic investment of archetypal landscapes and their enlistment in the national imaginary”.83 Fanck’s international team and sets may diffuse some of these concerns; however, the stigma of proto-Fascist values being endorsed in their narrative proves persistent. Only in recent years has a renaissance of his work focused more easily on his technical and modernist qualities, which has ensured the survival of the genre, albeit in adaptations and modifications. The use of filters, special film stock, and slow motion sequences which combine to endow magnificent natural scenery with dramatic overtones are the techniques that denote Fanck’s auteurship. This technical finesse, as well as his innovative use of lenses with focal lengths of 220, 300, or 500 mm instead of the conventional 50‒80 mm studio lenses, inspired Leni Riefenstahl, among others, to employ identical methods in her first foray into directing, Das blaue Licht [The Blue Light, 1932].84

Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light (1932) Riefenstahl’s film The Blue Light is a mountain film about the discovery of new spaces and the demystification of nature. Functioning as its two organizing tropes are a woman and a mountain, both of which signify terra incognita, and operate as sites for mapping, naming, claiming, and conquest. In the course of the film’s narrative, the uncharted, yet desired, is transferred from the unknown to the known, losing part of its mystique in the process. The Blue Light was the first film Riefenstahl directed after founding her own production company, Leni Riefenstahl-Produktion, in 1931.85 Along with her resolve “to make a mountain film in which the woman should play a more important role than the mountains”,86 and to change the Bergfilm’s style from realism to legend or fairy-tale,87 Riefenstahl’s debut as a director and producer promised a fresh impetus for the genre, and this has turned out to be the case, given the film’s many transformations. There are four versions of The Blue Light, released in 1932, 1938, 1952, and posthumously in 2005. The four versions attribute authorship differently, and the respective promotional materials emphasize distinct aspects of the story. The 1932 version is advertised as a co-production of director Leni Riefenstahl, scriptwriter Béla Balázs, and cameraman Hans Schneeberger, presenting a “mountain legend from the Dolomites”.88 The 1938 re-release, sparked by Riefenstahl’s success with Olympia, speaks only of “a mountain legend told and reshaped into images by Leni Riefenstahl”. It neglects to recognize Riefenstahl’s co-producers, one of whom, Harry R. Sokal, had a Jewish background. It also fails to mention the fact that the film is not set in 86

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Germany.89 In 1952, the film is promoted simply as “a mountain legend by Leni Riefenstahl”, again relying on her fame as the selling-point. On her deathbed, Riefenstahl married Horst Kettner, a long-time associate who was many years her junior. Kettner was heir to her artistic work and material wealth. He released The Blue Light on DVD in 2005 under the label Leni Riefenstahl-Produktion, featuring the original version of the film as well as the 1952 remake. However, both versions share the same credits, attributing authorship to Riefenstahl alone: “A mountain legend by Leni Riefenstahl. […] Book, Camera and Direction Leni Riefenstahl”. Therefore, the posthumously released DVD introduces a fourth version. Despite these differences, all four versions essentially have an identical plot, with Riefenstahl herself playing Junta, a mysterious gypsy who lives in a Tyrolean mountain hut together with a child who works as a goatherd.90 The woman is at home in the mountainous terrain between an isolated village and a mountain that emits a mysterious blue light at each full moon. Young men from the village are drawn to the mountain by a confluence of the blue light and Junta’s erotic aura; however, they all end up falling to their deaths, as only Junta has the skills and knowledge to climb the mountain safely, affording her sublime vistas. She also knows that the blue glow is due to the moonlight reflecting off crystals in a cave high up in the mountain, to which she climbs frequently and where she seeks spiritual introspection and redemption. A visiting painter, Vigo, played by Mathias Wieman, is drawn to her when he sees her treated as an outcast in the village. He moves into her hut and shares her enjoyment of the simple life. During the next full moon, he secretly follows Junta, observing her ascent to the cave, thus discovering not only its existence but also the only safe route to it. Struck by the logical explanation for the light, Vigo runs to the Sarntal villagers to educate them about it, suggesting that they mine the minerals and profit from the former curse which had seen so many young village men die. Junta is shocked when she next returns to her plundered cave, following a Hänsel-and-Gretel-like trail, not of stones but of crystals and mining utensils such as hammers and ropes. Her body language expresses her feelings, first angst and foreboding then heartbreak and disillusionment. Distraught at the ravaging of her sanctuary, she loses her balance and falls to her death, holding a crystal in her hand. Junta becomes eternally one with the mountain when she is buried at its base. Driven by guilt, the villagers erect a tombstone testifying to the injustice done to her through the destruction of her ancient and mythic Heimat— the cave and the magic of the mountain. They also pay tribute to her by recounting her life-story, thereby immortalizing Junta and transforming her tale into legend. Just as the Alps have been described in terms of the “other”, as “untouched by the passage of time, […] the absolutely ‘timeless’ landscape”,91 Junta herself becomes part of this eternal sphere. Through her death she has avoided being part of the cave’s exploitation and thus preserves her position as a being outside of society’s influence and intrigues. The 1952 version of the film, until 2005 the version most commonly in distribution as it is Riefenstahl’s last authorized version, starts in medias res, with Junta enjoying herself at a waterfall and observing with fear and anticipation the arrival of Vigo, a representative of the leisured class, who is introduced without reference to any family or national connection. The footage of the carriage bringing Vigo to the mountains is reminiscent of scenes in the 87

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Dracula films by Murnau92 and Browning.93 Both Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Carl Laemmle’s Universal Pictures production by Browning of Dracula (1931) have a very similar opening sequence, which has since been copied by other directors reviving the Dracula myth.94 In The Blue Light, the carriage is captured from an elevated camera angle making its way through the mountains on a winding path. When it halts, Vigo’s fellow passengers neither speak to him nor help him disembark, and the questions he directs to the coach driver remain unanswered. An eerie silence dominates the scene as if to imply that Vigo is doomed, and the expressions on the faces of the elderly and hostile-looking passengers seem to confirm that they know he is going to a cursed place. Finally, the door of the carriage is closed by an invisible hand and the coach glides away, leaving Vigo behind, puzzled and uneasy. Jonathan Harker’s entry into the realm of the vampires in Murnau’s 1921 film Nosferatu is paralleled in Vigo’s arrival in the village of Santa Maria. Both directors, Murnau and Riefenstahl, rely more on visual effects than narrative in their attempts to create an atmosphere akin to a “chilly draft from doomsday”.95 Further references to the Dracula films are evident when Vigo joins Junta in her hut. The initial encounter takes place when Junta is sleeping. Vigo enters, kneels next to the bed, and leans over her face; vulnerably close, her exposed neck clearly resembles similar shots of victims in the vampire films. Riefenstahl’s Vigo, though initially portrayed as a travelling tourist entering a dangerous locale, turns out to be not a victim but a villain, an “intruder and […] something of a vampire. He will gaze at Junta greedily and lustfully, bending over her sleeping body, enraptured by the sight of her exposed breasts. And in the end, his look will virtually suck all vitality from her.”96 His entrance into Junta’s hut, just like his discovery of her cave, is also shot in a way that reveals Vigo’s character. Like him, the audience become voyeurs; it is as if the viewer is breaking into the private and spiritual sphere of Junta’s womb-like cave. Junta’s connection to her place of refuge, and perhaps worship, is fundamental, with the grotto functioning almost as her protective super-ego. In the depiction of the cave, familiar allegories of womb and Heimat, virginity and religion, and also Alpine epiphany and aesthetics converge, mediating between terrestrial and celestial.97 Junta is shown to be endangered and vulnerable; however, she is not entirely innocent, as other stylizations of her character as Madonna and whore suggest. Early scenes in the film introduce Junta in torn, revealing clothes, implying that she is less than wholesome. Later scenes which show her caring for the boy and Vigo in the mountain hut highlight a maternal nurturing side, while sacred nuances dominate towards the end of the film, preparing the audience for her canonization in the folk-tale. Aided by Guiseppe Becce’s operatic score with its overwhelming monumentality, Junta appears to be equipped with the “Insignien eines Bühnenfestspiels” [insignia of a stage festival production],98 her portrayal heavy with religious connotations, such as when she assumes a devotional posture in the cave, marvelling at nature’s wonders. In keeping with these suggestions, Junta dies a martyr, allowing the villagers to continue with their myth-making and artistic exploitation of suffering, just as they have already done with the construction of a memorial featuring life-size sculptures of the dead young men. In its celestial iconography, her death is imbued with mythical overtones. She becomes the object of worship, but not of soci88

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ety’s remorse or contrition; Junta’s death is less a cause for the villagers to mourn than a chance for a new beginning—she needed to be sacrificed for this fresh start. The essential function of Heimat for the villagers is thus to “belong” and, to reinforce this, an “other” must be expelled. “If the price of civilization in Nosferatu is the sublimation of nature’s underworld and the exorcism of its darker side, [...] in The Blue Light [it] similarly involves the vitiation of the elemental and the arrest of potential threat.”99 Junta’s passing seems inevitable, as it is only when she is dead that she can be controlled. The villagers do so by enclosing her beautified and domesticated image in a framed plaque and reducing her to a commercial product by selling her story—as the film itself does. The mythologization of Junta, constructed through the use of the fairy-tale-like narrative of the myth of the blue crystals, presents a sanitized version of her inability to conform. The mountain legend of her sacrifice invites the viewer to witness and also to side with the villagers in their denial of responsibility for her death. The Blue Light depicts the construction of collective memory and also of collective amnesia, ironically making it representative not of proto-Fascist but rather of post-Fascist tendencies in Germany. The film’s plot is very much driven by images rather than narrative. This makes the final product in many ways reminiscent of a silent film, in that it features little dialogue and is carried by the actors’ expressiveness and by the score, hinting perhaps at the early constraints and potential drawbacks of the then fairly new medium of film with sound. “Theatrical action”, “stationary surroundings”, “inner life dramas at the expense of conflict involving outer reality”, “theatrical affinity […] due to technical backwardness”, and an initially “immovable camera” were prime factors that needed to be overcome or reconceptualized in the early years of film-making.100 Indeed, The Blue Light has many static scenes that almost give it the feel of a stage-bound piece, and—as Eisner points out rather polemically—“the sound often seems superimposed”, “the bleating goats and sheep weaken the force of the image”, and “the freshness and spontaneity of the open-air shots are marred by the overperfect, over-smooth shots” filmed “in the studio whenever the climbs were too difficult or the acrobatics too dangerous”.101 For practical reasons, it was necessary to create some of the sets in the studio, with Junta’s cave “reminiscent of a model in Fanck’s The Holy Mountain [and] salt and white powder representing snow and ice”.102 Such techniques give the film a certain patchwork aesthetic and overall dilettantish feel, both technically as well as artistically. The Blue Light’s underdeveloped storyline and characters can conceivably be attributed to the fact that the film was the product of several minds: cameraman Hans Schneeberger and scriptwriters Carl Mayer and Béla Balázs, whose own fascination with the romantic and the mystical is expressed in the film,103 as well as Arnold Fanck, the prominent editor who joined the team in the post-production stage. Limitations may also have been a result of Riefenstahl’s inexperience and the multiple responsibilities she had taken on. This was her first attempt at directing while also starring in the film and—given its limited budget—carrying out a number of tasks and duties during production. Riefenstahl herself was well aware of the film’s shortcomings.104 After the first private showing of the film she had finished without Balázs—the German writer and critic of Hungarian descent who was in 89

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Moscow at the time105—Fanck was so critical of the narrative that he decided to take on the editing work himself. The drama unfolding on screen was more than matched by the welldocumented high emotion displayed post-production, and Riefenstahl did her best to communicate her version of events. While she supposedly applauded Fanck’s editing of the first two acts, she did not approve of the third, and repeatedly took over from Fanck despite her self-proclaimed fragile health at the time.106 The last act had to be finished in a matter of days, resulting in major clashes between Fanck and Mayer, as well as with the music composer, Guiseppe Becce, who was forced to hastily rearrange his composition to fit the new cut just weeks before the film’s premiere. Riefenstahl repeatedly discredited the contribution of others, especially Fanck’s. “What I saw was a mutilation. What had Fanck done to my film! I have never found out whether it was an act of revenge, or whether he just could not connect with the subject.”107 The patchy direction may explain some of the weaknesses and inconsistencies, as well as the frequent narrative mistakes, such as when wet hair becomes miraculously dry and then wet again in the opening scenes showing Junta at the waterfall, or the inconsistencies in the name of the village— “Osteria” [tavern or countryside hotel], “Sarntal”, and “Santa Maria”. Overall, the plot of The Blue Light remained underdeveloped, despite, or because of, various re-editing efforts on Riefenstahl’s part following its initial release. However, the seemingly primordial pull of the landscape and its significance, which herald a deep sense of a lost Heimat, are evident in all versions. The Alps in general, and Junta in particular, are depicted as antagonistic towards the villagers. The film’s design implies a dichotomous topography which symbolizes the division between the village and the blue light. In one sequence in which the villagers pursue Junta and drive her away from the town, the mob stops at the bridge which crosses the mountain stream, and which marks the border between the two hostile spheres of civilization and wilderness. Junta is different, shunning society to live—separated from it by creek, woods, and highlands—in the mountains, demonstrating the division between the townsfolk and the “other”. The village is thus established as a safe haven contrasted with the alluring unknown of Monte Cristallo, representing both the mystique of Junta and that of nature. Even after her death, the villagers’ storytelling seems designed to expel or tame the immoderate powers of the female, with the loss of lives and male superiority attributed to Junta’s destructive and destabilizing influence. “Clearly, Bergfilme render exterior nature and female bodies as spaces of exploration and sanctuary, mountains and women representing unpredictable and autonomous natural forces that attract and overwhelm.”108 This statement is doubly applicable, with the film treating nature as the villagers do Junta: “The panoramic arrest of sublime landscapes goes hand-in-hand with a desire to shape and subdue female presence”, making mountains and women “elements [...] that one tries to contain and control with the modern means at man’s disposal—with mixed success.”109 The villagers succeed with the help of the mediator Vigo, who guides their eventual emergence from the darkness of the unknown towards enlightenment, literally assisting their ascent to the grotto, as well as effecting a general reappraisal of the town’s attitude towards the blue light. No matter how logical and enlightened Vigo’s character might appear to the au90

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dience, he too initially falls victim to the spell of the mystical and the mysterious when he is drawn to Junta, her hut, and Monte Cristallo, and it is he who also aids the ultimate veneration of Junta, reviving her mystique through the villagers’ storytelling. This combination of demystification followed by remystification is evident to many travellers, albeit with negative consequences. Nenno states in general terms that through tourism “the alpine landscape is transformed from inhospitable to accommodating, from turbulent to harmonious; no longer a site of spirituality and pilgrimage, the landscape is transformed […] into a consumer item.”110 She goes on to show that in The Blue Light, Riefenstahl thematized “the inevitable legacy of mass tourism” meditating on “tourism’s destruction of the natural landscape, ultimately recuperating this loss through cultural tourism, a practice that embraces and enshrines the past”.111 The Blue Light shares this motif with subsequent Heimat films, which also seek to show idealized images of nature, tradition, and folklore. Riefenstahl manages to keep her glorification of mountain life in perspective by counter-balancing nature’s idyll with a sense of impending destruction, and juxtaposing the wholesome country life of healthy farmers and pretty Dirndl-wearing girls with expressionistic images of local characters with harsh, distinctive features. In this way, Riefenstahl managed to avoid the kitsch that had become the norm in so many other mountain tales. However, many critics nevertheless failed to recognize Riefenstahl’s deliberate and revealing use of kitsch—for example, her self-referential critique of Junta’s transformation as brought about by Vigo—by deeming it unintentional and uncritical. Vigo’s gaze transforms Junta’s face in death into an iconic image, death re-formed into beauty, purposefully creating a sentimental image.112 Her well-groomed and made-up portrait, worthy of the promotion of a Hollywood star, not only fetishizes but also imposes control over her. In turn, the framed image at the end of the film corresponds with the framing narrative that formed its original structure. Junta has undergone a metamorphosis from a “disruptive force […] into [a] more manageable [form]”.113 It appears that this woman can only be in harmony with society in death,114 when her potential threat and erotic attraction have been subdued. Following Junta’s death and the resultant eradication of the threat she represented—with all the quasi-religious overtones that can in turn be linked, according to Friedländer, with kitsch, eroticization, and Nazism115—the mountains, as a matrix for heroism and mythical individualism amidst a world of alienating modernism, form an ambivalent image. By implying a link between Vigo’s tourism and the villagers’ capitalism, their role in the destruction of nature and their desire to preserve an aspect of the past in a glorified form, the film can be seen as self-referential, inasmuch as Vigo’s gaze and the villagers’ actions mimic the workings of the film and the tourism industry alike.116 Both have the power to create and transform images, as well as to construct myths. Riefenstahl as actor and director became expert at this; even in her first feature she clearly moves away from Fanck’s realism as well as from his credo of shooting on location,117 and adopts a perspective which relies heavily on metaphors, pseudo-religious symbolism, and the mythical. Her film direction “blends anti-modern sentiment and a rational solution, […] combines romantic iconography, sophisticated technical innovation, and a generic framework”,118 while self-critically revealing the workings of visual media and mass deception. 91

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More controversial, however, is her disregard for her colleagues and the sources of her inspiration as she blithely borrows and misappropriates elements from other genres and media. Inter-textual references abound, albeit mostly without acknowledgement. There was the village tale that was supposedly relayed to Riefenstahl upon her first visit to the Dolomites in 1924, together with Gustav Renker’s novel Bergkristall [Rock Crystal, 1926], and Stifter’s novella of the same name (1845) that were probable sources of reference, although Riefenstahl never admitted to this.119 Other sources of inspiration for the title and content of the film have been shown to include the quintessential romantic quest for the divine and ineffable, as symbolized by Novalis’ blue flower,120 as well as images painted by Caspar David Friedrich. As Rentschler points out: “Quite dramatically, the film commingles the iconography of nineteenth-century German landscape painting with the narrative idiosyncrasies of the Novelle”, and The Blue Light also builds “on the melodramatic constellations of mountain film (Bergfilm) as well as the genre’s predilection for natural settings and imposing elements”.121 The Blue Light shares with the Bergfilm genre, romanticism, and the novella structure an acute sense of the “Sündenfall der Menschheit” [Fall of Mankind] attributed to the “Degradierung der Natur zum blossen Material” [degradation of nature to the bare materials].122 This sin ultimately seals the fate of humankind, even if this logic is not pursued in the film to its bitter end. The sentiment of impending doom hangs over the film from the very beginning with Vigo’s arrival, and constitutes another inter-textual genre reference, as the “evocation of mysterious primal forces in the exterior world reflects a further debt to a darker side of German romanticism explored by another of Riefenstahl’s models, the director F. W. Murnau”.123 Rentschler lauds Fanck’s and Riefenstahl’s use of light and shadow, landscape and individual, which he likens to Caspar David Friedrich’s composition techniques. He points out that all infuse “nature with arousing power” and transform “landscape into emotional spaces, granting exterior nature an interior resonance”.124 The use of silhouetting in particular, “where figures shaded in dark contours pose against a luminescent and vague backdrop”,125 has been attributed to Friedrich’s influence, as is the framing of figures “who stand with their backs to the viewer, staring into the distance, [...] characters who embody yearning, persons wishing to merge with the grandeur before them”.126 Criticism of the genre in general, and Riefenstahl’s film in particular, has been voiced most notably by Siegfried Kracauer127 and, in later years, by Susan Sontag, who saw manifestations of “proto-Nazi sentiments”128 in The Blue Light, as in other mountain films. They perceived the essence of the Bergfilm to be the expression of an anti-rationalist belief in the laws of nature, in the way they glorified a “submission to inexorable destiny and elemental might, anticipating fascist surrender to irrationalism and brute force”.129 Furthermore, the escapism promoted by the mountain films was regarded as dangerous and illusory. “[T]he mountain film manifests a desire to take flight from the troubled streets of modernity, from anomie and inflation, to escape into a pristine world of snow-covered peaks and overpowering elements.”130 Kracauer’s argument that the mountain film genre constitutes a logical precursor to the Nazi Heimat films131 is supported by the fact that there were shared casts, crews, sources, and titles which “link the Bergfilm 92

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with the blood-and-soil productions of the Third Reich as well as the homeland films of the Adenauer era”.132 To counteract such criticism upon the film’s third release in post-war 1950s Germany, Riefenstahl was keen to influence the reception of The Blue Light by pointing out similarities between herself and the heroine of the film. Riefenstahl would have the public believe that she, like Junta,133 “had her own intuitive feelings about nature and was destroyed by her naïve disregard of the real world around her, the world she set out to avoid”.134 Indeed, if one were to watch only The Blue Light and not her later films, one could be forgiven for forming the impression that Riefenstahl stands out as a promising film-maker. Alice Schwarzer, the German feminist and publicist, claimed that The Blue Light would have been a cult film for the women’s movement, as well as the environmental movement, had it not been for her Nazi affiliations.135 Other critics concur when referring to the film as a “production of an ambivalent self-sacrifice, a woman’s martyrdom, and described by Leni Riefenstahl in the subtitle as a ‘legend’, the film which decisively led to establishing her fame”.136 Nevertheless, her reception has remained mixed, as after 1945 Riefenstahl found herself either condemned or adored, and throughout her life she sought immortality in the love of, and veneration by, people at home and abroad. For Riefenstahl, as well as for Junta, Heimat could only be found posthumously in stylized iconography.

Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son (1934) While the colour of choice in Riefenstahl’s film was blue and the atmosphere mythical, Luis Trenker chose brown and heroic. While Riefenstahl used Fanck’s heritage for self-promotion, Trenker willingly promoted Nazi ideology, thus justifying Stefan König’s claim: “The mountains are turning brown.”137 Luis Trenker was born Alois Franz Trenker in 1892 to German-speaking parents in the Tyrolean village of St Ulrich in the Dolomites (formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Ortisei, Italy). He studied architecture from 1912 until the outbreak of the First World War, during which he fought on the Austrian side, serving mainly in the Alps. Following the end of the war and the treaties of Versailles and St Germaine, South Tyrol became part of Italy in September 1919. “In spite of assurances that the natives’ language, culture, and economic interests would be preserved, Mussolini’s officials began a policy of enforced Italianization in 1923”.138 The area was now officially called “Alto Adige”, and referring to it as “German Tyrol” or “South Tyrol” was declared a punishable offence.139 In 1919, Trenker resumed his studies and subsequently worked as an architect in Bozen (Bolzano) with the world-famous Clemens Holzmeister. Considering that Trenker experienced the Italian repression of his native culture, the pan-German nationalism expressed in many of his films can be seen as an act of rebellion by a member of a recently formed and threatened ethnic minority. Given his diverse interests and many talents, including skiing, hiking, and designing, Trenker was open to new experiences, such as that which presented itself in 1921 when he met Arnold Fanck, who was unhappy with the inability of one of his lead actors to perform a stunt required for his 93

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latest mountain film. Trenker was offered the role, and continued to work with Fanck on other films. By 1928, he had abandoned his architecture practice and focused his energies on directing and writing. In the early 1930s, Trenker started to pursue his career without the influence and support of Fanck, although he continued to produce ski and mountain films. He found fame in America, and was invited to assist with a Hollywood adaptation of the film Berge in Flammen [Mountains in Flames], which he had coproduced with Karl Hart in 1931. Drawing on his personal experiences in New York, after “the completion of The Doomed Battalion (directed by Cyril Gardner, 1932), Trenker started conceptualizing Der verlorene Sohn [The Prodigal Son]. Both this film and his Der Kaiser von Kalifornien [The Kaiser of California] have been referred to as very “personal films” that reveal “the director’s obvious fascination with the United States, its myths, its people, and its vast panoramas”.140 While idealizing the connection between rural people and their homeland, Trenker presents city life as a mixture of decadence and dissoluteness. This practice evidently suited the Nazi ideologues who seized upon the patriotic elements of his work. Indeed, Trenker’s mountain film The Prodigal Son, which was clearly inspired by Cornelius Hintner’s 1913 film Evas Rosengartentour [Eva’s Rosegarden Tour],141 is a significant bridging film between the mountain films discussed above and the numerous Nazi Heimat films produced in the 1930s and 40s. Trenker wrote the script for the film together with Arnold Ulitz, a writer renowned for his links to the Heimat genre. Ironically, Ulitz fell foul of the Nazis because of his pacifist leanings, and his books were among those devalued and burnt, before Ulitz presented himself from 1939 on as a reformed supporter of the National Socialist cause.142 The film’s protagonist, Tonio Feuersinger, played by Trenker, is a successful, well-liked, and athletic villager who works in the forest commanding a group of woodchoppers. Tonio’s masculine prowess is coupled with respect for his elders, as is evident in his willingness to plough the fields of his father’s property (even after a long day of physical labour in the forest), and in his keen studies with a local teacher. Women are captivated by him and Tonio’s sweetheart is the prettiest and purest of them all. The Alps, usually the site of the “enactment and recuperation of identity”,143 have already allowed Tonio to reach the top. He is the leader of the forest workers, the best skier, and the most sought-after mountain guide: in short he is in the prime of his life and the most eligible man in the village. However, in the course of the film, he plunges from these localized heights into the abyss of modernity. When Tonio leads his team of skiers to victory in a racing contest, attended and partly sponsored by a visiting American industrialist, the ski prince is lured away into the wider world at the invitation of the American mogul and his vampish daughter, Lilian Williams. Unable to make contact with them in New York, Tonio faces difficulties finding his way, gaining employment, and earning respect in the foreign country. After intervening in a brawl at a boxing contest, he becomes the toast of New York’s high society and is, by chance, recognized and welcomed by the Williams. Just as he is about to start an affair with the wealthy socialite Lilian, he is reminded of his native community when he spots a replica of the original Rauhnacht mask of the Sun King, which Mr Williams had paid to have duplicated during his visit to St Laurein when he could not purchase the origi94

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nal.144 Tonio is transfixed by the mask and feels compelled to return to his native village to take “his place in [the] local community as a dutiful son and husband”.145 This is yet another adaptation of the classic storyline encountered in so many novels of formation or education, modelled on the classic German Bildungsroman and Erziehungsroman [novels of education]. Tonio’s “finding of self is not achieved by travelling, but by returning ‘home’”,146 with the journey serving as a catharsis, showing that it is possible for a misguided individual to return and be welcomed home by those he had left behind. Trenker’s novel provides further evidence that the portrayal of Tonio’s journey is intended to be a cathartic lesson: “Thus Tonio Feuersinger, the protagonist of this story, must also force himself to believe in his native soil, which ties him to itself like a mother’s heart to her beloved child.”147 In most mountain films, such as those of Arnold Fanck, the Alps operate as the antagonist: the hero must overcome the challenges they pose as symbols of the natural world. However, The Prodigal Son represents the Alps differently. To impress Lilian, Tonio and his friend Jörg take her on a challenging mountain hike. During a sudden snowstorm, Jörg is killed and Tonio and Lilian barely survive. This confrontation with the power and danger of the mountains is not the central conflict of the film; it serves as the catalyst for another encounter with the “other”, namely, Tonio’s journey to America. Thus it is not so much the Alps that constitute “a major stage in the process of his identity formation”, but rather the foreign land to which Tonio temporarily migrates—the United States of America.148 Ernst Bloch pointed out that the film’s theme, re-emigration, was somewhat ironic. Migration in Germany was common at the time; however, its direction and timing was opposite to that depicted in The Prodigal Son. In 1934, many Germans (whether Jews, Christians, or Communists) left the country to which Trenker’s protagonist returns.149 Tonio Feuersinger is shown fleeing back to “the land of Göring” and Hitler, at a time when Germany’s political reality presented rather more reasons to proceed in the opposite direction.150 In this respect, Trenker’s film is clearly political and responds to the concerns and anxieties shared by a number of German artists (along with the Nazis) about the threat posed by American influence on German popular culture, an influence which was evident in film, music, theatre, and the visual arts during the years of the Weimar Republic. The socio-historical and cultural impact of international arts and cultures on German tastes and cultural productions was so significant that Tonio’s return to his homeland and its traditions can be interpreted as symbolizing a return to a pure Germanic culture.151 Re-emigration was, nevertheless, a pertinent issue, as Nazi politicians sought to entice Germans living abroad to return home and show their trust in the new Reich which had emerged after 1933. Rentschler and Schulte-Sasse list numerous films from the mid-1930s that promote Germany as a safe haven for former citizens.152 These films were initially directed only at German émigrés, but were soon used to appeal to ethnic Germans throughout Central Europe, when the annexations of the Saar Region and the Rhineland were followed by the occupation of the Sudetenland and the Anschluss [annexation] of Austria. In contrast to the narratives common to the “Heim ins Reich” [home into the Empire] credo, the protagonist in The Prodigal Son initially feels drawn 95

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to travel and explore beyond his village—unwittingly inspired by his geography teacher with whom he “visits” faraway places, as his fingers wander over the globe in the teacher’s office. These distant places still present a promise of adventure, while his native village, although providing a comfortable life, no longer offers any challenges; Tonio has literally reached his peak both professionally and socially there, and has achieved everything that he could wish for. He is certain to play the Sun King at the upcoming winter solstice, a final accolade. It is this sense of a predetermined future, which, following his encounter with the Americans, ultimately allows him to be lured away from his village. Following Jörg’s death, due partly to the snowstorm and partly to Tonio’s negligence, he feels compelled to leave the village. It is the pull of the unknown, combined with the death of his friend in the mountains, that results in Tonio’s departure, albeit only temporarily, as his teacher’s wisdom rings true: “He who never goes away, can never come home.” [Wer nie fortkommt, kommt nie heim.]153 Tonio finds himself in the biggest American city, New York, which in Trenker’s portrayal continues to suffer the effects of the 1929 stock market crash. The streets are full of shadowy figures who are poor, homeless, and hungry. Tonio desperately seeks work and tries hard to fit in, but circumstances see him clash with the police when he is forced to steal bread for his survival and he is reduced to squatting in the park with other vagrants. Life is grey for Tonio; in contrast to these scenes of depression and regression, the earlier images of Tonio’s life in the Alps seem—though likewise shot in black-and-white—to be flooded with light and colour. Even Mr Williams seems to abandon him, his butler repeatedly sending Tonio away on each attempt to make contact, claiming the Williams are not in New York. Tonio’s wanderlust finds its nemesis in the metropolis, a place where the formerly happy-go-lucky and popular character experiences hardship and recedes into the background. His experiences are conveyed in jerkily edited scenes that stress his dislocation and general sense of disorientation.154 When he is finally able to get work in the construction industry, the job proves to be as fleeting as everything else which comes his way. Eventually, he finds employment in the boxing industry as a member of the support staff outside the ring. When a fight gets out of hand, he intervenes and it is at this point that his luck changes. Tonio is celebrated as a hero and is recognized by Mr Williams and his daughter, who happen to be in the audience. Invited to their house, Tonio at last becomes a part of high society and seems about to become Lilian’s lover, when he notices the replica of the Sun King mask. When Tonio spots this mask, he cannot help but recognize the true nature of his surroundings. It is telling that—in this moment of success and happiness— his native culture calls him home, and he comes to realize that the Williams, representatives of America’s elite, are shallow pleasure seekers. The misappropriation of the Rauhnacht Mask, replicated for an art collector with no regard to cost, as well as Lilian’s infatuation with Tonio, whom she treats as her “trophy man”, reinforces the message that a true understanding of his person, culture, and heritage cannot be found in America. Tonio then leaves the American capitalists to rejoin his native community. He is finally reunited with Barbl, the paradigmatic rural, Alpine woman whose Madonna-like nature is suggested in a number of ways, from nuances of her body language to her hair parting and her veil-like head covering.155 96

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Tonio arrives home on the night of the Rauhnacht festival,156 the annual celebration of the winter solstice on 21 December.157 Here, as in the film’s original title Die Große Sonnwend [The Great Solstice, literally The Great Solar Turn], the symbolism of a new start, a new season, a new year, and a new life is obvious.158 There have been widely differing interpretations of this ending. As part of the process of clearance for censorship, the film received contradictory ratings: “Initial criticism of Der verlorene Sohn came from the leaders of the Hitler Youth, who viewed it as a work filled with concealed Catholic propaganda financed by the Catholic Church.”159 The Hitler Youth seemed to take particular notice of the film’s final scenes, when Barbl and Tonio enter the local chapel in the hills and pray to the Blessed Mary, as well as of those opening shots featuring crosses and shrines in the mountain landscape. As it is the final image of the film, the shot of the devoted couple in the chapel creates a lasting impression. Furthermore, the structure of the film, which has three distinct parts—life in the Alps, time in America, and the return to the Alps—is reminiscent of a triptych, an altar-constellation. The religious connotations did not sit well with any Nazi party officials, nor with Viennese Communists, who nevertheless applauded the anti-American sentiment.160 The revival of the Rauhnacht tradition was also regarded favourably, as it was a cultural myth which had been neglected during and following the First World War. [“The sun mask gathered dust in the workshop of Barbl’s father.”]161 Its filmic restoration was pleasing to the Nazis, who made an effort to rejuvenate such celebrations of heathen and archaic customs in order to reinforce the myth of an ancient pagan, pan-German culture.162 Accordingly, the Rauhnacht festival experienced a post-1933 renaissance. While the film’s religious overtones may have provoked suspicion, there is also evidence that the Reichsfachschaft Film [Reich’s Special Film Division] did not trust Trenker on set in New York. Goebbels sent along a “production director” for surveillance, who spied on Trenker and reported his observations to Berlin.163 This was deemed necessary by Goebbels, as Trenker was renowned for drinking and speaking his mind. As a result, the film corresponds to Nazi blood-and-soil sentiments (in so far as it glorifies the intact community that has maintained racial purity and pan-German heritage from pagan times),164 and depicts the Alpine community as an idealized microcosm of the benefits of the Nazi Kulturkampf [cultural war].165 This reading of The Prodigal Son is also supported by Trenker’s portrayal of America. Manhattan, as the heart of America, is shown to be cold and monolithic, a futuristic mountainscape, and a modern, impoverished metropolis without a sense of tradition and community. The images of the mountain panorama of Tonio’s village slowly dissolve and are transformed into an expanse of skyscrapers,166 implying their similarity and the fascination and power both command, but also suggesting that the Alps are “a model and counter-model of modernity”.167 At the same time, the film’s music changes from a bombastic and grandiose made-for-cinema piece to wilder rhythms with modern influences: clarinets and instruments associated with jazz music and the Charleston dance play up and down the scales as the camera tracks the skyscrapers from top to bottom. Atonal sequences in Becce’s score create an atmosphere of hectic dissonance and perpetual motion.168 The excess of impressions experienced by Tonio is captured in the syncopated rhythms and 97

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frenetic movements of the film music, which emphasize chaos and decadence. The music briefly picks up certain motifs, such as the American national anthem, only to drop them halfway through, quickly rushing on to the next theme. The frenzied and chaotic nature of the music parallels the events occurring around Tonio, as well as his sense of excitement and loss at its unpredictability, reflecting the uncertainty of his life in this new environment. This is evident not only in the film’s score but also in the camera work. When the camera finally focuses on Tonio, he is no longer the commanding persona and centre of attention, but has instead been put into perspective and is dwarfed by the man-made panorama. Like the music, Tonio moves to and fro, back and forth, dodges traffic and other people, and negotiates lifts and stairs; the camera repeatedly loses him during his vertical and horizontal movements. To convey his low sense of self-worth and position within his new environment, the camera assumes a bird’s-eye view and focuses on Tonio standing at the top of the Empire State Building. Ironically, he is no longer at the top of the world; the millions around him are competitors of a different kind in a foreign setting, and he finds himself becoming more and more insignificant. The formerly undisputed “Sun King” is displaced and grows increasingly lost in his new surroundings: physically, mentally, and spiritually, he is unable to find a sense of belonging and Heimat in the city. Suffering hardship and alienation, the Alpine local hero loses his magic in modern Manhattan, and is forced to let his standards slip with regard to accommodation, dress, labour, and morals. Tonio is shown mostly on his own, competing with others for food and work in a dog-eat-dog environment symbolized by the boxing arena. Rentschler argues convincingly that New York represents a place “of spatial and temporal disjunction, a place where the sole communal event we see is a frenzied mass spectacle around the boxing ring”,169 and where even African-Americans, the police, and the landlady have Teutonic mannerisms, accents, and characteristics. Upon his eviction from a cheap flat, Tonio is forced to sleep on a bench in the domesticated natural surroundings of Central Park with its clipped lawns and pruned trees; however, he is not welcome there. A policeman rudely wakes him and orders him to move on. Without family and community support, Tonio reverts to the principles of Social Darwinism in order to survive: eat or be eaten, steal or be stolen from, a development which is fostered when he meets a brother in need, who serves as a catalyst in Tonio’s gradual degradation. Seated beneath the Statue of Liberty—that symbol of the land of unlimited possibilities and freedoms which has failed to come good on its promises—Tonio daydreams about his homeland as he watches ships depart. It is difficult to be sure whether the scenes of his native village that follow are Tonio’s imagination or reality; shots of bright, snow-covered mountains differ sharply from the bleak surroundings through which he passes. Homeless men on the streets of New York are contrasted with old villagers in his home town who discuss Tonio’s disappearance and make their judgement: “Er hat die Heimat verraten.” [He has betrayed his homeland.] Tonio realizes this himself when femme fatale Lilian looks set to seduce him, after he has established order during the boxing match riots. At the moment when he is embraced by Lilian and is about to kiss her, Trenker deliberately avoids the hollowness of a Hollywood-style ending. The uncertainty of 98

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the accompanying music in these scenes, which incorporate jazz and swing as well as folk and classical film tunes, mirrors Tonio’s ambivalence. He is caught between tradition and modernity, between folklore and modern sophistication. His decision to return to his birthplace drives home the film’s ultimate message: in his native village, the people have a sense of belonging, however poor they may seem in material terms—and they are therefore “freer than New York’s millionaires”.170 The eternal beauty and rich culture of his birthplace is contrasted with the superficial glitter of America. Lilian informs Tonio that she will never move to Europe with him, although she had been intrigued by the Alps when she visited them. During the dance celebrating his skiing victory, she exclaims: “Es ist so schön hier!” [It’s so beautiful here!] However, she is used to city life and her time in the Alps was merely an interlude in a life filled with entertainment and travel. A contemporary of Trenker recalled of the mid-1920s: “highrises, traffic officers, film, technical wonders, jazz bands, boxing, […] images of these things come to us from America”, and explains, “Americanism is fanaticism for life, for its worldliness and its present-day forms [...] as the strongest opponent of romanticism”.171 Jazz and boxing, in particular, were associated with African-Americans, and the film is not short on references to the Weimar Republic’s imports from America as alien elements. The geography teacher betrays an acute awareness of the “other” when he notes: “Last time we were in Africa among the blacks.” As Rentschler points out: “The foreign prospect stimulates Tonio’s imagination and ultimately compels him to leave home. Blacks will shadow him throughout his stay in Manhattan.”172 Initially, they appear to be competing with Tonio for work—at one point an African-American is chosen before him for a job in an apparent reversal of the “master and slave” relationship173—before they are shown as brothers in need. According to contemporary Nazi propaganda, African-Americans were seen as representatives of an infantile culture which had not yet “ascended” to civilization: they were childlike, lacked individuality, and formed indistinguishable masses.174 Tonio, just as they are, is trying to survive in a hostile environment, in which he seems just as out of place as the German actors who play black characters with darkened faces. The film works with numerous contrasts: black versus white;175 nature versus modernism; the religious, wholesome, and soil-bound life in the mountains versus the spiritual poverty of the metropolis; quality versus hierarchy; community versus class; honesty versus ruthlessness; Heimat versus Fremde [foreign]; and pan-German values and traditions versus cosmopolitan influences. Heimat is shown as a “dynamic interaction of common rituals, which interlock seamlessly”.176 The “other” is used as a litmus test: “The telos of The Prodigal Son is much more about proving the indisputable superiority of Heimat in a virtually didactic experiment.”177 Nevertheless, the different spheres do not seem so far apart, just as Tonio’s native village and America do not seem overly separated, geographically speaking. This is achieved by the deliberate omission of images of Tonio crossing the Atlantic. The voyage “from Tyrol to New York does not require an excruciating journey; it happens in a flash [which] displays how two different worlds condense in the German psyche”,178 suggesting that home and abroad are in some ways not such unrelated concepts. Indeed, with regard to prejudices, anxieties, and desires, the two spheres seem to coexist in Tonio’s mind, or 99

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even within the greater German society of which St Laurein is a part. The village is an island of purity, but when considering the artistic culture of the Weimar Republic in Germany and Austria, it is obvious that American imports—jazz music, the Charleston, boxing, etc.—had left their mark. The Golden Twenties in German-speaking areas were littered with borrowings from American culture, a situation which the Nazis were bent on reversing.179 In Nazi propaganda, the concept of Überfremdung [intolerable level of foreign influence], in opposition to purity, took centrestage. According to Nazi beliefs, foreign penetration of the arts was as much a threat to the German organism as was foreign influence on everyday social life. Thus many Nazi films promoted Germany as a “spatially contained, homogeneous ‘German’ environment [that] provides a context in which the individual can avoid contamination and in which community can come to fruition.”180 Following a line of thought of the Russian formalist philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, the superiority of the provincial is foregrounded by “the progress of a family-labor, agricultural or craft-work idyll […]—the uninterrupted, ageold link between the life of generations and a strictly delimited locale”.181 In this respect, as in many other Heimat films, Tonio’s village is pre-modern, nevertheless, it is otherwise difficult to place in a historical setting, as “all temporal boundaries are blurred”, and “the rhythm of life is in harmony with the rhythm of nature” alone.182 Historical contingency is replaced “with the self-sufficient timetables of nature and charismatic leadership”.183 In Trenker’s film, America appears to be a largely nightmarish figment of Tonio’s imagination, in which the images captured symbolize German anxieties and function mainly as symbols for stereotypes of the United States common at the time. “America takes on the status of a cipher”, as Rentschler argues, “an antithesis overcome in the film’s overall blood and soil dialectics”.184 The American way of life is shown to be alienating, belittling, debilitating, impoverished, and lacking in lasting communal ties, as is indicated by the depiction of transient groups, commuters, queues in front of soup kitchens, boxing arenas, skyscrapers, and treeless streetscapes. New York seems to be reduced to a pastiche of stereotypes and serves a clear function—to criticize those aspects of America which had found their way into German culture. For Tonio, it is a trip to hell, an environment which he cannot warm to and which he refers to in hindsight as the Fremde [foreign].185 In his 1936 film The Kaiser of California, Trenker expresses similarly anti-capitalist sentiments. The plot focuses on Johann August Suter, whose dream of transforming desert land into a garden is destroyed by the gold rush. As in The Prodigal Son, the film relies heavily on semiotic oppositions, this time “between the use value and aesthetic value of land versus gold, whereby land becomes the film’s central source of visual pleasure [fetishizing] Suter’s ‘garden’ in the desert much like the mountains in the mountain films”.186 The potential anti-Americanism of Trenker’s films The Prodigal Son and The Kaiser of California responds to an engagement with America that Nazi propagandists saw as very fruitful. Their ideology was based in part on “a revolt against modernity, the result of the crisis of a society passing from a traditional framework to that of industrialism, a rebellion designed to create a deliberately archaic utopia”.187 This underlying dichotomy meant that Germanic virtues and American vice could be contrasted most effectively and 100

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exploited in such a way that each could learn from the other, even if only from their mistakes. America thus served as an “other” which could unify Heimat. As a result, “exceptional familiarity with Americanism […] was not considered antithetical to forming a self-consciously nationalist mass culture”.188 Indeed, Goebbels sought to imitate and improve on the Hollywood recipe of film-making as mass entertainment, in order to show that Germany was on a par with, if not superior to, the United States in its understanding and application of the medium. Trenker’s ambivalent personal relationship with America was similar to that of the prodigal son in his film, who—although making his peace with America at the end—nevertheless forgoes certain success and the lure of high society for his native village. As if to imply that one can learn from Tonio’s journey without having to experience it personally, the film, just like Trenker’s novel, purports to serve as an educational tool similar to a novel of education [Erziehungsroman]. In Trenker’s novel, Tonio’s return to his father’s house is relayed by the omniscient narrator: “Across from him stood the old clock on the wall and its constant tick-tock tick-tock, as if nothing, absolutely nothing, had happened during the whole while.”189 Tonio is welcomed back into his society as the long-lost son, yet at the same time as an integral member of society, who can pick up from where he has left off. In contrast to his time in America, here he will not face difficulties finding work, food, and shelter. He will slide back into the wholesome country life that offers security, community, and solidarity. The carefree, uncomplicated lifestyle is portrayed by men singing while they chop wood and marvel at the beauty and purity of the women and the mountains around them. Like his biblical counterpart, the prodigal son is welcomed and accepted, and certainly not reprimanded.190 Thus the film promotes the illusion that Heimat is attainable, a reality that one can hold onto, a place where one can remain forever and which time will not change. At the beginning of the film, Barbl expresses her desire for stasis as she sits next to Tonio in the fields, admiring him as much as the surrounding mountain panorama: “I’d like to sit here like this forever.” The film’s ending implies that this sentiment could be realized. The celebration of the Rauhnacht festival, an age-old Germanic tradition, clearly shows that Barbl’s and Tonio’s Heimat is dominated by the eternal powers of the elements and seasons, traditions, and beliefs. Nature’s timetable has replaced history, and Heimat is confirmed as a place outside of progress and removed from politics and the corrupting forces and confusing ways of capitalism.191 The exorcism of evil from Heimat is implied by the pagan festival, and the viewer senses that something unsettling is about to happen when masked creatures emerge from the forest and primal powers, bonfires, and nocturnal rites prevail.192 The scenes hint at a primordial sense of clan worship and group unity, but also at the exorcism of those who do not belong. Unwittingly foreshadowing similar scenes in the context of Nazi-orchestrated book burnings, torch processions, or the orgy of violence and hatred played out during the Reichskristallnacht [Night of Broken Glass, 9 November 1938], Heimat becomes “unheimlich” [uncanny] in these scenes.193 However, tensions and uncertainties are soon resolved when it becomes clear that all the mysterious figures have one goal—to go to the village tavern and church to celebrate the Sun King Tonio.

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The rich tapestry, history, and emotionality of the festival are contrasted with America’s rational capitalism, which seems soulless, without tradition— and void of natural wonders. In comparison the pre-modern Heimat in the Alps is dominated by an awe-inspiring landscape, a healthy farming community, and the normative forces of Christian symbols and traditional festivities. “[F]ollowing the call of the Heimat [Tonio follows] his father and friends in a Rauhnacht celebration, as a player in a ritual act, a carnevalesque festivity half-pagan, half-Christian”,194 it is the highlight of the rite of passage that confirms him as a virile victor. This in turn provides the context for Heimat’s confirmation of patriarchal gender roles. Barbl is, in accordance with traditional Heimat understanding, the ideal woman: attractive, helpful, domesticated, and submissive, neither competing with nor restricting Tonio. This is evident from the camera work as well as the plot, with Barbl always shown in a subordinate position to Tonio and taking up a smaller proportion of the screen. In this sense, she is clearly contrasted with Lilian, who seeks the limelight. While Barbl sits, knits, prays, and is content to remain close to her house and village, Lilian seems to have no roots, escaping any domestic scenes and living life “like a man”, travelling, hiking, and hunting. It is evident that only Barbl can uphold and secure that sense of Heimat as “part of the package of hearth and home”.195 Thus Tonio can be sure of what he is returning to—his woman as well as his Heimat, community, and soil. The work of the woodchoppers (which ensures the timber’s ultimate return, through burning or decomposition, to the soil), as well as the reverence paid to the wood, meadows, and fields in the pagan festival, thematize the people’s bond with the soil. The wood will return to its origins, just as Tonio left, then returned, to his Heimat. This message is endorsed as a part of the cycle of life, ultimately accepting the external forces of nature and the fact that one will literally return to one’s beginnings—a stark contrast to capitalism, the aim of which is to improve one’s prospects and enhance one’s social status, leaving one’s origins behind. The experiences outside of Tonio’s Heimat, as represented by Lilian and Manhattan, are largely interchangeable, and any number of other stereotypical femmes fatale and capitalist, urban landscapes could have been substituted. Indeed, Trenker has done so in another of his mountain films, Der Rebell [The Rebel, 1932], in which the “other” is Napoleon’s rule. The rebel, played by Trenker himself, is no revolutionary figure but a Führer figure mobilizing the masses against the arch enemy France and its artificial behaviour and unjust manners. In both films, Trenker criticizes “an urbanistic, internationalistic political establishment which is alienated from the people”196 as a strange way of life. The Prodigal Son certainly fits the Heimat genre, with its affirmative message about an attainable and lasting sense of belonging, lending itself, purposefully or accidentally, to political instrumentalization. His patriotism certainly lent itself to the latter. In response to Lewis Milestone’s cinematic adaptation of Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues [All Quiet on the Western Front], Trenker lamented that the American’s interpretation focused solely on the “godless senselessness of war”, without showing any “love of the fatherland, no virtue”, thereby reducing the protagonists’ motivation to a “yawning comfortless emptiness”.197 Trenker himself had other ideals, although in promoting them he relegated nature’s might to a mere backdrop for his heroic male figures. Thus 102

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his mountain films are much more about man than mountain—in contrast to Fanck’s—and promote characters who serve man-made principles rather than nature. Luis Trenker was ten years older than Riefenstahl and also reached an almost biblical age (Trenker died in 1990, Riefenstahl in 2002). He has been celebrated as “Germany’s John Wayne and John Ford rolled into one”,198 although others, including Kracauer and Sontag, have made less favourable comparisons and called him a “thinly masked pro-Nazi”.199 Trenker did initially profit from Hitler’s patronage, just as Riefenstahl did, but he was seen as much more resistant to identification with the Nazis. Ultimately, he was extremely successful at casting himself as the prototypical “better” German after 1945.200 Shifts in political loyalties and a developing understanding are also evident in his relationship with Heimat. While Trenker asserted, “Heimat for me is not a political concept, but rather an object of love granted to man by God”, at times his films tell a different story.201 When he claims that loyalty to one’s Heimat “is a spiritual reaction against Nazi materialism and blood-and-soil drivel and against Marxist atheism and class hatred as well”,202 he is taking the interpretation of his film The Prodigal Son out of its historical setting and ignoring its warm reception by the Nazis. The film invites the audience to understand Heimat as a place where one is born, thus evoking a clear link between soil and ancestry, and making it hardly surprising that the Nazis considered The Prodigal Son a “standard work”,203 a helpful agent in the promotion of blood-and-soil sentiment and an exercise in anti-American agitation.204 Trenker’s ideals, his love for his Heimat, his heroism, and his honour were easily reconcilable with Nazi values. Rentschler points out the similarities between Riefenstahl’s character Junta and her own life, just as Trenker did with his protagonist. Trenker’s real life is to some degree mirrored in this film (as Riefenstahl’s was in The Blue Light), and for both directors, their films The Blue Light and The Prodigal Son served as founding myths. Trenker liked to describe himself as a “native son and protector of Heimat”.205 Yet, just as Tonio initially left his mountain home, so too did Trenker leave his native Tyrol. In his autobiography, Trenker refers to The Prodigal Son as his favourite film, declaring: “I was the prodigal son who left his Heimat here and went out into the world, struggled a lot, was always here in my heart.”206 This reference to the world, and especially its implied reference to the New World, America, perhaps glosses over the fact that Trenker also left Tyrol in June 1940 to become a “Reichsdeutscher” [citizen of the German Empire] when he moved temporarily to Berlin and joined the NSDAP (Nazi Party) the following month, swearing his allegiance to Hitler: “You, my Führer, have followed my work from The Rebel to The Fire Devil and you can rest assured that when the moment of truth arrives, I will know exactly where I belong and where I shall stand.”207 This, combined with the patriotic fervour of many of his films, may have prompted critics to refer to him as “a successful Nazi director of films of light entertainment”.208 Trenker himself liked to interpret his stance differently, arguing “that he was a loyal South Tyrolean, a pan-German patriot who smuggled anti-Nazi statements into his films and who was first used and then oppressed by the National Socialists”.209 His case has proved difficult to judge,210 as his supporters highlight the many inconsistencies which supposedly rule out an easy classification. Among them are references to the director’s curious 103

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Babylonian language games and his mixed messages.211 Like Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light, The Prodigal Son introduces another culture and another language to the audience. Dialogues, never intended to be subtitled for the German-speaking audience, include extended passages in Italian in Riefenstahl’s film, or in English in Trenker’s case. This, as well as the celebration of freedom and independence, and the representation of protagonists as autonomous agents, was interpreted as not concurring with Nazi ideology. However, the opposite argument could be made in both cases, as un-subtitled and untranslated passages could produce a sense of unease, estrangement, and hostility among members of the audience unfamiliar with those strange tongues. While the reception of foreign-language passages lies outside the control of the film-maker, Trenker sought to instrumentalize his own linguistic versatility in order to enlist the widest possible financial backing. Trenker was, in fact, clearly guided by monetary principles: he “looked out for his own financial interests, and manoeuvred like an acrobat between the National Socialists and the Italian Fascists”,212 never losing sight of where advantages lay. It could thus be argued that Trenker readily “sold out”, in true capitalist fashion, to the highest and most promising bidder at the time: “I’m always willing to consider a large offer and any company would suit me fine as long as it is solvent and generous.”213 This attitude served him well—although he was mindful about losing his artistic freedom of expression214—until the 1940s, when Trenker became persona non grata with Goebbels, moved to Italy in an ultimately successful bid for support from Mussolini,215 and watched the fall of the German Reich from a distance. His life and his films cannot gloss over certain discontinuities, paradoxes, contradictions, and ambiguities, whether or not Trenker employed them intentionally, so as to always be able to argue his way into as well as out of anything. So it was that in 1934 he “wore a swastika pin and boasted of being Hitler’s friend [but also] criticized the book burnings and the treatment of Jews”.216 While Trenker and his film The Prodigal Son were fixtures in Nazi Germany up until 1940, his oeuvre was met with a mixed reception after 1945. Immediately after the Second World War, the film was banned in the western part of Germany and prohibited by the US military government in Austria because it was considered “anti American”.217 In the eastern part of Germany, the film was forbidden by the military government of the Soviet Union because it was seen to be advertising the American way of life. Much less controversial was the reception of Luis Trenker himself. He successfully stylized himself as an anti-Nazi activist and a victim of state terror, and claimed, much like Riefenstahl, that he had never been interested in politics and propaganda, only in art. Likewise, both directors continued to influence not only those in the German film industry but film-makers around the world for decades to come.218 One such film-maker to engage with the Bergfilm heritage is Tom Tykwer, whose international fame with Lola rennt [Run Lola Run, 1998] led to a rediscovery of his earlier works, among them Winterschlӓfer [Wintersleepers, 1997].

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Tom Tykwer’s Wintersleepers (1997) Critics have not only regarded the wider Heimat film genre as a feature of the past but have also condemned its precursor, the mountain film, as tainted and beyond rehabilitation. “Berge sind faschistisch” [Mountains are Fascist] was the provocative statement that seemed to sum up the history of the genre.219 Therefore, it cannot be a surprise that critics have also repeatedly proclaimed the death of the mountain film. The general consensus is that the Bergfilm has been extinct since the 1930s and all efforts to revive it have failed: “Despite the effects of their [Fanck, Trenker, Riefenstahl] films reaching long into the period after WWII no other director was able to continue this genre with similar commercial results or to give it new artistic impulses.”220 It is evident that claims of this nature should be reviewed, given the recent success of several new mountain films, which include Jean-Jacques Annaud’s Seven Years in Tibet (1997) starring Brad Pitt, Martin Campbell’s Vertical Limit (2000), Kevin Macdonald’s docu-drama Touching the Void (2003), and Stephen Judson’s Imax-film Die Alpen [The Alps, 2007]. The existence and popularity of such films should also eliminate the misconception that the mountain film is a purely German phenomenon, though it is not only in the American film industry that the genre continues to fascinate directors and actors with a penchant for the extreme. German-language cinema has recently also seen its fair share of Bergfilm revivals, among them Markus Imhoof’s Der Berg [The Mountain, 1990] and Thomas Imbach’s Lenz (2006), both Swiss productions, as well as Stefan Krohmer’s German mountain film Sie haben Knut [They Have Knut, 2003], Philipp Stölzl’s Nordwand [North Face, 2008], Pepe Danquart’s documentary Am Limit [At the Limit, 2007], Ina Weisse’s Der Architekt [The Architect, 2008], Stefan Karle’s Weisse Stille [Cold Void, 2004], and Joseph Vilsmaier’s Bergkristall [Rock Crystal, 2004] and Nanga Parbat (2010). Mindful of the ideological baggage, German directors have felt the need to justify their turn towards the Alps and their depiction of heroism in snow and ice (for example, Stölzl’s North Face) as an act of devotion—not to Nazi aesthetics but to nature per se221 and to film pioneers such as Arnold Fanck: “After the end of the war his films were associated with the Nazi-aesthetic, but the man was actually much closer to Bauhaus than to the Nazis—a member of the avant-garde.”222 Statements such as this clearly betray the awareness of the genre’s history as much as of its artistic potential, and are part and parcel of the rehabilitation of the Bergfilm. One of the first mountain films to be produced in post-unification Germany was Tom Tykwer’s Winterschläfer [Wintersleepers, 1997], a film that captures the spirit of Heine’s perception of mountainous terrain, “the mountain has something so peacefully German”,223 and testifies to a continued interest in the search for a Heimat in the mountains. Tykwer has stated how important it is to him—as it was to the directors of the classic mountain films—that the audience understands his film atmospherically,224 that is, visually, as well as with regard to the underlying storyline. Reviews have stressed the typical predominance of “Schicksal” [fate]225 and “Zufälle” [chances],226 the foregrounded might and beauty of nature, the images of snow, clouds, and the grandiose mountain panoramas that transcend the banality of the story,227 and the fact that the landscape acts as both a protagonist and a mirror for grand emotions and catastrophes.228 105

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In Wintersleepers, Tykwer has cleverly reversed all the main hallmarks of the traditional mountain film, from the mountain-centred salvation that opens and closes the film to the German romantic notion of nature’s purity and urban or lowland corruption, and critically reflects on the stereotypical ideas about village folk possessing intact family structures and close social bonds. Setting the film in a contemporary Alpine ski village in winter, Tykwer uses the landscape and other symbols found in Heimat films to juxtapose the superficial threads of his narrative with modern concepts of identity and history. In so doing, he questions contemporary Germans’ preoccupation with history and guilt as a source of identity for collective as well as individual Germanness. Wintersleepers, Tykwer’s first internationally successful feature film, tells the story of six people’s lives in the days between Christmas and New Year. Lovers Rebecca and Marco are drifting apart, while two loners, Laura and René, find each other and make a tentative start on their relationship. The fates of the two couples are woven together as the result of a car accident which destroys the life of a farmer, Theo, and ultimately kills his daughter, in whose death each of the five adults plays a part. Moving between genres, Tykwer toys with elements of the thriller, melodrama, and mountain film, responding to new lifestyles and sensibilities.229 Images of mountain panoramas are set to slow, melodious, church-like music (composed in part by Arvo Pärt), which instils a sense of metaphysical introspection and sublime wonder. The film music intensifies dramatic moments while stressing a dream-like sense of irrationality; it is melodic yet unpredictable, harmonic yet requires active listening. Adding to the atmosphere created by the pace of the film and its carefully chosen imagery, the score’s leitmotif exudes a simultaneous sense of unease and peacefulness and elicits a respect for nature. The measured pace of the film, though annoying to some critics, was a deliberate choice for Tykwer: “The slow unfolding of this film was very important to me, where the tension slowly mounts.”230 This overall impression of Wintersleepers contrasts starkly with the initial scenes which are dominated by a quick pastiche of different locations and characters. Tykwer admits: “I couldn’t have maintained the pace of the first twenty minutes, nor would I have wanted to.”231 Deliberately introduced to follow his dynamic prologue, an aura of tranquillity ensues—one of the techniques Tykwer uses to resist a genre-classification for his film, with the images evoking fast-paced thrillers and murder-mysteries as much as slow-moving love stories, Heimat film melodramas, and the visual drama of mountain films.232 The film opens with images shot with a hand-held camera from the perspective of a skier meandering down a foggy slope. As the camera winds its way through snow-covered pine trees on the white hillside, one can see it is following the tracks of another skier. Two sets of tracks are visible in the thick snow. However, neither skier is ever in view, giving the whole scene an eerie feeling, reinforced by poor visibility due to cloud and fog. The footage of the skier’s descent dissolves repeatedly into white-outs and is interspersed with the introduction of each of the film’s five adult characters. Laura calls her friend Rebecca from her parents’ house, announcing her intention to return earlier than planned to the home they share: an old fairy-tale-like estate in the hills, which Laura has inherited from her great-aunt. She is keen to leave the domestic hell of her quarrelling parents, whose fighting has been 106

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exacerbated by tensions arising from the family Christmas reunion. Rebecca has evidently spent the festive season in Laura’s old house in the Alps partying with friends, and she attempts to tidy up before her friend returns. Laura is next shown on board a train, an apparently calm and contemplative person travelling passively back to her refuge. The contrasting characters of Marco and René are introduced parallel to each other. The fit, blond Marco is shown speeding southbound (in a suitably “cool” Alfa Romeo sports car with a Hamburg number plate) towards his lover, Rebecca, and his job as a ski instructor after a short holiday back home in the north. René, on the other hand, is shown standing next to his old Volkswagen Beetle, admiring the landscape as he is carried across a mountain lake on a ferry. Finally, Theo the farmer is introduced, driving his tractor through the mountain village to which the others are headed. He has been working late and is returning home to his rundown farmhouse and family in the dark. The film’s exposition ends with hints of the village location when René pulls up in front of the Winter Sleepers bar, and the viewer glimpses his car registration “BGL”, for Berchtesgadener Land. Having only recently chosen the area as their place of work and residence, these four young adults are set to cross paths with Theo, the only local. “All four characters seem to be fleeing from something in their past”,233 and each slowly reveals details of their past and present lives to one another. It emerges that Laura is employed as a nurse in the local hospital, René is a projectionist at the local movie theatre, Marco has seasonal employment as a ski instructor, and Rebecca translates Mills-and-Boon novels from English into German, while also helping with the administration of a local ski school. Their professions are as symbolic of the characters as the colours that have been assigned to them by way of carefully constructed mise-en-scènes. Rebecca is mainly depicted in a domestic environment—in bed, at her desk, and often smoking. She is hungry for love and excitement, and her behaviour is emotional, sexual, and at times irrational. Her wild responses when lovemaking and quarrelling with Marco show her to be a passionate figure, whose temperament is appropriately reflected in her colour, red. Attributed the colour green, Laura is a calm and calming figure who cares for and nurtures others, in her professional as well as her private life, while denying herself many pleasures. She seems to have an eating disorder and, like Blanche, the character she plays in the amateur production of A Streetcar Named Desire, is longing for love and happiness. However, her life seems to unfold in the opposite direction to the nightmares in Tennessee Williams’ play, as she is able to successfully channel her desires and overcome loneliness, aided by the domestic sanctuary of her old villa, which becomes the meeting-place of the four young strangers. She can retreat to this sheltered environment, ultimately to be with the other quiet loner René, with whom she develops an ever-closer bond. René’s life is image-focused. As he is unable to retain anything in his short-term memory because of a brain injury suffered during military service, he captures his life and surrounds with his camera, perpetually trying to store and label his experiences in an archive dedicated to his life. Ironically for a projectionist working with film reels displaying twenty-four frames per second, his life is a myriad of unconnected images that rarely lead to a continuous film or memory. His past is full of black holes; accordingly, his colour is 107

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black or grey. However, his condition seems to improve as his relationship with Laura grows and he experiences the continuity of her love. But he is the catalyst for the catastrophe which sees two people die, as well as for the happy ending when a new life is born. In contrast to René, daredevil Marco conducts several relationships simultaneously (as well as the occasional affair) and seems to cut a cool figure, reflected perhaps in his colour, blue. The viewer is introduced to an emotionally cold mover and shaker who meddles in everything without letting himself become involved. Slowly it emerges that Rebecca’s passionate lover already has a long-term girlfriend in Hamburg and regularly seduces his ski students as well. In the end he dies, falling to his death, like Junta in The Blue Light, from a mountain top, his fall the result of a confrontation with Theo. The old-fashioned farmer Theo, whose way of life is no longer sustainable in the tourism-focused Alpine environment, is shown in earthy, brown tones. Though a native of Berchtesgaden, his connection to the land does not help him forge an existence. Nor is he shown as an integral part of the local community. He is a loner, lacking respect from villagers and his own family. His way of life is outmoded, and the family suffers several setbacks when they are forced to sell a horse and later have their farm repossessed, driving them to move to a smaller, even more rundown, farmhouse further up the mountain. The lives of Theo and the young adults in their mid-twenties cross only twice. The first encounter takes place when René passes Theo on the road, and the accident occurs that causes the death of Theo’s horse and eventually of his young daughter. The second encounter leads to Marco’s death, when Theo confronts him in the high mountains, convinced that Marco was driving the car he thinks was to blame for the accident. Both incidents are set on the mountain paths and roads surrounding Berchtesgaden during the period following the winter solstice, the time between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new—a period symbolizing the cycle of life and death, and also the hope of a new start. Tykwer thus introduces a group of strangers, only one of whom comes from the area where the film takes place. “There is this widely propagated idea that you can go somewhere else and live your life quite differently—and then end up living it exactly as before. To that extent at least I wanted to portray these characters authentically.”234 This notion of circular development and the difficulty of real progress and change are enforced by the atmosphere of the winter season and the Alpine location, where people and nature are gridlocked in ice and snow. For Tykwer the Alpine drama is a microcosm representative of a generational change taking place in Germany: “Rebecca is supremely unambitious, which for me is a phenomenon of that generation now in their mid-twenties.”235 She is contrasted with her lover Marco, “who seems to have been driven on by his parents all his life, [Rebecca]’s character is probably a loved child. This is [...] the big line of demarcation between people. Those who were loved as children, and those who weren’t.”236 Thus Rebecca can return to her parents’ home when she leaves the Alps at the end of the film, while Marco is without a sanctuary. In the four young characters, Tykwer has scripted strangers to the Alps, to contrast them with the only native son of the soil, Theo. “Theo is deeply rooted in his native soil, but no longer has a grip on things. His farm has gone 108

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broke and his life is in ruins.”237 In contrast, “the four young people are well able to take over the roost. It’s this conflict I wanted to portray.”238 The film is dedicated to the clash between the characters as they all experience a transformation of sorts, as if the end of winter will herald their certain metamorphosis. Each develops along rather contradictory lines and becomes ever more complex before the viewer’s eyes. This complexity is enhanced by the visual qualities of the film. Despite the authentic aspects placing it deliberately in time and space, the film foregrounds its artificial and stylistic qualities to make the viewer reflect on perspective and point of view. Carefully composed mise-en-scènes, the colour coding of characters and the camera work all emphasize the film’s symbolism. In one instance, the horizontal axis in the film is used as a basis for rotation. Water from a showerhead does not move from top to bottom as expected, but instead from left to right, forcing the viewer to readjust, reassess and reflect on location, perspective, the characters, and their development. The film introduces each character at a slow pace, layer by layer, unveiling different idiosyncrasies and swaying the viewer’s opinion of each. First impressions must be revised, as the exposition raises expectations that are soon dashed. The seemingly calm and domesticated Rebecca is depicted as a femme fatale, initially appearing bitter and cynical, while Laura turns from a fragile loner into a likeable character. The creepy voyeur, René, turns out to be a victim in need of sympathy, while the light-hearted and free-spirited Marco becomes dangerously entangled in his own web of lies and deceit, and loses much of the viewer’s sympathy over time. Tykwer reveals his motivation for the hazy and moody characterization of the main figures, hinting that he did not want any of them to “fit into some good-guy/bad-guy scheme”.239 These deliberate compositional contradictions, which lead the audience to assess and reassess, can also be seen in the depiction of the accidents that will cost both a young girl and Marco their lives. Just as each character resists easy categorization, so too is it difficult to pinpoint the role each plays in the two deaths; every character is involved and to some extent guilty. Triggering a domino effect, the first accident involving Theo’s car and horse-float and Marco’s Alfa Romeo (driven by René) is part of a series of events which have an air of inevitability about them. Marco leaves the keys in his car when he leaps out to greet Rebecca at Laura’s house, but Rebecca promptly seduces him, preventing him from unpacking and locking the car. René subsequently takes up the open invitation to steal the car and narrowly misses hitting Theo head-on. Distracted by his child’s walkie-talkie, Theo is himself driving on the wrong side of the road and has also failed to notice that his distressed daughter had slipped into the horsefloat when he left the farm. Finally, Laura unintentionally provokes the deadly seizure which ends the girl’s coma when she opens the curtains of the hospital room to let in some light. No one really knows about the others’ involvement, and in their ignorance and innocence no one feels guilty; nor are they solely responsible for the tragedy. Theo mistakenly identifies Marco as the driver of the Alfa Romeo and confronts him to avenge his daughter’s death. The confrontation results in Marco falling to his death.240 Once more, every character is involved in this death, again without being aware of it.

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Not knowing and having to reassess are just as much themes of Wintersleepers as yearning. All the characters are driven by urges and desires: Rebecca longs for love, Laura for peace, René for a sense of certainty about his past, Marco for wish-fulfilment and instant gratification, and Theo for revenge. The film seems to affirm the desires of the first three characters, while the selfish wishes of Theo and Marco are revealed to be futile and destructive. Neither Theo nor Marco seems able to find a Heimat; on the contrary, both are successful at destroying homes and idylls. Marco undertakes nothing to construct a home, and instead abuses the homes of others—namely, Laura’s villa and the luxury abode of a friend—by using them temporarily and messing them up. He remains a nomad at heart, which is evident in his restless love life and his seasonal profession. Theo, too, is unable to provide for and protect his loved ones, losing his home, uprooting his family, and destroying their Heimat. In contrast, Laura has been able to create a home in a new location, after realizing she is no longer able to connect with her parents and her birthplace. She makes the deliberate choice of “coming home (earlier)”, leaving the “hell” of her parents’ place and retreating to her own Heimat—her inherited residence in the Alps. The concept of Heimat revolving around one’s place of origin is turned on its head, with Heimat denoting a place of choice. Laura and René become paradigms of Peter Dürrmann’s modern man searching for zones of comfort as spaces of Heimat by retreating to “manageable spaces which offer security and cultural identity”.241 Laura’s house, full of bric-à-brac and soul, becomes such a cocoon for them. A butterfly suspended over her bed highlights this imagery of a protected space that allows beauty to come to the fore. The unfolding of this pastiche of happy endings and tragedies explores the theme of sleep. Nature seems to be sleeping, and life has slowed in pace in this in-between time at the turning of the year. Following the accident, Theo’s daughter is in a type of sleep, a coma, and Marco ultimately dies, entering a state regarded as “Schlafes Bruder” [sleep’s brother]. Rebecca likes to sleep, confessing she has spent most of the Christmas period sleeping. Her sleepiness is also linked to her desire for a peaceful domestic sphere and love, in which the bed is the symbol of her passion, linked to living in a dreamworld rather than in reality. To stress this association, Marco tells her “you taste of sleep” when he meets her upon his arrival. At the end of the film, she is forced to wake up and to reassess her choices in life and love. As she boards the train, her passivity is overcome; she has left her comfort zone and is about to brave the world. By leaving Laura’s house, Rebecca awakes from a Sleeping Beauty‒like state which has been ended, not by Prince Charming but by an impostor. Rebecca’s emancipation and liberation from her sleepy dreams is paralleled in René’s fate. His memory loss means that he walks through life in a form of semi-consciousness. With Laura’s help, he overcomes his state of half-awareness and is forced to wake to the realities of fatherhood. Ironically, René and Laura enter a stage in life that will not afford them much sleep—parenthood. However, their domestic living arrangement will guarantee, even in the future, the existence of a place where they can retreat from life and hibernate. As complex as the characters of Wintersleepers and their development is the concept of truth. Time allows aspects of the truth to be revealed. Theo remembers the shape of the scar on the face of the driver of the other car, and 110

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the melting snow reveals the second car. Over time René’s memory of the incident, in which he steals and drives Marco’s car and subsequently becomes involved in the accident which kills Theo’s daughter, partially returns and Laura unravels details of René’s condition. As time passes, Rebecca, too, has doubts about her relationship with Marco; the last scene reveals this when she is shown leaving Berchtesgaden in the same carriage as Marco’s latest female conquest, Nina. From her, Rebecca is sure to find out the truth of Marco’s infidelity. Dealing appropriately with the past, by facing up to one’s mistakes and faults, is portrayed as the way to attain a happy ending. This process is structured in a communicative fashion, as Tykwer includes both utopian and dystopian models in his Alpine microcosm. The utopian/dystopian imagery extends to the portrayal of the couples themselves. Marco and Rebecca, initially seen as the attractive “golden couple” are in reality a sinister combination. While their relationship turns from passionate love to passionate fighting and they are increasingly lost for words, Laura and René tentatively develop a meaningful level of engagement, based on words as much as emotions. They enter this phase of their relationship with open minds, warning themselves about what must not be allowed to happen between them—falling pregnant, having to marry, and moving in together. Laura forces René to contemplate the conventional life events that she believes would be the most awful things to befall them. Ironically, she foreshadows their own lives; having children and other aspects of the petit bourgeois dream will become reality for them by the end of the film, and, although she is not yet aware of the fact, at this point she is already pregnant. Tykwer confirms: “Laura is articulating the fear people have of leading a completely normal life. Everybody imagines that they have to be something special, however the reality is rather different.”242 Despite being wary of commitment and afraid of being hurt, the couple learn with time to conquer this egoistical angst and commit to raising a new generation. Two issues central to Heimat films—overcoming the generational divide and passing on the responsibility to the younger generation—are resolved positively here. The history of the film’s inception makes its connection to the Bergfilm genre even clearer. Wintersleepers is based on a novel by Françoise Pyszora, which is set by the sea in summer time. Tykwer took almost two years to write the script, freely changing the story to suit his style and preferences. “I’m not a big fan of the sun, and I can’t imagine being able to create a seaside atmosphere that would interest me in the least.”243 Instead, he says: “I wanted to have the story take place in winter, in the snow, creating a completely different aesthetic.”244 Consequently, he chose the mountain setting, despite the fact that it provided challenges of a different nature. Tykwer admits: “Wintersleepers was much more expensive than Lola [Run Lola Run] was. […] Because it was shot in snow.”245 The choice of location had its price, and not just in terms of budget. Tykwer encountered similar problems to Fanck, Riefenstahl, and Trenker: “It was horrible to shoot. Being on a mountain with sixty people waiting for you to say something and you don’t even know where the wind is blowing. […] The snow is never where you want it to be. It’s always like—you want to shoot in that direction, but it’s all green there and the snow is behind you. […] And then when you really need some bad weather, you just have bright sun. When you really

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Despite the changes in locale, Tykwer left the main configuration of the novel unchanged: the combination of two very different couples, “one that communicates more verbally and the other who in strong contrast, relates more physically and whose conflicts tend to be played out on a physical level”.247 However, the demarcations are never that clear—neither with regard to the characters nor to the landscape through which they move. As a distant panorama, the Alps appear extremely picturesque; yet, on closer inspection, they have a darker, more complicated side. Tykwer chose the snowcovered landscape for symbolic reasons: “What fascinates me so much about snow is that on the one hand it always imparts a feeling of innocence to a landscape, a land with an unblemished surface. On the other hand, we found this landscape scarred with glacier crevices. The craziest thing about it is that it looks so flat and smooth when you see it from above (from a helicopter), but when you see it up close, wounds seem to open up everywhere as if the skin of the earth has been torn and injured. It couldn’t have 248 been a more fitting metaphor as a setting for the characters in Wintersleepers.”

Indeed, the characters reveal the same tendency. They harbour complex temperaments and outlooks beneath seemingly smooth surfaces. The snow also has a similar dialectic to it, in its capacity to blind as well as to reflect. The manner in which the four characters barricade themselves inside the dark mountain villa indicates that they find the outside world too hostile. Rather than merging with their surroundings, they stand out against the white glare of the snow. The villa serves as a cocoon from which they reluctantly emerge. Nature in general and the mountain in particular are not catalysts for personal development but instead become their nemesis. Only the comfort of social bonds in homely shelters affords the characters a happy ending. The film’s opening, with its montage and frequent use of fade-outs into white, is repeated at the end; the pastiche technique frames the film, allowing the viewer to understand the meaning of the introductory images only at the end of the story. Marco and Nina race each other down an ungroomed and unsafe slope, resulting in her fall and injury and fatefully sending Marco into Theo’s path. Tykwer acknowledges: “I wanted to develop a microcosmic structure for the whole thing. During the opening titles we see the route the characters travel, how they come together. Afterwards they are torn apart and individually introduced with all their conflicts and problems. At the end a noose is drawn tight, where I build up the suspense without, however, using any particular effects. Suspense is created far more by getting closer and closer to the characters, so that the noose is tightened as fate 249 slowly takes its course.”

The film’s dénouement, which repeats the montage technique, is deliberately ambivalent. Marco plunges to his certain death in an exaggerated freefall from the skies towards the snow-covered rocks of the high Alps. As he falls, 112

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the camera starts to spin and turn and enters a long vortex; death is thus linked with the trauma of birth, made explicit when the camera seems to enter Laura’s navel. Cutting back and forth between Marco’s deadly fall and the lives of the other characters, parallel editing creates the illusion that these events are happening simultaneously, a technique which is enhanced by the use of sound bridging—and is then destroyed as the viewer is confronted with significant leaps in time. The syuzhet’s final scene opens with a baby crying in the night, demanding its parents’ attention. The voice belongs to the offspring of Laura and René. René rises to tend to his child, turns on the light, and muses quietly as he looks into the happy face, “I know you are not hungry”, and with this the film closes. Tykwer justifies the ending as follows: “The intimate moment that takes place at the end of the film was quite important for me after the big sweep of events”,250 which thematized guilt and death, love and betrayal, lies and finding the truth. By bringing the film back to life’s bare essentials, Tykwer wished to include a reference to hope as much as to continuity. The idea has also been not “to bring everything to an end. This is a film that doesn’t end and so the story must continue, things are brought full circle but the stories go on. The child’s face in the final image gives us the feeling that life goes on.”251 In assessing the film’s overall message, two overarching existentialist themes are identifiable: buried memories and the different ways of coming to terms with the past. The location of the film is also fundamental to understanding the significance of its references to the past. Wintersleepers is set in a region that to this day evokes memories not only of mountain films but also of Hitler.252 After the failed putsch of 1923, the Obersalzberg became Hitler’s refuge and hermitage. It was there that he supposedly finished some chapters of Mein Kampf [My Struggle], making mention of a little wooden hut, his “Kampfhäusl” in the publication.253 In 1930, Hitler purchased the manor Wachenfeld, which was to become the central building of the Berghof complex on the Obersalzberg,254 supposedly funded by the royalties of Mein Kampf. In 1933/34 one nearby mountainous rise was referred to as “ReichskanzlerAdolf-Hitler-Höhe” [Chancellor of the German Reich Adolf Hitler Rise]; however, the place was later to become Göring’s residence and therefore soon lost its name among the locals. “Even prior to 1933 the Obersalzberg was not considered to be merely a summer and private residence, but was understood to be connected with Hitler’s biography, the rise of the NSDAP and finally with the fate of Germany.”255 Munich’s NSDAP-Gauleiter [head of Nazi administrative district] Adolf Wagner even referred to the Obersalzberg as the “Holy Mountain of all Germans”.256 After 1945, the area was appropriated once again, this time by the Americans, who erected an exclusive resort there following the bombing of the region and the destruction of the original structures. The area was not handed back to Germany until 1996, making way for the development of a museum in 1999257 and the latest tourist resort initiative, which feed off the dual fascination with the National Socialist past and the seemingly innocent mountain panorama. The late 1990s saw the transformation of the former Adolf-Hitler-Mountain, Göring-Hill, and Bormann-Hill into a mountain resort hosting precisely those guests that the Nazis most despised: international cosmopolitans. Promoting themselves even to locals in a mixture of German and English, the proprietors have endeavoured to avoid any parallels to Hit113

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lerian language or ideologies. In early 2005, the “Intercontinental Resort Berchtesgaden” opened, attempting to align itself with the earlier tradition of tourism dating back to the 1870s, rather than the connotations that arise from the period of the 1930s and 40s.258 With this in mind, Tykwer could not look at mountains in general and this region in particular without an ulterior motive. The concrete history of the area—coupled with the cinematic tradition of the Heimat films and their tendency to simplify, romanticize, and instrumentalize German identity with reference to mountains and history—certainly influenced Tykwer. With Wintersleepers, he confronts issues which are troubling to the sense of German identity and the understanding of history felt by many Germans. He uses traditional images of the Alpine sublime as a backdrop against which to juxtapose conservative notions of German identity with a story of alienated, confused individuals striving to construct their identities anew. Tykwer’s depiction of community in Wintersleepers departs from the tradition of the Heimat genre. By bringing together people from various parts of the country, Tykwer presents a microcosm of the nation, comprising different regions and challenging the Heimat notion that German identity is constructed around childhood memories and attachment to one’s native soil. His cosmos consists of very different people in search of a Heimat of their own; Theo and Rebecca cannot find a Heimat in the Alps, whereas the newcomers Laura and René are able to. Finding a way to live, while dealing with the past, is as difficult for each character in the film as it has been for their nation as a whole. The controversial term “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” [coming to terms with the past] stands for the phenomenon which has occupied individual as well as national remembering. While Germany has had to come to terms with the weight of its past and its guilt with regard to the Third Reich, Tykwer’s choice of location makes the link with the Nazi past unmissable, while the film’s setting in contemporary society shows the underlying traumas of Tykwer’s microcosm to be pars pro toto for the buried past on more personal terms. René’s and Theo’s inability to remember the events leading up to the car crash, and their reactions to their shortcomings in confronting their guilt and responsibility, represent two attitudes towards the relationship between history and identity in Germany. On the one hand, René’s role in the accident is buried twofold: by the snow which covers the car and also by his own shortterm amnesia. Theo, on the other hand, can remember only a scar and that a second car was involved, yet cannot bring himself to acknowledge his own role in the crash and the events following it. He becomes obsessed with reconstructing the past and uncovering potential explanations, continuously externalizing his feelings by assigning blame to others and to circumstance. He is only too prepared to jump to conclusions in the hope of redirecting his frustration through revenge and thus attaining closure. Obsessed with condemnation, and fixated on the past as a way of resolving what cannot be resolved, as well as directing attention away from his own failures, Theo cannot rest, even after Marco’s death, an event which should have allowed him to start afresh. His gaze in the final scenes of the film wanders up towards the mountain peaks in a reflective and introspective gesture that indicates that he will be trapped in the shadow of his past until the very end. In contrast, René and Laura cannot dwell on times past. By attempting to confront and unearth 114

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their personal histories, they have experienced a catharsis that has prepared them for another phase in their lives, one that is forward-looking and lifeembracing. Accepting their baby’s needs, they acknowledge the enduring human need for love, happiness, and companionship, while simultaneously rejecting a fixation on the past as being counterproductive. The establishment of an honest relationship is shown as one way of achieving a happy existence, something which is essential for an affirmation of a sense of Heimat. Love is shown to be the healing agent in the process. When the camera pans over the mountains, zooming in to reveal the cracks and crevices in the Alpine landscape, a voice-over recites from one of Rebecca’s trashy novels: “As the moisture flowed into droplets on the grass and her own eyes were dry, she knew that she had loved him. She had loved him for the salt and the sun on his body, for the smoothness of his skin, for his strength, but also she had loved him for himself, fallible and guilty, and it was this self which was now lost. There was an ache at the back of her throat, a dry ache, needing moisture but remaining dry.” While this passage foretells Rebecca’s own fate —she must face up to Marco’s death and infidelities—it also pleads for acceptance. As fallible and guilty as any individual (in the film as well as in life), the younger generation’s sense of identity can only develop strongly and healthily if the past is acknowledged and accepted as a lesson in life, in order to create a better future. Tykwer’s intent seems to be both a call for acceptance of the past and the re-connection of all Germans with the trauma of the past, while showing a constructive way forward. Fittingly, “Tykwer’s mountainscape strikes the viewer as eerily subjective and uncannily alive. Its uninhabitable creases and folds recall images of the human brain’s cerebral lobes.”259 Indeed, Wintersleepers examines the exploration of collective amnesia, of collective memory, and of personal and collective responsibility for the past, present, and future, thus rehabilitating the mountain film for contemporary and coming stories. The topos of mountains and nature in the Bergfilm genre foregrounds the cleansing effect of the surrounding environment as a way of ridding oneself of shame and guilt. While in the films of Fanck, Trenker, and Riefenstahl the successful hike to a peak served chiefly as a catharsis, Tykwer depicts less physical ways of overcoming one’s past shortcomings. The mountaineer in the tradition of the 1920s and 30s Bergfilm returned from his adventure a better person—purified, reformed, and with his reinvigorated physique symbolizing his reconstituted psyche. This process was steeped in mythical beliefs that saw nature as an equalizing force, similar to a judge: the undeserving do not get far. However, nature honours those of true quality and a noble mind by allowing them safe passage. Idealizing nature therefore serves the idolization of men. Likewise, an individual who can withstand nature’s onslaught is a truly developed being.260 The rites of passage in and through nature symbolize the process of liberation, whether from a mother or father figure or from an occupying force. The vitality of the virile nature lover demands recognition and admiration. Although he employs parts of this myth in his Wintersleepers, Tykwer rejects Darwinian logic; for him it is less a show of courage that is required in the process of finding and proclaiming one’s identity than a considered assessment of one’s environment, as well as introspection in surroundings in which one feels safe and comfortable. For

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Tykwer, it is less the exposed peak that symbolizes Heimat than the protected valley. In summary, Tykwer shows enormous originality in revitalizing the genre by resisting the repetition and copying of tried and tested elements in favour of deconstructing clichés and formulas. Most importantly, he renews the ideological message that usually harnesses the fetishization of Heimat in the Alpine countryside to tell the story of a self-sacrificial submission to, or a heroic struggle against, nature’s forces. While each of the mountain films discussed shares a “resolute privileging of gesture over word, of emotion over reason”,261 and centres on the elimination of misfits in a natural setting, they also reinstate Heimat as the central value in people’s lives. Tykwer has thus highlighted how working within the genre “while at the same time selfconsciously working against its conventions, upsetting audience expectations” can provide for a rich cinematic experience.262

NOTES 1

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Frank Kessler and Eva Warth, “Early Cinema and Its Audiences”, in Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk (eds.), The German Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002), pp. 121‒28, here p. 122. Cf. Martin Loiperdinger, “Kaiser Wilhelm II: Der erste deutsche Filmstar”, in Thomas Koebner (ed.), Idole des deutschen Films: Eine Galerie von Schlüsselfiguren (Munich: Edition Text & Kritik, 1997), pp. 41‒53. In the original: “Seine Majestät Kaiser Wilhelm II. schreitet zu Fuss kurz vor seiner Abfahrt von Stettin am 4. März 1897 mit grossem Gefolge auf der Landungsbrücke das Volk begrüßend zum Dampfer, hervorragend scharfes und klares Bild, Seine Majestät ist deutlich erkennbar.” Oskar Messter quoted from his logbook Bundesarchiv N 1275/41. Wilhelm II quoted in Peter Schamoni, Majestät brauchen Sonne, 1999, DVD release in 2006. Cf. Peter Schamoni, Majestät brauchen Sonne, 1999, DVD release in 2006. Lutz Koepnick, Framing Attention: Windows on Modern German Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), p. 111. Béla Balázs, “Revisited—Der Fall Dr. Fanck: Die Entdeckung der Natur im deutschen Bergfilm. (1931)”, Film & Kritik, no. 1 (1992), pp. 4‒7; JanChristopher Horak, “Berge, Licht und Traum: Dr. Arnold Fanck und der deutsche Bergfilm” (Munich: Ausstellungskatalog, 1997); Christian Rapp, Höhenrausch: Der deutsche Bergfilm (Vienna: Sonderzahl, 1997); Stefan König, Hans-Jürgen Panitz, and Michael Wachtler (eds.), Bergfilm: Dramen, Trick und Abenteuer (Munich: Herbig Verlagsgruppe, 2001); Carsten Strathausen, “The Image as Abyss: The Mountain Film and the Cinematic Sublime”, in Kenneth S. Calhoon (ed.), Peripheral Visions: The Hidden Stages of Weimar Cinema (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), pp. 17‒90; Irmbert Schenk, “Flucht aus der Moderne? Fanck, Riefenstahl, Trenker”, in Thomas Koebner (ed.), Diesseits der ‘Dämonischen Leinwand’: Neue Perspektiven auf das späte Weimarer Kino (Munich: Edition Text & Kritik, 2003), pp. 327‒40. Before the American left Switzerland, he gave a copy of the film to a guide from Zermatt. On the return journey to the United States, Burlingham and his film went down with their ship in the Atlantic. Not until the death of the mountain

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guide in 1956 was the copy of the film discovered in his estate. Cf. Roy Oppenheim, Die Entdeckung der Alpen (Stuttgart: Huber, 1974), p. 167. Cf. Herman Weigel, “Von Fanck und seinem Handwerk”, Filmhefte 2 (1976), pp. 30‒35, here p. 31. Hake refers to “this uniquely German genre”. Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 43. Cf. also “a film genre which was exclusively German: the mountain films”. Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, revised and expanded edition, edited by Leonardo Quaresima (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 110. “Unlike Alpine films in other countries […] only in Germany did the mountain film succeed in developing into a film genre of its own and making its own way in the cinema. However, as most of the films were made in the Swiss or the Austrian Alps, the term ‘German’ must be limited to the production of these films only.” In the original: “Im Unterschied zu alpinen Filmen in anderen Ländern gelang es […] dem Bergfilm nur in Deutschland, sich zu einer eigenen Filmgattung zu entwickeln und erfolgreich im Kino durchzusetzen. Da die meisten Filme in den Schweizer bzw. österreichischen Alpen entstanden, muß die Bezeichnung ‘deutsch’ allerdings auf die Produktion dieser Filme bezogen werden.” Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 7. Arnold Fanck remembers filming under conditions in which temperatures of twenty to thirty degrees below zero penetrated their clothing, particles of snow filtered into the tiniest cracks and openings of their equipment, and the lenses fogged up in the blink of an eye. Cf. Arnold Fanck, Er führte Regie mit Gletschern, Stürmen und Lawinen (Munich: Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1973), p. 199. Leni Riefenstahl recalls in similar terms—that filming above the clouds at heights of several thousand metres above sea level demands “Opferwillen” [a spirit of sacrifice]. Leni Riefenstahl, “Filmarbeit wie noch nie.… Ein Gespräch mit Leni Riefenstahl”, Mein Film, no. 328 (1932), pp. 4‒5. Nancy P. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space: Landscape, Nationality, and Identity in Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg”, German Quarterly, vol. 69, no. 3 (1996), pp. 305‒21, here p. 312. Eric Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity: Relocating the Bergfilm”, New German Critique, no. 51, Special Issue on Weimar Mass Culture (1990), pp. 137‒61, here p. 137. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 309. Ibid., p. 305. Ibid., p. 309. John Evelyn, Diary (London, 1908), quoted in Gabriele Seitz, Wo Europa den Himmel berührt: Die Entdeckung der Alpen (Munich: Artemis, 1987), p. 128. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 309. Ibid. Rapp, Höhenrausch, pp. 73‒74. Michael Simkin, “Mr Albert Smith, ein englischer Showman des 19. Jahrhunderts”, in Laterna Magica—Vergnügen, Belehrung, Unterhaltung—Der Projektionskünstler Paul Hoffmann, Schriftenreihe des Historischen Museums Frankfurt, vol. 14 (1981), pp. 55‒63. Cf. Stefano Ardito, Mont Blanc: Discovery and Conquest of the Giant of the Alps (Vercelli: White Star, 2000). Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 312.

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Linda Bryder, Below the Magic Mountain: A Social History of Tuberculosis in Twentieth Century Britain (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988), pp. 24‒25. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 310. Peter Gray, Die Republik der Außenseiter: Geist und Kultur der Weimarer Zeit, 1918‒1933 (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1989), p. 130. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 309. Ibid. Ibid. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful, based on the 2nd edition of the text from 1759 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 64. Cf. “Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling.” Ibid., p. 39. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 150. Ibid., p.141. Cf. Luis Trenker, Der verlorene Sohn (Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, 1951), original: 1934. In his 1951 foreword, Trenker states: “This story came about by thinking of the meadows and clouds of my childhood and of my Heimat. I wrote it out of the burning longing of someone who has washed up on a foreign shore and from the hot yearning of renunciation.” In the original: “Diese Erzählung entstand im Gedanken an die Wiesen und Wolken der Kindheit und der Heimat. Ich schrieb sie aus der brennenden Sehnsucht des an fremde Ufer Getriebenen und aus der heißen Sehnsucht des Entsagenden.” Ibid. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 310. Cf. Heinrich Pfannl, “Der Alpinismus und der Krieg—dieser eine, wahrhaftige Krieg!”, Österreichische Alpenzeitung, no. 911/912 (1914), pp. 250‒52. In the original: “schon, bevor die Zeit gekommen war, als höchstes Glück und herrlichstes Ziel [davon, die] eigenste und eigentliche Heimat, die Berge, mit dem Einsatz von Blut und Leben verteidigen zu dürfen.” Adolf Deye, “Kriegsbilder aus den Hochalpen”, Zeitschrift des D.Ö.A.V. (1916), p. 212. Cf. during the Second World War, this tradition was revived in films such as the 1941 propaganda film Spähtrupp Hallgarten [Hallgarten Scouting Patrol]. Hans Feld, “Der Fanck-Film der Aafa”, Film-Kurier, 3 Feb. 1931. Cf. Mountains and mountain climbing function as powerful metaphors against urbanization and the rationalism of the modern, thus serving as an ideal stage on which to temporarily turn one’s sense of being socially outclassed into dramatic victory poses. Cf. Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 18. In the original: “das Gefühl der Ekstase und Inspiration, die mit einem Aufstieg über 1500 Meter vom Geistigen ins Räumlich-Körperliche übertragen und damit stabilisiert wird. […] Hochgefühl.” Béla Balázs, “Champagner in der Luft”, in Hanno Loewy (ed.), Béla Balázs—Ein Baedecker der Seele: Und andere Feuilletons aus den Jahren, 1920‒1926 (Berlin: Das Arsenal, 2002), pp. 64‒66, here p. 64. “[I]n 1913 alone, more than 350 new films were released nationwide.” Hake, German National Cinema, p. 12. In the First World War, Fanck had been posted to the scientific department of the Secret Service. There he researched the penetrative strength of grenades with the aid of slow-motion photography. The war was barely over when he used the mili118

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tary equipment to make a ski film with a special camera weighing five tons. Cf. Lars-Olaf Beier and Hilmar Schmundt, “Der vertikale Western”, Der Spiegel, 49 (2007), pp. 212‒15, here p. 213. “Commodity tie-ins appeared for the first time when the chocolate manufacturer Stollwerk & Co. in Cologne, distributor of the Cinématographe Lumière since 1896, installed vending machines in its theatres.” Hake, German National Cinema, p. 12. “During the 1920s, […] movie-theatre advertising […] used the most advanced animation techniques to sell sweets, drinks and cigarettes.” Ibid, pp. 38‒39. In 1872 the first mountain infantry (Gebirgsjäger) was founded in the Alps, the Italian Alpini-company. Following Italy’s initiative, France (Chasseur-Alpin) and Austria (single combats) also started training mountain fighters. The German Schneeschuh-Batallions and later Deutsche Alpenkorps [German Alpine Corps] were used during the First World War. Although he refers to numerous caustic critics from the 1920s, Schenk also states that most contemporary critics assessed the quality of the films favourably as Nature, Landscape- or High Mountain Films. Cf. Schenk, “Flucht aus der Moderne?”, p. 331. Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 9. Cf. Klaus Kreimeier, The Ufa Story: A History of Germany’s Greatest Film Company, 1918‒1945, translated by Robert Kimber and Rita Kimber (New York: Hill & Wang, 1996). Ironically, in The Holy Mountain (1925/26), Riefenstahl played alongside Luis Trenker, with whom she had a real-life love affair. Soon after a well-documented falling out with Trenker, Riefenstahl pursued her own career as an actor and director, remaining on good terms with Fanck, his cameraman Sepp Allgeier, and other members of his team, several of whom lent their expertise to Riefenstahl’s subsequent projects. Cf. Leni Riefenstahl, Memoiren, 1902‒1945 (Frankfurt and Berlin: Ullstein, 1996), pp. 86‒95. Cf. Luis Trenker, Alles gut gegangen: Geschichten aus meinem Leben (Hamburg: Mosaik, 1965), pp. 233‒36. The original: “Der Heilige Berg […] ist eine gigantische Komposition aus Körperkultur-Phantasien, Sonnentrottelei und kosmischem Geschwöge.” Siegfried Kracauer, “Der heilige Berg”, Frankfurter Zeitung und Handelsblatt, 4 Mar. 1927. Ibid. Cf. Hake, German National Cinema, pp. 42‒43. Translated from the original: “die Bannkraft, die Zaubermacht, die vom Gebirge ausgeht und die Menschen in eine unentrinnbare Abhängigkeit zwingt. Es rast der Berg und will sein Opfer haben.” Anon., “Gletscher-Märchen”, Frankfurter Zeitung, 15 Nov. 1929. Heinrich Harrer was one of the first team members to climb the north face of the Eiger successfully in 1938, and was subsequently received by the Führer himself. Other mountain formations that had only recently been climbed were the north face of the Grande Jorasse (1935), the Große Zinne (1933), and the Matterhorn (1931). Mount Everest and Nanga Parbat were not conquered until the 1950s. Cf. In a review of Fancks’ Stürme über dem Montblanc: “A film? No, an incredible miracle, a ‘ninth’ symphony of the camera of nameless beauty, which must silence every critic.” In the original: “Ein Film? Nein, ein unerhörtes Wunder, eine ‘neunte Sinfonie’ der Kamera von namenloser Schönheit, vor der jede Kritik

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56 57

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verstummen muß.” Anon., “Filmkritik”, Tilsiter Allgemeine Zeitung, 28 Mar. 1931. In the original: “Das gesprochene Wort war dem stummen Pathos seiner Landschaftsbilder offenkundig abträglich.” Rapp, Höhenrausch, pp. 246‒47. In the original: “Arnold Fanck ist der Entdecker des Heroischen in der Natur […] und […] beantwortet die Schicksalsfragen des Menschen nicht in der schwächlichen Sprache der Ästhetik, sondern—ohne jeden Kompromiß—in der einzig lebendigen Sprache des Blutes, die auch die Sprache der ewigen Naturgesetze ist.” Alfred Beierle, “Die Welt des Dr. Arnold Fancks”, Illustrierte Film-Post, 9 Aug. 1933. Grieben-Reiseführer, Berchtesgadener Land (Berlin: Grieben, 1928), p. 64. Fanck himself provided the keywords for this reading when he referred to his personal experiences: The high mountain terrain was for him a school, which, even if an extremely hard one, was nevertheless an effective one, where he managed to overcome “Weichheit und Ängstlichkeit” [softness and timidity]. Fanck, Er führte Regie mit Gletschern, Stürmen und Lawinen, p. 30. “Just as the mountains in this place have remained immutable down the centuries, so too will the work that has been begun here by the Führer live on eternally in his people through the centuries.” In the original: “Wie hier die Berge im Wandel der Jahrtausende ewig bleiben, so ewig wird auch das hier begonnene Werk des Führers durch Jahrtausende in seinem Volk weiterleben.” Obergruppenführer Wilhelm Brückner, “Der Führer in seinem Privatleben”, in Adolf Hitler: Bilder aus dem Leben des Führers (Altona-Bahrenfeld: CigarettenBilderdienst, 1936), p. 43. The rehabilitation and renaissance of the genre is due mainly to several TV productions which reached huge audiences, including Hans Jürgen Panitz, Wer was Arnold Fanck? (Omega-Film, Munich, 1987); Rudolf Nottebohm and HansJürgen Panitz, Luis Trenker—Portrait: Fast ein Jahrhundert (Omega-Film, Munich, 1985); Ray Müller, Leni Riefenstahl—Die Macht der Bilder (OmegaFilm, Munich, 1993). Cf. video editions containing numerous Bergfilme such as Luis Trenker, Luis Trenker—Jubiläumsausgabe (Toppic-Polyband, Munich, 1992), and also DVD releases of most of his and Riefenstahl’s mountain films. Cf. “Filmrealität: Immanente Bestandsaufnahme. Inhalt, Form, Handlung. Bedingungsrealität: Warum wird dieser Inhalt, in dieser historischen Situation, in dieser Form filmisch aktualisiert? Wirkungsrealität: Dominante zeitgenössische Rezeption. Heutige Rezeption.” Helmut Korte, Einführung in die systematische Filmanalyse (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2004), p. 23. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 310. David Guston, “Leni Riefenstahl”, Film Quarterly, vol. 14, no. 1 (1960), pp. 4‒19, here p. 8. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 308. “Cold and rigid, stiff, wed to the rock, his body was bedded on some inaccessible ridge. The mighty mountain had made itself into his grave monument. The lofty sky arched above him as his cathedral, he remained free of clods of earth, in the open song of the eternal winds.” In the original: “Kalt und starr, steif, dem Fels vermählt, war sein Leib irgendwo auf unnahbarem Grat gebettet. Der mächtige Berg hatte sich zu seinem Grabobelisken gemacht. Der hohe Himmel wölbte sich als Dom über ihm, frei blieb er von Erdschollen, im offenen Gesang der ewigen

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80 81 82

Winde.” Carl Haensel, Der Kampf ums Matterhorn: Tatsachenroman (Stuttgart: Engelhornverlag Adolf Spemann, 1929), p. 168. Arno Rußegger, “Das Matterhorn des Luis Trenker: Zum Thema Erstbesteigung als Wiederholung im Film”, in Friedbert Aspetsberger (ed.), Der BergFilm, 1920‒1940 (Innsbruck: Studien, 2003), pp. 57‒77, here p. 58. Ibid., p. 62. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 312. Ibid. Notable exceptions are Anton Kaes, “German Cultural History and the Study of Film: Ten Theses and a Postscript”, New German Critique, no. 65 (1995), pp. 47‒58, and Shell Shock: Film and Trauma in Weimar Germany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). Originally entitled Hölle von Piz Palü [Hell of Piz Palü], the four-hour silent film was cut down rigorously and set to dramatic music in 1935. Helmuth Z. Zebhauser, “Am Anfang war die Camera obscura. Vom eingefrorenen Abbild zur Kinematographie”, in König, Panitz, and Wachtler (eds.), Bergfilm, p. 19. The term “Kulturfilm” [cultural film] referred to a form of “documentary committed to idealised representations of nature, country and native people”. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 22. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 138. Thomas Elsaesser, “Leni Riefenstahl: The Body Beautiful, Art Cinema and Fascist Aesthetics”, in Pam Cook and Philip Dodd (eds.), Women and Film: A Sight and Sound Reader (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), pp. 186‒97, here p. 190. Ibid. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 30. Eric Rentschler, “Hochgebirge und Moderne: eine Standortbestimmung des Bergfilms”, Film & Kritik, 1/1 (1992), p. 26. See also Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 27‒51. Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 311. In the original: “Vor allem habe ich durch diese meine Ski-Bergfilme ungezählten Millionen ernsthafter Menschen ein erhebendes und beglückendes und wirklich wertvolles Naturerlebnis geschenkt.” Arnold Fanck in a letter to Klaus Kreimeier, quoted in Fanck, Er führte Regie mit Gletschern, Stürmen und Lawinen, p. 10. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 137. Lutz Koepnick, The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 108. This connection has been made most recently by Beier and Schmundt, when they compared mountain films and Western movies and saw further parallels in the biographies of pioneers of the mountain film genre: “His [Fanck’s] films were vertical Westerns, whose heroes don’t move towards the West but instead towards the sky. […] One of Fanck’s colleagues was Harald Reinl, an enthusiastic skier who later also worked with Riefenstahl, and in the sixties was one of the first in Europe to film Westerns: after Karl May’s Winnetou novels.” In the original: “Seine [Fanck’s] Filme waren vertikale Western, deren Helden nicht gen Westen ziehen, sondern gen Himmel. […] Einer von Fancks Mitarbeitern war Harald Reinl, ein begeisterter Skifahrer, der später auch mit Riefenstahl arbeitete und in den sechziger Jahren als einer der Ersten in Europa Western drehte: nach Karl 121

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Mays Winnetou-Romanen.” Beier and Schmundt, “Der vertikale Western”, p. 214. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 42. “Dr Fanck became a spiritual teacher for me […]. He was also the first to make time-lapse and slow-motion into a filmic means of structuring. Only in his films could one see, for the first time, the swirling of clouds, the movement of the sunlight and the wandering shadows over mountain tops and rock walls. […] My deep respect and admiration for him as a brilliant pioneer of film and wise personality were great.” In the original: “Dr. Fanck wurde für mich ein geistiger Lehrer. […] Auch war er der Erste, der Zeitraffung und Zeitlupe zum filmischen Gestaltungsmittel machte. Das Brodeln der Wolken, das Ziehen des Sonnenlichtes und die wanderenden Schatten über Bergkuppen und Felswände konnte man zum ersten Mal nur in seinen Filmen sehen. […] Meine Hochachtung und Bewunderung für ihn als genialen Filmpionier und geistvolle Persönlichkeit war groß”. Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 76. Fanck put Riefenstahl in touch with the Jewish producer Harry Sokal who backed her financially and logistically for The Blue Light. Cf. Elsaesser, “Leni Riefenstahl”, p. 190. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 157. “For days and nights I brooded and considered just how I could draw the realistic rock walls into my fairy tale world, so that they would harmonize with my other editing efforts.” In the original: “Tagelang, nächtelang grübelte ich und dachte darüber nach, wie ich die realistischen Felswände in meine Märchenwelt so einbeziehen konnte, daß sie zu meinen anderen Bildversionen paßten.” Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 138. Cf. text on 1932 souvenir film progamme, in brochure format, for advertising and distribution at the movies. This first reference to the film being the product of a collective is supported in Riefenstahl’s memoirs (Riefenstahl, Memoiren, pp. 137‒39). When, probably in May 1931, Riefenstahl asked Hungarian-born Marxist film-maker and theorist Balázs whether he would be prepared to write a screenplay from her ideas for a film, which were only in note form, he immediately agreed. In the early summer of 1931, Balázs transformed Riefenstahl’s exposé into a screenplay, with Austrian scriptwriter Carl Mayer (an expert on silent film) also involved in the process. Filming lasted from July to September 1931, with Balázs present for four weeks and Schneeberger working as the chief cameraman. “We were like a family. Everything was paid for out of one pot. Each person made the effort not to dip into the pot too much so that it would last for as long as possible. [...] In the evening we sat by the log fire together and discussed the scenes. Every individual gave their opinion.” Translated from the German original: Leni Riefenstahl, Kampf in Schnee und Eis (Leipzig: Hesse & Becker, 1933), pp. 69 and 73, also in Riefenstahl, Memoiren, pp. 145‒46. At the premiere on 24 March 1932, the film was correctly referred to as a joint project by Leni Riefenstahl, Béla Balázs, and Hans Schneeberger, albeit omitting credits for Fanck’s contribution. Cf. text on 1938 film programmes/souvenir brochures for advertising and distribution at the cinemas. Junta only speaks and understands Italian and therefore never successfully communicates with Vigo. In the original: “die Unberührtheit von der zeitlichen Bewegtheit, […] die absolut ‘unhistorische’ Landschaft”. Georg Simmel, “Die Alpen”, Philosophische 122

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Kultur: Über das Abenteuer, die Geschlechter und die Krise der Moderne. Gesammelte Essais (Berlin: Klaus Wagenbach, 1986), pp. 125‒30, here p. 128. Since Abraham (“Bram”) Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, adaptations of the theme and plot have been plentiful. The first film version of the novel was the early German silent film Nosferatu: A Symphony in Terror (1922), an unauthorized adaptation of Stoker’s novel directed by the expressionist F.W. Murnau. In Murnau’s film, the rodent-like Dracula (Max Schreck) was renamed “Graf Orlock” [Count Orlock]. The film was released in England as Dracula. Tod Browning, Dracula (USA, 1931). One of the most recent and successful examples is Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (USA, 1992). Béla Balázs in a review of the film, which appeared in Der Tag, 9 Mar. 1923, quoted in Eric Rentschler, “Fatal Attractions: Leni Riefenstahl’s The Blue Light”, October, vol. 48 (1989), pp. 46‒68, here p. 56. Rentschler, “Fatal Attractions”, p. 57. Cf. “high mountain slopes were imagined as a cloud-wreathed borderland between the physical and the spiritual universe.” Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory (New York: Vintage, 1995), p. 417. Ulrich Rügner, Filmmusik in Deutschland zwischen, 1924 und 1934: Studien zur Filmgeschichte 3 (Hildesheim: Olms, 1988), p. 204. Rentschler, “Fatal Attractions”, p. 58. Cf. Kracauer with reference to Caligari. Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, p. 76. Cf. also Lotte H. Eisner’s chapters on “The Predisposition toward Expressionism” and “The Beginnings of Expressionist Film”, in Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, translated by Roger Greaves (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), pp. 9‒37. Eisner, The Haunted Screen, p. 313. Ibid. Cf. Sabine Hake, The Cinema’s Third Machine: Writing on Film in Germany, 1907‒1933 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993), p. 223. “I was unsatisfied with my work. Again and again I changed what I had edited, […] but the tension was missing. Then I decided to ask Fanck for help.” In the original: “Ich war mit meiner Arbeit unzufrieden. Immer wieder änderte ich den Schnitt, […] aber es fehlte die Spannung. Da entschloß ich mich, Fanck um Hilfe zu bitten.” Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 149. Riefenstahl wrote to Balázs about her poor health in a letter: “Dear Bela, I have been waiting for news from you for ages and am beginning to think that you have forgotten us.” Leni Riefenstahl to Béla Balázs, 21 Feb. 1932, Balázs-Archive, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, MS 5021/320. Ibid. In the original: “… was ich zu sehen bekam, war eine Verstümmelung. Was hatte Fanck mit meinem Film angerichtet! Ich habe nie erfahren, ob dies ein Racheakt war, oder ob er nur keine Beziehung zu dem Thema hatte.” Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 150. Ibid., p. 156. Ibid. Nancy P. Nenno, “‘Postcards from the Edge’: Education to Tourism in the German Mountain Film” in Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy (eds.), Light Mo-

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tives: German Popular Film in Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), pp. 61‒84, here p. 63. Ibid. Cf. “It has often been said that one of the characteristics of kitsch is […] the neutralization of ‘extreme situations’, particularly death, by turning them into some sentimental idyll.” Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death, translated by Thomas Weyr (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 27. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 158. Cf. “in Nazism itself, it is a matter of the juxtaposition of opposing images of harmony (kitsch) and death, and of such violently contradictory feelings as harmony and terror.” Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism, p. 50. Ibid., p. 18. By presenting “quasi-ethnographic sequences of villagers” and by folkloristically staging the “rural life as a tourist attraction”, Riefenstahl’s film works in much the same way as the villagers’ myth-making. Cf. Johannes von Moltke, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 49. Von Moltke continues: “Das blaue Licht begins to paint a picture of Heimat as a space that unites capitalist modernization with romantic iconography and racist biology. […] Riefenstahl’s film […] conforms to a regime that prized tourism, modern cartography, the rational exploitation of nature for capitalist gain, and female sacrifice.” Ibid., p. 50. In the explanatory notes to the 2005 DVD release of Das blaue Licht, Horst Kettner acknowledges numerous locations, including the little village of Foroglio in Ticino [“Tessiner Dörfchen Foroglio”], “das Brenta-Gebiet [region] und Schloss [castle] Runkelstein bei Bozen”, as well as studio settings “in Berlin”. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 158. “Arnold Fanck was familiar with Renker’s novels; in fact, he used the title, with a slight change, of one of Renker’s novels, Heilige Berge (Holy Mountains), for the first film in which Riefenstahl acted. […] Thus it is most likely that Riefenstahl became acquainted with Renker’s work at the very beginning of her career.” Joseph Zsuffa, Béla Balázs: The Man and the Artist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), p. 454. Rentschler, “Fatal Attractions”, p. 51. Rentschler also points out that one of Riefenstahl’s early dance routines bore the title “Die blaue Blume/The Blue Flower”. Ibid., p. 51. Friedmar Apel, Deutscher Geist und deutsche Landschaft: Eine Topographie (Munich: Knaus, 1998), p. 72. Rentschler, “Fatal Attractions”, p. 51. All three quotes from Rentschler, “Fatal Attractions”, p. 51. Ibid. Ibid. Mountain films showed a “kind of heroism [that] was rooted in a mentality kindred to Nazi spirit. […] In addition, the idolatry of glaciers and rocks was symptomatic of an antirationalism on which the Nazis could capitalize.” Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, p. 112. See also pp. 257‒59. Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism”, in Under the Sign of Saturn (New York: Random House, 1981), p. 76. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 137. 124

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134 135 136

137

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139 140 141

142 143 144 145 146

Ibid., p. 139. Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, pp. 259‒63. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 141. Riefenstahl repeatedly stated this in German and English: “I have seen this in life very often. People who love beauty and have an ideal, when they must face the realistic world, they are broken.” Riefenstahl quoted in an interview by the British Broadcasting Corporation, June 1972, in Glenn B. Infield, Leni Riefenstahl: The Fallen Film Goddess (New York: Crowell, 1976), p. 30. Cf. “Like in a premonition I told the story of my future fate in The Blue Light: Junta, the strange girl in the mountains, who lives in a dream world, is pursued and expelled, is destroyed because her ideals—symbolized in the film by the shimmering rock crystals—are destroyed.” In the original: “Wie in einer Vorahnung habe ich im ‘Blauen Licht’ mein späteres Schicksal erzählt: Junta, das seltsame Mädchen in den Bergen, das in einer Traumwelt lebt, verfolgt und ausgestoßen wird, geht zugrunde, weil ihre Ideale—im Film sind es symbolisch die schimmernden Bergkristalle—zerstört werden.” Riefenstahl, Memoiren, p. 151. Richard Meran Barsam, Filmguide to Triumph of the Will (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 9. Alice Schwarzer, “Leni Riefenstahl: Propagandistin oder Künstlerin?” EMMA, Jan./Feb. 1999, p. 40. Anon., “Leni Riefenstahl—Belá Balázs and The Blue Light: The Self-Staging of a Martyr”, http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Philo/LitWiss/MedienWiss/Forsch/Telaviv/Riefenstahl-englisch.html#_ftnref2, retrieved May 2005. “Mountain climbing, the camaraderie, the battle- and victory-ideology fit very well into the programme of the Nazi power-elite. […] The mountains are turning brown.” In the original: “Das Bergsteigen, die Kameradschaft, die Kampf- und Sieg-Ideologie passt den Nazi-Machthabern bestens ins Konzept. […] Das Gebirge wird braun.” Stefan König quoted in Beier and Schmundt, “Der vertikale Western”, p. 214. Franz A. Birgel, “Luis Trenker: A Rebel in the Third Reich? Der Rebell, Der verlorene Sohn, Der Kaiser von Kalifornien, Condottieri, and Der Feuerteufel”, in Robert C. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000), pp. 37‒64, here p. 40. Christopher Seton-Watson, Italy from Liberalism to Fascism, 1870-1925 (London: Methuen, 1967), p. 689. Birgel, “Luis Trenker”, p. 41. In Evas Rosengartentour, Tyrolian film-maker Cornelius Hintner presented a love story, set in the Dolomites, between a rich American lady and a local mountain guide. Hintner’s film, which enraged censors, ends happily where Tonio’s journey begins, with the successful completion of a mountain hike that Hintner wished to seal with a romantic kiss. The last scene, which implied a happy synthesis of old world and new, had to be cut prior to its screening in 1913. Cf. Robert Rduch, Unbehausheit und Heimat: Das literarische Werk von Arnold Ulitz, 1888‒1971 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2009). Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 311. Trenker, for whom Richard Billinger wrote film scripts in the early 1930s, was inspired by Billinger’s drama Rauhnacht, which premiered in Munich in 1931. Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 152. Linda Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 127. 125

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147 In the original: “So muß sich auch Tonio Feuersinger, der Träger dieser Erzählung, kämpfend zum Glauben an die Heimaterde durchringen, die ihn an sich kettet wie ein Mutterherz das geliebte Kind.” Trenker, Der verlorene Sohn, p. 5. 148 Nenno, “Projections on Blank Space”, p. 309. 149 “With the increasing number of refugee films, do they want to find an outlet for the longing in the country? […] All these refugees are fleeing to Germany of all places, as if in the direction of the promised land.” In the original: “Will man, mit der Häufung der Flüchtlingsfilme, der Sehnsucht im Land ein Ventil geben? […] Alle diese Flüchtlinge fliehen grade nach Deutschland hin, wie in der [sic] Richtung eines Gelobten Lands.” Ernst Bloch, “Nazi-Filme oder Der Zauber der Persönlichkeit”, in Ernst Bloch, Vom Hasard zur Katastrophe. Politische Aufsätze, 1934‒1939 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1972), pp. 13‒16, here p. 14. 150 “ins Land Görings” [to the land of Göring]. Ibid., p. 14. 151 Trenker was “replacing Weimar’s foreign enthusiasm with homegrown diversions”. Eric Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home: Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son (1934)”, New German Critique, no. 60, Special Issue on German Film History (1993), pp. 33‒56, here p. 47. 152 Gustav Ucicky’s Flüchtlinge [Fugitives], Hans Albers’s return home in Gold, Willi Birgel’s return from America in Paul Wegener’s Ein Mann will nach Deutschland [A German Wants To Go Home], Johannes Meyer’s Der Flüchtling aus Chicago [The Fugitive from Chicago], Punks kommt aus Amerika [Punks Come from America], and Frischer Wind aus Kanada [A Fresh Breeze from Canada] are examples of films made between 1933 and 1935 which support the “Heim ins Reich” propaganda. 153 Critics have repeatedly mused over whether Tonio really left or his American adventure is possibly only a dream. Trenker’s novel provides a clear answer to this, in the following lines: “Where is Tonio? They are still waiting. Nobody in St Laurein has seen Tonio.” In the original: “Wo bleibt Tonio? Sie warten noch immer. Niemand mehr in St Laurein hat Tonio gesehen.” Ibid., p. 133. 154 “The camera documents the undoing of the man who was to be Sun King. No longer does it track energetically; it limps behind the emigrant and stares at his worn-out shoes. The editing loses the fluidity of the mountain scenes: the exuberant motions of the woodchoppers, the smooth rhythms of trees tumbling down and sliding into the water, the breathtaking leaps between silhouetted downhill skiers. Cuts now shuffle Tonio about, displacing him from shot to shot.” Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 46. 155 Barbl is shown on the occasion of her visit to the woodchoppers from a camera angle that mirrors an altar scene. Shot from below against the glistening sunlight, she emanates the glow and aura of the Madonna. 156 This pagan festival has its roots in the Germanic homage to Wotan and the hunt, and has had the support of the Church for centuries. 157 Other critics have repeatedly dated the festival differently. One recent example can be found in Birgel, “Luis Trenker”, p. 42: “The twelve days between Christmas and the Epiphany are called the Rauhnächte in German. Among the festivities on the last of these nights, Twelfth Night in English, are various rituals to banish evil spirits.” 158 In 1932, South Tyrolian writer Maria Veronika Rubatscher published a novel entitled Sonnwend (Salzburg: Anton Pustet, 1932), which also features the di-

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167 168

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172 173 174 175

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chotomy of wholesome country life in the mountains and corrupt urban society, and which inspired Trenker. Cf. Rapp, Höhenrausch”, p. 210. Quoted in Birgel, “Luis Trenker”, p. 43. Cf. “Communist papers in Vienna also attacked the film”, Trenker quoted in Birgel, “Luis Trenker”, p. 43. Trenker, Der verlorene Sohn”, p. 248. Cf. Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism, p. 33. Florian Leimgruber (ed.), Luis Trenker, Regisseur und Schriftsteller: Die Personalakte im Berlin Document Center (Bozen: Frasnelli-Keitsch, 1994). Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 42. Ibid., p. 43. It is exactly the opposite of what Rentschler says: not a mirror but a clear juxtaposition: “A single shot, a matched dissolve between the Dolomites and Manhattan skyscrapers, illustrates how Alpine reaches and urban edifices are mirror images. The Bergfilm, in short, is the Straßenfilm’s double.” Rentschler, “Mountains and Modernity”, p. 152. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 43. Guiseppe Becce has clearly moved beyond his “practical cue sheets […] collection of mood music for movie accompanists” published in his Kinothek [Cinemateque] (1920) with this original composition for The Prodigal Son. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 15. Eric Rentschler, “How American Is It? The U.S. as Image and Imaginary in German Film”, in Terri Ginsberg and Kirsten Moana Thompson (eds.), Perspectives on German Cinema (New York and London: Prentice-Hall, 1996), pp. 277‒94, here p. 288. Trenker quoted in Oskar Kalbus, Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst, vol. 2 (Altona-Bahrenfeld: Cigaretten Bilderdienst, 1935), p. 115. Rudolph Kayser, “Americanism”, in Anton Kaes, Martin Jay, and Edward Dimendberg (eds.), The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 395‒97. Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 51. Sander L. Gilman, On Blackness without Blacks: Essays on the Image of the Blacks in Germany (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982), p. 91. Ibid., p. 95. “Blacks were cast in a host of roles: innocent, immigrant, invaders. […] No matter what the guise, the figures are ciphers: They have nothing to do with real blacks [sic] and everything to do with German preoccupations.” Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 51. In the original: “dynamisches Zusammenspiel gemeinschaftlicher Rituale, die nahtlos ineinander greifen”. Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 203. In the original: “Das Telos von Der verlorene Sohn besteht vielmehr darin, in einer geradezu didaktischen Versuchsanordnung die unbestrittene Überlegenheit der Heimat nachzuweisen.” Ibid. Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 48. One should note that Trenker had just as ambivalent feelings about America as the Nazi demagogues. “At one level, the discourse of ‘Americanism’ as it emerged in the Weimar Republic was often employed by the far right as synonymous with metropolitan alienation and racial decadence against which a national culture must immunize itself. On the other hand, particularly subsequent to the Machtergreifung [seizing of power] […] we note an increasing tendency 127

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182 183 184 185 186 187 188

189 190

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among the Nazi elite, more obvious in their practice than in explicit policy statements, to identify the Party and its rule with an Americanism represented generally by glamour and consumerism, and specifically by its often explicit acknowledgement of Hollywood production values and stylistic conventions as the norm.” David Bathrick, “Modernity Writ Germany: State of the Art as Art of the Nazi State”, in Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens, p. 7. Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich, p. 253. Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel”, in Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 84‒249, here p. 229. Ibid. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 133. Rentschler, “How American Is It?”, p. 283. Tonio says to his father upon his return: “Vater, ich hab’s nimmer ausgehalten in der Fremd.” [Father, I couldn’t stand it any longer abroad.] Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich, p. 249. Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism, p. 29. Victoria de Grazia, “Mass Culture and Souvereignty: The American Challenge to European Cinemas, 1920‒1960”, Journal of Modern History, 61 (1989), pp. 53‒87, here p. 66. Trenker, Der verlorene Sohn, p. 352. The parable about repentance in the New Testament speaks of a son who demanded his inheritance before his father’s death, was given it, and spent it unwisely on a lengthy journey. He returns without anything, yet is welcomed by his father who even slaughters a calf to celebrate his son’s return. When the elder brother complains about the perceived injustice, the father replies: “We have to celebrate and be happy, because your brother was dead, but now he is alive; he was lost, but now he has been found.” Luke, 15.32. Trenker voices his criticism of capitalism clearly in his novel: “You see money, the economy, politics and speculation just play their own game, which you can’t get to the bottom of. Whatever might be behind them. Sixteen hundred roadworkers are standing in the street.” In the original: “Das Geld, die Wirtschaft, Politik und Spekulation spielen eben ihr eigenes Spiel, hinter das man nicht sehen kann. Was auch immer dahinterstecken mag. Sechzehnhundert Erdarbeiter stehen auf der Straße.” Trenker, Der verlorene Sohn, p. 211. This atmosphere corresponds with Billinger’s presentation of Rauhnacht: “Billinger emphasizes the occult and threatening things, while Trenker seeks to combine the pagan Rauhnacht with Christian traditions into a holistic experience. To do this Trenker combines customs from different regions, as well as events such as Twelfth Night and Christmas, that are separated chronologically, into a single sequence, with the result that one actually has to speak of a synthetic festival.” In the original: “Billinger betont das Okkulte und Bedrohliche, während Trenker bemüht ist, die Rauhnacht mit den christlichen Bräuchen zu einem Gesamtergebnis zusammenzuführen. Trenker kombiniert dazu Bräuche unterschiedlicher Regionen, aber auch zeitlich auseinanderliegende Ereignisse wie Dreikönigstag und Weihnachtsfest in einer einzigen Sequenz, sodaß man eigentlich von einem synthetischen Fest sprechen muß.” Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 210.

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193 Cf. W. G. Sebald, Unheimliche Heimat: Essays zur österreichischen Literatur (Salzburg and Vienna: Residenz, 1991). 194 Rentschler, “How American Is It?” p. 281. 195 Elizabeth Boa and Rachel Palfreyman, Heimat, a German Dream: Regional Loyalties and National Identity in German Culture, 1890‒1990 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 26. 196 In the original: “ein urbanistisches, internationalistisches und dem ‘Volk’ entfremdetes politisches Establishment”. Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 191. 197 In the original: “gottlose Sinnlosigkeit des Krieges […] Liebe zum Vaterland, keine Tugend […] gähnende trostlose Leere”. Luis Trenker with reference to Lewis Milestone, All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), in Trenker, Alles gut gegangen, p. 260. 198 William Everson, “Luis Trenker”, Films in Review, May 1984, p. 271. 199 Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler, p. 262. 200 Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 36. 201 Trenker, 1978, quoted in Rentschler, ibid., p. 33. 202 Ibid. 203 Nazi review from 1934, quoted in Rentschler, ibid., p.36. 204 Ibid. 205 Ibid., p. 37. 206 In the original: “Ich bin der verlorene Sohn gewesen, der hier von der Heimat weggegangen is’ in die Welt hinaus, viel gekämpft hat, immer mit’m Herzen dagewesen ist.” Trenker quoted in Rudolf Nottebohm and Hans-Jürgen Panitz, Luis Trenker—Portrait: Fast ein Jahrhundert (Omega-Film, Munich, 1985), S. 35. 207 Trenker, 27 Feb. 1940, quoted in Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 55. 208 Robert C. Reimer, “Preface”, in Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens, p. vii. 209 Birgel, “Luis Trenker”, p. 38. 210 Trenker has been rehabilitated as a good German by Everson and in many rather naïve statements by David Stewart Hull, Film in the Third Reich: A Study of the German Cinema, 1933‒1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), while Eric Rentschler and Jan-Christopher Horak see Trenker as a blood-and-soil ideologue and chauvinistic anti-American agitator. Cf. Birgel, “Luis Trenker”, p. 38. 211 To name only one from The Prodigal Son: Although the film is clearly set in the Dolomites, Tonio introduces himself to an American, Jimmy, in New York’s Central Park as “Bavarian”. In a further twist, Hitler’s project “Ahnenerbe” [ancestral legacy] secretly planned the resettlement of all 200,000 German-speaking Tyrolians who were experiencing discrimination by the Italians. The plan was for the Tyrolians to follow directly in the paths of the German tanks advancing into Russia to settle in the newly occupied territories and to suppress the local population. Cf. Christopher Hale, Himmler’s Crusade: The True Story of the 1938 Nazi Expedition into Tibet (London: Bantam Press, 2003). 212 Birgel, “Luis Trenker”, p. 38. 213 Letter from Luis Trenker to Kohner, 12 Jan. 1937, KA, quoted in the original in Gertraud Steiner Daviau, “Arnold Fanck und Luis Trenker: ‘Regisseur für Hollywood’”, in Aspetsberger (ed.), Der BergFilm, p. 135.

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214 “You’re surprised that Condottieri turned out to be somewhat fascist? […] After all, I did receive the order to make this film and the Italian government financed [it] […] You must understand that I can’t work here the way you imagine [over there] in America. […] Whoever provides the funds also gives the orders.” In the original: “Sie wundern sich das Condottieri etwas faschistisch geraten ist? […] Ich erhielt doch den Auftrag diesen Film zu machen, und die italienische Regierung finanzierte […]. Das Verstehen Sie wohl selber, daß ich da nicht so arbeiten kann, wie Sie es sich in Amerika vorgestellt haben […], der, der das Geld gibt, der kommandiert auch.” Trenker in a letter to Kohner, 30 Nov. 1937, KA. Here quoted in Steiner Daviau, “Arnold Fanck und Luis Trenker”, p. 135. 215 “3. März 1940: Trenker […]. Dieser Vaterlandsverräter und patriotische Heuchler versteckt sich nun hinter Mussolini.” [This traitor to the Fatherland and patriotic Hypocrite is now hiding behind Mussolini.] Joseph Goebbels, Tagebücher, Band 4: 1.1.1940-8.7.1941, edited by Elke Fröhlich (Munich: Saur, 1987), pp. 58‒60, here p. 59. 216 Birgel, “Luis Trenker”, p. 38. 217 Steiner Daviau, “Arnold Fanck und Luis Trenker”, p. 133. 218 One such example is Volker Vogeler’s Verflucht, dies Amerika [Damn This America] from 1973. The film follows several Bavarian woodchoppers to America, where none of them finds what they have already sought in vain in their native village: peace, quiet, intact social bonds, unspoilt nature. They remain outsiders in the new world and are just as down and out in America as they were at home. 219 Michael Rutschky, “Berge sind faschistisch”, quoted in Beier and Schmundt, “Der vertikale Western”, p. 215. 220 In the original: “Trotz der Nachwirkungen ihrer [Fanck, Trenker, Riefenstahl] Filme bis tief in die Zeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg gelang es keinem anderen Regisseur mehr, dieses Genre mit ähnlichem kommerziellen Erfolg fortzusetzen oder ihm neue künstlerische Impulse zu verleihen.” Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 8. 221 At the height of discussions about global warming and climate change, images of nature’s might may seem reassuring: “Perhaps the new mountain films are reacting to the yearning for a nature which is too strong to be destroyed by humankind.” In the original: “Vielleicht reagieren die neuen Bergfilme auf die Sehnsucht nach einer Natur, die zu stark ist, um von den Menschen zerstört zu werden.” Beier and Schmundt, “Der vertikale Western”, p. 215. 222 In the original: “Nach Kriegsende sind seine Filme mit der Nazi-Ästhetik assoziiert worden, aber der Mann war eigentlich viel näher am Bauhaus als an den Nazis—ein Avantgardist.” Director Philipp Stölzl quoted in Beier and Schmundt, “Der vertikale Western”, p. 213. 223 In the original: “Der Berg hat so etwas Deutschruhiges….” Heinrich Heine, Die Harzreise in Reisebildern (1826), (Hamburg: Hoffman & Kampe, 1856), p. 179. 224 “For me it is crucial to approach this film atmospherically.” In the original: “Für mich ist entscheidend, dass man sich dem Film atmosphärisch nähert.” Tom Tykwer quoted in Susan Vahabzadeh, “Gruppenbild im Schnee”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6 Nov. 1997. 225 Karl-Heinz Schäfer, “Tom Tykwers Winterschläfer—Die Natur drehte mit: Das Schicksal von fünf Menschen vor grandioser Bergkulisse”, Rheinischer Merkur, 31 Oct. 1997. 226 Alexei Makartsey, “Spiel der Zufälle”, Nordwest Zeitung, 31 Oct. 1997.

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227 Cf. “The peaceful narrative style which is in love with detail creates a poetic, a spiritual landscape gently touched by oriental music set before grandiose Alpine backdrops, which transcend the banality of the story and its daringly tragic ending.” In the original: “Der ruhige, detailverliebte Erzählstil schafft eine poetische Atmosphäre, eine mit orientalischer Musik angehauchte Seelenlandschaft vor grandioser Alpenkulisse, die die Banalität der Geschichte und ihr verwegen tragisches Ende transzendiert.” Schäfer, “Tom Tykwers Winterschläfer”. 228 Cf. “Frank Giebe on the Scope-camera finds suggestive angles for the big screen that are rarely seen in the cinema. The mountain landscape takes part like a sixth main actor, contrasting the feelings and catastrophes of the people.” In the original: “Frank Giebe an der Scope-Kamera findet suggestive Einstellungen für die große Leinwand, wie man sie selten im Kino sieht. Die Berglandschaft spielt wie ein sechster Hauptdarsteller mit, kontrastiert die Gefühle und Katastrophen der Menschen.” Til Th. Radevagen, “Winterschläfer”, Filmecho, 1 Nov. 1997. 229 Cf. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 17. 230 Tom Tykwer quoted in “Wintersleepers: Interview with Tom Tykwer, Berlin 2004”, http://tomtykwer.com/03_filmographie/35_winterschlaefer/353_entstehung/content.html,retrieved Aug. 2005. 231 Ibid. 232 Koepnick refers to the aerial photography which captures “the sublime sight of Alpine mountainscapes. Majestically, the camera glides over summits, rock surfaces, ridges, glacial valleys, and fractured snowfields.” Lutz Koepnick, “Free Fallin’: Tom Tykwer and the Aesthetics of Deceleration and Dislocation”, Germanic Review, vol. 82, no. 1 (2007), pp. 7‒24, here p. 16. 233 Tykwer quoted in “Wintersleepers”, ibid. 234 Ibid. 235 Ibid. 236 Ibid. 237 Ibid. 238 Ibid. 239 Ibid. 240 Marco’s frenzied flight is juxtaposed with images of his girlfriend calmly smoking a cigarette—“as if conjured up by the smoke Rebecca exhales against the windowpane, clouds and fog will shroud Marco’s appearance” resulting in him not seeing the sharp drop. Koepnick, “Free Fallin’”, p. 19. 241 In the original: “… überschaubare Räume, die Sicherheit und kulturelle Identität bieten”. Peter Dürrmann, Heimat und Identität: der modener Mensch auf der Suche nach Geborgenheit (Tubingen: Hohenrain, 1994), pp. 11‒12. 242 Tom Tykwer quoted in “Wintersleepers”, ibid. 243 Ibid. 244 Ibid. 245 Ibid. 246 Ibid. 247 Ibid. 248 Ibid. 249 Ibid. 250 Ibid. 251 Ibid. 252 “In the early twenties Hitler made regular excursions up the Obersalzberg and to Berchtesgaden, at first accompanying his mentor Dietrich Eckart, later with party 131

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255

256 257

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259 260 261 262

friends. […] Apart from the scenically prominent location, Hitler was apparently fascinated with the mythological significance of the nearby Unterberg. Within it Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa is said to be seated at a table, just like in the Kyffhäuser saga, and will supposedly only leave when the day comes on which he will annihilate his enemies and call his tormented people home into the Empire which will last for one thousand years.” In the original: “In den frühen 20er Jahren unternahm Hitler, zunächst als Begleiter seines Mentors Dietrich Eckart, später mit Parteifreunden, regelmäßig Ausflüge auf den Obersalzberg und nach Berchtesgaden. […] Neben der landschaftlichen exponierten Lage soll Hitler die mythologische Bedeutung des nahen Unterbergs fasziniert haben. In dem sitzt, ähnlich der Kyffhäuser-Sage, Kaiser Friedrich Barbarossa an einem Tisch, den er erst verlassen sollte, wenn er einst die Feinde vernichten und sein bedrängtes Volk in ein Tausendjähriges Reich heimholen wird.” Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 50. When Hitler’s mentor died in 1922, his favourite room in a guesthouse at the Obersalzberg was not allowed to be changed when the rest of the inn was refurbished. For Hitler, the room remained a shrine to Eckart for the rest of his life. Cf. Rapp, Höhenrausch, p. 51. Overlooking the area of stately manors on the Obersalzberg was the Kehlsteinhaus, also known as Eagle’s Nest, which Bormann commissioned for Hitler’s fiftieth birthday in 1939. In the original: “Bereits vor 1933 wurde der Obersalzberg nicht als bloßer Sommersitz und privates Residuum verstanden, sondern mit der Biographie Hitlers, dem Aufstieg der NSDAP und schließlich dem Schicksal Deutschlands zusammengedacht.” Adolf Wagner quoted in Ulrich Chaussy and Christoph Püschner, Nachbar Hitler: Führerkult und Heimatzerstörung am Obersalzberg (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1995), p. 76. Cf. Documentation as part of a historical photo exhibition on the Kehlstein (mountain overlooking the Obersalzberg) to be seen at the Kehlsteinhaus 2009. A permanent exhibition on the history of Obersalzberg and the NS dictatorship is housed in the newly built complex referred to as “Dokumentation Obersalzberg. Orts- und Zeitgeschichte” [Local and World History]. In 1877, Mauritia Mayer founded “Pension Moritz” and thus became a pioneer of modern mountain tourism in the region. The influx of wealthy tourists ended with Hitler’s commandeering of countryside accommodation, which favoured party-hardliners and loyal followers over other local and international guests. Koepnick, “Free Fallin’”, p. 16. Cf. tradition of the Bildungsroman. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 34. Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis, Film: A Critical Introduction (Boston: Pearson, 2006), p. 364.

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The rise of National Socialism constituted neither a rupture nor a new beginning in German film history. Rather, a gradual takeover and infiltration of cinematic conventions and ideas by Nazi doctrine can be observed and, not surprisingly, National Socialist ideologues also sought to incorporate the traditional mountain film narrative into their propaganda. The struggle in and with nature became “one of the Nazi-Kulturfilm’s inexhaustible themes […] to justify […] the Social Darwinist ideology of eating and being eaten, of racist wars of extermination against what is ‘un-German’ and ‘degenerate’.”1 The elevation of the individual who overcomes every obstacle and conquers nature was the topic of many of Ufa’s early cultural films. As Georg Lukács described them: “[T]he rushing water, the breeze moving through the trees, the silence of sunset and the roar of a thunderstorm as natural events are being transformed here into art […]. Man has lost his soul, but he gains his body instead.”2 The rise to the top of the evolutionary ladder is mirrored in the ascent of mountain peaks. The Hochland [highlands], popularized in literature by Ludwig Ganghofer and in film by Arnold Fanck, became a fitting symbol for elevation, superiority, and assertiveness. Accordingly, the task or project of attaining the summit was a popular metaphor for adherents of Nazi ideology, as exemplified in the pronouncement by Joseph Goebbels: “Before us still lies a steep ascent. […] We are completely clear about our task, but also about our chances. We know what we want. But what is more important is that we also want what we know.”3 The selection of the fittest, as well as the demonstration that one can master every challenge as one proceeds, becomes part of the goal. “We know that the climb is stony and difficult; but no one should be in any doubt that it must be conquered, because otherwise everything would be in vain and all would be lost.”4 Self-sacrifice for the greater good, for the idea of the sublime, became the order of the era, or as Margarete Mitscherlich put it, a metaphor of “the heroic, of the masculine principle that radiated eternal glamour”.5 The imagery employed by the auteurs of mountain films could now be easily incorporated into the construction of a Fascist sublime that arose seemingly naturally from the Alpine sublime. Linked to ideas of death and honour, Nazi ideas of service and loyalty were conflated with “the metaphysical […] worship of the mythical and eternal of the world of mountains”,6 like that expressed in Leni Riefenstahl’s Das blaue Licht [The Blue Light, 1932]. The realm of the sublime, beautiful yet terrifying in its might and scale—aptly described by Thomas Mann as “the experience of nothingness and of death, a metaphysical dream”, as something “elementary in the sense of ultimate and untamed extrahuman grandeur”7— became the foundation of many Nazi myths. Likewise, in 1934, the German 133

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philosopher Martin Heidegger elevated the mountain experience to political and philosophical heights, in line with Fascist ideas. “This is the world in which I work […]. The heaviness of the mountains and the hardness of their ancient stone, […] the strict simplicity of the surfaces covered in deep snow.”8 Working in these settings, Heidegger postulates, “can’t be anything other than hard and severe”,9 thus justifying an elitist, inhuman, and eliminationist ideology played out in films which were promoted as Kultur-, Dokumentar-, and/or Lehrfilme [cultural, documentary, and/or educational films]. Hilmar Hoffman traced the cinematic expression of the mythical and the sublime back to the prototypical Ufa film Alpen [Alps, 1920/21] by Felix Lampe. Hoffman also lists several films whose directors remain nameless: Majestät der Berge [Majesty of the Mountains], Bergbauern [Mountain Farmers], and Heuzug im Allgäu [Hay Harvest in the Allgau]. Other examples include the Hitler Youth films Hitlerjugend in den Bergen [Hitler Youth in the Mountains, 1932] and Bergsommer [Mountain Summer, 1936]. Even during the war years, film-makers sought to use the “sublime world” of the Alps in the pursuit of their respective political agendas,10 such as with Aus der Geschichte des Florian Geyer [From the Story of Florian Geyer, 1940], Hochland HJ [Highland Hitler Youth, 1941], and war movies including Alpenkorps im Angriff [Alpine Corps on Attack, 1939], Die Funker mit dem Edelweiß [The Radio Operators with the Edelweiss, 1939], and In Fels und Firn [Rock and Firn, 1943].11 Many of these Nazi film releases were the direct successors of the mountain films; the near seamless continuity is evident in the similar titles, filming and editing techniques, as well as the personnel producing the two groups of films. One example, Der Kampf um den Himalaja [The Battle for the Himalayas, 1937], became “a general German symbol of the will to overcome all difficulties of life in order to reach the light”.12 Correspondingly, many earlier mountain film titles, such as Der Aufstieg aus der Tiefe empor [Ascent from the Deep, 1912] and Uns zieht es zu Höherem hinauf [We’re Drawn to Greater Heights, 1916], had employed the metaphor of light and height to indicate the way towards mythical transcendence, inviting “allegorical transfigurations of a lower ideology into the higher spheres of belief. These examples […] demonstrate how the cultural film, walking a tightrope towards the documentary, became a Nazi organ, a party organ.”13 To understand how the Nazis grafted a new branch onto the complex tree of Heimat film genealogy from 1933 onwards, one needs only to look at the first officially proclaimed film of the genre. In 1933/34, the subtitle “Heimatfilm” was used for Franz Seitz’s Die blonde Christel [The Blonde Christel], a film adaptation of Ludwig Ganghofer’s novel Der Geigenmacher von Mittenwald [The Violin Maker of Mittenwald].14 This was quickly followed by a spate of similar productions featuring pretty women and strong men, portraying lovers in picturesque rural surroundings. The term “Heimatfilm” per se and the genre’s typical iconography of “Tyrolean farms, peasants’ huts, openair dance floors and village inns” were already very familiar elements from the two previous decades of film production.15 Now it was time to add a more specific political flavour to these quasi-generic homeland myths. “Belonging” and the exorcism of evil from the wholesome community were couched in Social-Darwinist terms, such as purity, health, and strength.

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Directors Hans Deppe and Peter Ostermayr were the most prolific producers of Heimat films during the Nazi era, and their Gewitter im Mai [Thunderstorm in May, 1937] is a prime example of their pro-Nazi propaganda. This and their other films clearly conformed to Goebbels’ decree that a film’s National Socialist character should be expressed not “merely by displaying National Socialist emblems and symbols”; rather, Goebbels explained that he wanted an art that expressed its National Socialist attitude “by its stance […] as bias, as character, as attitude […] through action, development, through a series of events, through the contrasting of people”.16 He believed that a power which could penetrate the “hearts of the German people” would be longer lasting than any power that rested on arms.17 Hearts could be reached with touching and comforting stories in familiar settings which appealed to common dreams, such as the desire for love and integration. By the 1930s, many film-makers had already succumbed to using a popular “recipe” in an attempt to benefit from the familiarity of the Heimat genre and to increase their films’ appeal at the box office. Their strategy worked, as audiences continued to go to the movies “to watch familiar stories with expected outcomes”, which also “helped sustain the totalitarian state because […] genre films reassured audiences that a stable, ordinary, and secure world continued to exist outside the movie theatre—despite all rational evidence to the contrary”.18 As O’Brien states in her 2004 analysis of Nazi propaganda, German motion pictures between 1933 and 1945 sought not only to indoctrinate and terrorize people into submission, but also “used seduction and offered people many of the things they wanted: stability, a traditional value system, a sense of belonging, and the belief in a better standard of living”.19 Psychological needs were addressed by promising the populace a reliable, strong, and steady leadership and a private realm20 in which citizens could enjoy popular narratives and be spirited away to places full of optimism and with guaranteed happy endings. This description is particularly apt for the Heimat films of the era. As with their post-Nazi counterparts, the Heimat films produced during Hitler’s domination expressed social fantasies and promoted a place so delightful that people wanted to share the dream.21 The films habitually made use of dialect and renounced current topics, advocated traditional gender roles, featured anti-modern overtones of rural, pastoral, often Alpine images in an effort “to idealize ‘Bauerntum’ [the farming community] as the site of desirable traditions, and stereotyped the foreign (and most often the urban) as the breeding ground of moral decay, referring to their view of the urban centres of the Weimar Republic. Veit Harlan’s Die goldene Stadt [The Golden City, 1942] is an excellent example”,22 and so is the image of Manhattan in Luis Trenker’s Der verlorene Sohn [The Prodigal Son, 1934]. As a genre, Heimat films had certainly undergone a transformation: from the proto-typical mountain films that aimed to overwhelm the spectator with the monumentality and sheer massiveness of the Alpine homeland to the crowd-pleasing Trenker films such as Der Berg ruft [The Mountain Is Calling, 1937], in which political overtones were starting to emerge as a sub-text. Trenker’s mountainous terrain represented an idyll which could withstand threats from outsiders on the one hand, yet pose a challenge to humans by means of its sheer starkness and magnitude on the other.23 Trenker’s films helped to instil a respect for nature’s might and the dangers humans face when attempting a difficult ascent. This fascination was put into words 135

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by a mountaineer in a hiker’s journal in 1933 when he claimed that each year hundreds of thousands of people swarmed to the mountains; where the natural beauty supposedly purified their souls from the drain of the everyday and steeled their bodies for a new battle with life.24 The practice of stylizing a place to represent a mirror of its human inhabitants became programmatic for Nazi ideology. One such example is Rolf von Sonjevski-Jamrowski’s Blut und Boden [Blood and Soil, 1933], a mixture of documentary and feature film, which enlisted “the familiar iconography of landscape, nature, and Heimat in anti-modern diatribes”.25 Blood and Soil epitomizes the ideal of a wholesome country supporting healthy people in an organic symbiosis. Indeed, the dividing line between propaganda films and entertainment was blurry, and intentionally so, with the resulting products apparently representing a joint venture of the tourism industry, nationalism, and art in their merging of the Nazi with the Alpine sublime.26 Whether individual films lean further in one direction or another is difficult to prove in many cases. However, it is possible to trace the degree to which a film is instrumentalized, whether accidental or deliberate, in its subtexts and historical reception. In the following discussion, this exercise will be attempted with two Heimat films released during the Nazi period, Carl Froelich’s Heimat and Kurt Hoffmann’s Kohlhiesels Töchter [Kohlhiesel’s Daughters, 1943]. To aid the close reading of these films, it is necessary to take the production contexts into consideration as well as the general state of society. The concept of Nazism and Fascism is in itself ultimately heimatesque. With their propagation of the ideals of a Volksgemeinschaft [ethnic community], of a “wholeness, of fusion with a cohesive social body, with its implicit exclusion of an Other […] however ‘perverted’, biologized, or pathological”,27 the Nazis created the image of an all-encompassing Heimat. The illusion of inclusion and homogeneity was actively promulgated, and the use of brutal force against outsiders was part and parcel of their propaganda. Should all German films made during the Third Reich be therefore condemned as politically tainted?28 A definition of the term and a reference to Nazi methods may help. The National Socialists referred to their own activities as follows: “In relation to the political decontamination of our public life, the government will embark upon a systematic campaign to restore the nation’s moral and material health”, and the “whole education system, theatre, film, literature and the press” was to “be used as a means to this end”.29 This pronouncement of their intention certainly conforms to what is commonly referred to as propaganda, that is, “a set of methods employed by an organized group that wants to bring about the active or passive participation in its actions of a mass of individuals, [...] unified through psychological manipulation and incorporated in an organization”.30 In the Nazi context, a German definition specifies the workings of a “perfectly functioning piece of machinery made up of march-pasts, torch-lit parades, press, film and radio. [...] synchronized with regard to their longings, hopes and fears [...] the Jew, the Russian, the Communist, the Negro, the Foreigner.”31 Nationalist Socialist propaganda produced in the lead-up to war was designed to create the illusion of German unity in opposition to enemies both within and outside the Reich. Whether this was done in an overt fashion, as favoured by Hitler,32 or in a covert manner, as Goebbels preferred, there was little impact on its effective136

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ness. As there were no intellectual alternatives endorsed by the state, the viewer was confronted with more or less persuasive propaganda, or more or less obvious guidance—but propaganda it remained. After war had broken out, Nazi propaganda was more concerned with sustaining the stamina of the population for a long and hard battle, promoting the “destruction of the ‘willingness to fight’ of opposing soldiers on the battlefields, influencing the civilian population in occupied areas, and strengthening the willingness to hold on in the German population”.33 It was necessary to achieve a delicate balance between indoctrination and distraction, as different stages during the long years of the Second World War called for more escapist vehicles and innocent recreation than others. Nevertheless, the essential fact that all films of the Third Reich must be regarded as “concerted attempts to create a culture industry in the service of deception” remains crucial.34 Heimat films, as much as other films commissioned or otherwise supported and condoned by the Nazis, were intended to serve as Nazi propaganda35 even if—as a passage from the Deutsche Lichtspielgesetz [German Cinema Law] of 1934 explains—they were simply meant “to prevent in good time topics from being treated that run counter to the spirit of the age”.36 Leading National Socialists regarded film propaganda as essential for creating, promoting, and instilling the new norms of society and for perpetuating an ideological message. This was also expressed in the labels they attached to films, resulting in extra advertising and potential financial benefits for their producers.37 Hitler believed that “the more intensively the propaganda is carried on […] the stronger and more powerful the organization is that stands behind it”.38 Reflecting on his personal experiences during the last stages of the First World War in Mein Kampf, Hitler discussed his perception that the propaganda produced by the Allies during the Great War was far superior to anything issued by Germany, and identified it as contributing towards Germany’s defeat.39 To be successful, according to Hitler, propaganda “must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect [...] all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points [...] a positive and a negative: love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie”.40 Films were intended to stir up people’s feelings and to shape their emotive responses into a homogeneous form. Barely a few months after Hitler became Chancellor, he had demonstrated a keen interest in the medium of film, addressing representatives of the Reich’s film industry and claiming that he was a passionate devotee of the cinematographic art.41 Hitler and Goebbels, like most other Nazis, considered film an important propaganda tool; cinema was clearly a mass medium, encouraging cinema-goers to lose their sense of individual identity and thus succumb more readily to the all-encompassing ideology of National Socialism. The Nazis seized control of Germany’s well-developed film industry when Goebbels was made Propaganda Minister and entrusted with the “spiritual direction” of the nation on 1 March 1933. In July of the same year, a separate Reichsfilmkammer [Reich Film Chamber] was created to share the responsibility and workload created by the newly introduced totalitarian process of censorship and control.42 With the establishment in June 1933 of the Filmkreditbank [Film Credit Bank] (which was incorporated into the Reich Film Chamber and responsible for the distribution of funds to help finance films) as well as the passing of the Reich Cinema Law in February 137

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1934, the state assumed complete control over the production of film—or as Goebbels styled it: Gleichschaltung [NS unification, elimination of opposition].43 The film review process was also closely guarded, especially after the introduction of licensing regulations for art critics in 1936. Special media screenings, at which prescribed versions of film critiques were distributed, aided this process. The Credit Bank “favoured the big four film companies— Ufa, Tobis, Bavaria and Terra”,44 the latter, Terra Filmkunst, being merely a subsidiary [Tochtergesellschaft] of the Ufa, thus leading to a further concentration of the industry. With such complete control, overt propaganda seemed not only unnecessary but also counter-productive, which may explain why barely 200 of the 1,150 films produced under the Nazis were deemed to be explicit propaganda.45 Since 1941, hard times—the fact that the war dragged on, that victories for the Wehrmacht [Hitler’s armed forces] were few and far between, and that German civilians were increasingly the targets of Allied bombing—meant that light entertainment rather than indoctrination was required; the regime did not want to appear desperate and, as long as the film industry delivered distraction and laughs, no ground seemed to have been lost in the public’s faith in their leaders. However, the state’s decision not to exercise its control did not mean it had relaxed it; after all, as Goebbels reiterated at a Convention of the Reichsfilmkammer in 1941, “the film has a political function to fulfil. It is a means of educating the people. This means of education belongs [...] in the hands of the leadership of the state.”46 Finally, on 10 January 1942, a new giant trust company, Ufa-Film GmbH (UFI),47 seized control of the entire German film industry, thereby swallowing the renowned Universum Film AG (Ufa),48 in an effort to enforce total state control over the most powerful medium of propaganda. Headed by Dr Fritz Hippler, overall artistic control of German film production was now vested in a new body within UFI, the Reichsfilmintendanz [Reich Film Directorship]. In order to ensure public sentiment remained pro-Nazi, “Goebbels equipped no less than 1,500 mobile film units, taking film shows (predominantly newsreels) to those parts of the population who lived outside the reach of the urban cinemas.”49 The saturation of the market reached American proportions, and it is not surprising that Goebbels regarded the strategies of the US film industry, if not its products, as exemplary. As soon as he was able to assert pressure on the industry, he sought to “bring Hollywood to the Third Reich” in its home-grown film production.50 Ufa’s restructuring “along the lines of a Hollywood studio” dates from 1927, and thus pre-dates Goebbels’ involvement.51 The modernization of the cinema of the Weimar Republic which came about through technological advances such as sound and colour, was exposed to increased international competition, and was well underway by the time the Nazis seized control and influenced the ideological flavouring of the industry and its products. The sheer number of films released testifies to the medium’s importance to the state, as well as to the audiences. A loyal servant of the Propaganda Ministry, Dr Fritz Hippler, who was responsible for the commissioning of the anti-Semitic film The Eternal Jew, regarded film as a weapon, just as Mussolini did: “We know that the impact of a message is greater if it is less abstract, more visual. That makes it clear why film, with its series of continually moving images, must have particular persuasive force.”52 Hippler continued: “Whether in a newsreel or a German feature film, it is the mirror in which the broad masses of the world sees 138

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Germany. It is also, like radio, the way that the poorer classes of the people can be presented with culture inexpensively.”53 Film reached the masses; according to Reeves, “German films were popular with German audiences throughout the Nazi years”,54 although one must be mindful of the fact that a large percentage of the audience numbers that the Nazis boasted of were “gratis, arranged by political parties and social groups for propaganda purposes”.55 In addition, special schemes such as the Kraft durch Freude [Strength through Joy] initiative offered discounted tickets and sponsored film events, ensuring a steady stream of visitors56 who became more demanding in their choices and preferences. Towards the end of the 1930s, the paying German public preferred “the new foreign films that the censor allowed. Accordingly during 1936 the Hollywood products Broadway Melody […], Ruggles of Red Gap, and San Francisco had sensational runs in Berlin.”57 Such liberal offerings were perhaps made possible precisely because of the complete control of the sector rather than because it was lacking; Goebbels felt he had ensured the ideological reliability of the German population with the promotion of a homogeneous message, and so “light entertainment” (which included the majority of the Heimat films as well as foreign imports) was allowed as a sweet and banal distraction, rather than banned as attempted political infiltration. “Today tough times make us tense, and art has the task of lessening that tension.”58 The demand was great; while 245 million people visited cinemas in 1933, this number rose to 624 million in 1939, and to 834 million in 1942.59 The figures for the later years, presented by the Nazis, certainly would have included the markets of the newly occupied territories. Overall, the role that film played during the Nazi era cannot be underestimated. Ilse Aichinger, who lived through the war years in Austria, recalls the cinema craze in her own craving for entertainment: “I didn’t need the sign ‘Jews forbidden’ to intensify my cinema addiction to extreme levels, even if it meant going to see Nazi films [...] as we were only half-Jewish. [...] The cinema provided the relief.”60 The darkness of the movie theatre during 1933‒45 led into the heart of darkness, as Aichinger articulates metaphorically: “Ways of living, ways of dying, but above all types of cinema, movie posters, cinema entrances—the way in to wherever you wanted to go: into the heart of darkness.”61 Whether the audience was Jewish or non-Jewish, entertainment was welcomed as a distraction and respite from the horrors of wartime, thus explaining the number and popularity of films in general, as well as those declared to be politically “unbedenklich” [harmless] by the Allies after 1945.62 “Of the approximately 1,100 feature films produced between 1933 and 1945, eighty-six per cent of them were not officially coded as political by the regime. [...] almost half of all films made in Germany at this time were comedies and musicals, many of them similar in genre if not in quality to movies coming out of Hollywood during the same period.”63 The standard of film-making was very high, and many of the films continued to enjoy popularity for years. The two films analysed in the following pages are on the list of films declared to be free of propaganda.64 They will be placed in a cinematic genealogy in broad aesthetic and thematic terms, though with no claim that they are representative of film-making between 1933 and 1945. They may none the less turn out to be representative of the allegedly unproblematic and untainted films from the Nazi era. Despite mostly being declared “non-P-Filme”,65 and 139

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forming only a minute part of the Nazi film production, Heimat films made under the Nazis deserve closer attention as they served as a platform for völkische ideology and continued to circulate, at times in newly filmed versions, in post-war West Germany. The overarching question is whether these films can genuinely be regarded as apolitical and innocent. Are most Nazi Heimat films purely escapist fare, as contended by numerous critics,66 or will Kracauer’s assertion that “all Nazi films were more or less propaganda films—even the mere entertainment pictures which seem to be remote from politics”—prove true?67

Carl Froelich’s Heimat (1938) An adaptation of Hermann Sundermann’s popular drama Heimat (1893), Carl Froelich’s film version may be seen as a variation on Trenker’s The Prodigal Son. This time, the prodigal child is Magda, played by Zarah Leander, who spends eight years in America and becomes a celebrated singer under the pseudonym Maddalena dall’Orto. Her departure from the land of her birth followed a sad affair with the banker Mr von Keller, who left her pregnant and alone in Berlin. To avoid causing her father shame, Magda did not return to her native Illmingen, instead leaving her German Heimat altogether and returning only when she felt her international success had redeemed her. Magda, like Trenker’s Tonio, finally “makes good” in America, and both decide to return to their point of departure at the height of their success, driven by homesickness and a general desire to return to their Heimat. However, their experiences upon re-entry are very different. In contrast to Tonio’s seamless reintegration, Magda faces opposition and animosity. One difference beyond the gender-specific treatment of the two protagonists is the fact that Magda has changed and become an American star, who now seeks acceptance as a new persona in the provincial milieu of her birthplace. Magda’s American ways, the star cult surrounding her, and the glamour associated with her appearance upset the citizens of her traditional hometown. Her make-up and tasteful feminine dressing, as well as the Hollywood-style three-point lighting used for close-up shots, set her apart from the rest of society; while she is portrayed as a diva, most of the town-folk are depicted as modest, homely, wholesomely ordinary—and ultimately jealous. Her transformation into an international celebrity is presented in stark contrast to community traditions, with “low-cut dresses, flirtatiousness, a foreign stage name, raunchy cabaret songs and biting irony” emphasizing the gap between the two cultures.68 Not surprisingly, Magda’s re-admission into her paternal society is dominated by conflicts with her despotic father, who does not forgive easily. Upon finding out about her child, he wants her to marry the father of the illegitimate offspring. Indeed, the banker himself is interested, as he, now in financial strife, sees in Magda a way to avert his impending exposure. In a private confrontation between father and daughter, Mr von Schwartze threatens her: “Entweder Du heiratest den Vater Deines Kindes oder keiner von uns beiden verläßt lebend diesen Raum.” [Either you marry the father of your child, or neither of us leaves this room alive.] Magda’s response, a clear “No”, results in her father drawing his weapon to execute his threat, only to collapse as he utters the words “Gott sei uns gnädig.” [God 140

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have mercy on us.] In a parallel to Emilia Galotti’s fate in Lessing’s drama, Mr von Schwartze is prepared to sacrifice his or his daughter’s life in order to keep his sense of honour and to avert further shame. His breakdown prevents him from carrying out this inhumane and archaic deed which, incidentally, would have been entirely unnecessary, as family friend Lieutenant Max von Wendlowsky arrives with the news that the banker von Keller has committed suicide upon his exposure as a fraud. Following these revelations, father and daughter are sure to be reconciled after Magda’s performance of Bach’s aria “Buß und Reu” [Penance and Remorse] at the mass, and she is finally rewarded with her proud father’s recognition of her art and her essentially upright character. By the end of the film, old and new—the young and modern and the parental and traditional—are able to come together in a compromise. The power of music as an artistic expression of both Germanness and remorse was accessible to all, something that could be shared by the warring factions within the film while also uniting diverse audiences. The artistic and seductive quality of the church scene responds to Goebbels’ desire to “produce [images] that are accessible to the whole folk, to high and low, rich and poor, young and old”.69 The film’s final scene illustrates this reunification, when the singer’s daughter—who has not yet been introduced to her grandfather—proudly points out to him that the gifted artist on stage is her mother. Mr von Schwartze is overcome by the primeval power of blood ties and accepts his grandchild unequivocally. The union of grandfather and granddaughter serves as a reconnection for Magda, something that will ensure lasting peace between the generations, as Mr von Schwartze is reinstated as the head of an extended family. The film is set in the late nineteenth century, and does not attempt to modernize Sundermann’s story to fit the context of the 1930s and 40s. However, the problems current in 1885 played out between the individual and the wider social network of the family and the native village, as well as the lure of faraway places as an alternative to the confined sphere of one’s home, remained relevant in the 1930s context. Magda’s desires and hopes were quite familiar to audiences at the time of the film’s initial release. The roles ascribed to women had changed drastically over the previous few decades, and audiences would have experienced the conflicts which ensued when females had to negotiate their place in society. Although it is also an example of the American-inspired star and salon films, Heimat can be classified as a Heimat film—and not just because of its programmatic title. Depicting the quintessential Heimat theme, traditional laws and customs of the family and homeland are threatened and forced to undergo transformation and relaxation in order to cope with modern times. The renewal of the old rule through international influences—although at face value not in harmony with the archaic Fascist ideology—is intended to appease the film’s critics and assure its supporters that the threats posed by modernity and outsiders can be dealt with constructively. The film suggests that those “lost” sons and daughters, who had been inoculated with American values and seduced by the glamour and glitter of stardom during the wild years of the Weimar Republic, can be (re)integrated into the German order— now the National Socialist order—albeit with some concessions on both sides. Magda is played by Swedish national Zarah Leander, herself a cosmopolitan import who marries foreignness and exotic eroticism with a refined 141

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sensuality and respectability. Casting the diva-like Leander, especially after Greta Gabo and Marlene Dietrich had turned their backs on the Nazi film industry, enabled German cinema to emphasize that the Reich allowed for the cultivation of stars.70 Leander, the highest paid Ufa star at the time, became the pars pro toto for Germany’s extravagant film industry, serving as a substitute for all the other stars who had left. Nazi cinema capitalized on Leander’s appeal to a broad spectrum of fans, uniting diverse groups in their efforts to homogenize the nation. Magda’s experiences and the tensions between traditional values, conformity to norms, and the status quo on the one hand, as opposed to the lure of modernism, cultural sophistication, and the expression of individualism on the other, are explored paradigmatically. Often cast by directors in melodramas “where she played seemingly independent, sensual women who suffer unbearable anguish before being redeemed as proper and obedient”,71 Leander came to embody the transgressor whose final submission to Nazi ideals is seen as a happy ending by all. Magda, like so many “ideal” women under National Socialism, moves “from Heim to Heimat”, from the home to the nation and the community.72 Thus the characterization of Magda is relevant to the Nazi agenda of promoting and appeasing “modern women”. Just as Goebbels vowed to “eradicate all traces of the Weimar Republic and cleanse the film industry of undesired people and degenerate ideas”,73 the banker von Keller is sacrificed in Heimat. Magda rejects him on a personal level and in so doing performs a service to the nation, as his ostracization from the community will only strengthen it. An emancipated figure, Magda is one of a new set of role models promoted by the Nazis: “New Women […] strong, healthy and able to—at least temporarily—take care of themselves.”74 By refusing to marry a schemer and swindler, who failed in a profession which at that time was often considered to be typically “Jewish”— banking and moneylending—Magda upholds Nazi ideology. When Hitler proclaimed in Mein Kampf that marriage should not be a matter of personal choice but a means of serving the greater national aim of increasing and preserving the race, he intended to stress the role that any marital union plays in preserving moral and racial purity.75 Magda is not willing to repeat her mistakes by opting a second time for the liar and cheat von Keller, but instead chooses to save herself for a better union. As a result, Magda twice rejects crucial aspects of American culture: first, she has moved back to Germany, forgoing Hollywood-style stardom in the United States and acknowledging the deficiencies which have resulted in her “decentred and feminized” state.76 In addition, she has rejected von Keller, an example of “emasculated, degenerate, and Jewish hybridity”,77 a stock figure in Nazi ideology, often associated with America. Nevertheless, Magda’s transgressions—due to Instinktlosigkeit [lack of instinct]78—are addressed, and she must redeem herself before she is fit to be accepted back into the community. As she says: “Es ist leichter fortzugehen, als wiederzukommen.” [It is easier to leave than to come back.] Accordingly, upon her return both the villagers and her own family view her suspiciously, as she is a fallen woman who needs to be “made ‘fit’ to be included in the community or be punished for [her] refusal to live by the rules”.79 Upon her return, she endeavours to bridge a divide which seems to span two entirely opposing concepts of womanhood. In attempting to do so, Magda negotiates some very real concerns faced by women in the Reich in the second half of 142

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the 1930s. From 1936, “the scope of the ‘areas’ deemed suitable for women increased, especially with regard to employment, and women were encouraged to transcend their gender boundaries and be an active part of the labour market [resulting] in greater (personal, economic, and social) independence”.80 By behaving as a woman who can “stand like a man”, as a famous German proverb goes,81 Magda is a role model, strong yet feminine, modern and at the same time Heimat verbunden [allied with her Heimat], thus serving the promotion of the Volksgemeinschaft [ethnic community].82 Magda’s decision to return to her Heimat indicates that the sentimental pull of blood and soil is stronger than the lure of America’s glamour. Even in view of the provinciality and hostility of her village, she insists: “Dieses Nest ist meine Heimat.” [This backwater is my Heimat.] The outside world cannot compete with the Heimat, dominated by her father and his village community. “I am so happy to be back here,” she sobs at her father’s chest in a “close-up of the prodigal daughter returning to her patriarchal master”.83 Magda’s reintegration is paradigmatic for other lost sons and daughters, whose fate is foreshadowed in the film’s promotion of a homogenization of “conflicting viewing positions” and redefinitions of “people with different social, cultural, religious and gender backgrounds as members of one and the same national audience”.84 Initially, though, Heimat does not live up to Magda’s expectations. She rediscovers all the reasons why she had left—the “stifling and narrowminded environment (her strict father, her acquiescent sister, and the middleclass gossips of the town)”.85 Returning as a strong, independent, and successful woman with her own opinions, she steers her way self-confidently through several confrontations. After the altercation with her estranged father that nearly results in their death, she comes to appreciate his sense of honour and to understand the need for compromise and sacrifice for peace of mind and the community. Aware of the threat to her father’s health posed by emotional stress, Magda agrees to conform to his last wish. She consents to the proposed marriage with von Keller, not yet knowing of his suicide. The gesture itself, her willingness to adhere to the wishes of an elder, is indicative of her new understanding: cherishing family and community above personal well-being. This confirms that Magda has been successfully “re-educated”; she is made to understand her errors before she can be accepted back into her native society. Remorseful, and understanding what is to be her destiny, she ultimately agrees to submit to her father and his moral code. To avoid bringing shame on him in the community, she is prepared to accept his values and abide by his rules. Although fate prevents this from happening, her willingness has rehabilitated her. Appropriately, Magda’s recital from Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion spells out this submission; it becomes something grand and unselfish, beautiful and worthy of respect. The father-daughter melodrama finds its happy resolution when Magda sings: “Repentance and remorse cleaves the sinner’s heart asunder.” Thus Froelich’s Heimat manages to reconcile any mixed messages that women may have received in previous years. While the liberation of women during the Weimar Republic—resulting in their right to vote and partake in most aspects of society—had opened up many possibilities to them, Nazi ideals prescribed that women should first and foremost be mothers: “Frausein heißt Muttersein.” [Being a woman means being a mother.]86 To encourage this, the government passed an Ehestandsdarlehengesetz [law regulating 143

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loans for newly married couples] in 1933. It granted newlywed German couples loans at substantially reduced rates if the wife chose to forgo her job. This resulted in a marriage boom in 1934, with 111 weddings taking place per 10,000 citizens.87 In 1938, Goebbels elevated childbearing and housekeeping to female tasks with “state function” in order to encourage women to support the nation’s survival.88 Simultaneously, however, as part of the war preparations and the active pursuit of rearmament, the Nazis changed their loans scheme so as to encourage women to return to the workforce.89 One researcher described the situation thus: “Eclectic, half-reactionary, halfrevolutionary ideologies concerning women existed side by side.”90 Despite its 1885 setting in the small town of Illmingen, the film’s melodramatic conflict was intended to resonate with the female audience of the Nazi period. Magda becomes the Überwoman [superwoman] who manages to be a good mother and a good daughter, a tough businesswoman and a good-hearted citizen, an exceptional artist yet at the same time a suitably rational individual. Magda as mother and performer holds down two jobs, just like the ideal Nazi woman during the Second World War—although both “jobs” are those which were regarded as wesensgemäße [fitting] occupations that naturally belong to the female sphere.91 Though her lifestyle, in contrast to later Nazi heroines, is anything but frugal, Magda offers her fellow women reasons to identify with her—even if it is in a dreamy, escapist fashion—and therefore fulfils Froelich’s mission statement: “The fate unfolding up there on the screen before us should and must be so strong that it simply forces us to feel that we are one with the performers, to make their experience our own.”92 The achievement of this aim, however, required realistic details in the depiction of conflict and tensions, thus marrying elements of reality and fantasy. Froelich’s melodrama Heimat includes references to everyday circumstances that appear to be, if not real, then at least realistic. Accordingly, “the film invites the widening of a narrowly defined Heimat by allowing viewers to safely experience the foreign and the exotic”, yet “in the end, the film reaffirms the restrictions imposed by Heimat”.93 In addition, by not marrying at the end of the film, Magda legitimizes her working life. As a wife, she would have been forced to submit to the traditional roles of mother and housekeeper, preserving the realm of home and nation, since being married would have removed her need to work outside the home. Her status as a single mother, like a surrogate emancipation, allows her to continue her professional pursuits. Overall, the film appeals to sentiment more than to intellect with its generic melodramatic traits. “The emphasis on the emotional is evident from the film’s first sequence, which depicts Magda as psychologically incomplete. In this sequence, before the credits begin, Magda sings the theme song.”94 The introduction of music appealing to a broad spectrum of society had been successfully adopted from musical entertainment films such as Fritz Kampers’s Ich sing’ mich in Dein Herz hinein [I’ll Sing Myself into Your Heart, 1934], Carl Lamac’s Im Weißen Rößl [In the White Horse Hotel, 1935] and later Froelich’s Es war eine rauschende Ballnacht [It Was a Grand Ball, 1939], as well as Helmut Käutner’s Wir machen Musik [We Make Music, 1942]. Creating a sympathetic predisposition towards the protagonists, music was a popular unifier of audiences and a means of transporting lasting impressions and tunes out of the cinema and into people’s everyday lives. 144

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Immediate identification with Magda is also achieved through her vulnerable appearance. Close-ups of her face during two of her performances reveal that she has been crying, and her glance suggests her mind is far away. This impression is initially invited by the lyrics of the song “Drei Sterne sah ich scheinen” [I saw three stars shining] which opens the film, alluding to the tension between what is familiar and what is foreign within the concept of Heimat, where Heimat is most keenly appreciated when it is distant or has been lost. Magda’s melancholic yearning for the Heimat, because “die Fremde ist so leer” [foreign lands are so empty], as expressed in the opening song, refers to the image of a garden dominated by a tree (“ein grüner Lindenbaum”, [a green linden tree]) and thus introduces not only a phallic symbol towering over a protected enclosure but also an image of rootedness and natural bonding. Her dreamy and teary eyes serve as a sign of her stirring struggle between the charms of America and the pull of Heimat. “By imagining a linden tree within a garden rather than nature per se, Magda expresses her longing for a familiar identifiable order. What separates the garden from nature is the controlled order of the latter within the former.”95 This opening scene also introduces divorced domains in the cinematic language: the camera angle and focus do not show her body. “The effect of this mind and body split is to cloak the idea of Heimat in a secret, the nature of which we are to discover during the film.”96 In a moment of epiphany, at the end of the film Magda clearly realizes her place in society, as does her community. While the initial sequence of the film depicts her wandering mind and longing, the last scene of Heimat assures the audience that Magda has arrived in her Heimat in both body and mind. “Magda is framed against the powerful architecture of a gothic cathedral, filled with the music of Bach. This frame positions her symbolically within the national community.”97 She is reconciled with the congregation of her church before higher authorities. Framed by the gothic architecture and the community, Magda “symbolically becomes part of another order that transcends both her father’s Wilhelminian order and her own individualistic one”.98 Thus the prodigal daughter is purged of her sins, while rejuvenating the community with her return, ultimately “promoting unity, ostensibly beyond social, economic, and especially generational and gender struggles, in order to strengthen the family of Germans”. 99 The film employs a powerful mix of national, emotional, and regional stimuli—music, the Christmas-like setting, genre elements of the melodrama, and symbols of Heimat—to endorse an ideology that is very much akin to that of the Nazi period. Aspects of bigotry in the film come to the fore in many instances, such as when the nationality of the artist who is to sing Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion is discussed. The consensus is that a German artist is required to sing the piece. In general, the message is clear: “the German homeland [is] in need of German artists.”100 This logic is continued and satisfied on the textual as well as the extra-diegetical level. Ironically, the actress playing Magda, Zarah Leander, is an international star, but the surroundings in which she is shown reflect a certain Germanness. The use of Christmas carols, classical music, the town’s architecture and decoration, as well as the general activities that create the illusion that this is the festive season (although the scenes take place in early February), further the melodramatic effect, but more impor-

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tantly encourage the audience to locate the film’s action in their own idealized nation. Zarah Leander’s stardom had been well received by the German film industry. She brought to Nazi cinema something which the American industry had plenty of: a star with international flair, “mondäne[r] Erotik und […] triumphierende[r] Eleganz” [chic erotic and […] triumphant elegance],101 who could be used for the promotion of the film and for other marketing activities, including Nazi propaganda. “By transforming not just women, but beautiful stars, into protagonists of Heimat, the concept could be popularized and finally packaged for mass entertainment.”102 Magda’s obligation to submit to the pressures of German Heimat with all its anti-modern iconography, while simultaneously embracing modernity and international success— as well as combining motherhood and professional activities—means that she is presented as an all-encompassing female role-model. She is able to negotiate her way out of the conundrum of wanting to succeed while wanting to conform, and pursuing freedom while still operating willingly within a given framework. Indeed, Magda’s persona operates within the known confines of female types. Her name conjures up associations with Mary Magdalene, and her characterization is associated with images of both whore and Madonna, femme fatale and femme fragile.103 “While the femme fragile is characterized by her aesthetic suffering and spiritual fragility, the femme fatale possesses, because of her sexual appetite, demonic powers over men.”104 Magda’s sexual indiscretions, which led to her pregnancy out of wedlock and brought shame upon her father, are balanced by her remorse and her nurturing and caring attitude. Both are constructs of femininity, “the femme fatale linked to the exotic, dangerous sexuality and the femme fragile who expresses the qualities of Heimat”, thereby providing “affirmation and revocation of the female autonomy and the extension and delimination of the concept of Heimat”.105 In the end, Magda has overcome her spatial and mental distance from her Heimat by reintegrating herself into the old order. Thus Magda, like women in general, becomes the embodiment of Heimat. Her successful reintegration into the patriarchal order as a mother and a daughter, without abandoning her acclaimed position as a star, “packages these gendered dynamics for mass consumption, playing out the exotic and sexual aura of Zarah Leander that incites the audience to taste the eccentric and unconventional and to transgress the narrow borders of Heimat”, however, “only to lead it heim ins Reich [home into the Empire].”106 By returning to her Heimat, Magda avoids the fate that Nazi films customarily bestowed on insubordinate women: misery and/or death. In Veit Harlan’s The Golden City, the heroine eventually commits suicide after she has run away from home. Like Magda, she became involved with the wrong man, succumbed to the temptations of a decadent urban environment, and fell pregnant to “a good-for-nothing racial enemy”.107 Treason—in terms of leaving one’s home—and involvement with a race enemy were crimes too threatening to be condoned by the rest of society and, as Harlan’s film in its entirety makes clear, Nazi values were not to be questioned. Clearly, The Golden City warns against betraying one’s homeland as much as against despoiling its cultural and racial homogeneity. Similarly, Froelich’s Heimat never escapes the ideological constraints of Goebbels’ credo and, although to

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some it may seem free of propaganda,108 it repeatedly reveals positive references to the ideological system under which it was created. These references can hardly be ignored, such as when Magda’s father reflects on the changing world around him. He laments: “I grew up in this world. I don’t know another one”, to which Heffterdingk replies: “But you know of this other world, Mr von Schwartze. It is ascending with new visions and a new honour. It touches our hearts and cannot be stopped even by you. This life that also stirs within you is too big, too powerful not to burst open these old forms. You feel it too, you just refuse to admit it.” National Socialism is the new order that Heffterdingk so prophetically announces, thus paving the way for a positive assessment of Hitler’s ideology and its genealogy in which “[t]he past legitimises the present, and German history appears as teleological progress toward a glorious future”.109 Again the reconciliatory tendency of the film prevails, as it advocates not a revolution but a synthesis. What Heffterdingk envisions, in real life “Hitler accomplished […] a familiar world in which Prussian values of order, discipline, and obedience could be reconciled in a modern nation-state and fuelled by Hitler’s aim to unite Germans”.110 However, if this union cannot be achieved peacefully, the film sanctions brute force, violence, and threats, in doing so condoning contemporary and future treatment of outsiders in the Reich. This is clear from the language used by the male characters trying to restore order; namely, retired soldiers proud to have been “Soldat” [soldier] und “Krieger” [warrior]. Their vocabulary includes many terms borrowed from the military field: “… von Schwartze speaks of ‘treason’ [Verrat] and ‘interrogation’ [Verhören] when discussing his daughter Magda’s past; Mieze’s fiancé Max uses the phrase “to stand at attention” [strammstehen] to address the family conflict; Magda’s thinking revolves around the ‘battle’ [Kampf] for Heimat and for her child; and Heffterdingk casts Magda’s position vis-à-vis her father in terms of ‘battle’ 111 [Kampf] and ‘victory’ [Sieg].”

This militaristic rhetoric, as well as statements justifying “Autorität muss sein” [authority is necessary], “Sauberkeit” [cleanliness]—not just with regard to hygiene but also to race, as the reference to black Americans112 shows, and “Ordnung muss sein” [order is necessary], forms a disturbing sub-text, situating the film clearly in the context of anti-Semitism, rising international tensions, and the war-mongering that accompanied the occupation of the Rhineland, the annexation of the Sudeto-German territories, and the Anschluß [annexation] of Austria. In other words, “by 1938 Hitler had brought about a new order by managing to unite the various, heterogeneous members of the German nation and mould them into a unified whole”,113 just as Froelich managed to reunify diverse elements in this film. In summary, Froelich’s Heimat is certainly not free of propaganda, and is clearly political in its message. While foregrounding sentimentality and providing points of identification, particularly for women,114 the film tries to appease both modern and traditional citizens; for example, by “fostering the illusion of crossing boundaries of Heimat, […] Froelich’s film encourages fantasies of rebellion and resistance, radical individualism, unrestrained sexuality, exotic far-away places, and consequently offers multiple ways of interpretation of both the characters and the narrative”.115 These border cross147

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ings, figurative and literal, are, however, shown to a viewer who remains in a safe position, from the perspective of a seat in the cinema. Like the journey for Trenker’s protagonist Tonio, Magda’s experiences serve as a substitute for those in the audience. The film discourages similar journeys and individualism by allowing the viewer to experience the process vicariously and cathartically, so they need not attempt such things themselves. The audience is meant to conform and continue to exist within the status quo. “This kind of ‘safe fantasy’ […] popularised and proliferated the ‘Heimatisation’ of Germany, that is, the concept of a newly orchestrated and restructured National Socialist community.”116 Born in 1875, Froelich himself belonged to this community, joining the NSDAP (Nazi Party) even before 1933, becoming head of the General Federation of Film Production and Film Realization [Leiter des Gesamtverbandes der Filmherstellung und Filmverwertung], and accepting commissions from the Reichspropaganda management, such as for the film Ich für Dich—Du für mich [I for You—You for Me] in 1934. Like Fanck, Trenker, and Riefenstahl, he had been one of the pioneers of German film, starting his career as a cinematographer as early as 1906 and making the transition to directing between 1913 and 1915. “A director definitely not known for non-conformist intentions ever since his 1913 biopic Richard Wagner”,117 Froelich was a prominent player in Weimar and Nazi cinema. He shot the first German sound film, Die Nacht gehört uns [The Night Belongs to Us] in 1924, as well as the first German film in colour, Das Schönheitsfleckchen [The Little Beauty Spot] in 1936. Soon after, he became the toast of the Nazi cultural scene, which earned him the title of Professor in 1937.118 In the twelve years of Hitler’s reign, Froelich wrote, directed, produced, and shot some thirty films, all of which bear clear political signs of the times. Not surprisingly, as a loyal supporter of the Nazis, Froelich was made president of the Reichsfilmkammer in 1939 and remained at the top of the organization until its demise in 1945. His career never recovered after the war; following his denazification in 1948, he was able to make only two more films and died in 1953. Froelich’s legacy is still manifest today, with many contemporary directors engaging critically with his most prominent works. Evidence of this is to be found, for example, in Edgar Reitz’s Heimat trilogy. Tensions about Heimat, the nation, and the position of women in society, which are familiar from Froelich’s work, are unmistakable in several episodes of Reitz’s Heimat from 1984. “Rejecting the fatherland and its Nazi crimes, Reitz focuses on an alternative motherland centred around the labor of women in order to rehabilitate German identity.”119 In this manner, Reitz incorporates passages from Froelich’s 1938 melodrama Heimat into episodes of his own series, which, however, emphasize that “women figures, in the end, only sanction patriarchal arrangements. The discourse of Heimat elevates woman as an icon for the price of controlling and manipulating her in its center.”120 With the reality of war in Germany, the fate of the single mother, portrayed as “strong, mysterious, […] serious and reserved, […] intuitive and feminine”,121 is intended to be exemplary. Whether by choice or fate, an existence without a man was possible without upsetting the larger order—for Magda, just as for the millions of German women after 1939. Thus the film played its part in preparing the German female audiences for their roles to come,122 especially as it pro-

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phetically states: “Der Krieg hat noch gar nicht begonnen.” [The war has not even begun yet.] Indeed, Froelich’s Heimat can still be classified as one of the tamer varieties of Nazi Heimat films, albeit one that clearly betrays the sentiment of the times, while doing so in a subdued fashion which escaped detection during the initial denazification period and thus allowed latently anti-Semitic and crypto-Fascist messages to be carried into the second half of the twentieth century.

Kurt Hoffmann’s Kohlhiesel’s Daughters (1943) Froelich’s Heimat is not a typical Heimat film, as it features elements of other genres. Under the Nazis, Heimat films were more likely to take the form of village tales with familiar themes or conventions from the Volkstheater [folk drama/theatre] and the Volkslied [folksong]. Several of the directors of these films, such as Hans Deppe and Kurt Hoffmann, were even able to make an immediate and successful transition into production in postwar West Germany—and continued to use the same types of tales they had filmed during the previous twenty years. One such story from the Nazi period is Hoffmann’s Kohlhiesels Töchter [Kohlhiesel’s Daughters]. Hoffmann, born in 1910, was a generation younger than Trenker and ten years younger than Riefenstahl, and was in his early years of training when the Nazis came to power. With the intervention of his father, Ufa cameraman Carl Hoffmann, he received a traineeship with Erik Charell and Robert Siodmak, and was given his first chance at directing as early as 1938/39. During the Nazi era, Kurt Hoffmann was involved in the making of more than twenty films, mainly as assistant to the director (working, among others, for the “half-Jew” Reinhold Schünzel, whose status in Nazi Germany remained precarious, and also for Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Gustav Ucicky, and Hans Steinhoff). Nevertheless, Hoffmann directed nine films himself, including three short films and three extremely successful feature films—Kohlhiesel’s Daughters, Ich vertraue Dir meine Frau an [I Entrust My Wife to You, 1942/43], and Quax, der Bruchpilot [Quax, the Pilot Who Crash-landed, 1941], with Heinz Rühmann playing the lead role.123 However, his success as a film-maker did not exempt him from having to serve as a soldier: first in Poland and then on the Western Front, with the only time remaining for filmmaking being his army leave periods away from the front. In 1945, Hoffmann was captured by the Americans in Belgium and was held prisoner until 1946. After his release, he returned to the film industry, rising to the position of post-war West Germany’s most successful director of light entertainment in the 1950s. The films he had produced during the Nazi period were rereleased on German television in that decade—Kohlhiesel’s Daughters was screened on the ARD in 1953—along with new productions, all of which were popular with large audiences. Ich denke oft an Piroschka [I Often Think of Piroschka, 1955] and Das Wirtshaus im Spessart [The Inn in the Spessart Forest, 1957/58] marked the peak of his success. Hoffmann’s credo, “I don’t make my films for critics, but for the public”,124 which saw him focus on melodrama and comedy, worked well with the distributors’ profit expectations at the box office. His career thus spanned the Nazi as well as the post149

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war period, and he continued to work within the same genre (Heimat film) and with the same actors (including Heinz Rühmann). He suffered no setbacks whatsoever from his Nazi affiliations, and his life’s work was honoured with numerous awards, such as the German Filmpreis Filmbänder in Gold. He remains one of only a few German directors to be awarded a Golden Globe (in 1957 for his film Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull [Confessions of the Swindler Felix Krull] and in 1958 for Wir Wunderkinder [We Miracle Children]). In an interview to mark his seventy-fifth birthday in 1985, Hoffmann stated: “I have nothing to tell. Who’s even interested in these old films?”,125 saying that he would rather speak about his father Carl, who was a cameraman for some of the great films directed by F. W. Murnau and Fritz Lang. He did, however, acknowledge that “his own” old films with Heinz Rühmann and Liselotte Pulver still attracted record audiences when screened on television, and that he was indeed proud of that. Nevertheless, this sense of achievement may appear somewhat hollow when Hoffmann’s oeuvre is analysed in context, as between 1933 and 1945 he made films that corresponded with the Nazi ideal of Heimat, even if only as a sub-text. By concentrating, as he does in Kohlhiesel’s Daughters, on the conflict between generations, on traditional and modern desires, as well as on marriage, Hoffmann addresses problems which, even if only on a personal level, are common to every one. He was thus able to avoid being labelled a “propagandist”.126 Kohlhiesel’s Daughters is a modernized adaptation of a play by Hanns Kräly, which was set in nineteenth-century Southern Bavaria. It is a farcical peasant comedy,127 telling of the complications involved in the weddings of two sisters, Liesel and Gretel. It had already been adapted by Ernst Lubitsch in his silent film of 1920,128 and despite being condemned by critics such as Lotte Eisner for being “one of his least refined farces” which made “nonGerman spectators feel violently indisposed”,129 the storyline was nevertheless extremely well received by its German audience. Its popularity was perhaps due to its parallels with Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, its references to traditional customs familiar to the audience (an older daughter must be married off before the younger one can wed), and a happy ending which resonated well with the general public, with the two lovers, Xaver and Gretel, ending up together. Already in 1930, director Hans Behrendt released his adaptation of the story under the same title, Kohlhiesel’s Daughters, while, at the height of the Second World War, Hoffmann’s version of the romantic comedy introduced slight modifications to the storyline and characters. The setting and plot are more contemporary, with the traditional custom of the older sibling needing to be married first having been replaced. In the revised plot, an unsuitable marriage contender has his eyes set on the perfect maiden Veronika—or rather her father’s wealth and properties. The trials and tribulations arising from the daughter’s cunning plans to instead marry the man she loves make for an entertaining, light-hearted, and at times very funny film. This choice proved timely, as Hoffmann’s adaptation reached the cinemas during a dark period for the German Reich, premiering in Klagenfurt in March 1943 and opening in Berlin two months later. The tide of war had turned against Hitler’s troops, and amidst the chaos and destruction and stories of loss and death, Kohlhiesel’s Daughters delighted audiences with its shots of unspoilt nature, heart-warming images of close-knit family units, 150

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authentic locations, and the inevitable happy ending which instilled hope for a better life for all. Hoffmann’s film presents a melodramatic tale which is dominated by the conflict between a father, Mathias Kohlhöfer (Kohlhiesel), and his daughter Veronika (Vroni), who quarrel about which of her two suitors should be chosen. The father favours a rich applicant, the landholder Jodok Simerl, while the daughter’s choice is motivated by love rather than money. Her heart belongs to the woodchopper Kaspar Pointner, who is the incarnation of moral masculinity and a proto-Aryan athletic type (played by Sepp Rist, who was known to audiences from Arnold Fanck’s Stürme über dem Montblanc [Storms over Mont Blanc, 1930]). The two male characters are allegorical figures representing opposing moral convictions which guide Vroni’s decision-making process. Through numerous disguise tactics, she reveals the less wealthy candidate to be worthier, and the capitalist hopeful to be ruthless and immoral. The film derives most of its entertainment value from the scheme thought up by Vroni and her helpful uncle, Thomas Altlechner. They invent the story that Kohlhiesel has another biological daughter named Anna-Mirl, whose mother was supposedly Kohlhiesl’s childhood sweetheart. Anna-Mirl, who is ugly and crude, is played by Vroni herself in disguise, and is to inherit Kohlhiesel’s entire property, as he has disinherited Vroni in a rage over her insubordination. Jodok’s love interest immediately shifts to Anna-Mirl, showing that he is more interested in the dowry than in Vroni. This seemingly harmless tale, however, on closer inspection, reveals itself as a vehicle to prime the audience for Nazi ideology, as the comical elements of the tale function to prepare the ground for propagandistic consensus. Hoffmann plays with genre conventions and innovations, artistically raising the film beyond the level of the banal wedding farce, which was familiar to and popular with the audience from the folk theatre. While purporting to follow Fanck’s creed of shooting on authentic locations rather than in studios, which were less costly and more comfortable and convenient, the director in fact undermines the sense of authenticity by having the actors speak an artificial Bavarian dialect. He assembles their speech fragments from jargon, quotes from rainbow-press headlines, as well as phrases from Stammtisch [regulars’ table at the pub] and Mills-and-Boons-type contexts, and also reproduces mise-en-scènes reminiscent of stage sets and theatre scenes. In addition, his use of deconstruction and juxtaposition are very evident. One such example is the setting of the courtship ceremony between Anna-Mirl and Jodok in a shed, which suggests underlying animalistic instincts with explicit references to sex, lust, and animal behaviour. Just as it serves as a reminder of nineteenth-century peasant comedies, the film also foreshadows the salacious lederhosen films of the 1970s, in which the Alpine setting is the playground of lusty individuals in the infamous Heimat sex films. The basic storyline of Kohlhiesel’s Daughters underwent numerous adaptations after 1945: Géza von Bolváry’s Ja, ja, die Liebe in Tirol [Yes, Yes, Love in Tyrol] in 1955, the 1962 remake of Kohlhiesels Töchter by Axel von Ambesser with Liselotte Pulver in the lead, a soft-porn interpretation by Walter Boos released in 1978 under the title Wirtshaus der sündigen Töchter [Inn of the Sinful Daughters], a 1979 TV adaptation under the original title by Jürgen Enz, and a stage adaptation by Daniel Call in 2005.130 A comparison 151

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of Hoffmann’s film with these versions indicates that his interpretation of the tale bears incontrovertible signs of the era, as it introduces elements that serve Nazi ideology beyond the necessary characterization. References to Jodok’s stereotypical Jewish behaviour, for example, have been dropped in later adaptations, and Vroni’s ideal husband has also lost much of his Aryan appearance. Likewise, the “Anti-Trasch-und-Klatsch Kampagnen” [antiscandal and gossip campaigns] that serve as a vehicle to unmask the impostor, comments such as “Feind hört mit” [enemies are listening], as well as the real-life references to the obligation to register with the authorities,131 clearly allude to the ideology which prevailed under Nazism. The fictitious ugly daughter, who must undergo the registration procedure, claims that the reason for her visit is “Familienangelegenheiten” [family business]. In Germany in 1943, this was the reason cited most often to justify fleeing from war-torn cities and regions. On the whole, this issue of flight to rural areas and the treatment of refugees by officials was very topical, as “countless numbers of people evacuated under official orders from areas at risk of bombing, as well as holiday-makers and relatives from the big cities who had moved to the safe haven of ‘Auntie’s farm’ on their own initiative”, had led to logistical chaos: “Control over drafting soldiers, ration cards and care requirements was becoming more and more difficult for the authorities to manage.”132 In addition to these explicit references, the film also endorses Nazi values. Vroni is depicted as the ideal German girl in appearance and character. Her traditional Dirndl and Gretchen-like hairstyle, as well as her moral integrity, refreshing attitude, and loyal deeds set her apart from the scheming servant of the corrupt contender Jodok Simerl. The latter, whose real name is Simon Moser, a name that may have sounded Jewish to contemporary Germans, had changed his name to the more Bavarian sounding “Simerl” and is obsessed with money. Vroni is introduced as a domestic woman, making fruit preserves in the kitchen. The polarization between positive role models and negative influences is further enhanced by Hoffmann’s crude juxtaposition of good and bad characters and values. A variety of decent and unpleasant men and women are contrasted to ensure that the message is unmistakable. Vroni has her negative counterpart in Anna-Mirl, the fictitious half-sister she pretends to be: a dim, loud, superficial, insincere, crudely sexual, and nonconformist figure. “Owing to the glorification of the ‘good’ main female character as […] a woman who conforms with the system and through the defamation and condemnation of a female character, who doesn’t conform to Nazi-ideals”, the film endorses Fascist ideology by example.133 The audience is left in no doubt as to who is the real heroine, as the anti-ideal, with all its exaggerations and provocations, is unmistakably make-believe. She appears in disguise, using dress-up clothes, wigs, make-up, and offensive language. Thus Anna-Mirl is clearly presented as a fictitious, and undesirable, alternative to Vroni. With regard to male role models, the film employs a confrontation, familiar to audiences from real life, between the “ideal” Kaspar and his “evil” counterpart, Jodok. Again, the audience is left in no doubt about the way it is intended to judge the two men, whose characters are so obviously different. Hitler’s “complex pattern of ideas out of which his particular Weltanschauung [philosophy of life] had been constructed resulted in a singularly black-and-white view of the world, where virtue and sin, good and evil, heroes and villains were all too easily delineated.”134 Like all melodramatic 152

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love stories, this film places obstacles in the path of the true lovers, in the form of adversaries that, nevertheless, ultimately allow the golden couple to shine forth and win. In this instance, the suspected “Jew” and the uncontrolled, abnormally sexual woman are typical misfits, according to Fascist ideology. Nazi propaganda portrays the Aryan and the Jew as eternally opposed protagonists and antagonists, with this opposition forming a staple ingredient of the artistic productions of the time, ranging from children’s literature to Heimat film. Accordingly, both the fictitious sister and Jodok embody everything that Nazi ideology despises. Ironically, and despite his supposed Jewishness, Jodok dresses like Hitler, wearing the same little moustache and slicked-down hairstyle. He continually pretends to be someone he is not, and this ruse serves only to make his character less a Hitler persiflage than a paradigm of dishonesty. Despite this clear-cut distribution of sympathies, Hoffmann builds complications into the plot, with Vroni, too, at times seemingly departing from the Nazi ideal of hearth and home, such as when she self-confidently plays the part of Anna-Mirl, deceiving even the people she loves. However, she is forced to resort to this behaviour to expose the impostor and defend her virginity, home, and community. Hoffmann may also have felt it appropriate to depict Vroni as an independent and strong woman, to pay tribute to the many women in the 1940s who, in the absence of their men—brothers, fathers, husbands, sweethearts, or fiancés—had to fend for themselves, even if that meant using tricks and cunning deceit to survive.135 Just like Magda in Froelich’s Heimat, Vroni depicts a modern woman, thus providing further evidence of Nazi efforts to unite the German population under the umbrella of an ideology that attracted conservative forces as much as it did political, technical, and social innovators. Kohlhiesel’s Daughters is an attempt to reconcile farmers and family patriarchs with modern women and new social orders. “Without promoting backwardness, many [films] reflect a rural idyll [and] pro-peasant propaganda, but at the same time they make much of the availability and benefits of inventions of the modern age” —and of modern women.136 Employing such time-specific references made the overemphasis of historical context superfluous, with Hoffmann (and Goebbels) considering it unnecessary to include the swastika flag when the camera panned over a series of regional banners during festivities in the village. The Nazi ideals of Heimat were deemed to have been expressed so obviously that they could function as “a space of rest guaranteeing that all movement can be arrested and that the traveller will not lose the self in eternal movement”.137 The notion that a homeless and therefore soulless individual is unfit and unworthy of Heimat is certainly derived from the “demon” of the wandering Jew,138 who in this instance moves restlessly between two women in pursuit of financial gain. The motif of the restless mind and body “signifies the aimless roaming of an alienated, uprooted subject unable to find its own space in a world dominated by exchange value”.139 Heimat for the Nazis thus served as “a geographical projection of the need for security”,140 and was manifested in the family unit of husband, wife, and offspring. That this ideal is found in a rural community implies a rejection of urban life and modernity, which were associated with mobility and internationalization and were in turn slandered as products of the international Jewish conspiracy. “The development of money as an autonomous force was a precondition for the internationalization 153

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Nazism equates with a loss of Heimat.”141 Vroni defends her Heimat while Jodok wants to “cheat” his way in—the only way he can possibly attain one. In Nazi Germany, everyone was encouraged to “derive their identity exclusively from their sense of belonging to that community”.142 The dichotomous understanding of Heimat versus Heimatlosigkeit [homelessness] can be traced back to early völkisch thinking, according to which “the very definition of what it was to be German was conceived in part in contradistinction to the Jews.”143 This juxtaposition functioned as follows: “The Volk were stable and settled, the Jews were wandering and rootless; the Volk were spiritual, the Jews were materialistic; the Volk were the epitome of healthy rural life, the Jews embodied the decadence and corruption of the life of the city.”144 In this context, the rural setting of the film, as opposed to a cityscape, is also important. In Kohlhiesel’s Daughters, the Alpine landscape serves as an aesthetic background, but also plays a part in the tale and generates meaning. The camera often pans over lakes and mountains in a horizontal movement that indicates the passing of time as much as references to the make-up of society. The natural surroundings, however, also reflect dramatic internal character development, such as the crucial conflict between the lovers. Vroni’s inability to meet her true lover Kaspar, due to her eagerness to play the part of Anna-Mirl, is mistaken by him to be a sign of infidelity and weakness. Their confrontation takes place against the threatening backdrop of a mountain, with the landscape seeming to mirror the temperament and intensity of the characters and their conflict, as well as the danger of this climactic meeting. However, the composition of the mise-en-scène suggests that Vroni can win back Kaspar’s trust: she is positioned against the bright, blue sky while Kaspar stands in front of the imposing mountain, symbolizing that he is burdened with overwhelming doubts. Fanck had already pioneered the convention of using landscape as a narrative symbol—for example, the snowstorm in his 1930 film Stürme über dem Montblanc [Storms over Mont Blanc]—and the technique had since proved inspirational for many films.145 Following this example, Hoffmann’s film has specific mountain and Heimat film elements, just as it possesses Nazi-specific attributes, all of which are contained in a storyline that foregrounds the timeless desire for distraction and for tales of fortune and misfortune among the common people. “Like all successful Nazi feature films, […] [i]t caters to the audience’s emotional needs by integrating troubling aspects of everyday life into a more palatable reality of cinematic experience”, all the while affirming National Socialist ideals.146 The struggle between good and evil functions as a dominant force in establishing an ideal community, and thus works as a catalyst for the victory of true love. Therefore, Kohlhiesel’s Daughters is clearly not apolitical—a statement that can be said to apply to other popular films, including Helmut Käutner’s films Romanze in Moll [Romance in a Minor Key, 1943] and Kleider machen Leute [Clothes Make the Man, 1940], that were also “declared free of propaganda”.147 Indeed, as the analysis of two representative examples has shown, the clean bill of health awarded to these films does not mean that they were innocent of supporting Nazi ideology, as Goebbels employed entertainment for the purposes of distraction and subliminal indoctrination, even if it was on face value only through the presentation of a feel-good storyline which distracted the audience from the reality of war and imminent defeat.148 As 154

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Goebbels reiterated in 1941 at the Convention of the Reichsfilmkammer: “Even entertainment can occasionally have the task of fitting out a people for the fight of their lives, provide them in the dramatic events of the day with the necessary [spiritual] edification, entertainment and relaxation. […] Film has a political function to fulfil.”149 Conservative values were thus clearly promoted and, whether directly or indirectly, Nazi Weltanschauung was ever present. Propaganda is a tool used to generate consensus, a means of promoting, forming, and fostering a homogeneous society, and the Fascist regime proved very resourceful in narrating its story while blocking “other narratives from forming and emerging”,150 thus skilfully monopolizing knowledge and using the power of persuasion to serve its political programmes. Their military invasions went hand-in-hand with the colonization of people’s minds. The very art of propaganda is to make such brainwashing implicit, but also to make the process of manipulation appear subtle, if not undetectable. By 1938, the year of Heimat’s release, “Hitler himself had achieved the unity of the German people within Germany by suppressing, threatening, and eliminating the opposition to National Socialism.”151 He had thereby succeeded in “reuniting the different ‘family members’ of the German nation. The reintegration of the Saarland into the Reich, the annexation of Austria, and the incorporation of the Sudetenland completed this German family romance.”152 The times had called for drastic measures, and it was considered legitimate to employ treachery and deceit to advance a good cause. Jodok’s exposure resulted in the elimination of a class enemy as well as a racial misfit and the return of peace to the family of Germans. The social order which was thereby reinstated certainly corresponded to the Third Reich’s preoccupation and obsession “with order and coordination; reordering, subordinating, uniting, classifying, categorising”.153 Hitler asserted in 1936 that “[o]ur socialism goes far deeper. It not only changes the external order of things, but it also reorders the relations between people and state and national community.”154 Goebbels in turn explained how people should be redirected towards community and state by using the analogy of a poly-instrumental, yet harmonic, orchestra: “We do not want everybody playing the same instrument. We only require that everyone plays according to a plan and that the emerging concert […] is based on a symphony. No one should have the right to play however he wants.”155 Vroni’s efforts to reinstate order serve her personal needs, but first and foremost aid the well-being of her society and affirm Heimat as the site of ideal relationships. “On the one hand, [...] Heimat separates what is familiar and close from what is foreign and strange, or decides who is to be considered an insider or outsider. On the other hand, Heimat also functions to order people around a principle of unity.”156 In so doing, “the unified experience of Heimat requires that different voices and identities be assimilated, suppressed, or excluded”.157 As with most Nazi Heimat films, the reinstatement of order or the happy union of man and woman are essential ingredients of the plot. However, despite the social stress on procreation at the time, films tended to leave out this part of the equation. Although there is little doubt left at the end of Kohlhiesel’s Daughters that Vroni and Kaspar will be blessed with progeny, the details are left to the viewers’ imagination. The issue is not complicated by any such speculation, although the expectation is clear that, despite her self155

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confident and independent manner, Vroni will be happily domesticated and do her part in building the nation’s future, as in all Hoffmann films, where “fantasy offers a convenient way of assuming various identities, of testing new attitudes, but always within the confines of private desires and with a clear view towards a harmonious integration of differences”.158 Both films, Heimat and Kohlhiesel’s Daughters, are therefore prime examples of how well-narrated stories, by touching people’s hearts, can serve as entertainment as much as promote political and ideological ideas. “The viewing of these films serves […] to pacify the female population, to ‘educate’ them subtly, or to manipulate them by means of propaganda”, thereby making them “conform with and supportive of the [Nazi] system”.159 By marrying well-mastered technological feats with well-known genre elements, both films show the ease with which heimatesque elements harmonize with Nazism and Fascism. To ensure this message was communicated without any doubt, advertising campaigns, press coverage, and cinema booklets were used to protect the films from “undesirable interpretation”.160 With this provision of surplus information, the process of reception, interpretation, and construction of meaning was tailored to Nazi needs, meaning that even the seemingly apolitical consumption of light entertainment took place within a tightly controlled society. The Nazis’ skilful use of the Heimat genre lulled audiences “into complacency by their promise to be nothing more than mere entertainment. As such, viewers are little more than passive receptacles, mindlessly absorbing a reassuring cultural mythology that celebrates the status quo.”161 Accordingly, Marxist scholar Judith Hess Wright points out: “Genre films produce satisfaction rather than action, pity, and fear rather than revolt. […] they throw a sop to oppressed groups who […] eagerly accept genre film’s absurd solutions to economic and social conflict.”162 In this way, the Heimat genre in itself is just as absorbing as the Fascist myth of belonging and succeeding.

Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall (2004) As a continuation of the Nazi ideal of Heimat and the Heimat ideal of Nazism, it is useful to examine a contemporary rendition of the heimatesque myth. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Der Untergang [Downfall] is a fitting interpretation of both the myth of Heimat and of Nazism’s Heimat-like qualities, in as much as the ideological platform of Fascism can be seen as a false totality, and the idea of Heimat itself is like the temporary warmth radiating from a total and all-encompassing sense of shelter, comfort, and nostalgia. Hirschbiegel’s docu-drama is based on Joachim Fest’s publication Der Untergang [Downfall: Inside Hitler's Bunker, The Last Days of the Third Reich, 2002] and Traudl Junge’s memoirs Bis zur letzten Stunde: Hitlers Sekretärin erzählt ihr Leben [Until the Final Hour: Hitler’s Last Secretary] (based on a manuscript written by Junge in 1947, which was edited by Melissa Müller and published in 2002). The film is framed by segments from a real-life interview with Junge taken from André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer’s 2002 documentary Blind Spot: Hitler’s Secretary. In the final part of this interview, which was conducted shortly before her death (also in 2002), Junge apologized for her naivety and for failing to comprehend the 156

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true evil of Nazism. The rest of the film is a fictionalized account of the first hours and last days of Junge’s time as Hitler’s secretary. It is clearly evident from the historically accurate recreation of the bunker, its inhabitants, and of bombed-out Berlin, and the emphasis on particular times and dates,163 that Hirschbiegel intended to realistically re-enact and replicate the events and settings of the final awful days of the war in Berlin. Traudl Junge’s voice is heard in the film’s prologue, introducing the audience to her perspective of the events as they unfolded in 1945. Her initial infatuation with Hitler, her innocence, and her increasing amazement when confronted with developments in the rapid downfall of the Reich anchor the audience response, inviting identification with, and sympathy and pity for, her character. Together with the child-soldier Peter Kranz, who feels called upon to defend Berlin against the Red Army in the last days of the war, Traudl becomes the character with whom the audience identifies most closely, potentially allowing them a cathartic experience. She is depicted as seeming to thrive in her Mitläufertum [collaboration] and remains detached from the realities of her grim secretarial correspondence, refusing to lose her cool, whether she is typing Hitler’s last will and testament or documenting ludicrous and murderous orders. Peter is more proactive in his efforts to aid the Nazis, destroying two Russian tanks and subsequently receiving a medal from Hitler himself. Both Peter and Traudl represent some of the last Nazis to survive at the end of the war, yet neither can be subsumed under the stereotype of the “nasty German”. On the contrary, the narrative allows both to redeem themselves. In the end, Traudl reverts from official collaborator to civilian, just as twelve-year-old Peter—upon finding his parents have been murdered by fanatical supporters of the regime for suspected treason—is wrenched from his role of staunch supporter of the Nazi cause back to the reality of a frightened and shell-shocked child. Both have lost their innocence in the process, although it probably only registers much later in their conscience that, instead of merely being young followers, they had themselves perpetrated crimes against humanity in their own way. Despite this, neither character loses the audience’s sympathy. In the chaotic days of early May 1945, amidst the human pandemonium and the burning buildings of Berlin, both ultimately save their own skins. Traudl and Peter represent lucky survivors of the final conflagration, and it is their fate which becomes the audience’s main concern— rather than the destiny of the real victims of Hitler’s Weltanschauung [philosophy of life]. Their likeable qualities of innocence, youth, beauty, loyalty, and bravery ensure their positive reception. Indeed, audiences are invited to understand their behaviour and to extend their sympathy and good wishes towards them as much as towards the “good” SS-doctors who endanger their own lives by refusing to leave Berlin in order to uphold their Hippocratic Oath and help the countless injured soldiers and civilians. Even the selfsacrificial suicides of the SS-officers who refuse to consider surrendering to the Red Army appear to have noble overtones. Hirschbiegel has invested his images and narrative with pathos and traces of nostalgia, thus allowing the downfall of the Third Reich to achieve the proportions of a Greek tragedy, in which the fortunes of the rulers seem to obscure those of the many victims. Although it is difficult to feel any pity for the majority of the Nazis depicted in the film, there are moments when even the ailing Hitler, who is suffering 157

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from the onset of Parkinson’s disease as much as from delusions and the loss of a sense of reality, elicits some pity and understanding from the audience. Hitler is convincingly played by Bruno Ganz, the Swiss actor well known to world audiences for his masterful and sensitive portrayals of an angel in Wim Wenders’ Berlin films and the central character in Peter Stein’s mammoth production of Goethe’s Faust (2000). These previous performances no doubt encourage a certain propensity for the audience to feel sympathetically disposed towards any character he plays. Heralded as one of Germany’s most successful films, the release of Downfall turned into a huge media event, largely orchestrated by Hirschbiegel and producer Bernd Eichinger, who were able to rely on the sensational value of their media statements and the high-profile cast, which featured many of the best-known faces of German cinema. The film was launched with a massive promotional budget during the lead-up to the commemorations in 2004/5 marking the sixtieth anniversaries of D-Day, V-Day, the liberation of Auschwitz, and other significant events of the Second World War, and it became a critical and commercial success. Hardly any discussion of the film, academic or otherwise, fails to pick up on the press-release claims that Hitler is portrayed as a real person with many sides to his character. It is undeniable that Hirschbiegel and Eichinger, neither of whom are strangers to box-office success, intended to provoke a media frenzy by emphasizing the supposed novelty and apparent breaking of the taboo of representing Hitler as a complex human being rather than as a one-dimensional, evil monster. National and international audiences and critics alike, no doubt sensitized to the matter through the marketing of the film and the ensuing public debate, remarked on the moments of tenderness dominating the introduction of Hitler in the film’s initial scenes. Nevertheless, Hirschbiegel also succeeds in showing a “collective loss of reason”164 and counter-balances the affectionate Hitler with many images revealing his failing physical and mental health, without allowing audiences to be unmoved by his doom. The director’s ability to have the film guide audience sympathies is masterful. Traudl is introduced as an upright young lady from Bavaria; impressionable and aspiring, she becomes Hitler’s secretary at the height of the Second World War and of Hitler’s popularity. She remains with the Führer throughout the period of his slow decline, until his suicide in April 1945. Traudl’s first encounter with Hitler, as well as the last twelve days of his life, provide insight into the banality, insanity, and boredom that was the reality of living in the bunker towards the end of the war. Nazi atrocities, delusional characters, and all-too-human weaknesses are represented side-by-side with pleasant parties, kind conversations, tender moments, and seemingly heroic gestures. The film leads the viewer on an emotional roller-coaster ride that invites identification as much as it does repulsion. One cannot help but disassociate oneself from the bad Nazis, SS-men and cruel and cowardly officers, while feeling ambivalent towards Hitler and the “positive” Nazi figures around him. Traudl and most of the medical staff in the bunker escape condemnation as accomplices. The film manages this by portraying either their naivety (as in the case of Traudl) or their truly selfless support of wounded soldiers and civilians (as with the medicos Dr Hause and Professor Schenck) in sympathetic terms. Blanket statements of collective guilt thus seem inappropriate even for Hitler’s closest confidants; although Traudl Junge’s ac158

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tions lack courage and independence, her final commentary redeems her. In hindsight, her memories chronicle her delayed awareness and assimilation of her personal guilt; she admits to her gullibility and indifference towards events taking place outside the safe haven in which she could carry out her typist duties and lead a relatively protected life. In the epilogue she wonders: “How could I be so blind and naive, while a young woman like Sophie Scholl, about my age and also from Munich, had long recognized the extent of Hitler’s criminal energy and was executed for her role in the resistance?” Her comments, edited to provide an authentic frame to the fictionalized feature, establish Traudl Junge as an honest eyewitness who atones for her shortcomings with the authenticity of her account and the realization that she was not an innocent victim of circumstances. Hirschbiegel’s film struck a chord with audiences in Germany and abroad. More than three million Germans saw the film in the four weeks following its release, making the film the event of the social calendar in 2004 and leading to the rediscovery of one of Hirschbiegel’s earlier films, Das Experiment [The Experiment, 2001], a parable of Germany’s Nazi past and its implications. Both The Experiment and Downfall explore Nazism and its attractions in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as its remnants today. However, the films tackle these issues in very different ways: one by creating a historical illusion, as in the instance of the docu-drama about Hitler’s last days in the bunker, the other by introducing a fictional horror scenario instigated by academic research. The latter fits the prison film genre and is based on the infamous “Stanford Prison Experiment” conducted in August 1971.165 The appalling findings of that experiment, which resonated far beyond academic circles, formed the basis of a novel by Mario Giordano and, ultimately, of Hirschbiegel’s film; all of which foretold in many aspects the Iraqi prisoner scandal.166 Hirschbiegel scripted The Experiment for a contemporary German setting: in the film the University of Cologne is supposedly conducting a similar trial to that of Zimbardo in present-day Germany, thus foregrounding the nation’s historical link to Nazism and the human propensity to be seduced by power. The film’s commentary on German history is especially poignant given its location in the present. The fragility of civil society and the tendency of any microcosm to descend into chaos are highlighted, as is the creation of in-groups and outsiders, and the inclination of individuals to “go with the flow”, even if this means committing atrocities. Both The Experiment and Downfall also make use of the confined, manmade spaces of a prison and a bunker respectively, resulting in films that are literally played out underground, in artificial light, and thus have a claustrophobic effect. Downfall consequently seems to be far removed from the Heimat film tradition that employs panned nature shots, long shots, distant panoramas, and sun-bathed spaces. Nevertheless, in both films Hirschbiegel makes powerful statements about the state of Heimat and tinkers with the genre’s conventions. By moving underground, and thus metaphorically penetrating to the psychological core of human motivations, the films reveal underlying patterns of desire, aggression, survival instincts, and the craving for harmony, inclusion, and protection. In the case of Downfall, the twenty-twoyear-old Traudl Junge, together with five other hopeful applicants for the position of Hitler’s secretary, is escorted by soldiers at night through a patch of forest and is ushered into the “Wolf’s Lair”, Hitler’s headquarters in East159

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ern Prussia. Indeed, the initial scenes are reminiscent of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy-tale Little Red Riding Hood, with the fresh-faced, beautiful women proceeding to a “hut”, in which the wolf waits in disguise. Against all expectations, the wolf proves to be a very pleasant creature: caring, curious, personal, down-to-earth, forgiving, and charming. Despite Traudl not performing well in the test dictation, Hitler recruits her because she is a MünchnerMad’l [Munich lass] and reminds him of his Heimat. Traudl happily accepts the offer, deeming herself protected and secure in the surroundings provided by Hitler’s father-like persona. The opening scenes, set at night in war-torn Germany in 1942, initially evoke a sense of danger, although this soon dissolves. Hitler’s secret hideout brings to mind the security and stability of a close-knit community and she immediately feels at home. The film cuts ahead to April 1945, when Traudl is literally awoken from sweet dreams in Hitler’s Berlin bunker by Russian shelling. The Red Army is advancing and rapidly closing in on Berlin, and the war seems lost, despite the last desperate attempts to defend the Reich. Traudl, together with other women in the bunkers, slowly comes to the realization that Hitler’s vision has not materialized, and that all their lives are at risk as chaos intrudes into their sheltered existence. However, Hitler and his mistress Eva Braun, who prances around in traditional Bavarian dresses (Dirndl) and glamorous party gowns, refuse to face the reality of the situation, and continue to live their dream, celebrating Hitler’s birthday with champagne, rallying those around them for ongoing support and steadfastness, as if nothing has been lost. Venturing outside the gloomy bunker during a break in the gunfire, Traudl is faced with scorched earth; the former garden of the Reich Chancellery is devastated, with only one last white marble statue remaining to attest to its former beauty. Eva and Traudl hastily smoke their cigarettes in this former garden idyll, before renewed artillery fire forces them to abandon their desire for a breath of the air outside. Their Heimat seems destroyed: not only is the physical world above them slowly disintegrating, so too is their belief in the Endsieg [final victory]. Even Hitler, realizing that his closest confidants are deserting him, finally acknowledges that the war is lost. Despising those Germans who, in their resignation to their fate, deserve nothing more than to sink and face ultimate defeat, he refuses to be captured alive and prepares to commit suicide, farewelling his staff and encouraging Traudl and the other women to flee. Traudl, however, sensing that she is still safest in Hitler’s proximity, does not wish to follow this final order. She will stay until the bitter end, although she is by no means a Nazi fanatic or a staunch anti-Semite. Nevertheless, with Hitler’s death confirmed, Traudl loses her protector and finally realizes that her Nazi Heimat is dead and her future is in her own hands. When the camera ventures outside the bunker for the aforementioned cigarette break, as well as when Traudl flees Berlin, the claustrophobic atmosphere, which is intentionally enhanced by using a hand-held camera to film the underground scenes, gives way to a sense of freedom. The bunker mentality as a form of cognitive dissonance becomes apparent, and is expressed in the blatant detachment from the real world of Hitler and the majority of his followers. Isolated from others to a large extent, and only slowly coming to terms with imminent defeat, their vision of grandeur, upheld at this stage only in the minds of his inner circle, slowly gives way to the realization that the outside world is encroaching on their safe haven. The bunker has 160

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served as a womb, protecting its inhabitants, but on leaving her haven, Traudl starts to comprehend how thin the veneer of this psychological reassurance has been. Hirschbiegel has made this juxtaposition of underground and outside the focus of both The Experiment and Downfall. In each film, the protagonists lose a sense of reality and perspective and become increasingly detached from the outside world. Traudl Junge and Eva Braun, just like Hitler himself, live in a world that is seemingly secure and rigidly structured by Nazism. Their little cosmos, dominated by rituals, traditions, reverence, and order, shelters them from the destabilizing forces raging outside the bunker. In this world, they have achieved a feeling of harmony and security, akin to the feeling of Heimat. Magda Goebbels, who regards a world without Nazism as one not worth living in, murders her children rather than allowing them to face the dreadful disappointment of life without the all-encompassing Nazi ideology. In a parallel to Hitler’s suicide, her last act, that of killing her children before allowing her husband to end their own lives, is the final and, to her, logical consequence of an ethos that accepts self-destructive loyalty rather than giving in and accepting defeat. At the same time, the systematic and almost mechanical killing of her children alludes as much to the cold-blooded extermination and mass killing of Jews and other Holocaust victims as to the representation of German victims of the war. Films and books depicting the citizens of the Third Reich as victims during and following the Second World War167 have been popular with large numbers of Germans in recent years, and Downfall seems to have been a timely, but also extreme, addition to this reappraisal of German history. The sympathetic portrayal of German victims is particularly dominant in the film’s final scenes, when the survivors from Hitler’s bunker stagger through war-torn Berlin: the Red Army is represented as a faceless, threatening, and alien mass, while the reality faced by the German survivors seems cruel and undeserved. In contrast to an overwhelmingly positive echo in the international media, German intellectuals expressed their grave concerns about the film and the accompanying tendency to find Fascism somehow “sexy”: “The fact is that the National Socialist period is ‘sexy’ in that it guarantees success—however critically it is dealt with and whichever medium is used to depict it. High viewing figures vouch for this.”168 The guaranteed success of Fascism in cinema should have cautioned producer and director against making simplifications; instead, one critic laments: “Eichinger and Hirschbiegel portray Hitler, Goebbels, and their cronies as people—admittedly, people bewailing their own personal circumstances—but in the final analysis, people who don’t really make such a bad impression. They represent them in a film in which words like ‘Jew’ are used as insults, but which neglect to provide the relevant historical background. There is no mention of Auschwitz or the transportation of Jews to their deaths. This is logical and consistent considering that rather fewer of the inner circle in Berlin are supposed to have known the facts about what was going on, and the script contains the action strictly within limits: inside, above, and in the immediate vicinity of the Führer’s Bunker. As a result, this film can have no say in the school history syllabus—as has already been proposed with the entitlements to implementation virtually guaranteed. Today’s school children know far too little about mankind’s worst

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Screening Nostalgia crime for Der Untergang to be used as an educational tool to convey what happened. Because Der Untergang declares the circle surrounding Hitler to be a morbid—it has to be said—microcosm, but—would you believe it—one which 169 also comprised human traits.”

In their official statements, the producer Bernd Eichinger and director Hirschbiegel carefully walk the line between making placatory, uncontroversial statements and provocation. After all, as The New York Times reminds viewers, one has to be mindful of the fact that this film comes from a country that “bans the Nazi Party, the wearing of swastikas, the publication of Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and other relics of National Socialism”,170 yet still witnesses the repeated political successes of right-wing parties. The Bilderverbot [prohibition of images ]171 seems to have provoked not a Bildersturm [iconoclasm] but a Bilderflut [flood of images].172 “The time is ripe for such a film,” Eichinger said. “It’s important not just to shed light on one’s own history superficially, but rather to tell it from within.”173 Actor Bruno Ganz denies that one can have real compassion for Hitler, but acknowledges at the same time that he is “not ashamed of the fact that I could feel sympathy for him during fleeting moments […]. If the audience doesn’t, at least in certain sequences, feel sympathy for the monster Hitler, then I didn’t do my job as an actor.”174 However, the film crosses this line rather often, especially towards the end, when Hitler, as claimed in many reviews, is bestowed with heroic traits.175 He shows honour and perseverance in his refusal to flee or capitulate when some of his subordinates start to betray him by not following orders and by surrendering or escaping. Eichinger does not wish to see this as Übermensch-like, but defends his strategy of depicting Hitler as both human and humane: “Of course he was a human being. You have to make clear to people that he was a human being, and that’s the dangerous thing.”176 However, this logic is not applied to the representation of the Red Army. As if to finally emphasize its questionable tendencies, the film ends with an image reminiscent of 1940s and 50s Heimat films, as Traudl and Peter (the young orphan and former passionate child soldier who attaches himself to her) escape to the countryside after finding a traditional mode of transport, a bicycle, and seem to be destined to arrive at a more idyllic place. Eva Braun’s farewell has provided the clue: “Salute my beautiful Bavaria for me.” With some biblical references, “the virgin and the golden-haired child”,177 having escaped from the hell-hole of Berlin and their complicity in the war, depart for their promised land further south, riding into the sun through untouched nature, allowing for their moral regeneration and a retreat into civilization. The film grants audiences a certain happy ending that lifts the spirits and glosses over the terrible suffering and the cause of it all by exonerating the survivors—perpetrators and Mitläufer [collaborators] alike. With its references to the traditional Heimat film, Hirschbiegel seems to mark a retreat from his more challenging interpretation of Nazism in The Experiment. It is only in the final minutes that the film breaks out of its dramatic narrative to end, as it started, with the continuation of the interview with the real-life Traudl Junge. This framing structure, which forces the viewer to once again reflect on the events from an outsider’s perspective, provides a commentary in which Junge hypothesizes about an alternative role she could have played. The fact that others of her age and gender had known better and 162

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shown exceptional courage poignantly sums up her shortcomings and puts her on par with all the other followers. The desire to engage with the stories of the Mitläufer and the “kleinen Mann” [the little/ordinary man], the citizen who was on the receiving end and therefore more victim than perpetrator, more innocent than guilty, and tainted more by coincidence than by wilful association, has been commonplace in post-war West German cinema. Hirschbiegel’s film attempts a fusion with this tradition, by examining the “big people”: Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, and company, while also allowing sympathetic insight into Traudl Junge’s experiences and the plight of Peter’s family. A long-time resident of Vienna (though born in Hamburg in 1957) Oliver Hirschbiegel attended a Waldorf School as a child and was heavily influenced by the anti-authoritarian model of education. Believing strongly in the ethos of the self-made man, he left school early, favouring travel and experience as his teachers in life. Hirschbiegel worked in ships’ galleys and studied film in much the same way as he did life: primarily in an autodidactic fashion. He started his formal professional training in the arts at Hamburg University as a mature-age student of painting and graphic design. There he studied under Sigmar Polke, moving on gradually from painting towards photography, video, and film studies. Through installations and performance gigs, the now multi-media artist Hirschbiegel met Gábor Bódy, with whom he edited the video magazine Infermental.178 Nevertheless, his most important influences continued to be those encountered through his own private studies, as he learnt the art of directing by watching “films by Peter Weir, Sydney Pollack, Ridley Scott and others”.179 He admired the Anglo-Americans’ straightforward storytelling skills, something he found lacking in most German intellectual art-house movies. Over the next few years, Hirschbiegel followed their example by foregrounding the plot, admitting: “I do not plan on getting any message across […] I’m a storyteller. I want to entertain people.”180 Aided by his formal education in the visual arts at Hamburg University, he learnt to understand film as an iconic medium and developed a liking for the genres of crime and suspense. Working with many inter-textual references to his cinematic masters, Hirschbiegel directed and received acclaim for his work on television series such as Inspector Rex and Tatort [Scene of the Crime] up to 2001,181 before achieving fame as a director of feature films and large-scale cinema productions. His international breakthrough, despite notable success along the way, really only came with the release of the two films thematizing Fascism—The Experiment and Downfall—a topic which, judging by the Oscar success182 of Caroline Link’s Nirgendwo in Africa [Nowhere in Africa, 2003], and most recently of Jochen Alexander Freydank’s short film Spielzeugland [Toy Land, 2009], is a sure winner, particularly with American audiences. Based on this pattern, international critics have, unsurprisingly, been considerably more generous towards Hirschbiegel’s Downfall than have their German counterparts. Der Spiegel called it “overall superfluous”,183 Der Tagesspiegel “merkwürdig leer” [strangely empty],184 Die Zeit “eine große ästhetische Niederlage” [a big aesthetic defeat],185 and in general the humanization of Hitler was considered unforgivable, “because the director Oliver Hirschbiegel and producer Eichinger do not understand (or consciously ignore) the fact that Hitler simply cannot be represented as ‘normal’, owing to 163

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the immense encumbrance of all that has been written and recorded by and about him and because of his status as the chief villain of all chief villains”.186 However, Hirschbiegel’s representation of Hitler responds to a growing desire to demythologize the demon and to reclaim a discourse from within German cinematic tradition. In doing so, Hirschbiegel provides an insight into Nazism as Heimat, and links the end of the Second World War with the 1950s desire for Heimat images that reconcile and appease. Heimat, as evoked in the glimpses the audience is given of the garden outside the bunker and the forest in the film’s dénouement, is associated primarily with a sense of loss. The “downfall” of Nazism is thereby somewhat transformed from liberation to tragedy in its loss of Heimat.

NOTES 1

2

3

4

5 6 7 8

9 10 11 12

Hilmar Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda: Film and National Socialism, 1933‒1945, translated by John A. Broadwin and V. R. Berghahn (Oxford: Berghahn, 1996), p. 127; from the original: ‘Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit': Propaganda im NS-Film (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1988). Georg Lukács, “Gedanken zu einer Ästhetik des Kinos”, in Peter Ludz (ed.), Georg Lukács—Werkauswahl, Bd 1: Schriften zur Literatursoziologie; quoted in Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda, pp. 127‒28. In the original: “Vor uns liegt noch ein steiler Aufstieg. Aber wir glauben, daß er eher von einem Volke bezwungen werden kann, das durch jahrelange harte Übung in den Strapazen des Bergsteigens geschult ist, als durch ein Volk, das das Bergsteigen nur in der Ebene gelernt hat [...]. Wir sind uns über unsere Aufgabe, aber auch über unsere Chancen vollauf im klaren. Wir wissen, was wir wollen. Aber was noch wichtiger ist: Wir wollen auch, was wir wissen.” Joseph Goebbels, Der steile Aufstieg: Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1942/43 (Munich: Franz Eher, 1943), p. xiii. In the original: “Wir wissen, daß der Aufstieg steinig und schwer ist; aber keiner darf daran zweifeln, daß er bezwungen werden muß, weil sonst alles umsonst und alles verloren wäre.” Ibid. Margarete Mitscherlich, “Triumph der Verdrängung”, Stern, no. 42 (1987), p. 32; quoted in Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda, p. 129. Ibid. Thomas Mann, Gesammelte Werke in zwölf Bänden, vol. 10, p. 394 (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1960); quoted in Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda, p. 129. In the original: “Das ist meine Arbeitswelt […]. Die Schwere der Berge und die Härte ihres Urgesteins, […] die strenge Einfachheit der tiefverschneiten Flächen.” Martin Heidegger, “Warum bleiben wir in der Provinz?”, in Zu neuen Ufern: Die wöchentlich erscheinende Kultur-Beilage des Alemannen, 7 Mar. 1934. In the original: “... kann nicht anders, denn hart und scharf sein”. Ibid. Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda, p. 130. Angela Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Spielfilms (Hamburg: Dr Kovac, 2005), pp. 21‒22. Johannes Eckhardt, “Abbild und Sinnbild”, Der deutsche Film, 3, iss. 1 (Berlin, 1938), p. 44; quoted from the translation in Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda, p. 131.

164

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13 14 15

16

17 18 19 20 21 22

23

24

25 26

Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda, p. 131. Cf. Willi Höfig, Der deutsche Heimatfilm, 1947‒1960 (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1973), p. 143. A critic’s comment on Die Geier-Wally (1921) quoted in Johannes von Moltke, “Evergreens: The Heimat Genre”, in Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk (eds.), The German Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002), pp. 18‒28, here p. 20. In the original: “Ich wünschte nicht etwa eine Kunst, die ihren nationalsozialistischen Charakter lediglich durch Zurschaustellung nationalsozialistischer Embleme und Symbole beweist, sondern eine Kunst, die [durch] ihre Haltung […] als Tendenz, als Charakter, als Haltung […] durch Handlung, durch Ablauf, durch Vorgänge, durch Kontrastierung von Menschen in Erscheinung tritt.” Goebbels quoted in Gerd Albrecht, Nationalsozialistische Filmpolitik: Eine soziologische Untersuchung über die Spielfilme des Dritten Reiches (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1969), p. 456. Ibid., pp. 456‒57. Mary-Elizabeth O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), p. 6. Ibid., p. 1. Cf. Hans Dieter Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit, 1933‒1945 (Munich: Hanser, 1981), pp. 114‒62. Cf. O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment, p. 1. Tedd Rippey, Melissa Sundell, Suzanne Townley, “‘Ein wunderschönes Heute’: The Evolution and Functionalization of ‘Heimat’ in West German Heimat Films of the 1950s”, in Jost Hermand and James Steakley (eds.), Heimat, Nation, Fatherland: The German Sense of Belonging (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 137‒59, here p. 139. “… in this case manifesting itself by means of the high mountains, the formative challenge for mankind”. In the original: “… in diesem Fall durch das Hochgebirge sich manifestierend, die prägende Herausforderung für die Menschen”. Wendelin Schmidt-Dengler, Bruchlinien: Vorlesungen zur österreichischen Literatur 1945 bis 1990 (Salzburg: Residenz, 1996), pp. 403‒18, here p. 404. Verschönerungsverein für das Siebengebirge (VVS), Jahresbericht, 1933, p. 1, quoted in Thomas M. Lekan, Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885‒1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 153. Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 79. This is ironically also true for Hermann Broch’s Versucher, published posthumously in 1953; “… the posthumous partial publication of the first draft of The Enchantment from 1935 […] was often given the working title Mountain Novel during its gestation. [It] belongs cum grano salis in this romance family too; even if Broch was aiming at local Fascists, he was still trying to meet these same people on a territory which they largely held occupied.” In the original: “... die posthume Teilveröffentlichung der ersten, 1935 entstandenen Fassung von Die Verzauberung [...] wurde während der Entstehung oft mit dem Arbeitstitel Bergroman bedacht [...] gehört cum grano salis auch in diese Romanfamilie; wenngleich Broch sich gegen die lokalen Faschismen richtete, so versucht er, eben jenen auf einem Gelände zu begegnen, das sie weitgehend okkupiert hielten.” Schmidt-Dengler, Bruchlinien, p. 404. 165

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27 28

29 30

31

32

33

34 35 36

37 38 39 40 41 42 43

44 45

Linda Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), p. 43. Arthur Maria Rabenalt, in his autobiographical book Film im Zwielicht (Hildesheim: Olms, 1978), is one such supporter of the idea of a non-political film in the Third Reich. Völkischer Beobachter, 23 Mar. 1933, quoted in David Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema, 1933‒45 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 39‒40. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, translated by Konrad Kellen and Jean Lerner (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968), p. 61. Cf. Randall Bytwerk, Bending Spines: The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic (Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2004), p. 3. “… perfekt funktionierende Maschinerie aus Aufmärschen, Fackelzügen, Presse, Film und Radio. Abermillionen Menschen wurden in ihren Sehnsüchten, Hoffnungen und Ängsten gleichgeschaltet. Primitive Feindbilder funktionierten und wirken heute noch in vielen Köpfen nach: Der Jude, Der Russe, Der Kommunist, Der Neger, Der Ausländer.” Jo Angerer, “Schlacht um Herzen und Hirne: Die Geschichte deutscher Kriegspropaganda”, Wissenschaft und Frieden, 3 (1993), pp. 1‒12, here pp. 1‒2. Hitler said: “I want to use the film fully and completely as a medium of propaganda, but in such a way that every viewer knows that today he’s going to see a political film.” Hitler quoted in Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (London: I.B. Tauris, 1998), p. 148. In the original: “Zersetzung des ‘Wehrwillens’ gegnerischer Soldaten auf den Schlachtfeldern, Beeinflussung der Zivilbevölkerung in besetzten Gebieten, Stärkung des ‘Durchhaltewillens’ in der deutschen Bevölkerung.” Angerer, “Schlacht um Herzen und Hirne”, p. 2. Eric Rentschler, The Ministry of Illusion: Nazi Cinema and Its Afterlife (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 16‒17. Bytwerk, Bending Spines, pp. 112‒-13. Das deutsche Lichtspielgesetz, 16 Feb. 1934, § 2, Absatz 5, in Reichsgesetzblatt, Teil 1. Berlin 1934, no. 1894, p. 95; quoted in Hoffmann, The Triumph of Propaganda. p. 130. “Staatspolitisch wertvoll” [politically valuable] was the highest “Prädikat” [rating/grade]. Cf. Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 11. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Cambridge, Mass.: Riverside Press, 1943), p. 584. Ibid., p. 177. Ibid., pp. 176‒77. Goebbels in Curt Belling, Der Film in Staat und Partei (Berlin: Verlag der Film, 1936), pp. 27‒31. Cf. Welch, Propaganda and the German Cinema. “Gleichschaltung proceeded along two related paths: synchronisation of all government institutions and mass mobilisation of all citizens for the National Socialist cause.” Klaus P. Fischer, Nazi Germany: A New History (New York: Continuum, 1996), p. 278. Julian Petley, “Film Policy in the Third Reich”, in Bergfelder, Carter and Göktürk (eds.), The German Cinema Book, p. 175. Of these, some 100 films are still deemed “dangerous” today; as “Vorbehaltsfilme” [films about which the authorities have reservations] a public screening ban has been placed on them and to date never lifted. 166

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46

47 48

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56

57 58

59

60

61

In the original: “… der Film hat eine staatspolitische Funktion zu erfüllen. Er ist ein Erziehungsmittel des Volkes. Dieses Erziehungsmittel gehört—ob offen oder getarnt ist dabei ganz gleichgültig—in die Hände der Staatsführung.” Joseph Goebbels at the Convention of the Reichsfilmkammer in 1941, quoted in Erwin Leiser, “Deutschland erwache!”: Propaganda im Film des Dritten Reiches (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1968), p. 59. Cf. Nicholas Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality (London: Cassell, 1999), p. 102. The Ufa or UFA was founded at the end of 1917 to undertake, in General Ludendorff’s words, “planned and energetic measures for influencing the masses in the interests of the state”. Ludendorff quoted in Julian Petley, Capital and Culture: German Cinema, 1933‒1945 (London: British Film Institute, 1978), pp. 31‒32. At the end of the First World War, the German government sold its shares in Ufa, making it a private company until the Nazis increasingly seized control. Cf. Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda, p. 131. Ibid., p. 100. Lutz Koepnick, The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 1. Petley, “Film Policy in the Third Reich”, pp. 173‒81, here p. 176. Fritz Hippler, “Der Film als Waffe” [Film as a Weapon], Unser Wille und Weg, 7 (1937), pp. 21‒23, here p. 21. Ibid., p. 22. Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda, p. 103. S. K. Padover, “The Nazi Cinema”, Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 3, no. 1 (1939), pp. 142‒46, here p. 144. Victoria de Grazia, “Mass Culture and Sovereignty: The American Challenge to European Cinemas, 1920‒1960”, Journal of Modern History, 61 (1989), pp. 53‒87, here p. 78. Padover, “The Nazi Cinema”, p. 146. In the original: “Heute spannt die Zeit, und die Kunst hat die Aufgabe, die Zeit zu entspannen.” Goebbels in a speech on 2 Feb. 1942, quoted in Jerzy Toeplitz, Geschichte des Films, Zwei Bände, translated by Lilli Kaufmann, vol. 2 (Munich: Rogner & Bernhard, 1987), p. 1562. Beate Bechtold-Comforty et al., “Zwanziger Jahre und Nationalsozialismus: Vom Bergfilm zum Bauernmythos”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm: Bildwelten und Weltbilder: Bilder, Texte und Analysen zu 70 Jahren deutscher Filmgeschichte (Tubingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1989), pp. 33‒67, here pp. 53‒54. In the original: “Es hätte für mich nicht des Schildes ‘Judenverbot’ bedurft, um die Kinosucht, selbst die nach Nazifilmen, extrem zu steigern. [Wir] durften […] Kinos noch betreten, da wir nur halbjüdisch waren. Ich identifizierte mich auch weder mit dem Judentum noch mit dem Christentum, beide erschienen mir gleich fremd, von Angst geprägt und Angst auslösend. Die Erlösung war das Kino.” Ilse Aichinger, “Einübung in Abschiede. Hartmut Bitomsky: Die Ufa”, in Ilse Aichinger, Film und Verhängnis: Blitzlichter auf ein Leben (Frankfurt: Fischer, 2001), pp. 73‒75, here p. 73. “Lebensarten, Sterbensarten, aber vor allem Kinoarten, Kinoplakate, Kinoeingänge – dorthin, wo man immer hinwollte: ins Herz der Finsternis.” Aichinger, “Einübung in Abschiede”, p. 75. Aichinger survived the Nazi terror, in contrast to her Jewish grandmother and her mother’s siblings, and went on to 167

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62

63

64 65 66

67

68

69

70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

write about the horrors she and her family endured, as well as about her temporary refuge in the world of cinema. The process being followed in this assessment by the Allied Information Control Division from 1945 onwards looked for German films “which glorify the ideology of Fascism, Nazism or racial distinction; glorify or idealize war or militarism; politically subvert or pervert German history; glorify or idealize the German army; seem derogatory or uncomplimentary of or ridicule Allied people, their governments, their political or national leaders; deal with German revenge; ridicule or criticize religious feelings and religious attitudes; glorify or idealize the thoughts and/or acts of German leaders whose opinions, notions or political philosophy was imperialistic; are based on a book or script of a known Nazi Party member or supporter, or which originate through the creative efforts of known Nazi Party members or proven active supporters.” Military Government Regulations, 21-606 and 21-606.1, 1945, quoted in Peter Pleyer, Deutscher Nachkriegsfilm, 1946‒1948 (Munster: C. J. Fahle, 1965), p. 26. David Bathrick, “Modernity Writ Germany: State of the Art as Art of the Nazi State”, in Robert C. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000), pp. 1‒10, here p. 1. Ibid., p. vii. Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 23. “Even today critics are hard put to discover any message at all in these [Nazi] films full of entertainment, waltzes, and romance, which […] accounted for ninetenths of the production.” Pierre Ayçoberry, The Social History of the Third Reich, 1933‒1945, translated by Janet Lloyd (New York: New Press, 1999), p. 70. Cf. David Stuart Hull, Film in the Third Reich: A Study of the German Cinema, 1933‒1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969); Francis Coutrade and Pierre Caders, Geschichte des Films im Dritten Reich, translated by Florian Hopf, (Munich: Hanser, 1975). Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, revised and expanded edition, edited by Leonardo Quaresima (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 119. Manuela von Papen, “Opportunities and Limitations: The New Woman in Third Reich Cinema”, Women’s History Review, vol. 8, no. 4 (1999), pp. 693‒728, here p. 705. Joseph Goebbels, “Der Film als Erzieher: Rede zur Eröffnung der Filmarbeit der HJ”, in Das eherne Herz: Reden und Aufsätze aus den Jahren 1941/42 (Munich: Fritz Eher, 1943), p. 44. Cf. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 23. O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment, p. 137. Von Papen, “Opportunities and Limitations”, p. 699. Goebbels quoted in von Papen, “Opportunities and Limitations”, p. 700. Ibid., p. 704. Hitler, Mein Kampf, pp. 275‒76. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 47. Ibid., p. 47. Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 187. A similar transgression is shown in Leander’s film La Habañera (Detlev Sierck, 1937). Von Papen, “Opportunities and Limitations”, p. 705. Ibid., p. 694.

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81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88

89 90 91 92

93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103

104 105 106 107 108

109 110 111 112

The proverb “Seinen Mann stehen” comes closest to the English expression “to stand one’s ground”. Cf. Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 13. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 98. Ibid., p. 24. Von Papen, “Opportunities and Limitations”, p. 705. Paula Siber von Groote, Die Frauenfrage und ihre Lösung durch den Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Kallmeyer, 1933), p. 23. Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 53. Joseph Goebbels, “Signale der neuen Zeit (1938)”, in Renate Wiggershaus (ed.), Frauen unterm Nationalsozialismus (Wuppertal: Peter Hammer, 1984), pp. 118‒19, here p. 118. Claudia Koonz, Mütter im Vaterland: Frauen im Dritten Reich (Freiburg: Kore, 1991), pp. 235‒38. Von Papen, “Opportunities and Limitations”, p. 694. These roles included nurses, nannies, and singers. Cf. Vaupel, Frauen im NSFilm, p. 114. Carl Froelich quoted in O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment, p. 241. Original in Hete Nebel, “Künstler antworten uns: Professor Carl Froelich: Zeitnähe muß nicht gleichbedeutend mit Gegenwart sein!”, Der deutsche Film 3, no. 11 (1939), p. 314. Florentine Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close: Carl Froelich’s Heimat”, in Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens, p. 128. Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 125. Ibid., p. 114. Ibid., p. 116. Ibid., p. 117. Ibid. On the role of women in Nazi cinema, see also Hake, German National Cinema, p. 75. Ibid., p. 114. Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 63. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 111. Cf. Livia Z. Wittmann, “Zwischen ‘femme fatale’ und ‘femme fragile’—die Neue Frau?”, Jahrbuch für Internationale Germanistik, 17/2 (1985), pp. 74‒111, here pp. 82‒85. See also Ariana Thomalla, Die Femme Fragile: Ein literarischer Frauentypus der Jahrhundertwende (Dusseldorf: Bertelsmann-Universitätsverlag, 1972). Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 118. Ibid. Ibid., p. 123. Von Papen, “Opportunities and Limitations”, p. 706. For example, Sabine Hake saw Nazi Heimat films as narrative forms offering “a romanticised, but completely depoliticised, view of country and nation”. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 76. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 126. Ibid. Ibid. When discussing the nationality of the international singer performing as part of the local “Kunstwoche” [Art Festival Week], comments are uttered such as “eine 169

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113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122

123

124

125 126 127 128

129

130 131

132

Amerikanerin […] eine Negerin war es nicht, da können wir noch von Glück sagen” [an American woman … it wasn’t a Negress, we can count ourselves lucky]. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 126. From 1940, German films were produced predominantly for female audiences whose men were away at the front. Cf. Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 1. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, pp. 128‒29. Ibid., p.129. With reference to Froelich’s co-production with William Wauer, cf. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 98. Cf. Rolf Giessen, Nazi Propaganda Films: A History and Filmography (Jefferson: McFarland, 2003), p. 240. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 128. Ibid. In the original: “… stark, geheimnisvoll, […] schwerblütig und verschlossen, […] intuitiv”. Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 63. By 1938, the claim was made that 70 per cent of German audiences was female and responded particularly well to melodramatic feature films. Despite questionable research techniques and political instrumentalization, this statement cannot be entirely assumed to be fantasy. Cf. Frank Maraun, “Das Erlebnis entscheidet: Der abendfüllende Kulturfilm—Von verschiedenen Seiten gesehen”, Der deutsche Film 2, no. 7 (1938), p. 189. “The appeal of Heinz Rühmann hinged on his simultaneously humorous and pathetic compulsion to act out the petty-bourgeois desire for social acceptance with all of its psychological complications. As the personification of the little man—oppressed, repressed, but always in a good mood—Rühmann comically re-enacted the crises of masculinity [and] brought out the underlying tension between male aggression and regression”. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 69. In the original: “Ich mache meine Filme nicht für Kritiker, sondern für das Publikum.” Kurt Hoffmann quoted in Christian Bauer, Humor ist eine ernste Sache— Der Filmregisseur Kurt Hoffmann, Documentary (ARD), Germany, 1985. In the original: “Ich habe nichts zu erzählen, wen interessieren schon diese alten Filme.” Ibid. Cf. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens, p. vii. Hanns Kräly also wrote the script for the Lubitsch adaptation (1920). “The rustic comedy […] with Henny Porten in the double role as pretty and ugly sister, still relied on the frontal staging and acting conventions known from theatre.” Hake, German National Cinema, p. 33. Lotte H. Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, translated by Roger Greaves (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), p. 98 and 310. Daniel Call, Kohlhiesels Töchter: Eine Schauspieloperette in drei Akten, Musik von Heinrich Huber, 2005. In this scene a bureaucrat intones—seemingly not only to Anna-Mirl but also to the audience, and directly into the camera—“Drei Tage kann man sich unangemeldet an einem Ort aufhalten” [One may stay in a place for three days without registering.] Cf. Bechtold-Comforty et al., “Zwanziger Jahre und Nationalsozialismus”, pp. 64‒65. In the original: “Unzählige behördlich Evakuierte aus bombengefährdeten Gebieten, dazu ‘Urlauber’ und großstädtische Verwandte, die sich auf eigene 170

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133

134 135

136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149

150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159

Initiative ‘bei der Tante auf dem Hof’ in Sicherheit gebracht hatten...” resulted in: “Kontrolle über Dienstverpflichungen, Lebensmittelkarten und Versorgungsansprüche glitt den Behörden immer mehr aus der Hand.” Ibid., p. 65. Half of Munich’s population had deserted the city for the country, staying with relatives mainly in rural areas of Bavaria. Cf. Paul Erker, “Revolution des Dorfes? Ländliche Bevölkerung zwischen Flüchtlingsstrom und landwirtschaftlichem Kulturwandel”, in Martin Broszat et al. (eds.), Von Stalingrad zur Währungsreform—Zur Sozialgeschichte des Umbruchs in Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1988), pp. 367‒425, here p. 377. In the original: “Aufgrund der Glorifizierung der ‘guten’ weiblichen Hauptfigur als […] systemkonforme Frau und durch die Diffamierung und Verurteilung einer Frauenfigur, die nicht dem NS-Ideal entspricht”. Vaupel, Frauen im NSFilm, p. 155. Reeves, The Power of Film Propagand, p. 84. In later months, this turned out to be a widely used technique, with many women trying to disguise themselves as old ladies to avoid being raped by Russian soldiers. Von Papen, “Opportunities and Limitations”, p. 706. Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich, p. 77. The motif of the wandering Jew “dates back to the Middle Ages but […] changed its character substantially during the nineteenth century”. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 235. Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda, p. 87. Ibid. Ibid. Deppe’s thunderstorms over heath landscapes in Green Is the Heath are one such example. O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment, p. 133. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens, p. vii. Cf. “Der Blick nach vorne”, in Goebbels, Der steile Aufstieg, p. 151. In the original: “Auch Unterhaltung kann zuweilen die Aufgabe haben, ein Volk für seinen Lebenskampf auszustatten, ihm die in dem dramatischen Geschehen des Tages notwendige Erbauung, Unterhaltung und Entspannung zu geben. […] Film hat eine staatspolitische Funktion zu erfüllen.” Joseph Goebbels at the Convention of the Reichsfilmkammer in 1941, quoted in Leiser, “Deutschland erwache!”, p. 59. Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), p. xiii. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 126. Ibid., p. 123. Ibid. Hermann Rauschning, Gespräche mit Hitler (New York: Europa, 1940), p. 180. Goebbels quoted in Gerd Rühle, Das Dritte Reich. Dokumentarische Darstellung des Aufbaues der Nation. Das erste Jahr: 1933 (Berlin: Hummer, 1934), p. 82. Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close”, p. 127. Ibid. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 93. In the original: “Der Konsum dieser Filme diente […] der Beruhigung der weiblichen Bevölkerung, ihrer subtilen ‘Erziehung’, bzw. propagandistischen 171

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164 165

166

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Manipulation, und war infolgedessen unbedingt ein systemkonformes und systemerhaltendes Mittel des nationalsozialistischen Staats.” Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film, p. 189. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 96. Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis, Film: A Critical Introduction (Boston: Pearson, 2006), p. 362. Judith Hess Wright, “Genre Films and Status Quo”, in Barry Keith Grant (ed.), Film Genre Reader (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 41. The sense of realism was of paramount importance for the accomplishment of Hirschbiegel’s “historic task”. Hirschbiegel quoted in “Making of The Downfall”, DVD Extra Materials, 2004. Meticulous attention was given to detail. Actor Bruno Ganz carefully studied a seven-minute recording (made by a Finnish diplomat) of Hitler speaking at a dinner party to ensure he presented a realistic portrait of the social persona. Magda Goebbels’ systematic killing of her children was re-enacted carefully with the help of a surviving phonograph recording of the event made from an adjacent bunker room. The bravery award ceremony in honour of child soldiers in the last few days of the war was a recreation from newsreel footage of the actual event. Hirschbiegel quoted in the official press release accompanying the DVD, Der Untergang, 2005. Philip G. Zimbardo, et al., “The Socialization into Criminality: On Becoming a Prisoner and a Guard”, in J. L. Tapp and R. J. Levine (eds.), Law, Justice and the Individual in Society: Psychological and Legal Issues (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977), pp. 198‒223. The Abu Ghraib Scandal shocked the world and led to harsh sentences for the army personnel involved, although they insisted that they had only acted under orders. Cf. Kate Zernike, “Ringleader in Iraqi prisoner abuse is sentenced to 10 years”, New York Times, 16 Jan. 2005. Winfried G. Sebald, Luftkrieg und Literatur (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 2001); Günter Grass, Im Krebsgang: Eine Novelle (Gottingen: Steidl, 2002); Guido Knopp’s popular five-part TV series on the flight of Germans from the advancing Red Army and the expulsion of German from Eastern Europe (Die große Flucht, first screened in 2001); Ulla Hahn, Unscharfe Bilder. Roman (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2003). In the original: “Dem TV-Historiker Guido Knopp wird gerne vorgeworfen, mit dem Dritten Reich mache er sich selber reich. Denn die Zeit des Nationalsozialismus, wie kritisch man immer damit umgeht, ist, je nach Medium, sexy, weil Erfolg versprechend. Hohe Einschaltquoten verbürgen dies. Zu den Sendungen von Knopp kann man stehen wie man will. Eichinger und Hirschbiegel setzen dem die Krone auf, wenn sie das Dritte Reich ins Kino bringen und dann Hitler, Goebbels und ihre Spießgesellen als ihre persönliche Lage bejammernde, aber letztlich nicht so schlimm wirkende Menschen in einem Film wiedergeben. In einem Film wiedergeben, in dem Wörter wie ‘Juden’ als Schimpfwörter fallen, der geschichtliche Hintergrund dazu aber fallen gelassen wird. Von Auschwitz, Judentransporten in den Tod keine Silbe. Logisch und konsequent ist dies, weil in Berlin eher wenige Eingeweihte davon gewusst haben mögen und das Drehbuch sich daran hält, den Film stringent im, über dem Führerbunker und in seiner nächsten Umgebung spielen zu lassen. Dann aber kann der Film nicht den Geschichtsunterricht mitbestimmen, wie schon vorgeschlagen wurde mit geradezu garantierter Option auf Umsetzung. Dafür wis172

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169 170 171

172

173 174 175

176 177 178

179 180

181

sen Schüler heute zu wenig, als dass Der Untergang als pädagogisches Instrument das schlimmste Ereignis der Menschheit den Schülern vermitteln kann. Da Der Untergang den Zirkel um Führer Hitler als zwar morbiden, aber auch—man höre und staune—Menschlichkeit beinhaltenden Mikrokosmos deklariert.”] Michael Dlugosch, “Der anvisierte Untergang des deutschen Films. Der Untergang”, 14 Sep. 2004, http://www. filmrezension.de/filme/der_untergang.shtml, retrieved Jan. 2005. Ibid. Mark Landler, “The All-Too-Human Hitler, on Your Big Screen”, New York Times, 15 Sep. 2004. Derived from the Second Commandment in the Bible’s Old Testament: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above […]; you shall not bow down to them or serve them” (in the German translation: “Du sollst Dir kein Bildnis machen”)—extended from representations of God here to representations of evil too. Translated as “flood of images/representations”. Following the thematization of Nazism in horror films set in contemporary society, Downfall is one of a number of historical films to have “flooded” the German cinema since 2004, among them a three-part docu-drama on Albert Speer by Heinrich Röhler entitled The Devil’s Architect, which features an impersonation of Hitler by Austrian actor Tobias Moretti, as well as Lutz Hachmeister’s The Goebbels Experiment, a docu-drama about the NS propaganda minister. Eichinger quoted in Scott Roxborough, “Downfall breaks taboo, portrays Hitler’s human side”, Hollywood Reporter, 7 Sep. 2004. Ganz quoted in Roxborough, ibid. This was noted in both the German and the American media. “Mass murderer becomes a pitiable, tragic figure.” In the original: “Massenmörder wird [..] zur bemitleidenswert tragischen Figur.” Dlugosch, “Der anvisierte Untergang des deutschen Films. Der Untergang”. Likewise, Dlugosch criticizes the presentations of “Albert Speer as having the courage to stand up for his beliefs, Himmler and Goering as going against orders, Hitler and Goebbels as suicides—people with a certain sense of honour [...] presented toned down.” In the original: “Albert Speer mit Zivilcourage, Himmler und Göring als Befehlsverweigerer, Hitler und Goebbels als Selbstmörder—Menschen mit einem gewissen Gefühl für Ehre […] gemäßigt dargestellt.” Ibid. Eichinger quoted in Landler, “The All-Too-Human Hitler”. Michael B. Oren, “Pass the Fault”, New Republic, vol. 233, iss. 1 (2005), p. 10. Infermental, a self-proclaimed electronic network established during the 1980s, was published from 1982 to 1991, and was the first international magazine published on videocassettes. Hirschbiegel co-edited Infermental II (Hamburg, 1983) together with Rotraut Pape. Hirschbiegel quoted in Liz Braun, “The Experimenter”, Toronto Sun, 7 Nov. 2002. Hirschbiegel quoted in Carlo Cavagna, “Star Moritz Bleibtreu and Director Oliver Hirschbiegel talk about their new film, Das Experiment”, http://www. aboutfilm.com/features/dasexperiment/interview.htm, retrieved Aug. 2004. Tatort is a popular long-running “whodunnit” German TV series. Hirschbiegel directed the episode Kinderspiel [Child’s Play, 1992] and was awarded the prestigious Adolf Grimme Prize. He won Grimme Special Prizes and Golden Lions for Trickser (1996) and Das Urteil [The Judgement, 1997], both of which also 173

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received Emmy nominations for Best Foreign TV Drama. For Todfeinde (1998) Hirschbiegel earned the Bavarian Television Award 1999. In all he directed 14 episodes of the TV series Kommissar Rex (1993), the German Tatort episode Ostwärts (1994), and the TV movie Rex—die frühen Jahre [Rex—The Early Years, 1997]. Caroline Link’s Nowhere in Africa, about a Jewish family who flee from Nazi Germany in 1938 to a farm in Kenya, won an Oscar in 2003. Of the dozen German-language films nominated for an Oscar since 1979, most had a storyline relating to the Third Reich, including Agniezka Holland’s Angry Harvest (1985), Michael Verhoeven's The Nasty Girl (1991), Helmut Dietl’s Schtonk! (1992), and Jochen Alexander Freydank’s Spielzeugland (2009). Andreas Borcholte, “Der Untergang: Die unerzählbare Geschichte”, Spiegelonline.de, 15 Sep. 2004. Jan Schulz-Ojala, “In der Höhle des Bösen”, Der Tagesspiegel, 29 Aug. 2004, p. 25. Jens Jessen, “Stilles Ende eines Irren unter Tage”, Die Zeit, no. 36, 26 Aug. 2004, p. 33. In the original: “weil Regisseur Oliver Hirschbiegel und Eichinger nicht verstehen (oder bewußt ignorieren), dass Hitler aufgrund des immensen medialen Ballasts und dem Status des Oberbösewichts aller Oberbösewichter schlicht nicht ‘normal’ dargestellt werden kann.” Thomas Schlömer, “Der Führer ist der Führer!”, Filmspiegel, http://www.filmspiegel.de/filme/untergangder/untergangder_1.php, retrieved July 2005.

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War Heimat Films

Germany’s surrender in 1945, its occupation, and its eventual division into two states demanded major adjustments from its populace. The loss of selfdetermination and the use of the nation as a bargaining chip by the emerging superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, led to widespread feelings of anxiety, uncertainty, and ambivalence. The first few years of this new era, 1945 to 1948, were referred to as the black market years,1 a period when crude bargaining methods required people’s energy to be directed towards ensuring their own survival, before the nation’s progress could be properly considered. The population’s most pressing needs were related to selfpreservation. “The economy of ‘organizing’, the symbiosis of anarchy and self-regulation of free market forces, finally a will to survive, which manifested itself as the morally questionable ‘elbow society’”2 shaped to some extent the newly emerging national character in the western parts of the occupied country. American cigarettes became the de facto currency for months, and at a time when the financial market was tumultuous and the value of hard currency unclear, Chesterfield, Camel, or Lucky Strike cigarettes could buy their lucky owners Leica cameras, antiques, and sex.3 Notwithstanding the fact that from 1947 onwards the Marshall Plan offered aid to Western Europe only,4 the ultimate provocation that led to the Cold War—with Germany at the frontline—was the introduction in 1948 of the Deutschmark as the new currency in the Western-occupied zones and the western sectors of Berlin. Despite attempts at consolidating the western and eastern spheres of influence, many Germans felt helplessly involved in a strategic reorientation in which they were primarily treated as the ball, rather than as team players. This may explain why many sectors in occupied Germany were keen to call upon men with experience to rebuild their country: men who had already proved themselves competent and successful in their field of work. In 1948/49, white-collar positions in law and the civil service in particular were “largely staffed by personnel of the Third Reich, as it was impossible to build a nation with the few who were guilt-free”.5 Ironically, this prepared the way for a period of gradual stabilization which saw the foundation of two German states in 1949. The stand-off between West and East proved an important step in identity construction and, with the confrontation between capitalism and communism, Fascism and the immediate German past seemed to require less attention. Emotions were easily diverted towards a renewed foe and this new “fight”, while the more basic needs and desires of the population came to the fore. Going to the cinema was the top leisure activity in both East and West Germany in the 1950s, and escapist Heimat films, which showed idyllic country scenery instead of rubble-strewn cityscapes, were the most popular. 175

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An explanation of the difficult living conditions endured by many Germans in the early 1950s may help to explain the universal popularity of movie theatres, irrespective of what was showing. German audiences returned to the cinema in droves as soon as the opportunity for entertainment presented itself. Of the 6,500 cinemas registered in Nazi Germany in 1944, only 1,150 remained intact in 1945.6 For about three months, from the end of the war on 8 May 1945 to the end of July, there were no cinema screenings at all. With films during the Nazi period constituting part of the weekly entertainment programme for most civilians, this immediate post-war void must have added to the overall sense of loss. Four days after Nazi Germany’s capitulation, a ban on film screenings was announced by the military government in occupied Germany. The embargo was lifted only after cinema proprietors had undergone a denazification process. On 27 July 1945, the front page of the daily newspaper Ruhr Zeitung jubilantly announced: “Montag eröffnen die Kinos.” [The cinemas open on Monday.]7 This was rather late, considering the efforts of the Soviet occupiers in the eastern sector to negotiate the reopening of cinemas by April and the screening in Berlin, months before the war ended, of dubbed versions of Soviet films that had been banned by the Hitler regime.8 Although mandatory screenings of re-education documentaries about the Nazi death camps, such as Hans H. Burger’s Die Todesmühlen [Death Mills, 1945], were the first films to feature in West Germany, cinemas were soon rediscovered as providers of light entertainment and a home away from home. To escape for a few hours into the comfort of a heated space which also offered distraction and solace, was well worth the forty pfennigs charged for a seat in the stalls, or even the two marks for a box seat. In the early days, it was also necessary to bring either coal or a piece of wood to subsidize the heating costs. Nevertheless, cinema was an affordable refuge which offered “green, idyllic scenes instead of mountains of rubble and harmonious family life instead of the fate of returnees”.9 As many were sharing their basic flats with relatives, or even strangers who had found themselves bombed out of their former houses, a dry, heated haven away from the limited personal space of one’s crowded and frugal abode was of paramount importance to many. “For young people in particular the cinema offered the rare possibility of meeting up without being observed.”10 An outing to the movies in the first years following the war served as a reason to escape the ruins and misery of German post-war life for a couple of hours. “You closed your eyes and your ears, didn’t want to hear anything else about the Third Reich and just as little about the real circumstances that went along with life under occupation [...] about collective guilt, but instead to laugh and to dream.”11 The West German industry pumped out kitsch films in quick succession to service this demand, capturing the audience’s imagination: “The public is spellbound by the beautifully equipped, harmonious world represented in the films, in which its yearnings and desires are foreseen and reproduced.”12 In line with a commonly held prejudice regarding the escapist nature of Heimat films, it was felt that films of this genre, but also cinema in general, allowed a twofold escape from reality: “not just a flight from the present, but a flight in a double direction. You were fleeing from the past which hadn’t yet been dealt with and from a future which still had to be coped with.”13 Visitor numbers were excellent: by 1949, 3,360 cinemas were in operation and attracting 467 million patrons, not least because the cinema 176

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“remained an important establishment for meeting people, for relaxation and for social communication”.14 An independent censoring committee which referred to its work as “Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle” (FSK) [voluntary selfchecking]15 was set up in 1949 to ensure that this form of entertainment did not conflict with the prevailing values of German society. From this point on, all films were released with an age recommendation, the subject of numerous heated discussions relating to decisions deemed inappropriate by the viewing public. In the immediate post-war years, the German market had been flooded with B-grade films from the Allied countries, predominantly American productions. Westerns, gangster films, and light comedies dominated the screens to such an extent that critics spoke of a “cultural colonization” taking place. Many of the films had been hastily dubbed and were not recent productions but old Hollywood movies which had been banned in the Third Reich. Promoting individualism, consumerism, and the American way of life with its attractive social and sexual role models, these films seemed more palatable to the citizens in post-war occupied Germany than the home-grown productions of Trümmerfilme [rubble films] that were emerging at the time.16 Films such as Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns [The Murderers Are Among Us, DEFA, 1946], Hans Müller’s Und finden dereinst wir uns wieder [And One Day We Find Ourselves Again, DEFA, 1947],17 and Josef von Báky’s Und über uns der Himmel [And Above Us the Sky, Objectiv-Film, West Berlin, 1947] expressed a certain desire to reflect images of contemporary Germany on screen, albeit without questioning the reasons behind the moral and physical destruction depicted. These half-hearted and highly fictionalized accounts of post-war urban life reflected inadequately on the immediate past and functioned poorly as a distraction from their reality. In style the Trümmerfilme corresponded more or less exactly with the moderate level of Vergangenheitsbewältigung [coming to terms with the past]18 favoured by most, which allowed Germans a certain reprieve from radical questioning and merciless introspection about their personal role in the recent past. Nevertheless, these films were also regarded as unnecessary reminders of Germany’s misery. A film review in Der Spiegel in January 1947, commenting on the considerable output of German feature films being produced that were set in rubble-strewn urban landscapes,19 lamented: “No one likes ruins.”20 Neither the cultural imports, which had been so eagerly adopted by German distributors, nor the local productions of the time truly captured the hearts and minds of the West German population. While some felt that Trümmerfilme struck too close to home, the imports failed for the opposite reason: their content seemed too far removed from the hardships and privations of everyday life. Cinematographically, several of the Trümmerfilme can be seen as a bridging genre between mountain and Heimat films. As Eric Rentschler points out, some of the “jagged shards of broken buildings [being depicted] bear an uncanny resemblance to the craggy contours of alpine peaks”.21 However, the aesthetic translation of rubble into imposing mountainscapes, as suggested by Rentschler, was not one that contemporary audiences could follow. Instead, the desire for material manifestations meant that audiences were much more willing to take “leave of the Trümmerfilm’s Albtrӓume [nightmares] and embrace the Alpentrӓume [Alpine visions] of a Beautiful Germany”.22 Ironically, the scenery of many a Trümmerfilm prepared the way for films that 177

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were proof of the rubble having been cleared and the nation restored, as “the Trümmerfilm’s manifest destiny, a fantasy of an intact national corpus [...], finds its definite incarnation in the Heimatfilm”.23 In the socio-cultural void that ensued after the collapse of National Socialism, a desire to recreate their own industries and identities became paramount for many German survivors of the Second World War. Heimat and Heimat film provided the population with a unique opportunity to do just that. With most film studios destroyed or closed, German film producers sought out natural settings in rural areas, for thematic and also for practical reasons. Heimat films needed hardly any studio scenes, the spectacular landscape shots were relatively cheap to come by and, what is more, this was “a field in which the Americans could not compete”.24 The unblemished ideal of the Alpine sublime and of iconic rural landscapes provided a positive representation of German life which seemingly pre-dated National Socialism and was thus a pseudo-carefree and, above all, natural alternative. In fact, in 1955 the film industry and its regulatory body went as far as requesting that new films be free of politics and rubble.25 This recommendation was reflected in popular taste: “Please, no more ruins,” moaned sections of the German audience upon the release of only the second post-war film in 1946.26 Research conducted by a marketing company into viewer preferences in the late 1940s confirmed that the majority wanted to see “Illusionsfilm” [illusion films], not “Wirklichkeitsfilm” [reality films].27 This programmatic choice was thematized self-referentially in Rudolf Jugert’s Film ohne Titel [Film without a Title, Camera-Filmproduktion, Hamburg, 1948]. Helmut Käutner’s script for this film is full of contemporary references with strong irony. In a rural setting three men—a director, a scriptwriter, and an actor—gather under a tree to brainstorm ideas for their next production, a “zeitnahe Komödie” [comedy of our age] that will respond well to the need for light entertainment. In their deliberations, they reject certain genres such as Trümmerfilm, Heimkehrerfilm [returnee films], and political or propagandizing anti-Nazi films, thus setting both theme and plot unmistakably in the immediate post-war years. The feature provides a film-within-a-film structure in which the three come to realize that the ideal story is one written by life itself. A youngish couple, Martin and Christine (who are known to the author) stumble across the three and relate their life stories, allowing glimpses into their lives during and after the war. Martin, a young carpenter-cum-wealthy businessman from Hanover, and the maid Christine, a country girl in service with one of his associates, had fallen in love during the last Nazi years. Class differences had tested their relationship and provoked Christine to leave him before the end of the war. After the war, however, the power relationship had changed. With his business in the city and, therefore, his livelihood destroyed, Martin turns to Christine’s parents’ farm upon his return from the prisoner-of-war camp. This time, it is the pride of the farming community that makes them reject the penniless former soldier. Martin struggles to find his place in post-war society, working as a farmhand, and then becoming an antiques dealer, before finally returning to his original trade as a carpenter to make simple furniture. His financial recovery would seem to prepare the way for marriage to Christine. The director character in the film insists that “the happy ending is entirely logical”; however, the scriptwriter and the lead actor—Willy Fritsch playing himself—respond with their own versions. While the scriptwriter 178

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favours a “cinematic marriage of expressionism and existentialism” that sees Christine marry a younger man and Martin fail at his business venture, Fritsch dreams of a “radiant star chopping wood, wielding the plow, sowing corn, and riding in a horse-drawn carriage,” who ultimately marries in “Christine’s village—‘in keeping with popular tradition and in authentic traditional dress’”.28 Clearly, this scenario would have been typical of a Heimat film, and the scriptwriter comments: “Das ist Kitsch, Herr Fritsch” [That is kitsch, Mr Fritsch]. This sweet and unrealistic ending is also rejected by the director who suggests that art should catch up with life; they should meet up with Christine and Martin again at her brother’s upcoming wedding to see what has become of them. “With this solution, which brings the internal story up to date with the frame narrative, it appears that we have avoided the excesses of both the hyper-Trümmerfilm imagined by the writer and the Ufa comedy imagined by Fritsch.”29 With the potential happy ending, and the underlying message to accept life’s simple gifts and to endure hardship because better times will surely come, the film not only prepared the way for the 1950s Heimat films, and their reappraisal of family reunions, but also for a return to the provinces amidst nature’s beauty. Film without a Title, which won Jugert a Bambi award in 1949 for the “geschäftlich erfolgreichsten deutschen Film 1948” [most commercially successful German film of 1948]30 and Hildegard Knef the honour of Best Actress, has been classed as a “transitional film that illustrates the regrouping of (West) German cinema after 1945”.31 However, Jugert’s film achieves more: “Not only is Film ohne Titel the first and last Trümmerfilm to showcase the kind of rural milieu that we associate with the iconography of the Heimatfilm; in many respects it also anticipates the cultural logic of the Heimatfilm.”32 Images of nature seemed to provide a sense of refuge for large sections of the mentally and physically displaced population, evoking a sense of cyclical renewal, natural revitalization, and soothing beauty. At the same time, however, the films provided glimpses of everyday reality, complete with refugees, expellees, and itinerants—something which resonated with audiences.33 Large-scale production of Heimat films resulted, in response to the instant commercial success of early examples of the genre. The characteristics of these films allowed for streamlined production and distribution, and Heimat films came to dominate the market in the emerging West German society.34 Resorting to popular genre narratives to enhance the films’ appeal and effect, film-makers offered increasingly melodramatic and trivialized products which, initially at least, found a receptive audience. “As a system for organizing meanings, [the Heimat] genre proved especially effective in responding to social and political problems”, but also “in giving expression to experiences of uncertainty, instability, and radical change [in an] effective mixture of social commentary and escapist fantasy”.35 A common urge to withdraw into alternative narratives is implied by the enormous popularity of the genre, with its instantly recognizable aesthetics. Indeed, familiar storylines inducing welcome emotional responses were favoured during this period. Heimat film producers could count on the willingness of audiences to lose themselves in the world of nature and lovers, a world of surmountable obstacles, with an assured happy ending, which would provide a welcome alternative to the anxieties of the real world while still responding to them.36 Emphatic identification of the kind Nazi Heimat films aroused was still en179

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couraged, with the audience swept up by the melodrama on the screen, allowing them to identify with the protagonists to such an extent that they virtually live through the fictional hardships and experience the relief of the resolution achieved at the end. Such films reaffirmed and re-endorsed conservative role models and values. Not much had really changed: producers could still rely on canonical narratives with melodramatic patterns which elicited empathy, sympathy, feelings of reassurance, and recognition in most viewers, soft sentiments which translate into hard coin for the industry. Heimat iconology, narrative formulas, and the obligatory romantic love story with a happy ending shaped viewer expectations and the accompanying emotional responses; all of this had been evident most recently in Nazi Heimat films—but it could also be recycled for the post-war market.37 Despite the obvious dangers, many producers failed to resist the temptation to mass-produce formulaic Heimat films that simply promised a repeat of past emotions and successes. Only moderate attempts at development of the genre were made, with some novel aspects integrated to enhance the overall viewing experience and the films’ commercial prospects. In West Germany, the desire to maximize profits was driving the Heimat film industry, rather than artistic or aesthetic concerns. This was particularly evident when film producers and distribution companies sought box-office success as much as related spin-off sales; many of these films attempted to sell not only the idea of a Heimat which transcended regional and cultural boundaries but also the accompanying music, the Schlager,38 which functioned very much as a musical representation of Heimat.39 This quintessential German form of sing-along music, which aimed at social integration, reached the height of its popularity between the late 1950s and late 1970s.40 Schlager, sung in German, reflected the optimism of the “economic miracle”,41 often “featuring lyrics that sentimentalized Heimat […] and extirpated unpleasant thoughts of the Nazi past”.42 Just like the Heimat films themselves, the music presented audiences with a catchy “feel-good” warmth; it granted the melodic and social alignment of diverse groups of people as part of an “escapist diversion from reality and history, as well as unbridled consumerism and commercialism”.43 In addition, it highlighted the conservative cultural values derived from the opposition of the Schlager to Anglo-American influences. “Mach Dir ein paar schöne Stunden, geh ins Kino!” [Enjoy a few nice hours, go to the cinema!] was the advertising slogan of the 1950s,44 a time that tried to redefine Heimat in a retrograde fashion with a select few aspects of modernity included. Thus the Heimat films of the 1950s served several purposes: the development of social and cultural unity in West Germany, the mythical merging of industrial and rural aspects, as well as traditional German values in the young nation, wish-fulfilment in a morally unquestionable manner (food, drink, consumer goods, holidays, social status, economic progress), a bridging of the generation gap, and the reinstatement of a patriarchal society and a conservative attitude towards family and state.45 The desire for homogenization was based on the understanding that not everyone inhabited the same present, and that many were still struggling to find their place in the Central European post-war order. Heimat films were therefore useful in assisting the many diverse members of the young nation to negotiate major changes in their lives, and in transporting them from the old world to the new in such a way that old values could still find a place in the 180

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present. Through this medium, audiences hoped to reclaim a unity of experience once more, inspired by lifelike presentations that provided immediate gratification. Genre films in general provide an ideal opportunity for repair and reassurance, as they instil a sense of continuity in terms of visual and structural elements and resist the change which dominates the society they come from. For twelve years under Nazism, genre films functioned as “an advocate of the ordinary people, their everyday worries and desires, their demands for security, their visions of happiness, their brief escapes and, most of all, their longing for normality”.46 Heimat films of the 1950s encouraged this sense of stability, a certainty that, essentially, everything remained as it always had been. They provided an alternative to guilt and to any sense of loss by suggesting that nothing had been lost or changed, and that Germany was really the same as it was before Nazism; in essence, these films served the function of virtually “writing out” the Nazi period.47 This helps to explain why the post-war cultural scene was, overall, unadventurous and lacking in innovation, thus managing to combine bad times with bad taste: “Maria Schell, kidney-shaped tables, NATO, Cold War, Heimat films […] The fifties were a restorative phase, almost a counterpart to the myth of the twenties, [...] without alternative excitements like the sixties and the seventies.”48 In the 1960s, in particular, critics poured scorn on the German films of the previous decade. Critics either damned them with their disparaging verdicts or ignored the films altogether. For instance, Ulrich Gregor and Enno Patalas devoted a mere two pages in their 550-page analytical work, Geschichte des Films [History of Film, 1962], to films from the 1950s.49 The consensus ever since has basically been that “the 1950s arguably remain the quintessentially ‘bad object’ of German film historiography”, and constitute a period which “yielded no significant auteur, harboured few compelling institutional developments […] and produced hardly a stylistic experiment worth mentioning”.50 Despite a few attempts by academics to rescue individual films from this collective dismissal, the overall impression of German films from the 1950s remained largely negative.51 Indeed, the lack of new talent and the absence of stylistic or thematic innovations does hold true for most of them. The malaise can be blamed in part on the fact that the turning-point of 1945 did not catapult a new generation to the fore in the resource-rich film industry. In 1960, a Spiegel reader lamented in a letter to the editor that the average age of German film-makers was over fifty-five years, while the statistics for the time show that the average age of the audience was between seventeen and twenty-four.52 This generational disparity between supplier and potential consumer meant that a predominantly young audience was still being catered for by the same old men who had produced films for decades, including during the Nazi regime.53 On and behind the screen were familiar faces and names. The actors included Hans Albers, Heinz Rühmann, Luis Trenker, Luise Ullrich, and Marika Rökk, and as for the directors, Alfred Weidemann, Arthur Maria Rabenalt, Veit Harlan, Joe Stöckel, Franz Seitz, Erich Waschneck, Hans Deppe, and again Luis Trenker were still calling the shots. Germany’s show business, just like other sectors of German industry and government, had progressed apparently seamlessly from the 1930s to the 1950s. To be fair, there were other stories and new names, including the wave of Trümmerfilme54 and the discovery of Hildegard Knef in

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1946, but the masses continued to desire instead their staple diet of Heimat and Heile-Welt-Geschichten [stories from an ideal world]. At a time of battered egos, Heimat films and other stories endorsing patriarchy ensured that traditions were upheld. For this reason, many post-war Heimat films are guided by a selective world view, are largely free of traces of war and guilt, and underscore—in accordance with public sentiment—the plight of the common man. The self-perception of many Germans was that they were the helpless victims of circumstances beyond their control, whether those circumstances were twelve years of Nazi domination, Germany’s occupation and division after the war, or the hardship and suffering of the immediate post-war years.55 In many films, such as Helmut Käutner’s film In jenen Tagen [In Those Days, Camera-Film, 1947], a sense of impotence expressed the powerlessness of the average citizen. This remained a popular standpoint for the decade to come; Frank Wisbar’s Haie und kleine Fische [Sharks and Small Fish, 1957], Kurt Hoffmann’s Wir Wunderkinder [We Miracle Children, 1958], Wolfgang Staudte’s Rosen für den Staatsanwalt [Roses for the Prosecutor, 1959], and Robert Siodmak’s Der Schulfreund [The School Friend, 1960] are symptomatic of this development. The fact that the “little man”, the under-privileged German battler, rang true with so many Germans at the time, is reflected literally in the popularity of “little men”; actors with a small build, such as Heinz Rühmann, became the “archetypal German little man”,56 a new “anti-hero” who was still an acceptable protagonist in the wake of Nazi ideals of masculinity—not the Übermensch, with all its militant connotations, but an ordinary human being with a Nazi past. In the guise of such figures, the nation seemed to atone for the horror and guilt that had ultimately become so apparent in 1945. Following a phase of re-education, denazification, and dealing with the pressing realities of the ruined country, which was reflected in the short life of the Trümmerfilm between 1946 and 1949, the focus of the German film industry shifted markedly—away from introspection and soul-searching and towards escapist dreams. The seemingly apolitical entertainment films that were so successful in the Nazi years served as a good starting-point for the regrouping of the industry. This may explain the thirty-two remakes of Heimat films that flooded the market between 1947 and 1960. Interestingly, it was especially the political nature of these films that construct Heimat primarily as a social concept and that made them so adaptable to the new context.57 However, the genre was clearly not rejuvenated through this process of copying. On the contrary, whereas the Heimat films of the 1930s and 40s had impressed with their use of technical features including close-ups and extremely low camera angles (to make the subject look more impressive or threatening), as well as back-lit images, dramatic music, and tension-filled montage images in typical Nazi, heroic, imposing style, in the films of the 1950s a more moderate photographic language prevails.58 As if the pompous style might remind viewers of Germany’s most recent past, aesthetics that could be interpreted as Fascist were abandoned in favour of a plain film language dominated by shots from the middle distance (the closest to the normal human perspective), with the camera operating from a static position and even the actors behaving in a more restrained manner.59 This mode of presentation can also be explained with reference to the socio-cultural framework. As Germany was an occupied country, its home-grown cultural scene had 182

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been relegated to a secondary status. Re-education, denazification, and general chaos caused German cinema and theatre to have negligible entertainment value and to be irrelevant for critical social discourse for some time. The Allied powers tried to make an impact on German social and political awareness with their films, but to little avail. Cultural imports, such as films from Hollywood, enjoyed only minor success and “there was no out-and-out American domination of the market in the ten years between 1945 and 1955” on several grounds.60 Latent anti-Americanism existed, among other reasons, because of Germany’s status as an occupied country, the presence of foreign troops on German soil, and, at least initially, the presence of a military government.61 This helps to explain some lingering political resentment and an anti-reeducation mindset among many of the German people, who rebelled against instruction from a foreign military as well as against that military power’s cultural products. Hence, “Hollywood films had no better a start in postwar Germany than British or French imports.” The appetite for local fare meant that re-releases of German films from the Weimar Republic and Nazi time “surpassed imports in popularity (nearly 70 per cent of Germans polled in 1951 said they preferred domestic films) due to the absence of language barriers and the presence of familiar stars”.62 Even the old Ufa style enjoyed a revival. Marked by jovial backgrounds, stage-like settings, and a degree of artificiality, the screen became a looking glass into the future via the past, presenting images of well-kept, civilized, cultured, refined, and clean people and environments, while, ironically, the action and the conflicts encountered in the films had “little to do with the daily experiences of the cinema-goers.63 The audience accepted these recycled products, despite the fact their 1930s’ aesthetics were clearly outdated in the 1950s. A French critic accurately evaluated a German comedy of 1954 by comparing it to a typical Ufa operetta, “newly emerged from an old box, as if it had taken place in 1935. The bad thing about it is not that the film is bad […], but that it is bad like a bad film from 1935 and not like a bad film from 1954.”64 Not only was there, on the whole, seemingly no progression in the German film industry, even worse, the genre appeared to regress. While the typical pre-war Heimat film, “which despite its contrived plots was frequently able to transform powerful emotions into convincing nature images, now the Heimat ‘feeling’ became schizophrenic”, “nostalgia for the security of home”, but at the same time also a “fear of the phantoms in that home”.65 The cinema of the Konrad Adenauer era that so desperately tried to increase its market share came to reflect a more general loss of orientation and ideals in society—even the loss of Heimat in general terms. Films by Géza von Cziffra and Hans Deppe were said to correspond to the similarly unimaginative, functional, and haphazard architecture of the time. “Neo-Biedermeier”66 was a term used to describe the lack of innovation in German films of this time, as well as people’s desire to retreat into their private realms furnished with Heimat simulacra, which could not hide the fact that behind a thin aesthetic veneer it was really kitsch. With the “Röhrender Hirsch” [roaring deer] above the sofa and the dried edelweiss flower in a plastic frame, the proud homeowners expressed their sentiments towards their homeland in contrived images,67 and recycled massproduced motifs found their way into the houses and onto the screens. When critics bemoan the fact that early post-war German Heimat films constitute a period of regression within a formerly artistically ambitious genre, they pin183

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point a gaping wound in West Germany’s cultural production. In the Heimat films released in the 1950s, nature had become “a consumable product, domesticated and fake as in a poorly rendered still-life rather than a hypothesized site of freedom.”68 Remakes and highly derivative films became the genre’s hallmarks, the “pinnacle of good taste in the absence of taste, of art in ugliness […], everyday Gemütlichkeit [cosiness], art adapted to life where the function of the adaptation exceeds that of innovation”.69 Friedländer refers to kitsch as “the tastes of the majority, a faithful expression of a common sensibility, of the harmony dear to the petit bourgeois, who see in it a respect for beauty and the order of things”.70 West German Heimat films of the 1950s were exactly that. However, the form should not detract from the content, which at least responded at times to real socio-historical concerns, such as the loss of one’s home and peace of mind, the conflict between the generations, and, in particular, the loss of role models for the younger generation, with many members of the older generation appearing broken and guiltridden by the recent past or being implicated in Nazi atrocities. The Heimat film genre of this period captured dormant utopias and was mainly a vessel for the transmission of restorative cultural values which were to aid the German public in a positive reappraisal of their homeland. Despite numerous variations in plot and milieu, two ingredients reappeared nearly every time—the beautiful landscape and the love story with a happy ending71 —and these two constants do indeed summarize the genre’s rudimentary structure, which aroused expectations of a “seamless narrative extolling the virtues of pure romantic love (typically in conflict with duty), family and bourgeois values, a community (with its folksongs, costume and dance) in harmony with its natural surroundings”, the latter “typically marked by timeless, scenic beauty (mountains, forests, heathland), and a resolution in which the old, God-given order is restored and the source of the conflict is either eradicated or rendered harmless and integrated”.72 Thus, post-war Heimat films attracted—thanks to growing discretionary incomes and an ongoing need for escapist fare—an increasing number of viewers who responded well to the films’ recipes, namely, to “focus on the postwar healing process, [confine] it to an emotional or spiritual exercise and [dole] out sympathy in generous portions”.73 This fulfilled the important socio-political task of shaping emotions and utopias into collectively agreeable responses of empathy and consumerism. The market-place was receptive to these strategies, making Heimat films the dominant West German film genre from 1950 to 1956, and resulting in “the West German film industry experienc[ing] a little ‘golden age’ on the basis of this sure money-maker”.74 Heinrich Böll in his 1954 novel Haus ohne Hüter [The Unguarded House] describes a typical sentiment when his protagonist acknowledges: “The cinema was wonderful, it was good and warm there. Nobody saw you, nobody could talk to you, and you could do what you couldn’t do otherwise: forget.”75 However, are these films really part of a culture of forgetting? “West Germans, the narrative goes, traumatized by the humiliation of defeat and the disaster of urban destruction and impoverishment in the wake of the Second World War”, were said to be “unwilling to come to terms with their own responsibility for sustaining the political regime that had not only unleashed the war but also engineered the largest genocide recorded in history, ‘chose to forget’.”76 This point of view remains strong among many Austrian and 184

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German academics to date.77 The common assumption in film history thus far has been that German films of the 1950s and early 1960s, “in their avoidance of all contemporary relevance, let alone political statements or awkward questioning, reflected the mood of the 1950s in West Germany”.78 This perception of German film in general and Heimat film in particular has its origins in a “memory/forgetting paradigm” that goes back to the work of Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich in 1967. They diagnosed a collective failure of the German people to come to terms with their experiences before and after 1945 by means of working through them and “mourning”, explaining that the people went instead with the “instinctive and self-protective forces of forgetting, denying, projecting, and other similar defence mechanisms”.79 The situation was far more complex and very different for most. With the obvious presence of reminders of the past all around them, dealing with these material reminders as well as psychological and physical scars and traumas took on countless forms. For many, a process of carefully remembering and communicating their personal stories took place.80 The same can be said of the many films produced during the post-war years, in which allusions to the immediate past were clearer to the contemporary audiences than to the detached onlooker decades later. Sensitively thematizing controversial and hurtful issues became a balancing act in private and public discourse, as a sense of loss and insecurity was to be felt at all levels of society. Thus Heimat films responded to desire and need alike during the first half of the 1950s by remembering selectively and strategically.81 German audiences, with their experience of material deprivation, their sense of guilt and shame, and their need to rebuild their souls and their environment, sought at times a blueprint of their future in projections which married tradition and progress, the past and utopia. With the notable presence of fractured families and incomplete households, they responded to the contemporary problems which faced society after wartime. Likewise, the figure of the stranger came to symbolize the great sense of displacement felt by all those who had fled from or lost their Heimat and who thus needed to come to terms with dislocation and discontinuity. However, 1950s Heimat films ultimately provided an assurance that the future would be safe and secure after a time of upheaval, and created an ideological vacuum of sorts, recognizing that perhaps—with the National Socialist “plans” for the future quashed—many Germans were desperate to find guidance elsewhere. For those reasons, “these films found their audience in millions of Germans despite the competition from Hollywood”.82 Like no other genre at the time, Heimat film addressed Germans directly and responded to specific German problems which related to the nation’s past, present, and desired future. Films like Schwarzwaldmädel [Black Forest Girl] and Grün ist die Heide [Green Is the Heath], which will be analysed in the following discussion, were successful because they were respectful of post-war emotions such as nostalgia, loss, and personal pain. “Like their youthful heroines, these films were good-natured in their treatment of flawed characters”, who for many in the audience would have rung true.83 Most importantly, these films instilled a trust in a better future, an existence that afforded material and psychological well-being. “Heimatfilms guaranteed personal and national redemption, forgiveness and forgetfulness; they offered the postwar German viewer, that is, something that Hollywood films could not.”84 On the contrary, international film during that period was ob185

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sessed with the image of the “bad German” who could hardly offer a point of identification for German audiences. The token inclusion of the unrelenting Nazi character with a heavy German accent, played by a stereotypically hard, blond, foreign actor, was the staple way to approach international affairs in Hollywood films. Sam Fuller’s Pick Up on South Street (1953) is one such example, and Gefahr Aus Dem Dunkel, also known as the Quiller Memorandum (Anderson, 1966), is “another film about espionage and Neo-Nazism that, by virtue of creative re-editing, was made totally unintelligible to West German audiences”.85 To stand any chance at the German box-office, if they were released in Germany at all, these films were dubbed incorrectly to gloss over some of the anti-German sentiment expressed in the original. Hollywood films such as Michael Curtiz’s Casablanca (1942) and Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious (1946) were drastically re-edited and changed in the process of dubbing to exclude references to Nazis. In this way, the behaviour of Hollywood’s villains could be instantly and dramatically modified. “Consequently […] it wasn’t uncommon for Nazi spies to be turned into drug smugglers. “Entideologisierende Bearbeitung” was a common form of political censorship in Adenauer’s Germany”86 and transformed any politicized figures, regardless whether they were Nazis or Communists, into criminals. No matter how “bad” German and foreign films were, they found an audience by virtue of the fact that they “would allow both a return to traditional values and a (selective) embrace of contemporary change”, by negotiating the “encroaching demands of modernity within the spaces of Heimat”.87 Pointing towards the “decade’s double imperative of restoration and modernization, of sedentariness and (imaginary) transport”,88 von Moltke explains that the presence of convertibles and scooters as evidence of mobility and progress is balanced by community spirit and stability of values. This helps to explain why West Germany’s film industry boom of the 1950s, which formed part of a more general economic recovery, and the unprecedented building boom of cinema venues that could hold large audiences, did not lead to vibrant, innovative or progressive film aesthetics and/or film language, or the tackling of significantly new material. On the contrary, certain success was sought via the rehashing of past recipes, with the most radical changes being the introduction of colour footage and new technology on and behind the screen. While many people hungered for films in the absence of food, and for cinemas in the absence of heating materials, as is evident from research in the late 1940s,89 and while a “Neubaugigantismus” [giant new developments] brought 1,000-seat cinemas even to regional centres,90 in hindsight it can be seen that the home-grown productions of the time, despite their success and popularity, were made by a sadly deficient film industry which produced mostly films marked by low-grade plots and unambitious camera work. The shortcomings of these Heimat films are especially obvious when compared with international productions, not just those made in Hollywood; the work of other European film industries stood out, in particular Italy’s New Realism (1943‒54) and the films of the French auteurs. Despite experiencing similarly desperate funding problems, Germany’s neighbours enjoyed an innovative period of film culture in the 1950s, with new names and styles emerging during this phase of post-war reconstruction. Nevertheless, despite the limita-

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tions of the German productions, the following analysis will, to a certain degree, identify an undeniable development of the genre.

Hans Deppe’s Black Forest Girl (1950) In line with the trend of the time, Schwarzwaldmädel [Black Forest Girl] was a remake of a storyline that had already featured in two German silent films made in 1920 and 1929, as well as in a 1933 film.91 Each of these was itself an adaptation of the popular 1917 operetta of the same title.92 This love story, which concentrates on the domestication of an appealing bride-to-be, has enjoyed constant popularity, with reruns of the 1950 film appealing to television audiences over succeeding decades and inspiring other cinematic and even post-modern adaptations, such as the three-minute short film Schwarzwaldmädel Goes to America by Barbara Toennieshen (Germany, 1998). Promoted as the first German colour motion picture and therefore, even on a visual level, a welcome departure from the dominant Nazi aesthetics and the monochrome Trümmerfilme, Black Forest Girl was made by movie doyen Hans Deppe, who was responsible for twenty-four Heimat films in all and regarded as the “king” of the genre in the 1950s.93 The former actor and cabaret artist had successfully reinvented himself and his ideas to become the most successful director and distributor of the period, founding his HD-FilmGmbH in 1952 and dominating the market for years to come. The company officially folded in 1958, but Deppe made a comeback as an actor on stage and in films and continued to work to a demanding schedule until his death in 1969. In contrast to the Trümmerfilme produced in the immediate post-war period—including Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns [The Murderers Are Among Us, 1946, produced under Soviet licence] and Helmut Käutner’s In jenen Tagen [In Those Days, 1947, produced under British licence], as well as the documentaries produced by the Allies about the Nazi concentration camps Todesmühlen [Death Mills, 1945], Die Lager des Grauens [Horror Camps, 1946], and Nürnberg und seine Lehren [Nuremberg and Its Lessons, 1947]—Deppe wanted to use the medium in a more escapist fashion, in order to realize people’s dreams. On the one hand, films were (for the majority of Germans) an escape from poverty, while on the other, they were a means to promote a political agenda, and could reinforce ideas about customs, traditions, relationships, and gender roles. Deppe filmed comedies and love stories, and catapulted German actors such as the young Sonja Ziemann and the rather fatherly and middle-aged Rudolf Prack—the lead players in Black Forest Girl—into stardom, while transporting audiences into a blissful, relaxed state.94 Deppe’s comedy Black Forest Girl was an instant hit upon its release in 1950; it earned him a Bambi, the German equivalent of the Oscar of that period, and “topped the audience ranking of then current films [14 million patrons]; the only dip in the film’s popularity was in the Schwarzwald itself”, suggesting that the majority of locals in that region rejected it in part for lacking in authenticity and relevance.95 In general, though, the film’s protagonists, an elderly Black Forest Kapellmeister [music director], a young girl from the Black Forest, Bärbel Riedele, and a middle-aged artist, Hans 187

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Hauser, evoked great sympathy in audiences of all ages. The love triangle hinted at in the plot is resolved in true Heimat fashion, with the golden boy and girl finally finding romance against the backdrop of a wholesome Swabian community and an inviting landscape. Before this happy conclusion, many obstacles had to be overcome to bring together people from different generations, classes, regions, and tastes. The film opens not in the Black Forest but in the resort town of BadenBaden, where a fancy-dress party is taking place. Bärbele is attending in traditional local attire and carries a basket of apples with her. Amidst masks, deceit, and make-believe identities, the cosmopolitan artist Hans is curious to discover that the apples are “real” [echt], to which Bärbele adds that she is also “ein echtes Mädel aus dem Schwarzwald” [a real girl from the Black Forest]. Her character is presented as natural, genuine, and disarmingly honest, making her immediately appealing to the artist. Hans’s profession sees him struggling with mimicry in life and work alike, and he sees in Bärbele an example of authenticity. He buys her a raffle ticket which wins her a red sports car, a Ford Taunus Cabriolet, with which Bärbele—the toast of the party in Baden-Baden—returns home to her native village. The character of Bärbele is placed at the centre of both rural and urban communities; she is portrayed as a woman who can negotiate her way in any society. Her ease and naturalness immediately cast a spell over Hans, despite the brevity of their chance encounter. Leaving his former love interest behind, Hans follows his wholesome Schwarzwaldmädel to the Black Forest. Appropriately, his pursuit of Bärbele promotes a modern means of transport: Hans follows her Ford on his “Till” motor-scooter in a piece of deliberate product placement that became common in post-war cinema,96 with cars and household consumer products used successfully in many Heimat films. The Till scooter, “a model of a scooter which is somewhat remarkable in appearance”,97 was promoted as “surprising and original in its construction, and as indestructible and as agile as its imaginative namesake from the house of Eulenspiegel”.98 However, it did not fulfil its inventor’s dreams. After producing a mere five models of the Till, the company folded. Other strategically placed products like the Volkswagen Beetle in Géza von Bolváry’s Schwarzwälder Kirsch [Black Forest Cherry Schnapps, 1958] and Paul May’s Die Landärztin [The Female Country Doctor, 1958] were sure-fire successes, and their placement instilled the belief that modernity is not the antithesis of Heimat; “rather than holding modernity at bay, the Heimatfilm helps to naturalise its effect”.99 The representation of people successfully traversing village and city, country and region (as well as evidence of cars, scooters, and modern means of communication), indicates that the Heimat promoted in typical 1950s films is not simply a retreat to the provinces or a flight from post-war rubble-filled landscapes. The fact that the “spaces of the Heimatfilm are suffused with tropes of mobility—whether in terms of expulsion and displacement or motorization and tourism”—indicates that “Heimat itself is transformed, its promise of stability a mere compensation for a series of more profound destabilisations that have long since occurred.”100 One of these shifts related to the position of women in German society who only gained the right to work after marrying and the right to have bank accounts in their own names in 1958. In the Black Forest, a region that has allowed for a happy coexistence of the old and the new, as is evident in the depiction of the region’s fashion, 188

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architecture, and character constellation, Bärbele fills in as housekeeper for the elderly Domkapellmeister Römer. She temporarily replaces her spinster aunt who is on a rare vacation. The contrast between the two women—one from the “old school”, the other personifying a fresh wind—is evident. While the domineering aunt has little regard for her employer’s artistic compositions, and busies herself around him even when he reclines to smoke a cigar, Bärbele shows no trace of such an overbearing nature. She does her work with love, care, and a sense of humour, something that had been lacking in the Kapellmeister’s household. She hums and sings while cleaning and thus induces the Kapellmeister to interrupt his hymn-composition to play a waltz on the piano, which in turn tempts Bärbele to dance. With her youthfulness, beauty, and energy, she fills the Kapellmeister’s residence and heart with joy, so much so that he gradually falls in love with her. She takes up the initiative, introduces him to popular music, the good life, and simple, fun activities, such as their excursion to the countryside in her convertible Ford. Bärbele reinvigorates the old man, though not without showing him his rightful place in the community. During the concluding scenes at a local festival, it becomes clear that the Kapellmeister is an old man who cannot turn back the clock. When he is encouraged to “come sit with us old folks; we will watch the young people dance”, he accepts his place in society. As the younger lovers dance together, the Kapellmeister lowers his eyes and acknowledges in his song that his time is over: “You can ponder it for a long time, but then your heart will break.” As one critic put it, this scene portrays “the generational eclipse […] as personally painful but necessary; the past must be cleared away before the present can thrive unencumbered”.101 The past had been dominated by members of the war generation, but the present and the future belong to Bärbele, whose portrait (painted by Hans) adorns the invitation to the village festival, and whose nickname “festival bride” indicates her certain future. Her qualities, her purity and genuine nature, bring about a rejuvenation of the entire community and revitalize their sense of Heimat and ideals such as marriage, harmony, optimism, respect for elders, and love of children. Indeed, Bärbele comes to symbolize “the very essence of Heimat and serves as the center of a communal celebration of tradition, renewal, and optimism”.102 Her image, fixed not only on the poster but also in Hans’s mind, draws him back to the Black Forest town a second time, to entice Bärbele to come with him to Baden-Baden. In choosing Bärbele over his old flame, Hans chooses a woman who for him embodies all the virtues of Heimat. She is the heroine and the undisputed role model in the film: natural, non-judgemental, and caring. Her youth releases her from any responsibility for Nazism and thus promises an untainted future, a fresh start.103 Both the reference to the “festival bride” and the comment “we will let the young generation dance” suggest that the younger generation is innocent and pure, and assured of a happy future, whereas it is time for the older generation, still disgraced by the Nazi years, to bow out. Deppe thus attempts to subdue guilt and fear by separating the generations and making positive indications about the future in a time of uncertainty. Bärbele comes to represent the certainty that West Germany’s future will include financial comfort and happiness. Physically attractive, spiritually worthy, and socially promising in her maternal qualities, she embodies the very essence of procreation, something her tired old aunt never did. Nevertheless, given her 189

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loyalty to her aunt and her old employer, Bärbele symbolizes the reconciliation of tradition with modernity, and of progress with old values, while clearly suggesting to female audiences that women like Bärbele’s spinster aunt represent an older generation that has not proven successful. The future lies with self-confident child-bearers, which Bärbele will surely become. Rather than harbouring bitterness like her aunt, Bärbele is at peace with herself and her surroundings, whether she is in the village or in the city, and her unconditional sense of belonging is the perfect expression of Heimatliebe. Depictions of women like Bärbele in the post-war Heimat films put them at “the libidinal center of the Heimatfilm’s universe; they were the vortex around which the action, concern, and fantasy swirled. Yet they were no mere objects of desire.” Female protagonists in 1950s Heimat films, such as Bärbele, “received both recognition and credit for their efforts at caretaking, were lauded for their loyalty and strength, and drew sympathy for their substantial contributions on the home and work front.”104 By focusing on a working woman who succeeds in fulfilling her dreams and thus appealing to a predominantly female audience,105 the film also tries to ensure that male characters and viewers are not alienated. The men in Bärbele’s presence all benefit from her esprit and enjoy her company. Hans, in particular, is constructed so as to enjoy a positive reception from viewers, as he is depicted as caring and tender, while his Bohemian profession removes any suspicion that he would have been involved with the Nazis. By deciding not to pursue his former love interest—the socialite with attitude, who had been attractive mainly on a superficial level—Hans shows character and taste. In his dealings with both women, he proves himself to be honest and sensitive, and seems to be perfect for a stable family unit, something Bärbele desires. Especially amidst the post-war fragmentation of families, where the parent generation often consisted of widowed or divorced individuals, the union of Bärbele and Hans promises compensation in the next generation. In fact, German society in 1950/51 was still marked by absences and losses, uncertainty, and discomfort. Many thousands of German prisoners of war were yet to be released by the Soviet Union; cities such as Munich and Cologne were in a state of disrepair; and families were experiencing shortages and rationing.106 Although most consumer goods were available in shops by late 1950, hardly anyone could afford them. Food prices had increased by twenty per cent in the second half of 1950, the result being that many items were out of reach for the majority. Thus the world of Bärbele and Hans is closer to people’s aspirations than to their reality. Films like Black Forest Girl in many ways serve as wish-fulfilment, as a projection of the audience’s yearnings; “Heimatfilme held out a fantasy for the future. They showed what a Wohlstandsgesellschaft, or prosperous society, would look like ‘long before it became a reality for the broad German public’.”107 In doing so, the post-war Heimat films—ironically just like their Nazi counterparts—sought to convince the audience that they would “all pursue the same goals and desires—living prosperously and amassing fashionable goods”.108 It is therefore difficult to divorce Heimat films of this time from the genre’s traditions, inasmuch as one can understand the popularity of the films with the general public only when they are interpreted in the context of the historical reality of an early 1950s society that was desperate for fantasies 190

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of consumer paradise. The film’s fictions of security, happiness, and comfort in a “geregelten-bürgerlichen Wohlstandsexistenz” [well-ordered and wellto-do middle class]109 responded to the yearning for such sureties at a time when the demand for material culture and home-grown distraction was great. “In 1950, the year of Schwarzwaldmädel’s release, the unemployment rate stood at 11 per cent and refugees constituted almost 17 per cent of the population.”110 Rubble-filled sites and a shortage of adequate housing plagued many families, and forced nearly forty per cent of West Germany’s population, among them close to ten million refugees and expellees, “to live in sub-letting arrangements or in emergency accommodation such as cellars, barracks or ‘Nissenhuts’ made of corrugated iron. [...] by 1953 there were still four million apartments required”.111 Indeed, the release of this film and the hype of its sustained popularity coincided with the early period of West Germany’s eventual transformation.112 Audiences were eager to be stimulated and enticed by the German dream factory that was the Heimat film. While the fictional reality being depicted did not yet reflect historical reality, it represented, to popular understanding, a society that was at least within reach and not entirely out of this world. Ironically, as soon as material security and the first spurt of consumerism had been experienced by the majority, the genre’s popularity dwindled and became less attractive as the audience no longer “needed” it.113 While the placement of contemporary products and consumer items clearly anchored the films within the 1950s, the concept of real time was not taken too seriously. As in the 1938 film Heimat, inconsistencies in the plot place the film rather deliberately outside of logical measurements of time. In Black Forest Girl, orchards are shown in bloom, which would indicate that the film is set in springtime. However, Bärbele’s fresh harvest of local apples also suggests that the temporal setting is autumn, while the village festival (according to the church calendar) would actually take place in November. The film thus condenses the best parts of the rural calendar into an unrealistic time frame to present the image of an “idyll”. At the same time, Deppe tries to transcend its spatial setting by incorporating (for no apparent or logical reason) numerous ethnic guises of German, including the dialects used in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, and Swabia. The explanation of this oddity lies in the genre’s tradition. “The sound of German music and of the German language had played a significant role in the symbolism of the German nation” before 1933, during the Nazi period, and also after 1945.114 Germany’s historical division into many disparate political entities and regional groups resulted in attempts to present the country’s diversity as a unique strength and to “reconcile the abundance of regional dialects with the idea of the linguistic nation, [thus endorsing] the German language, not as a catalyst to but as a sign and essence of German national identity.”115 The ability of the film to integrate the viewing public into the new West German community through its “sonic construction of German nationhood”116 only served to highlight its similarities to its Nazi precursors, which made it even less palatable to intellectuals. In doing so, the film is true to its genre, sacrificing realism to emphasize a positive and certain image of “Heimat”. A further creation of unity via sonic synthesis is achieved by integrating modern dance music and traditional folk music in a Heimat waltz, “das Schwarzwaldlied als Walzer” [the Black Forest song as a waltz].117 191

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Despite the general consensus among highbrow film critics that the film is trite and tired, its self-referentiality—the ironic reflections of reality and illusion, recreation and serious life—is worth noting. In his analysis of Black Forest Girl, Marc Silberman has highlighted these self-conscious oscillations between “desires and denial”, the “role-playing” and “hide-and-seek games”118 that become self-fulfilling prophecies. In the course of the action, pretenders are exposed, matches are made, and deceit is uncovered. “The confusion between fake and real, which surfaces in every relation, signals a more fundamental uncertainty that underlies existence in this narrative world.”119 The only real things depicted in this world are consumer items: food, cars, clothes, and motor-scooters. The fruits of the “economic miracle” represent “the antithesis of economic degradation and hunger imposed by postwar hardship, the proof that consumerism is a magical blessing”.120 However, the narrative stresses that these material goods mean little if spiritual well-being is lacking. The latter can be achieved only with a positive understanding of one’s Heimat. St Christoph, the fictional Black Forest village of the film, is a place that allows for homecoming and identification, while some city dwellers (Malwine, Richard, Theo, and Bussmann) are shown to have lost the connection to their origins. Instead, they are “alienated from this intact natural world. Their context is unstable, defined by commerce, gambling, and theatricality”, and by the music in Baden-Baden, which is “nervous, exotic, and jazzy”.121 As Julia Anspach pointed out in her study of anti-Semitism in 1950s Heimat films, these attributes serve as clear indicators of a latent anti-Semitism in Black Forest Girl.122 The representation of the jeweller Fritz Bussmann, in particular, correlates to the images of the stereotypical Jewish urbanite—capitalist and modern, rootless and disrespectful of tradition. The character of Bussmann, depicted as greedy and deceitful, tries to benefit from a forged piece of jewellery, both financially and sexually, as he woos the singer Malwine with his gift. In contrast to Bussmann, who makes money dishonestly, the connectedness of the villagers to their Heimat is suggested in juxtaposed scenes which cut to images of their honest, physical work, such as woodchopping. With Bussmann working only indoors, his disconnectedness from the land and its values is the central message. He is depicted as removed from the natural idyll and unable to appreciate the sense of community, yet at the same time desperate to join in and to assimilate,123 to no avail. When he is finally shown climbing into a box to hide, it seems that his rightful place is actually outside of society. He is subsequently exposed, loses a pair of engagement rings that were intended for a genuine couple, and is then left in the box, as if it were a coffin, sealing his fate. Anspach stresses: “The attributes and characteristics which make him appear false, correspond to stereotypical anti-Semitic imputations.”124 Everything that is wrong about him is what is right for the village and community around him, thereby playing to latent Fascist sentiments in German society at the time. The village can only truly celebrate once Bussmann, as a representative of evil, is excised. This quasi-religious sub-text is also evident in allusions to St Christoph. St Christoph—with its biblical name, its folk songs, and church chorales—is a tight-knit community that comes to symbolize Heimat rather than a location in time. In contrast to the Bergfilm, nature is no longer a stimulus for a metaphysical experience or conquest, but instead a mere back192

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drop for social interaction. The protagonists are therefore concerned with Heimat’s reconstruction, whereby capitalism is elevated to an ideal social ideology which allows for peace and reconciliation between the old and the new, the young and the aged, in a most idealistic tourist environment. “Less a geographical place than an amalgam of values revolving around static concepts like tradition, norms, and custom, the fictional St Christoph and its surrounding Black Forest region is an elaborately conventionalized, synthetic product including blue sky, summer sun, mountain panoramas, green meadows, cows and horses, dancing rural people, picturesque half-timber houses with pots of geraniums on the window sills, church steeples, and splashing fountains and 125 wells.”

A fixed and final space is shown to be less fundamental to Heimat than the bonds between people within that space, which, compared to the Nazi Heimat, is a significant reappraisal and redefinition of Heimat. The historical and psychological context (displacement, increased mobility, loss of territory, and the division of Germany) meant that there was a hesitancy to tie one’s sense of belonging to a particular piece of land. Perhaps the nexus of man and land, familiar from the Fascist image of blood and soil, was still suspect. After 1945, a more progressive and modern understanding of Heimat was necessary to be truly all-inclusive. This is an innovative quality clearly evident in Deppe’s film. In keeping with this new quality of Heimat, Deppe does not fall into the trap of playing city and country against each other in a black-and-white contrast. Rather, he reveals the image of the country to be a façade that hides the very same vices that can be found in the city—greed, corruption, crime, and vanity. Bärbele comes to represent the bridge between the best aspects of both worlds, while rejecting any negative attributes. Her character is thus ensured a receptive audience in both urban and rural areas in West Germany. Nevertheless, the starkly different responses to the film by popular and critical audiences are difficult to reconcile. By 1959, it had garnered an audience of nineteen million in Germany alone. Its protagonists rose to stardom and were commonly referred to as the “Traumpaar” [dream couple] and “Zieprack”. This amalgamation of the stars’ surnames (Ziemann and Prack) invited further creative usage with a new proverb attesting to the conservative goal of marriage in this period: “Jeder Backfisch ist ein Prackfisch!” [Every teenage girl is a Prack-girl!] The appeal of these popular stars (and their suitability to be cast over and over again as predictable characters appearing in formulaic narratives) translated into certain financial profit for the Heimat film genre up to the mid-1950s. Black Forest Girl was paradigmatic for the genre’s character constellations and the teleological narratives that “endorsed the pleasure of repetition and recognition, catering to the desire for stability and epistemological certainty”, much as the Nazi Heimat films had done, albeit without the clear reference to space itself.126 However, even this dedication to place was annulled in the way Deppe prepared the scenes; he felt it necessary to improve on the setting by importing “truckloads of carved and painted folklore art, furniture, wooden crucifixes, statues of the Madonna with child, and other carved holy figures”, ironically in an attempt to add to the authentic look.127 193

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Notwithstanding its commercial success, critics have never had a soft spot for the film. Owing to the many negative comments made about the plot, as well as the deconstruction of the general composition, the film was rejected by more educated audiences. Likewise, local people from the Black Forest objected to the film’s depiction of the country folk in the film as “Dorftrottel” [village idiot] caricatures, and the inclusion of a song praising Swabia— despite the particular scene being set in the “Badische Seite” of the region [Baden area of the state of Baden-Württemberg]—seemed unforgivable to them.128 Their criticism of the film was echoed and exaggerated by journalists who proclaimed that Black Forest Girl’s success heralded a dangerous new trend in German cinema. The applause for the film was referred to as “dubious!” The same critic goes on to point out problems with continuity and appearance: “The people’s hands were tanned and their faces were light […], coarse jokes instead of real humour, German sentimentality and conventionality, insistent preference for directness.”129 However, despite these shortcomings, the formula worked: “According to the tried and true recipe ‘something for everyone’, it had all the bells and whistles—from the ice-skating extravaganza [...] and march music to organ music and pious children’s choirs.”130 Critic Wolfdietrich Schnurre agreed that Black Forest Girl constituted a regression in German film and warned that a continuation would drive one of the genres of art, one that showed the most promise for the future and was most capable of development, towards the dead end of provincial public entertainment.131 In view of the lack of quality and innovation, critics moaned: “What we are missing most urgently is the avantgarde film with a German influence, which can point out the way forward to German film production and which is trend-setting!”132 This cry was ultimately heard by the founders of the New German Cinema.133 However, Deppe’s goal was far from the rejuvenation of genre conventions and film aesthetics. On the contrary, his style became synonymous with the genre’s iconoclasm, a vehicle of escape with its concentration on the tourist potential of the German landscape, “with color shots panning the distinctive natural treasures of the provinces”134—devoid of too many signs of war and destruction—a world where lovers were sure to find one another and an untainted love for man and nature alike abounds. Designed to appeal to the popular market, Deppe’s Heimat films employed emotional triggers and visual spectacles, providing a “temporary escape from the cares of unemployment, inadequate (and often ugly, hastily erected) accommodations, and the rubble-strewn vistas of the urban landscape”.135 Despite this lack of adventurousness and renewal in the formalistic sense, Black Forest Girl appealed to younger and mature audiences alike, and to females in particular, as it seemed to support a conservative change in women’s lifestyles, away from the existence of Trümmerfrauen and working mothers towards that of a proud middle class. In addition, it rejuvenated the entire strategy of marketing film. The professional advertising campaign accompanying the film, including posters, banners, public appearances by the main actors, “gags like dressing the cinema personnel in traditional Black Forest costumes and having the Federal Post Office issue a special cancellation stamp” certainly played a role in its success.136 The playfulness introduced into the marketing as well as into the storyline itself was fresh and heralded a change, the

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passing of one generation to another. Deppe was keen to harvest the fruits of these innovations in his very next film, Green Is the Heath.

Hans Deppe’s Green Is the Heath (1951) The 1951 film Grün ist die Heide [Green Is the Heath] is a remake of Hans Deppe’s own production of 1932,137 a time when the term “Heimatfilm” was already used as a marketing tool. Deppe changed only a few aspects of the original plot,138 including the names of protagonists, but one important modification is the origin of Helga’s family. While the 1932 version is centred on an impoverished family which had formerly belonged to the landed gentry, the fall in status of the Lüdersen family has a different cause. The 1951 version of Green Is the Heath139 tells the tale of the aristocratic father and daughter Lüdersen, expellees from Silesia, who were forced to leave behind everything they owned at the end of the Second World War and must now find a new Heimat in the West Germany of 1951. This adaptation of the plot was made, according to the scriptwriter Bobby E. Lüthge, with the intention of incorporating “the contemporary-modern motif of the expellees, to whom the Lüneburg Heath has become a second home”.140 In its choice of locale, cast, and values, the film was constructed so as to be a counter-force to combat the cinematic imports from the Allied countries. Dr Herbert Hundt, a critic sensitive to the humanistic message of the film, makes this juxtaposition abundantly clear, while drawing attention to the film’s proximity to its Nazi precursors in his choice of terminology. He refers to the “Urkraft der Natur” [primitive strength of nature], the “Wurzelboden der Heimat” [ground in which the Heimat roots took hold] from which expellees have been wrenched [“losgerissen”], and remarks of the local film industry: “It seems to us that this film shows some very promising ideas for the return to a down-toearth German film production, which does justice to the spiritual needs of our people and to the problems of our time.”141 Hundt continues: “The recipe for such a renewal of our film-making […] will […] succeed, when it pays attention to the healthy strengths of our people.”142 Linguistically, the continuities remain, while references to displacement and rupture are blamed more on the Allied occupiers than on the past wrongs of the Germans themselves. The displaced citizen was indeed a reality of the time. Evacuated, bombed-out, lost, and expelled people accounted for up to half of the entire population in Germany.143 Hardly anyone could claim not to have been personally affected by dislocation, or not to know someone who had been. Conservative estimates speak of one-third, others of half of the population as having been uprooted and on the move between 1945 and 1950.144 To find a Heimat, a place of belonging, was both a collectively shared and an individual desire that came about as a response to the enormous social change taking place in West Germany during those years.145 The plot of the film centres on a father-daughter duo, the formerly wealthy landlord Lüder Lüdersen and Helga, who have resettled in the north of West Germany, albeit with difficulty in the case of the father. Living with well-to-do relatives on the picturesque Lüneburger Heath, they have had to come to terms with the new circumstances in their personal lives. Helga has settled in with ease; after all, everything seems fine in their new Heimat, 195

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which appears untouched by post-war dramas. Problems arise only when Helga’s father resumes hunting, a hobby he had enjoyed on his own property in his native Silesia, but which is against the law in post-war West Germany. The new ranger, Walter Rainer, pursues the “poacher”, catches Lüdersen in the act, and follows him through the forest back to the manor, where he attempts to fine him. However, when he meets Lüdersen’s daughter and falls in love with her, the quarrel with the offender is relegated to the back of his mind. In a parallel storyline, a circus visits the town, reuniting Helga with a long-lost friend, Nora, who plans to quit her profession and find a new life in America.146 This joyous occasion is overshadowed by the murder of a local policeman whom the authorities, personified by the district judge, suspect has been killed by the poacher. Evidence mounts against Lüdersen and, to resolve the situation, Helga is prepared to forgo her newly found love by agreeing to move to the city with her father. As they prepare to leave, Lüdersen wanders off into the heath for one last time, as if to say goodbye to his temporary home. On this occasion, he witnesses a man killing deer and attempts to stop him, only to be shot and left seriously wounded. The police manage to catch the perpetrator, a man from the circus hunting for food for the lions, and consequently regard the case as closed. No one suspects Lüdersen any longer; on the contrary, his act of bravery and his status as an innocent victim who became an invalid while defending the homeland’s laws have redeemed him, even in the eyes of the ranger, who is the only one outside the Lüdersen family who knows about his poaching.147 In line with the typical plot of a 1950s Heimat film, which ensures that the lovers come together by the film’s end, the ranger and Helga unite outside the room in which her father is recuperating, foreshadowing a larger family union. The portrayal of marriage as the ultimate goal and solution are typical of the restorative tendencies of Heimat films. In this film, the forced integration of music, dress, and uniforms is meant to appear traditional, whereas the effect is caricaturistic, and the seemingly pre-modern setting, in which the automobile seems out of place among horsedrawn carts, has been scorned by critics. The film’s naivety and triviality have provoked one critic to diagnose audiences enjoying such kitsch as suffering from “kollektiven Schwachsinn” [collective idiocy/feeble-mindedness].148 However, it is necessary to acknowledge the socio-historical background of such films as this framework will help to contextualize the plot beyond its many faults. For a nation that had participated more or less actively in the Nazis’ deeds and ideology, the creation and consumption of kitsch Heimat films may be interpreted as an attempt to escape having to coming to terms with the past by trying to depict positive as well as negative stereotypes. Films like Green Is the Heath are reflections of a nation which is suffering from an allpervasive and ever-present guilt, a nation which is trying to find scapegoats as much as distraction. Lüdersen’s activities make him knowingly guilty, but he cannot own up to his crimes and accept the punishment; the daughter, knowingly his accomplice, tries to negotiate his guilt away, as her status as daughter forbids outright confrontation and demands mediation. When the father is hurt by another poacher, a circus hand without a home—a figure not too far removed from other scapegoats of the recent German past—the fate of both men is accepted as “just punishment” for their respective sins. The 196

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circus employee is happily sacrificed by the people of the heath who want to rid the community of destabilizing elements. The criminal vagabond—who had killed a policeman and, as a result of his poaching, had been able to misappropriate the circus’s budget for horsemeat to feed the lions—is eliminated, with the Heimat film promoting a stable, ordered society as ideal and normative. “There is a ‘correct’ order of things, which must be restored or attained. The consensus omnium gives its opinion about its disruption. For the troublemaker it involves ignominy.”149 Thus the film tends to relegate Lüdersen to irrelevance, despite excuses being made for him on the basis that his transgressions are an “Externalisierung seiner Verletzung” [externalization of his feelings of hurt] and a rebellion against his loss.150 They are explained but not entirely forgiven. While the happy ending conveys hope for the next generation, the door closes on the father in his sickbed. It seems that he is not really part of the future, as he is shut-out and thus hidden, “a father, one must be ashamed of, a burden of guilt for the family to bear”.151 Lüdersen, having lost his Heimat, failed to truly integrate into this new society of his own accord, and is not constructed as a role model. Rather it is in Helga, and her youthful optimism, in which a young nation’s dreams are vested. Black Forest Girl, just like the film Green Is the Heath, condemns the parent generation as patriarchal, authoritarian, and lacking joie de vivre. At the end of both films, it is the older generation that must acknowledge its mistakes or overcome its prejudices. The father Lüdersen, as well as the Kapellmeister in Black Forest Girl, must adjust their stance and change their attitude and behaviour. Without ever mentioning any guilt, or their personal involvement with National Socialism, the correction of their behaviour hints at faults that lie in the past and that they are prepared to overcome, or at least address, by changing their ways. The war itself and the Holocaust are not thematized, despite the implied references to wartime, the film’s post-war setting, and the expulsion of the family. “Like a natural catastrophe, it has no author but unsettling repercussions: the unexplained loss of Helga’s mother, the need to accept new authority, new laws, and a new life.”152 Germany’s role as the aggressor in the war is also never mentioned, and Lüder Lüdersen and his daughter are clearly portrayed as victims. Both become sentimental heroes who represent refugees in general and plead for caring treatment by their adopted community.153 Consequently, Walter Rainer is not interested in rigorously pursuing the matter of Lüdersen’s poaching. While he is an upstanding German citizen with an acute sense of justice (and thus serves as a perfect role model), he is not dogmatic at all costs—perhaps in a conscious attempt not to repeat the mistakes of the Nazi period. So as not to endanger a developing romance, Walter does not wish to expose Lüdersen or to shame Helga, evidently understanding the difficulties of adjusting to a new society. He is satisfied when Helga mentions their planned move to the city in an attempt to help her father integrate more successfully. The matter thus seems resolved without Walter having to behave like “yet another unfeeling civil servant ‘just following orders’”.154 The reference to Nazism is clear to the German audience: “A bit of latitude goes a long way after National Socialism, and Walter is intended to be perceived as a principled humanitarian, a man with a heart—something that signals his difference from the Nazi film hero.”155 Like Black Forest

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Girl, Green Is the Heath presents a revision of masculine ideals by creating new heroes who are acceptable after 1945. Parallel to Lüdersen’s attempt to forge a new German identity, the ranger, in terms of work ethic and mentality, has changed from a Nazi to a humanitarian. Nevertheless, it is significant that he is neither a member of the national police force nor a member of another executive arm of the democratic state, although his role is that of a citizen personifying order. A patriarchal hierarchy is upheld in most Heimat films, with heroic males being personified in power players, such as “the mostly noble landholder with his forest rangers, who act as representatives of the law in the Heimat which remain undefined, which are based on ethnic-moral values and norms.”156 The ideal society has many means by which order is established and ensured. “The basically undemocratic utopias of order, which are encountered again and again in Heimat films, thus communicate a great deal about the sensitivities in Germany in the early postwar period.”157 In this supra-democratic organization, it is believed that societal order should be a god-given natural state, divorced from the dominant political climate, something which can withstand any forces that may be at play on the national level—if only the individual members of the state subscribe to this belief in a primeval order. This behaviour is particularly symptomatic of the unwillingness of individuals to take on personal responsibility after the demise of Nazism. Similar to a Wild West narrative, it is up to one man to establish law and order and to resolve any conflict. With his “Forstadjudantenuniform” [forest ranger’s uniform],158 a reminder of a melancholic longing some Germans have retained for the respect and power lent by a smart uniform, it is evidently up to Rainer to set new standards of justice. Attempts to offload responsibility to politicians and other custodians of law to restore the natural order of things proved to be one of the idées fixes of German post-war society, a fixation which Heimat film seems to have confirmed and enabled in specific ways.159 In such a society, not only were enemies neutralized on the screen, but the initial problem of the integration of newcomers (by the 1950s these were post-war expellees as well as “Übersiedler” [re-settlers] from the GDR) and impoverished members of society had also been successfully dealt with. Every “worthy” victim had been incorporated into society in a meaningful way, and the dominant members had shown the necessary degree of solidarity and empathy to ensure that the new order would have a human face. Green Is the Heath indexes and resolves “some of the very instabilities and contradictions within the spaces that postwar West Germans would preserve as Heimat”,160 promoting integration—albeit at the price of submission and assimilation. This troubling point has been repeatedly ignored by reviewers who fail to acknowledge the denigration, discrimination, and at times exorcism experienced by outsiders.161 The most prominent theme of Green Is the Heath is undoubtedly the formation of a new Germany, inclusive of the millions of refugees who had already arrived and the thousands yet to arrive before the building of the Berlin Wall ten years later. This intention is highlighted by Lüdersen’s address to his friends and acquaintances towards the end of the film: “My dear friends, allow me to say a few words […] I speak not for me alone, but for the many others who have found a second Heimat here among you. I will never forget the days I was allowed to be with you in the Heide, in the Heide 198

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that has become my second home.” These words of gratitude—spoken by a man whose nobility is evident—are followed by a plea for sympathy, as he feels for everyone who is “heimatlos” [without a Heimat], and believes one cannot truly understand the plight of these people without suffering the loss of one’s own Heimat. He establishes his connection with the people of the Heide, as well as with the land, when he stresses the healing powers of the natural surroundings: “When I was in the forests here, often I felt as if I were at home again. The natural beauty comforted me and made me forget what I have lost.” He sums up by reiterating: “I was close to losing myself. But through the goodwill and understanding you have shown me, I have found myself again. I thank you […] for all the good things you have permitted me to know.” Surrounded by Northern Germans and fellow expellees (who are notably present at the local Volksfest [public festival] in their traditional dress), Lüdersen thus “locates the lesson of Heimat in the experience of homelessness” shared by so many in post-war Germany.162 Such scenes served the purpose of psychological reassurance, as they “touched the hearts of the West Germans, who were at home here and could derive a lot of pleasure from their own generosity, as well as the hearts of those who had been driven from their homelands.”163 Nation-building was a priority and, as the film tells us, had to be pursued with vigour and rigour. In line with the aforementioned aims of the genre in the 1950s, the film marries nationbuilding efforts with entertainment, escapist strategies, and wish-fulfilment. Accordingly, Seidl describes the Heimat film genre in terms of a surrogate holiday for the impoverished masses, in which the view of nature is that of the picture postcard and is intended to instil feelings of harmony. The once dominant struggle between men and nature has been replaced by the struggle of men to become integrated into society. Nature is merely a visually pleasing backdrop, as noted in many reviews,164 for the problematization of the integration of displaced individuals into German society. Rural society is no longer under threat by nature; if at all, it is only threatened by poachers and city dwellers. In line with the use of the dichotomy between urban and rural spheres which was popular in 1950s Heimat films, Lüdersen’s punishment for poaching—the foreshadowed relocation to the city—seems like an expulsion from paradise, as the heath is presented as a perfect landscape.165 Later films cement this opposition, imposing value judgements on the urban sphere by way of negatively connotated speeding cars, hectic music, and formal attire, which are contrasted with the positive depiction of horse-drawn carts, traditional music, and livery. The natural environment is usually beautified and enhanced through editing or mise-en-scène techniques. The setting is rarely authentic but rather fictionalized: new names for villages are invented, and while the general region is specified in most cases as north, south, Alpine, Black Forest, heath landscape or coastal region, Mosel or Rhine, the exact location is purposely ambiguous or invented, for “it was not about a geographically exact and realistic depiction, but merely about an ideally typical compilation of images, impressions and moods”.166 Heimat thus becomes a staged construct, a visualized utopia or a locus amoenus. The rural Heimat without obvious signs of destruction, history, and national guilt becomes a desirable alternative to the cities with their scars, shortages, and scenes of humiliation. The countryside becomes a pars pro toto, the substitute for a 199

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whole, a select ideal of Heimat in a nation unable to fulfil the human desire for peace and harmony at the time. Heimat films represent this longing for a “replacement for the ‘big’ Heimat concept of Fatherland and Nation, after both terms had been thoroughly misused by the National Socialists […]. In this situation the Heimat film offers orientation for everyone.”167 A reaffirmation of the nation’s value is pursued successfully: “Look here, these films seem to say, this new state [...] with its green heath, its Black Forest, the Spessart Forest, the Rhine valley, the foothills of the Alps in Bavaria, the Alps.”168 Iconic images of German beauty serve to elevate the nation. “The sight of these idylls makes the audience a little proud of its Heimat after all. Which was enormously comforting for those who lived in the cities.”169 The genre offered something for everyone; not only in terms of taste and motif, but also in terms of identification, thus ensuring that the film had a broad and accepting audience within the wider society. Critics have correctly pointed out that “Heimat film made it easy for the West Germans to create a real Heimat out of the provisional Federal Republic.”170 The overall conditions for such a development were undeniably ideal in West Germany: in 1951 the country experienced an export boom, unemployment levels had reached the dream figure of 1.3 per cent, wages had risen, and Ludwig Erhard’s credo “Wohlstand für alle” [wealth for everyone] seemed to fulfil itself rapidly. A “Freßwelle” [wave of gluttony] rolled over West Germany; as if to compensate for past shortages, many people started to consume in excess of 3,000 calories a day, and regarded their increasing physical weight as a sign of their burgeoning social standing. Many carried the “Wohlstandsbauch” [belly of affluence] with pride.171 Therefore, more so than with Black Forest Girl, Green Is the Heath must have appeared as a relatively believable depiction of German society at the time. On the one hand, it still resonated with experiences of loss—“not just […] experiences of material losses, but also […] disillusionment with powerful old German fantasies of greatness.”172 On the other hand, it presented a society which bore all the hallmarks of unstoppable progress towards a better life ahead. Fittingly, a CDU-election slogan at the time was: “One notices it in the way people walk and in what they say / everywhere is on the go / for even in the lowlands things are heading up / people are enjoying the flame of life.”173 The Lüdersens are thus representative of the “rise from the ashes” which actually transpired for large parts of West German society in the early 1950s, and which must have provided a sense of identification for many. Therefore, it is unsurprising that the film was an enormous success at the time of its release, and even when first screened on television (ARD) in September 1980 it was still able to attract fifteen million viewers. This may have been indicative of the fact that the film struck a chord with those Germans who were able to vicariously relive their own traumas of loss and relocation. Germans, at least for the length of the film, were portrayed not as perpetrators of evil but as victims of circumstances: of National Socialism, followed by Allied rule and occupation. For a change—so it must have seemed to viewers—the film did not pose questions about German guilt, but instead invoked sympathy for history’s losers, although Lüdersen cannot really be seen as representative of the mainstream audience. In the manner in which the film transfers the problem of dislocation to characters of the upper class, it avoids the thematization of the real problems faced by refugees without 200

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means and connections. Lüdersen and his fellow members of the Eastern landed gentry were certainly not representative of the majority of expellees. “The large landholders were compensated with millions, the little man stayed little.”174 Therefore, Deppe seems to have unintentionally chosen a controversial figure in father Lüdersen, as he unwittingly becomes a reminder of post-war injustice in West Germany. Critics have been scornful of the film’s deceitful representation of expellee life. Lüdersen is in every respect still well-to-do: “Instead of cramped living space, too little food and unemployment it is the loss of his property and above all having to give up his beloved hunting that depress him.”175 Considering that barely thirteen per cent of expellees lost “Grund und Boden” that was their own property (the vast majority had rental arrangements), the Lüdersens’ fate is hardly representative. The vagabonds in the film are depicted in a similarly unrealistic fashion. While the life of a homeless person at the time would have been dominated by hunger, rejection, and the struggle to make a living, the three vagrants in Green Is the Heath are well-shaven, high-spirited singers and musicians who show no signs of deprivation; rather, they are ready to break into song and thus create the illusion that even the life of a homeless person is a breeze in northern Germany’s heath. Though the vagabonds’ life is romanticized, the fact that the townspeople, while being addressed by the vagabonds with a polite “Sie”, always reply with the informal “Du”, indicates that their social status is low. They receive no respect, and if the economic situation were harsher, they would be the first to be ostracized by society. Although Heimat films in the 1950s often feature such trios, musicians on the road who claim “My Heimat is the whole world”,176 these characters have not yet arrived anywhere “respectable”. Their ultimate goal must be marital union with a woman and the establishment of house and hearth. Nora’s situation and the temporary camp-like living conditions experienced by the itinerant circus workers offer an alternative response to this desire. The film features a lengthy paratelic interlude set inside the circus, similar to the spectacle that dominates Helmut Weiß’s successful circus movie Tromba (1949). Clowns, acrobats, dressage acts, and magicians are presented as light entertainment and provide a welcome distraction for the film’s protagonists as well as its real-life audience. Despite the well-presented romanticism and exoticism of circus life, which reach their culmination in the evening performance, the two spheres of circus world and heath society never merge. Other than Helga’s friend Nora, all circus folk remain outsiders, and their portrayal ranges from exotic personalities to misfits. Their status as “heimatlos” relegates them to society’s margins, visited, revered at times, but not integrated. Emotions are really only invested in those who seek to find a permanent home and help rebuild a close-knit society. Nora, the artist on horseback, is integrated only when she indicates that she intends to leave the circus and has to give up her dream of migrating to America after breaking her leg. Giving in to the courting of a local judge, she moves towards Helga’s dream of a life as a wife and mother. Initially cast as Helga’s opposite, Nora is tamed, and progresses from horseback rider to a passenger in a DKW,177 a bride-to-be. Her domestication serves to reinforce the endorsement of the patriarchal order and reintegration into West German society.178 Thus both Helga and Nora come to live the conservative dream of 1950s Germany; their fictional fate serves as pure wish-fulfilment, compensating for the reality of 201

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fractured households. Helga’s motherless existence and Nora’s orphan-like status imply the absence of members of the parent generation, although in actual fact, the missing family members were predominantly male. In an attempt to defuse the pain of such losses or confrontations, the 1950s versions of the genre largely centre on father-daughter relationships: “It is not the father who is missing in the families in the Heimat films, as this would have been much more reminiscent of the real circumstances of the German warand postwar generations.”179 By focusing more on the absence than on the conflict, many Heimat films thematize a lack of continuity as well as a generational change, which combine to relieve the next generation of the need to engage with parental guilt. In Green Is the Heath, as in other Heimat films, it is the role of the daughters to rectify past wrongs in their own lives. The reality of widowed households throughout Europe needed to be redressed in this period through the re-creation of classical nuclear family structures in the following generation. Hence, finding love and a partner for life is of paramount interest in most Heimat films. As if the construction of a family through marriage heralds a new life, the finale of Heimat films presents the happy congregation of several generations as a tableau, marvelling at a young couple’s imminent union. The reason for such monocausal logic is to be found in the experiences of the war that led to the fragmentation of families. Divorce rates were high among the couples from the war generation, where the husband had survived and returned from a prisoner-of-war camp after a long absence away from home and his wife.180 For many family units, the 1940s and early 1950s were very trying times. On the screen, the post-war generations were offered marriage as the ideal solution to past material and emotional loss; in Deppe’s Black Forest Girl as well as in Green Is the Heath, the marital union compensates for the real-life political division of East and West Germany at the time. In turning to a new generation very much in the spirit of the past, a restoration had begun that seemed to demonstrate a way forward in a return to old values and traditions. Practically speaking, marriage in the years after the war did indeed provide some with an opportunity to legitimize children born out of wedlock, to fill gaps that the war had created and to recreate—within their own society at least—harmony, unity, recognition, and admiration that West Germany would be unable to achieve on an international level for some time. In addition, marriage promised economic stability, personal fulfilment, and societal acceptance. “The withdrawal into the private sphere of marriage and family is the promise of harmony and happiness”,181 with films deliberately closing with the hopeful image of a future marriage rather than thematizing the worries and everyday problems of young married couples at the time. While the filmic scenario of a woman’s highest hopes being fulfilled in attaining the status of wife and mother may have responded to some female ideals, the promotion of this ideal certainly concurred with the political programme of the late 1940s and early 1950s. Men needed to be reintegrated into the workplace and a surplus of potential employees meant that the workforce needed to be reduced by removing the large female labour force, thus ensuring the smooth transition of returning prisoners of war into civil professions. In an effort to reinstate traditional role models, married women, 202

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like a reserve army, were sent back to domestic life, while the illusion was maintained that this choice was theirs and thus reversible at any time. In a logical extension of this illusion, Heimat films also indicated that love would be able to overcome all obstacles, including class or regional borders. Consequently, Heimat films of the early 1950s project the certainty that the protagonists’ fate will also be the sure future of the audience. No one is suffering from hunger in these films, the characters’ dress is immaculate, and life in general fairly effortless. These films do indeed present a blueprint for West Germany’s desires, a rise to comfort and happiness. The consumer goods featured in most Heimat films, ranging from sports cars to kitchen utensils, inspired viewers to shop. The very real promise of imminent satisfaction of their desires within the film’s logic contributed to West Germany’s “economic miracle”. These films fostered, just like their Nazi precursors, “the illusion of a new collective of consumers that would overcome economic competition, social struggle, regional difference, and gender conflict”.182 Like other films of the genre, Deppe’s 1951 film entertains the idea of a Heimat utopia, a place where conflicts are easily resolved, counter-productive elements are swiftly eliminated, and an equilibrium is achieved with a loving couple at its centre. The shift in locale from the south in Black Forest Girl to the north of Germany seeks to inspire in the audience the belief that the vision being presented is attainable for every region of the new nation. Accordingly, Green Is the Heath is not set (like so many other post-war Heimat films) in the high Alps in archaic villages and pre-modern settings, but literally in a border region. Like the low Black Forest mountains in Black Forest Girl, the heath landscape symbolizes a society at the crossroads of old and new, tradition and modernity, where one has the choice of ploughs and Volkswagen Beetles alike. This border phenomenon is also foregrounded in the conflicts that arise between generations and between natives and newcomers. Similarly, such regions of moderate natural beauty are promoted as alternatives to extremes (high Alps or the sea); they are places in which the struggle with nature is absent. Rather, the inviting landscape forms a pleasant backdrop for relaxation and appeals to mass tourism. It is a place where weary workers contributing to the “economic miracle” can connect with their Heimat in the form of traditions, festivities, folkloristic attire, and regional cuisine—a place untainted by the progress of modernity. The landscapes featured in the 1950s Heimat films thus aroused more of a desire to travel and to enjoy the surroundings than the urge to conquer. The locations depicted offer tourist experiences in the hope that the carefree surroundings would rejuvenate the city dwellers who were busily working towards Germany’s recovery. The portrayal of happy citizens in an unspoilt environment sharing in a country’s natural and economic improvement served as a symbol of stability, as a satisfied people would neither revolt nor desire change that could hinder or slow their revitalization. Heimat films were thus ideal propaganda tools in the post-war era, ensuring a smooth transition from destruction to reconstruction in material, familial, and existential terms. “The officially promulgated philosophy of wealth, which was willingly taken on by the majority as a collective goal, creates ideal conditions for political and social restoration.”183 History is likewise relegated to the background, mentioned in passing when one speaks of flight and loss, but not with regard 203

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to guilt or the Third Reich. It was clearly not, as many critics lamented, “Unterhaltung ohne Zeitnähe” [entertainment without contemporary references].184 With only fleeting allusions to the Nazi period, the films did not attempt any explanations; they were merely concerned with showing destinies that unite people across moral divides. Such tales were palatable and attracted five to six million viewers upon their release at the box-office, appealing to those who had lost as well as those who had gained. Mass appeal was ensured through concessions to all age groups, classes, genders, and political factions, and above all to locals and newcomers; this is evident, for example, in the songs chanted at the northern German Volksfest in Green Is the Heath, which included not only local favourites but indirectly also politically charged harmonies worshipping lost territories, such as the song “Riesengebirge, deutsches Gebirge, meine liebe Heimat, du!” [Sudeten mountains, German mountains, my dear Heimat, you!], which is sung by expellees in their traditional regional attire. The mix of dialects, traditional costumes, and songs provoked one critic in the 1950s to remark, tongue in cheek: “Whenever you […] look at German films of this period, you get the feeling that it wasn’t millions of people but instead millions of members of choral societies who were expelled from their Heimat.”185 Something was provided for every conceivable section of the population, to ensure that the product connected with the largest possible audience. The single biggest factor in harmonizing the audience was, however, achieved by presenting victims, not perpetrators, in a consumer paradise. Using this strategy, Deppe was able to renew the genre by altering its audio and visual aspects. “He succeeds […] in developing the Heimat film, [...] further into the travel film with interludes of Schlager music [...] reacting in a commercially appropriate manner to the new needs of the prosperous society.”186 Indeed, the increasingly affluent West Germans developed wanderlust and became travel hungry. On the whole, public sentiment slowly moved towards a new sense of self-confidence during the 1950s. This was obvious in West Germany’s open condemnation of the bloody suppression of protests in the GDR (culminating in the Warsaw Pact intervention on 17 June 1953 in East Berlin), the Bundesrepublik’s international success at the 1952 Winter Olympics, the 1954 Football World Cup, the declaration of West German sovereignty on 5 May 1955 and the establishment of its NATO membership four days later, the founding of the Bundeswehr [German Federal Armed Forces] in November 1955, and West Germany’s support for the European Economic Community (it became a signatory to the Treaty of Rome in 1957). The country became an international player once more, although the price of its re-entry into the world arena was the abandonment of seemingly contradictory parochial elements. It was during this period that the proportion of local films at the German box-office dwindled in comparison to foreign products, which gained increasing market share. Erika Müller, in her 1957 plea “Eine Chance für den deutschen Film” [A Chance for the German Film], stated emphatically that, in view of the 517 foreign films released in West Germany from the end of the war, eighty German productions was a dismal number, with the local industry marginalized. Towards the end of the decade, Heimat films no longer attracted the blockbuster audiences that they had only five to eight years earlier, and German films proved unpopular and un204

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marketable outside the homeland. “In earlier years we didn’t only export films in a big way, we also set the tone and exported film personalities—men like Lubitsch, Murnau, Dieterle and Berger left Germany long before 1933.”187 This was a distant memory, as in the 1950s German films were not yet competitive again abroad. They were rejected by international distributors for being too provincial, but also increasingly struck younger domestic audiences as outmoded. The sugary plots and lulling effect of the vast majority of Heimat films, which had long been the object of scorn of many film critics, had also lost their appeal to the general public. Elsaesser referred to the Heimat film trend as “something of a Bavarian cottage industry”, with “[n]eo-imperialist ‘Sissi’-films, dreaming of Viennese pastry and Hapsburg glories, the Bavarian mountain musicals, beermug-and-lederhosen comedies” persisting well into the 1960s.188 The over-representation of music and musicians, and the large amounts of leisure time supposedly enjoyed by the protagonists (“Man lebt doch hier ständig wie in den Ferien” [People live here as if they are always on holiday]),189 ultimately removed any sense of realism from 1950s Heimat films that historical references and consumer goods had been able to evoke. In some films which could also be classified as “Filmoperetten” or “Schlagerfilme” [films featuring popular German music], the entire plot was designed according to the desire to integrate as many dance, song, and musical interludes as possible. The trend towards such films seemed to increase in the late 1950s, and provoked one critic to classify the genre as follows: “Kein Heimatfilm ohne Musik […] ein triviales Singspiel” [No film without music … a trivial lyrical drama].190 Both Black Forest Girl (1950) and Green Is the Heath (1951) “established the standards and contours of the cinematic genre” which served to showcase musical performance; “indeed no film was complete without a handful of traditional Volkslieder and sentimental hits, which were simultaneously marketed on radio and records.”191 However, the questionable quality of many Heimat films did not relegate them to the rubbish bins of producers and distributors; critical disdain did not hinder popular appeal when the 1950s films were rereleased on television in the 1980s and in subsequent decades. The success of Deppe’s films in the 1950s and again from the 1980s onwards is certainly due in part to its visual and acoustic compositions. “For nature lovers there are landscapes like those in picture books, lovers of music can indulge themselves in choir music one moment and in Tschintara the next, and whoever wishes to feast on dance, is offered […] a potpourri.”192 The screening of Heimat films on television coincided with a wave of folk music shows on prime-time television, enabling an increasingly ageing audience to relive their youth with the help of the sights and sounds from their past. In the 1950s this mix guaranteed large cinema audiences, and Heimat films produced in subsequent years “are always linked very strongly with regard to dramaturgy, personnel and motifs to Black Forest Girl and Green Is the Heath, copying and quoting from them”.193 Despite these obvious prototypes, it is surprising how many of today’s critics and academics are at odds with their remarks regarding the genre. Generalizations such as that made by Trimborn in 1998, when he claimed a city versus country juxtaposition was a necessary fixture of the Heimat film,194 have not aided in the analysis of a genre that is definitely more complex than such blanket statements would indicate. These films warrant closer analysis and are not easily rejected as 205

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junk, as others have recommended when they condemn Deppe’s films, for example, as hastily, badly and carelessly shot: “quickly and messily […] The Lüneburg heath is basically like the first cheap rug that you put down in your own laboriously built home in 1951 […] to make you forget your fear of the suppressed ghosts of the past.”195 The deficiencies of the genre, which have been highlighted by many critics, tell us more about the expectations of those critics than about the reality of the genre, as Heimat films of the 1950s, despite their references to socio-cultural aspects of contemporary German society, did not attempt to critically examine Germany’s immediate past, present, or likely future. The “reality” shown on film did not mirror the times, nor analyse historical events, political processes, or social frictions. “The Heimat film distances itself quite consciously from reality, it is not its goal to show the real world in which people are living.”196 Guilt, the Nazi period, and complex social questions are not tackled, although neither are they entirely blocked out. Critics have at times commented in unfairly general terms, “Heimat films provide concrete and telling evidence of the way the Germans handled their past after 1945.”197 Others lament that the genre films of the 1950s were indicative of a “gestörtes Verhältnis zur Geschichte” [a troubled relationship with the past].198 However, this was never the intention of the genre; rather these films looked towards the future and were intended to be an “illustration of a myth of a just and humane society in the Federal Republic”.199 They expressed a return to utopian concepts in a dynamic period of reconstruction and reorientation, and with their integrative forces— due to their response to common anxieties and dreams—constituted an appeal to the lowest common denominator of West Germany with regard to taste. Heimat films became a framework for interpreting national and regional development into a teleological framework with a happy ending, evoking “empathy and identity with its subject matter, rather than understanding of it”.200 Thus the genre’s intent in the 1950s was to show a world that respectfully fulfilled people’s dreams. While not detaching itself entirely from people’s reality (expulsion, loss, material and psychological hardship), films like Black Forest Girl and Green Is the Heath uphold a belief in miracles and a potentially wonderful future.

Sönke Wortmann’s The Miracle of Bern (2003) If critics insist that films can be read as a mirror of history and a seismograph for a society’s sensitivities, then Sönke Wortmann’s Das Wunder von Bern [The Miracle of Bern], which recalls the German victory at the 1954 Football World Cup, is just as telling as Deppe’s films. Although the plot concerns an historical event and the film reveals a certain desire for authenticity, it also tells the critical viewer as much about the period depicted as it does about the likely and intended audience in the twenty-first century. At a time when the economic and political reality of Germany did not provide much reason for national pride—for example, in the years of the post-unification blues at the turn of the millennium—many Germans enjoyed reliving better times. West German foundation myths,201 such as the fledgling country’s unlikely football win over Hungary’s national team in the World Cup finals in Switzerland in 1954, and the heights of the “economic miracle” it attained barely ten years 206

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after the end of the Second World War, seemed ideal stories with which to elevate German spirits at a time when both the current and forecast state of affairs seemed dismal. Nostalgia was definitely “in”. Wortmann’s film transports the audience back to the “good old days” in the mid-1950s, when West Germany was “Fußballweltmeister, Konsumweltmeister, Verdrängungsweltmeister” [football champions, consumer champions, champions of suppression].202 The film is psychologically sensitive, attempting to appeal to the audience in their current situation. The grey images of the Kohlenpott [coal pot] or Ruhrgebiet [Ruhr region, the centre of Germany’s heavy industry powered by miners and labourers] allow a glimpse of a working-class existence in the first decade after the war. The environment is polluted and forlorn. As if the images of the streets had been shot underground, they seem devoid of light and colour. The opening scene focuses on a group of children—dressed in what appear to be more rags than clothes—who are waiting for a carrier pigeon to return with the results of a football match played outside town. One of them is eleven-year-old Matthias Lubanski, whose cheeks are dirt-smeared. His mother and two older siblings run the local pub, and he has grown up without knowing his prisoner-of-war father, who is missing in the Soviet Union. In the lives of an under-privileged and poverty-stricken community, football achieves paramount importance as a spectacle which can provide feelings of success and euphoria. Despite his own inability to play the game, Matthias is a great fan of the local team RotWeiss Essen and acts as the personal mascot of its star player Helmut Rahn (also called the Boss), carrying his bag to and from training. The film intertwines the narratives of West Germany’s regional and national football teams with Matthias’s family tale, and later on with the life of the sports reporter Ackermann, who covers the events in Bern for the German media. Presented in parallel with the reconciliation of the returning soldier Richard Lubanski and his son Matthias, the son he has never met, are German football’s rise to world fame and the Wirtschaftswunderwelt [economic miracle world] of Paul and Annette Ackermann. While the 1954 World Cup win constitutes a factual part of the plot, all the other events are fictitious, albeit semi-realistic: mother Lubanski, who has diligently raised her three children without a father, Richard Lubanski the prisoner of war and member of the “betrogene Generation” [deceived generation],203 and the Ackermanns are all representative of certain demographics present in 1950s German society. The film is not afraid to call upon stereotypes: with his lederhosen and blond hair, Matthias is a recognizably German child, and Annette Ackermann, the German Fräuleinwunder [girl wonder], dolled up and ready for procreation, is not too far removed from the archetypal image of young women portrayed in the glossy magazines of the time.204 The film’s prologue explores Matthias’s childhood before his father’s return, and thus outlines a status quo from which a gradual transformation takes place. The surroundings of Matthias’s neighbourhood still bear the hallmarks of the immediate past, as the war left gaps in families and buildings alike. Without mentioning the 3.5 million civilian deaths, the hundreds of thousands of war wounded, the fact that sixty-five per cent of the population was female, and that twelve million German men remained in prisoner-of-war camps after the war, the film gives a muted sense of West 207

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Germany’s initial hardship. Fatherless and struggling financially, Matthias’s family is exemplary of working-class battlers at the time. While the Western Allies had freed their last inmates in 1948, by 1950 the Soviet Union had yet to confirm the whereabouts of some 30,000 men reported missing, thus explaining the initial absence of Matthias’s father, who is feared dead in Russia. Post-war society was dominated by Trümmerfrauen such as Mrs Lubanski, who worked tirelessly to support their families and to rebuild society. In the absence of her husband, she has taken on the role of breadwinner and entered the typically male profession of publican,205 helped by her three children; teenagers Ingrid and Bruno work as a barmaid and band player, and Matthias deals in tobacco scrounged from old cigarette butts. Following the workers’ uprising in East Germany on 13 June 1953 and its crushing by Russian tanks, the Soviet Union released twelve thousand German prisoners of war, perhaps as a conciliatory gesture. Richard Lubanski was one of these veterans who arrived in West Germany in 1954.206 His last name betrays his Eastern European origins, and it is likely that his forefathers were migrants from Poland who had settled in the Ruhr region during Germany’s late industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. Bismarck’s German Empire owed its economic hegemony to such migrants, yet in the 1950s the “economic miracle” seemed to bypass these people. Mr Lubanski’s misfortune is aggravated by the fact that he is an uneducated labourer, has lost nearly fifteen years of his life through his involvement in the war as a soldier and then as a prisoner of war, and now faces enormous difficulties readjusting to his family and workplace.207 The actor playing Mr Lubanski reflects: “For me that is some-one who has lost his Heimat. And by Heimat I mean family. Now he is searching. […] This character is empty. It has lost its identity.”208 Unaware of his youngest son and rejected by his first-born, he is a somewhat broken father figure; moreover, as a former soldier and de facto Nazi supporter, it seems there are few remaining values upon which he can build a new life. Richard Lubanski is a man keen to forget his past, yet also unable to adjust to the present. His oldest offspring, Bruno, a character with high moral values through whom the film introduces the generational conflict, is a member of the Communist Party (KPD) and presents himself as a rebel with a political cause. The accusations of complicity with Nazism which he levels at his father—in a glimpse of the conflict to come between the 1968 generation and their parents—are the basis of his rejection of Richard. Bruno undermines his father’s authority and competence in public on numerous occasions, although his anger is directed not only at his father’s past and present shortcomings but also at contemporary West German society in general. He feels drawn towards the “better” half of Germany and subsequently migrates to the communist East209—on the one hand, defusing the tensions within the family and, on the other, putting to rest all hopes for the rapprochement of father and son, West and East. In parallel with the story of the Lubanski family, the film introduces two other storylines representative of 1950s society, those of the Ackermanns and the sports scene. Both provide the opportunity to foreground material and spiritual success stories: the Ackermanns as the prototypical German dream couple, and the football team, its coach, and sports-shoe supplier as vehicles of the German economic and national dream. Adi Dassler, the real-life 208

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founder of Adidas, the company which developed shoes with superior “technology”—screw studs—is represented by a fictional character who visits the football team in their training camp. The unorthodox trainer, Sepp Herberger, and the football star and golden boy, Fritz Walter, complete the colourful world of an elite sport which rewarded its winners with millions of Deutschmarks, despite the fact that it was more a serious hobby than a profession for players at that time. Before the film ends, every character is shown to struggle. Upon his return home, Richard Lubanski resents his son’s obsession with football in general and, in particular, Helmut Rahn’s role as a paternal substitute. Sepp Herberger struggles with the discipline of some of his players and with the media and general public who do not understand his training, playing, and psychological strategies, while the newly married Ackermanns struggle to prioritize holidays over work. Having decided to forgo their honeymoon upon being offered the opportunity to cover the World Cup in Switzerland, competency issues in understanding Herberger’s methods are played out between the “expert” husband and his more intuitive wife, who takes to the sport with a passion. By the end of the film, all quarrels are resolved and all differences seem to have been neutralized, when the parallel worlds unite in pan-national euphoria. The film at first contrasts the Ackermanns’ life in fashionable Munich, particularly their modern, stylish, and luxurious house, with Matthias’s home in the Ruhr region, with its drab and depressed atmosphere. Nevertheless, the Lubanskis prove their potential for social mobility when Richard impersonates the reporter Ackermann upon finding his press card. Football serves as a great equalizer between the classes and also between family members. Son Matthias has gradually been able to draw his father into his world, which is dominated by the emotional rollercoaster of football matches, team membership, and support for regional and eventually national identity; the father ultimately rewards his son with a trip to Switzerland to see the final. In a moment of magic realism, Matthias passes Helmut Rahn the football from the sidelines, which directly results in Rahn shooting the winning goal. The resurrection of the father-figure from a broken, traumatized, and brutalized former prisoner of war to an integrated member of family and society mirrors the gradual emergence of the German national team from underdogs to champions in the international community, symbolizing West Germany’s phoenix-like emergence from the ashes and its integration into world politics. For both the Lubanski duo and the Ackermanns, the journey to Switzerland becomes a rite of passage into a world in which traditional Heimat images are not outmoded and where success is attainable. The rediscovery of Heimat in this film is realized visually in saturated colour images with iconographic imagery ranging from Alpine lakes and Alp horns to traditional attire and architecture, as well as the variety of dialects in the different German-speaking regions. The sun is shining and the flowers are blooming in the Alpine resorts, providing picture-perfect panoramas which evoke a holiday feel. In the closing scene, the train with football team and father and son Lubanski on board—a luxury coach that seems to be concrete proof of the “economic miracle”,210 contrasting sharply with the cattle-wagon in which the prisoner of war had returned earlier in the same year—rolls into 209

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the pink sky, bringing colour, hope, and euphoria into the darkest corners of Germany. “The train is greeted by a few folk standing in golden fields of wheat and waving as the garlanded train passes by. A horse-drawn cart and two people on bicycles complete the idyllic picture, which strongly evokes the intense and slightly lurid colors of the 1950s Heimat film, as well as its tendency to integrate tradition with modernity in irresistible, if contrived, ways.” 211

Iconography and themes from 1950s Heimat films are integrated into Wortmann’s opus on numerous occasions, with one example provided by his use of escapist strategies. For Matthias, who senses his father’s rejection of him, the rabbit cage behind their run-down house becomes a favourite refuge. It is the only place in the mining town where colours seem to prevail. Here Matthias feels safe, protected, sheltered, and understood. This Heimat idyll is destroyed by his father when he slaughters Matthias’s pet for a festive meal on his mother’s birthday. However, it is also his father who shows him a larger Heimat, larger than the rabbit cage and Rot-Weiss Essen, even larger than the Lubanski family—a national Heimat. Matthias’s innocent enthusiasm for football in turn provides the catalyst for his father’s renewal and his fresh start in the young country. Both are united in their sense of pride and achievement. Indeed, the football victory became a very real turning-point in German national identity. The years of guilt and shame seemed to have ended, just as the time of material hardship appeared to have been overcome with the “economic miracle”; West Germany had proven to itself and to others that the vanquished nation was rebuilding itself and was able to compete on the world stage again. International recognition proved vital to the young country’s self-esteem, as it forced the world to recognize West Germany’s achievements publicly and to endorse the country as a role model, at least in the world of football. However, in line with 1950s Heimat ideals, the rise of German national pride did not go hand in hand with a general emancipation and liberation. On the contrary, the characterization of both Mrs Ackermann and Mrs Lubanski foreshadows a conservative trend in society. Clearly self-confident, competent, and independent, Mrs Ackermann is the embodiment of the German Fräuleinwunder. She is fashion-conscious, well-mannered, loves luxury, and happily fulfils her domestic role as wife and mother-to-be. Initially the dominant partner in her relationship with her young husband—it is she who makes the decisions about holiday plans and work opportunities, and also proves herself to be the better sports analyst and commentator—she forgoes a potential career for motherhood. She is a catalyst in the process of her husband’s empowerment, necessitating as the next logical step her increasing subjugation. This process is also evident in her working-class counterpart: for Mrs Lubanski, her husband’s physical and psychological recovery means that he will return to work, if not in the mine then at least in the pub. It seems certain that he will eventually take over from his wife. While many 1950s Heimat films glorify the traditional role of young women, by documenting the short phase of proven independence and career aspirations necessitated by post-war conditions, Wortmann’s film highlights the conflicts associated with retrograde gender roles in working-class families. Mrs Lubanski is not 210

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prepared to return to domestic duties and instead continues with her increasingly successful business. The 1950s film versions often depict the apparently happy reintegration of Trümmerfrauen and Fräuleinwunder into a conservative family structure which favoured the traditional female roles of mother and housewife. Wortmann’s film foregrounds the underlying battles and highlights the forgone opportunities associated with this conservative transformation. Nevertheless, he ultimately portrays the empowerment of the male characters—and the retreat of the females into the private sphere—as a sign of normalization. While Black Forest Girl and Green Is the Heath still depict joyful family unions, and nurturing daughters who submit to a patriarchal order, in Wortmann’s film the mid-1950s are portrayed as less homogeneous. The younger characters are shown to be in a heightened state of restlessness, with American culture, thinking, music, and fashion widening the rift between the generations. While Americanism became shorthand for liberation for some of the young generation, the “old guard”—in an attitude similar to the antiAmerican sentiment that had existed in the 1920s and 30s—saw it in negative terms as a sign of decline and moral corruption. Matthias’s siblings feel drawn to imports such as American cigarettes and jeans, and see James Dean and Marlon Brando as their role models, unlike their parents. This is evident in his brother’s membership of a rock ’n’ roll band and his sister’s love of everything American, highlighted when she dances to rock ’n’ roll music with an American soldier. Richard Lubanski does not agree with either of his older children’s choices, and rejects their modern ways in the strongest manner. While he identifies contemporary demons in such Americanization of German society, he is initially unable to face up to the demons of his own past. Jewish-German author Gila Lustiger writes about her family history: “We were and are a family that considerately remains silent about the past. That is what we are like.”212 The Lubanskis try a similar tactic and are thus quite representative of the way in which many Germans, notwithstanding guilt or victim status, religion or ideology, failed to engage with the recent Nazi past during the 1950s. In West German society in the late 1960s, this behaviour provoked an outspoken rejection of the parent generation by their children; Wortmann’s film shows that tensions are already simmering in 1954. Although Heimat films very often feature tense conflicts between generations that must be overcome in the course of the plot’s action, the topic was approached in a more roundabout way in the 1950s, in a symbolic confrontation between the value systems of the generations represented by father and daughter. Wortmann’s Heimat film, however, dealing with the 1950s from the distant perspective of fifty years, is able to prod old wounds without flinching. Now father and son can clash openly. Accused of being a Nazi and a Mitläufer [collaborator] by his older son Bruno, Richard Lubanski fumbles for justifications and explanations. However, the differences in the way this issue is dealt with run deeper still. While the 1950s films were keen to resolve any problems and bridge the gap, usually by showing the child ready to sacrifice aspects of her belief system while also having the parent generation show its readiness for compromise, Wortmann allows the conflict to develop along different lines. Father and Bruno become estranged, communication between the two breaks down, and it seems unlikely that the 211

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pair will ever be reconciled. Only the younger son, still less dogmatic and politically aware, is able to be impressed by his father’s haphazard attempts at making up for past mistakes, his clumsy efforts at explaining away his involvement in the war, and his inability to own up to any infatuation with Nazism. Nevertheless, the reconciliation between Matthias and his father and the victory of the German national football team ensure an overwhelming sense of a happy ending for the audience and guarantee that, just like its 1950s counterparts, this contemporary Heimat film provides for the resolution of cross-cultural and cross-generational conflicts.213 The musical score dramatically underlines moments of drama and victory, evoking strong emotions and transcending cultures. It intensifies both the experience of loss and gain, and foregrounds the intensity of extreme passions felt by individuals from all walks of German life. However, by not homogenizing German society and by pointing to its injustices and inconsistencies, the film is truer to its time in this respect than many 1950s productions. Gender equality was not yet a reality in Germany; it was not until 1957 that women were given the right to work or to continue to work after marriage without the consent of their husbands, and only in that year did they gain the right to manage their own financial affairs (although interest-bearing accounts in the name of the female partners were still managed and controlled by their husbands)214 or win recognition as equal partners under law (Gleichberechtigungsgesetz, 1957). The film also comments on the growing phenomenon of individualism in society. Not equality, but rather a reward structure was desired by everyone who believed Ludwig Erhard’s credo that wealth was attainable for all, if only they applied themselves assiduously to the task at hand. Although the film’s aesthetics initially aim to contrast the drabness and lack of colour and light of the Ruhr region with the urban environment surrounding the Ackermanns’ abode, which oozes wealth and comfort and is filled with light and consumer goods, the plot suggests that the well-to-do Ackermanns are not so much the class enemies of the Lubanskis as the embodiment of their aspirations. The Ackermanns’ picture-perfect residence becomes the promise of the Lubanskis’ future if their pub continues to make a profit. By restoring his father to his rightful position of breadwinner and role model, Matthias aids Richard in his rehabilitation so that he is ultimately fit to rejoin those who have already progressed during the period of economic recovery. Indeed, future prosperity seemed likely for the majority who were already surrounded with the evidence of a better life. “Economic growth resulted in better nutrition, better clothes, and better living quarters, in the beginnings of the wave of modernization and surge of holiday traffic, in reconstruction and new buildings in cities.”215 However, it is at this point that the film becomes problematic. A glance at the goals of 1950s Heimat films confirms that The Miracle of Bern is not so much a film about the 1950s but a film that appears to be from the 1950s: selective in its perspective, sugary in its pacifying effect, unifying in its attempt at nation-building, and highly selective in its gaze. Like its 1950s counterparts, the film focuses on German victims at the expense of the victims of the innumerable Nazi crimes. Although some critics have argued that Mr Ackermann could be Jewish, the film itself does not provide any clues to this end other than the possibly Jewish last name. Rather, the film 212

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focuses on the fate of ordinary Germans, “on the apparent ‘impossibility’ of their circumstances, choices and varying (mis)fortunes”.216 By constructing Mr Lubanski’s return with the intent of evoking sympathy from the audience, the film loses sight of the atrocities and barbarism which marked Nazi Germany’s invasion of the east and the plight of those persecuted and dispossessed individuals he must have encountered in the previous fifteen years. The director seems to have forgotten the Wehrmacht [Hitler’s armed forces] scandal of 1995, which debunked the mythology that Hitler’s army was an essentially “honourable institution misled by a bungling madman [as] was encouraged by the war memoirs produced by high-ranking officers during the 1950s”.217 Matthias essentially perceives his father to be a victim of the war, which was exactly the way most prisoners of war wished to be seen at that time.218 Critics have therefore raised concerns that the film not only conflates the different causes and extent of German and Jewish trauma, but even goes as far as substituting Jewish suffering with German suffering as “it seems that Jews are no longer required: the German ‘family’ can be reconstituted without them”.219 The rebirth of the family unit is shown to go hand in hand with a national rebirth, through the celebration of the achievements of West Germany. The perception of the World Cup victory as paradigmatic of West German reconstruction—something Wortmann stresses in his film—has a long tradition.220 Already back in 1954, the event was viewed in the context of (West) Germany’s resurgence after 1945.221 However, as Plowman points out,222 even here the director prefers a selective reading. No mention is made of the displays of national pride at the time that revealed problematic, crypto-Nazi tendencies, when part of the jubilant crowd started chanting the forbidden first verse of Germany’s national anthem, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” [according to Fallersleben’s original intent, referring to holding in one’s heart and mind “Germany, Germany above everything else”], rather than the official third verse, “Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit” [Unity and justice and freedom].223 Wortmann’s film glosses over such controversies, allowing the audience to indulge, uncritically, in the euphoria of the time.224 Tongue in cheek, the cleaning lady advising Sepp Herberger may also have a suggestion for academics and politicians when she recommends—in a tip that turns out to provide the winning formula—a little less discipline and control, as well as more understanding and turning a blind eye. Coincidentally, this was also the strategy of the traditional 1950s Heimat films. The focus on a historical sporting event as a positive affirmation of social integration and national harmony, coupled with a peaceful return of Germans to the political arena, should be seen in the context of such a reductive perspective. “We are someone to be reckoned with once more, because we are achieving something together was the “gemeinschaftsstiftende Propaganda” [propaganda creating a sense of community] of those times.225 The Miracle of Bern does, however, allow glimpses into a country in which Nazi rhetoric is still favoured by some. Wortmann, himself a former professional football player, integrates anecdotes, made-up stories, and also real letters of complaint sent to German coach Herberger into the film, providing insight into the brutalized rhetoric of some sections of the West German population. One letter from a disgruntled fan recommends: “Herr Herberger, when the national coach doesn’t know what spectators expect at 213

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times like this then he should buy a rope and hang himself from the nearest tree—but preferably in a way that the rope can be used again.” That National Socialist values are still foremost in some people’s minds is also evident in remarks like “Ein deutscher Junge weint nicht” [German boys don’t cry]. Thus The Miracle of Bern is, to some extent, a “psychogram” of the 1950s as much as it is an indicator of German affairs at the time of its release. It is a heart-warming crowd-pleaser that has won audience awards at festivals in Germany and Switzerland, recalling the manner in which the 1950s Heimat films resonated with popular audiences. In accordance with Heimat film intentions, The Miracle of Bern presents not only an image of regional integration in which the Federal Republic comes together as a nation, but also one in which pan-German identities in general unite. This is reflected in the diverse backgrounds of the Lubanskis and Ackermanns, in the composition of the national football team, and the film’s inclusion of fans from East Germany. The film shows a miraculous unity, in which rich and poor, young and old, East and West—including Bruno Lubanski and his new East German comrades, wearing the uniform of the GDR socialist youth organization—are all able to celebrate the achievement. The 2003 film thus provides today’s Germans—in their not-yet-so-successfully-united nation—with an accomplishment, by focusing on the miracle of Bern in 1954 as an event common to their histories and a positive start for an appraisal of their similarities. Like the 1950s Heimat films, Wortmann’s The Miracle of Bern is in the business of nation formation; it combines an affirmative construction of the origins of the Federal Republic with a representation of inner unity. While the “highly symbolic act of reconciliation” in the 1950s Heimat films occurred “during folk festivals, religious holidays, and communal celebrations”,226 the football match in Bern serves a similar purpose. The shots of Bruno and his East German comrades cheering for the West German team are also indicative of this, as their euphoria projects back onto 1954 the dream of German unity. In doing so, the film subscribes thematically to the pan-German Heimat myth. In keeping with the genre, the film promotes reconciliation and unity as contemporary projects, similar to the way wish-fulfilment, marriage, prosperity, and international acclaim were projects in the 1950s. Wortmann wishes to instil a belief in miracles by showing at least one coming true. Here, the film connects aesthetically to the Heimat film tradition while also integrating Hollywood values. The colour-saturated trip taken by father and son through the Alps on their way to Bern—a rather roundabout route—can only be explained as an attempt to provide the sort of images that were ubiquitous in the Heimat films of the early 1950s. The idyllic sun-filled shots, similar to those depicted on the Swiss postcards that confront the Ackermanns and the national team in their hotel in Spiez, show neither traces of war nor of the struggles of working class, and are therefore a blueprint for the future desired by Germany. At the same time, sporting heroes like Rahn and women like Annette Ackermann could just as easily be part of any American production. Emotionally powerful stories with feel-good sentiment, in which attractive men surrounded by adoring and adorable women experience a happy ending, never seem entirely out of fashion. “The miracle of Bern” helped a nation in the mid 1950s—as it has the potential to do now—to rebound: at that time from years of Nazism, war, and poverty, and now from economic and psychological hardship. In Germany, 214

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the 1954 World Cup constituted a seminal moment in national history, much like the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Wortmann seems to suggest that in reliving the euphoria of 1954, today’s Germans can grasp the chance presented to them fifty years ago with similar enthusiasm: “Fifty years after the Miracle of Bern the German Football Union wants to remind [the German people] of the great success. For Germany the Football-World Championship […] meant the re-entry into the international community of nations.”227 For this reason, the film has been classified under the rubric of “Westalgie” films,228 a parallel movement to the “Ostalgie” wave. While “Ostalgie” in film, literature, and products celebrated East German culture and resurrected consumer items and traditions that initially did not stand a chance in a freemarket economy, “Westalgie”—not without a sense of irony229—celebrates the achievements of West German society before 1989. Accordingly, The Miracle of Bern deals retrospectively with one foundation myth of the young Federal Republic, thereby fulfilling not only the Westalgie criteria but also the purposes of 1950s Heimat film, namely, nation building, resurrecting worthy aspects of older times, allowing for wish-fulfilment on screen, appeasing generational differences, and supporting a male-dominated society. The producer, Hanno Huth, confessed: “To my own bafflement, I have ascertained that I like producing Heimat films the most.”230 Just like any myth, The Miracle of Bern aims “to explain, to reconcile, to guide action or to legitimise”,231 in this instance, the re-emergence of West Germany and its readmission into a league of respectable and successful nations after the Second World War. This narrative is obviously a lot more palatable to German audiences than to international ones, as was reflected in the film’s exclusively domestic critical acclaim, especially as it offers hope for a brighter future for Germans. Like other Heimat films, The Miracle of Bern not only allows German audiences an escapist experience while watching the film but also promises triumph and heralds a self-fulfilling prophecy of recurrence. This mythical tale is concerned with past events and affords them a special meaning and significance for the present, namely, the potential for them to recur. History seemed to allow for just that. Deutschland—Ein Sommermärchen [Germany—A Summer’s Tale], Wortmann’s docu-drama about the 2006 Football World Cup Championships in Germany, sees him continue with his nation-building exercise. While the celebration of the “Helden von Bern” [heroes of Bern], elevating “the German people, who had been sorely afflicted by the war”,232 was used as a political tool by sporting officials and Wortmann alike, both renewed their partnership by allowing Wortmann to accompany the team in 2006. Following in the footsteps, methodologically speaking, of Stéphane Meunier’s Les Yeux dans le Bleus [Eyes on the French National Team] documentary of the 1998 World Cup hosted by France, Wortmann again evokes images of unity when he recalls his sense of belonging, standing “Arm in Arm”233 among the German football stars and being part of the big family: “From this moment on I have not just said ‘we’, but also meant ‘we’.”234 Wortmann documents the atmosphere in the summer of 2006 that led to a euphoric embracing of the sport and its national team. In Germany: A Summer’s Tale, Wortmann reflects on his personal experiences as having been “in the middle of a dream, which millions were dreaming in Germany at the time”,235 and compares the importance of this mass movement to the effect of the football events in 215

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Bern: “In 1954 the German national team gave the young Federal Republic its first feeling of self-esteem, in 2006 a German national team helped a country to like itself.”236 This assessment was echoed by Jürgen Klinsmann, the head coach, who was the catalyst for the transformation from a depressed and fragmented nation to a jubilant and united one: “We wanted to show that we could build an identity, in which everyone can see themselves reflected […]. That is cultural change”.237 The seeds for this development had already been sown with Wortmann’s representation of the 1954 miracle as a Heimat dream, and again flourished in 2010 when Germany’s soccer team repeated its transformation of the country into a sea of black, red, and gold. Heimat films, especially in the form of the 1950s clichés, may have been declared dead and dangerous, but the genre is certainly alive in today’s German film industry in numerous adaptations and transformations. Now, as then, the genre provides a “simultaneously regressive and progressive fantasy of belonging that enlist[s] the well-known iconography of Heimat in the creation of a new collective identity based on more contemporary visions of modernisation, industrialisation, and commercialisation.”238 The roles played by Willi Fritsch and Rudolf Prack in the 1950s and Roy Black in the 1970s have been inherited by Hansi Hinterseer in the 1990s and Joseph Bierbichler ever since, albeit in films of sometimes considerable merit. However, even with art cinemas’ discovery of the Alps and Heimat, the less sophisticated productions with 1950s charm have also survived, less so in cinema, with the exception of The Miracle of Bern. The charm and simplicity of 1950s Heimat films survived in TV productions, where standard shots of the Alps, women in folk attire, as well as the obligatory love story have remained a constant. Many contemporary TV productions, such as Peter Sämann’s two-part TV feature Im Tal des Schweigens [In the Valley of Silence, 2004] or the seemingly endless TV features with singer and actor Hansi Hinterseer—Da wo die Berge sind [There Where the Mountains Are, 2000], Da wo die Liebe wohnt [There Where Love Resides, 2003], both directed by Kurt Ockermüller, Da wo die Heimat ist [There Where Heimat Is, 2004], Da wo die Herzen schlagen [There Where Hearts Beat, 2005], Da wo das Glück beginnt [There Where Happiness Begins, 2006], all directed by Karl Kases—seem more like adaptations of 1950s genre films than progressive developments of the genre. The unbroken popular appeal of the old formula (mountains, lovers, sunshine) seems to corrupt even renowned actors such as Götz George, who has taken on roles of the most formulaic nature in contemporary Heimat films, for example, playing the reserved northern German Hannes who is converted to a lederhosen-wearing lover in Hajo Gies’s Alpenglühen [Alpenglow, 2003] and its sequel Liebe versetzt Berge [Love Moves Mountains, 2005]. The reception of these films, as well as Wortmann’s Heimat film, clearly reflected a shift in audience preferences in the first decade of the new millennium, which saw the “discovery” of popular film and the “rehabilitation” of popular genres of the 1950s and 60s, in both consumer tastes and scholarship.239 Just how far Wortmann’s film corresponds to the 1950s Heimat ideal, rather than being a critical evaluation of the historic event, can be seen when compared to the treatment which Germany’s victory over the Hungarian team in 1954 received in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die Ehe der Maria Braun [The Marriage of Maria Braun, 1979]. That film ends with the moment when “the game was won and thus lost simultaneously. […] For Fassbinder, this 216

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victory marks a turning point in the direction the Federal Republic took in establishing its democracy and a failed opportunity to reflect on Germany’s fascist past.”240 An examination of Fassbinder’s (and his contemporaries’) understanding of German society and its relationship to its troubled history— including the concept of Heimat and its associated film genre—can shed light on the nature of Wortmann’s film as much as on its alternative, the critical Heimat film.

NOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7 8

9

10 11

Cf. Frank Grube and Gerhard Richter, Die Schwarzmarktzeit (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1979). The term was used euphemistically to denote a period that was dominated by suffering and humiliation for many. “Der Ökonomismus des ‘Organisierens’, die Symbiose von Anarchie und Selbstregulation der ‘freien’ Marktkräfte, schließlich ein als ‘EllenbogenGesellschaft’ moralisch in Verruf geratener, gleichwohl zu keinem Zeitpunkt politisch reflektierter Überlebenswille: dies war der Stoff, aus dem ein geschlagenes Volk mühsam seine nationale Substanz, seine tägliche Orientierung, aber auch seine Mythen und Träume rekonstruierte.” Klaus Kreimeier, “Die Ökonomie der Gefühle: Aspekte des westdeutschen Nachkriegsfilms”, in Hilmar Hoffmann and Walter Schobert (eds.), Zwischen Gestern und Morgen: Westdeutscher Nachkriegsfilm, 1946‒1962 (Frankfurt: Union-Druckerei, 1989), pp. 8‒28, here p. 10. “Zigaretten gegen Leicas….” [Cigarettes in exchange for Leicas.] Alfred Grosser, Geschichte Deutschlands seit 1945 (Munich: dtv, 1978), p. 79. Cf. Billy Wilder’s film A Foreign Affair (1948). The Marshall Plan, the popular name given to the US initiative “European Recovery Program”, was started in 1947 (initially for five years) and set out to rebuild Western Europe in an effort to curb the influence of communism in the post-war era. In the original: “zum größten Teil aus dem Personal des Dritten Reichs. Denn mit den wenigen Unbelasteten war kein Staat zu machen.” Henryk M. Broder, “Knechte des Gesetzes: Wie der Rechtsstaat seine Richter fand”, Der Spiegel, 20 (1999), pp. 120‒30, here p. 121. Cf. Ursula Bessen, Trümmer und Träume. Nachkriegszeit und fünfziger Jahre auf Zelluloid. Deutsche Spielfilme als Zeugnisse ihrer Zeit. Eine Dokumentation (Bochum: Studienverlag Dr N. Brockmeyer, 1989), p. 79. Anon., “Montag eröffnen die Kinos”, Ruhr Zeitung, 27 July 1945. Cf. Seán Allan, “DEFA: An Historical Overview”, in Seán Allan and John Sandford (eds.), DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946‒1992 (New York: Berghahn, 1999), pp. 1‒21, here p. 2. In the original: “grüne Idyllen statt Schuttberge und harmonisches Familienleben statt Heimkehrerschicksale”. Johannes Hirschler, “Hauptsache warm und unpolitisch: Kino in der Wiederaufbauzeit”, WDR.DE, 14 Oct. 2005. In the original: “Gerade für Jugendliche bot das Kino die seltene Möglichkeit, unbeobachtet zusammenzukommen.” Ibid. In the original: “Man hielt sich die Augen und die Ohren zu, wollte nichts mehr vom Dritten Reich wissen und ebensowenig von den realen Begleitumständen der Okkupationstatsachen. Man wollte nichts mehr von Kollektivschuld hören,

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14

15

16

17

18

19

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21 22 23 24

sondern lachen und träumen.” Arthur Maria Rabenalt, Die Schnulze: Capriccios über ein sämiges Thema (Berlin and Munich: Kreisselmeier, 1959), p. 52. In the original: “Das Publikum ist gebannt von der wohlausgestatteten, harmonischen Filmwelt, in der seine Sehnsüchte und Wünsche erahnt und reproduziert werden.” Gertrud Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre: Heide und Silberwald”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm: Bildwelten und Weltbilder: Bilder, Texte und Analysen zu 70 Jahren deutscher Filmgeschichte (Tubingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1989), pp. 69‒95, here p. 81. Cf. Lothar Hack, “Soziologische Bemerkungen zum Deutschen Gegenwartsfilm. Träume mit belegter Zunge”, Frankfurter Hefte, 21/2 (1966), pp. 119‒28, here p. 120. In the original: “nicht nur eine Flucht vor der Gegenwart, sondern eine Flucht in doppelte Richtung. Man flieht vor der unbewältigten Vergangenheit und vor der noch nicht bewältigten Zukunft.” Rabenalt, Die Schnulze, pp. 12‒13. In the original: “blieb in den Nachkriegsjahren eine wichtige Einrichtung der Begegnung, der Entspannung und der sozialen Kommunikation.” Bessen, Trümmer und Träume, p. 79. This self-censorship agency modelled itself on the MPPDA [Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America] and encouraged strict censorship of nudity, vulgarity, and blasphemy. In 1951, the “Filmbewertungsstelle Wiesbaden” (FBW) [Film Evaluation Authority] and, in 1954, the controversial “Interministerielle Filmprüfungsausschuß” (IMF) [Inter-Ministerial Film Censorship Committee] were added to the West German network of quality control/censorship. From 1946 to 1949, German films emerged that dealt with the contemporary reality of post-war German society. Even films that do not show rubble have been classified as Trümmerfilme. Cf. Thomas Brandlmeier, “Von Hitler zu Adenauer: Deutsche Trümmerfilme”, in Hoffmann and Schobert (eds.), Zwischen Gestern und Morgen, pp. 33‒59. “Committed to humanistic principles, the DEFA founders in [May] 1946 set out to make films that countered the forces of nationalism and militarism and promoted the ideas of international co-operation.” Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 88. This German compound [Vergangenheit = past; Bewältigung = mastering] is commonly rendered into English as “coming to terms with the past”. However, in this translation the specific German historical context as well as the ensuing “struggle” to come to terms with this past are lost in the paraphrase. Half of the forty-seven German features that premiered between 1946 and 1948 are set in shattered streets of a contemporary big city.” Eric Rentschler, “The Place of Rubble in the Trümmerfilm”, New German Critique, 110, vol. 37, no. 2 (2010), pp. 9‒30, here p. 10. Anon., “Stimmen aus Parkett und Rang. Man mag keine Ruinen” [Voices from the auditorium floor and balcony: No one likes ruins], Der Spiegel, 1 (1947), p. 20. Rentschler, “The Place of Rubble in the Trümmerfilm”, p. 9. Ibid., p. 23. Ibid., p. 27. Cf. “ein Gebiet, in dem die Amerikaner nicht konkurrieren konnten.” Gertraud Steiner Daviau, “Sprache und Bilder in österreichischen Heimatfilmen der fünfziger Jahre”, in Die Namen der Berge. Anschauungen, 2001, http://www.inst.at/berge/perspektiven/steiner.htm, retrieved Aug. 2005. 218

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25

26

27

28 29 30 31 32 33

34

35 36

37 38

Cf. Reinold E. Thiel, “Die geheime Filmzensur”, in Wilfried von Bredow and Rolf Zurek (eds.), Film und Gesellschaft in Deutschland: Dokumente und Materialien (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1975), pp. 327‒34, here p. 331. In the original: “Bloß nicht wieder Ruinen”, Die Filmwoche (identical to Neue Filmwoche, from June 1949 Illustrierte Filmwoche), film magazine of the French-occupied zone, 22 (1949), p. 250. Findings summarized by Urs Jenny, “Augen zu und durch. 50 Jahre bundesdeutscher Film. Die Ära Brandt”, Der Spiegel, 20 (1999), pp. 188‒90, here p. 188. Johannes von Moltke, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 76. Ibid. Manfred Barthel, Als Opas Kino jung war: Der deutsche Nachkriegsfilm (Frankfurt: Ullstein Sachbuch, 1991), p. 36. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, pp. 77‒78. Ibid. Johannes von Moltke, “Location Heimat: Tracking Refugee Images, from DEFA to the Heimatfilm”, in John Davidson and Sabine Hake (eds.), Framing the Fifties: Cinema in Divided Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), pp. 74‒90, here p. 77. “By the beginning of 1949 it emerged that the film production units in the three western zones of occupation were endeavouring to consider film as a commercial product far more strongly than they had previously […] in 1949 the three western zones produced 51 films, as opposed to only 19 the year before.” In the original: “Mit Beginn des Jahres 1949 zeichnete sich in der Filmproduktion der drei westlichen Besatzungszonen das Bestreben ab, den Film in weitaus stärkerem Maße als bisher als kommerzielles Produkt zu betrachten […]. Im Jahre 1949 wurden in den drei westlichen Besatzungszonen 51 neue deutsche Spielfilme fertiggestellt, im Jahre 1948 waren es nur 19 […] gewesen.” Peter Pleyer, Deutscher Nachkriegsfilm, 1946‒1948 (Munster: C. J. Fahle, 1965), p. 163. Although there were some Heimat films produced in the Soviet-occupied zone in eastern Germany, DEFA films generally “fall short of a full-fledged coherence that would allow us to speak of a DEFA-Heimatfilm in its own right”. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 179. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 39. Byg acknowledges, with a view to film noir in particular, that German post-war film bears witness to a period of great anxiety, “anxiety over the stability of men’s gender identity, anxiety over the presence of strong women in the context of a postwar crisis of masculinity, and anxiety over the possibility that the postwar period could bring political change”. Barton Byg, “Nazism as Femme Fatale: Recuperations of Cinematic Masculinity in Postwar Berlin”, in Patricia Herminghouse and Magda Mueller (eds.), Gender and Germanness (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1997), pp. 176‒88. Cf. Torben Grodal, Moving Pictures: A New Theory of Film Genres, Feelings, and Cognition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 157‒71. Georg Seelen argues convincingly that the genre of Heimat film developed closely related sub-genres or sister-genres such as Schlagerfilm, Ferienfilm, and Habsburgerfilm. “Durch die Heimat und so weiter: Heimatfilme, Schlagerfilme und Ferienfilme der fünfziger Jahre”, in Hoffmann and Schobert (eds.), Zwischen Gestern und Morgen, p. 139. 219

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39 40

41

42

43 44 45 46

47

Cf. Julio Mendívil, Ein musikalisches Stück Heimat: Ethnologische Betrachtungen zum deutschen Schlager (Bielefeld: transcript, 2008). “A success which no other type of film in the film history of the Federal Republic has ever been able to repeat and for which the associated viewer numbers will probably remain forever unattainable, when the Ranger of the Silver Forest alone attracted 22 million viewers to the cinema between 1955 and 1958, and did that in competition with film classics like Damned for All Eternity (1953), The Seven Year Itch (1955), or The Twelve Members of the Jury (1957). If one compares these numbers with successful films of today, for example, Good Bye, Lenin, which has had a good 6.3 million viewers to date, one gets an approximate idea of the success of these films with the public.” In the original: “Ein Erfolg, den kein anderer Filmtyp in der Filmgeschichte der Bundesrepublik jemals wiederholen konnte und deren Zuschauerzahlen wahrscheinlich für immer unerreicht bleiben werden, lockte doch allein der Förster vom Silberwald zwischen 1955 und 1958 22 Millionen Zuschauer ins Kino und das gegen die Konkurrenz von Filmklassikern wie Verdammt in alle Ewigkeit (1953), Das verflixte 7. Jahr (1955) oder Die zwölf Geschworenen (1957). Vergleicht man diese Zahlen mit heutigen erfolgreichen deutschen Filmen, etwa Good Bye, Lenin, den bisher gut 6,3 Millionen sahen, bekommt man einen ungefähren Anhaltspunkt über den Publikumserfolg dieser Filme.” Jürgen Alexander Bader, “Der bundesdeutsche Heimatfilm der 50er Jahre & dessen Einsatz im Geschichtsunterricht der Realschule”, unpublished thesis (Pädagogische Hochschule Weingarten, 2004), p. 2. This term “Wirtschaftswunder” [economic miracle] was often said to owe its basis to Ludwig Erhard, West Germany’s Minister for Economy (1949‒63). Erhard himself vehemently rejected the term and the associated mysticism around the “laws of the free market”. Cf. Hans Ulrich Wehler, “Der deutsche Fetisch: Über die Verklärung des Wirtschaftswunders”, Der Spiegel, 52 (2005), pp. 54‒55. Edward Larkey, “Postwar German Popular Music: Americanization, the Cold War, and the Post-Nazi Heimat”, in Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter (eds.), Music and German National Identity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 234‒50, here p. 235. Ibid. pp. 235‒36. Christoph Kleßmann, Zwei Staaten, eine Nation: Deutsche Geschichte, 1955‒1970 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1988), p. 47. Cf. Seelen, “Durch die Heimat und so weiter“, p. 140. Klaus Kreimeier, “Von Henny Porten zu Zarah Leander: Filmgenres and Genrefilm in der Weimarer Republik und im Nationalsozialismus”, Montage AV, 3/2 (1994), pp. 41‒54, here p. 45. With regard to several remakes of Nazi Heimat films in post-war West Germany, such as Das sündige Dorf [The Sinful Village, 1940] which was made for the second time in 1954 by the same cast and director, some in the industry criticized the continuities: “No wonder that the remakes fit so seamlessly into film programme guides. The personal interconnection between the creators of Nazi films and the West German post-war film is so strong that one can speak without any exaggeration of an uninterrupted continuation of film under the Third Reich in(to) West Germany.” In the original: “Kein Wunder, dass sich die Reprisen so nahtlos in die Filmprogramme einreihen ließen. Die personale Verflechtung zwischen den Schöpfern des NS-Films und dem westdeutschen Nachkriegsfilm 220

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48

49 50

51 52 53

54

55

ist so stark, dass man ohne Übertreibung von einer kontinuierlichen Fortführung des Films im ‘Dritten Reich’ in Westdeutschland sprechen kann.” Hans Peter Kochenrath, “Kontinuität im deutschen Film”, in von Bredow and Zurek (eds.), Film und Gesellschaft in Deutschland, pp. 286‒92. In the original: “Die fünfziger Jahre haben ein schlechtes Image. [...] Maria Schell, Nierentische, NATO, Kalter Krieg, Heimatfilm—sind negativ besetzt. [...] Die fünfziger waren eine restaurative Phase, fast ein Gegenstück zum Mythos der zwanziger, monolithischer als die janusköpfigen vierziger, ohne alternative Spannungen wie die sechziger und siebziger Jahre.” Hans Helmut Prinzler, “Shadows of the Past: Die bundesdeutsche Filmkritik der fünfziger Jahre”, in Norbert Grob and Karl Prümm (eds.), Die Macht der Filmkritik: Positionen und Kontroversen (Munich: Edition Text & Kritik, 1990), pp. 46‒62, here p. 47. Ulrich Gregor and Enno Patalas, Geschichte des Films, 1895‒960 (Munich and Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, 1962). Johannes von Moltke, “Evergreens: The Heimat Genre”, in Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter and Deniz Göktürk (eds.), The German Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002), pp. 18‒28, here p. 18. For a recent laudable re-evaluation, see John Davidson and Sabine Hake (eds.), Framing the Fifties: Cinema in Divided Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007). Kai Petersen’s “Leserbrief”, Der Spiegel, 10 (1960), p. 15. This was also evident in the genealogy of many post-war films. Helmut Weiβ’s Sag die Wahrheit (1946) with a script by Ernst Marischka, used a lot of footage from Terra-Filmkunst which had actually been made during the war. “Studio 45”, the official producer, was solely responsible for little more than the finishing touches and the final editing. Films with a similar production history are frequently referred to as “Überläufer” [overruns]. Cf. Friedrich P. Kahlenberg, “Film”, in Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Band 4: Kultur (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1989), pp. 464‒512. Even this genre has been criticized for failing to rejuvenate the industry. The West German Trümmerfilm—with the exception of those made by Helmut Käutner—retained the “purely verbal arguments, [and the] mainly profound melancholia and a formal repertoire […], that had already served the Nazi-films well. In all these films, a vague need for coming to terms with the past forms an unholy alliance with the posing of hypocritical questions and a fatalistic belief in destiny, which give the ‘little’ man every possibility of placing the entire blame for the tragic collapse of Germany on a few villains or indeed on Hitler himself.” In the original: “in rein sprachlicher Auseinandersetzung, überwiegend großer Wehleidigkeit und einem formalen Repertoire […], das schon den Nazifilmen beste Dienste geleistet hatte. In allen diesen Filmen mischt sich ein vages Bedürfnis nach Vergangenheitsbewältigung mit verlogenen Problemstellungen und einer fatalistischen Schicksalsgläubigkeit, die dem ‘kleinen Mann’ alle Möglichkeiten läßt, ein paar finsteren Bösewichtern oder gar dem ‘Führer’ selbst die Alleinschuld an dem ‘tragischen Zusammenbruch Deutschlands’ zuzuschieben.” Liz-Anne Bawden (ed.), Filmlexikon (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1978), p. 687. Cf. Norbert Frei, 1945 und wir: Das Dritte Reich im Bewußtsein der Deutschen (Munich: C.H. Beck, 2005). In his book Frei likens this discourse to the self-

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57

58

59 60

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sacrifice of the German soldiers in Stalingrad and the downfall of the 6th Army there. Stephen Lowry, “Heinz Rühmann—The Archetypal German”, in Bergfelder, Carter, and Göktürk (eds.), The German Cinema Book, pp. 81‒89, here p. 86. “Rühmann’s image and role invoke identification and projection simultaneously. The meek little man is close to the audience, but he is also a winner who uses his wits to overcome ostensibly more powerful opponents and thus can embody wish-fulfilment fantasies.” Ibid., p. 87. Cf. “The quality of life that is constituted by Heimat is neither innate nor can it be ordained, but is instead an achievement of the active […] subject. To give him real chances for this self-determining behaviour is the ‘political task of Heimat’.” In the original: “Die Lebensqualität Heimat ist weder angeboren noch kann sie verordnet werden, sondern sie ist eine Leistung des tätigen […] Subjekts. Ihm reale Chancen für dieses selbstbestimmende Handeln zu geben, ist die ‘politische Aufgabe Heimat’.” Ina-Maria Greverus, Auf der Suche nach Heimat (Munich: Beck, 1979), p. 17. Cf. “eine eher gemäßigte Bildsprache [war] vorherrschend.” Manuela Fiedler, Heimat im deutschen Film: Ein Mythos zwischen Regression und Utopie (Alfeld and Leine: Coppi, 1997), p. 36. Cf. “Schauspieler agieren wesentlich verhaltener.” Ibid. Heide Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, in Reiner Pommerin (ed.), The American Impact on Postwar Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 1995), pp. 165‒95, here p. 187. Cf. “Die Deutschen bevorzugen deutsche Filme.” Ludwig Thome, “Der deutsche Filmbesucher”, Internationale Film Revue, 1 (1951/52), pp. 279‒81, here p. 280. Helga Haftendorn, “Zusammensetzung und Verhalten des Filmtheaterpublikums in der Mittelstadt”, Filmstudien, 2 (1957), pp. 13‒25, here p. 15. Resentments were also due to a deep-seated angst sparked by the behaviour of all occupying forces: “Before the victors helped, years later, to rebuild West German industry, they initially demolished factories and dismantled railway infrastructure, cut down forests and confiscated patents; they wanted at least partial reparations for those valuables that the Germans had destroyed.” In the original: “Bevor die Sieger, Jahre später, dabei halfen, die westdeutsche Wirtschaft wiederaufzubauen, demolierten sie erst einmal Fabriken und demontierten Bahnanlagen, holzten Wälder ab und beschlagnahmten Patente; sie wollten zumindest teilweise jene Werte ersetzen, welche die Deutschen zerstört hatten.” Jochen Bölsche and Per Hinrichs, “Muckefuck und Hundewurst. Als Sturz ins Bodenlose empfanden die Deutschen die totale Niederlage, die auf ihren totalen Krieg folgte. Doch in den Hungerjahren zwischen Hitler und Adenauer wurden, unter dem Militärregime der Sieger, die Weichen für den Weg in die Bonner Wirtschaftswunderrepublik gestellt”, Der Spiegel, 49 (2005), pp. 60‒70, here p. 61. Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 187. Cf. Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre”, p. 69. In the original: “Kurz, die typische UFA-Operette, neu aus alten Schachteln entstanden, wie es sich im Jahre 1935 hätte zutragen können. Das Schlimme daran ist nicht, daß der Film schlecht ist […], sondern, daß er schlecht ist, wie ein schlechter Film des Jahres 1935 und nicht wie ein schlechter Film von 1954.” Chris Marker, “Adieu au cinéma allemand?”, Positif, no. 12 (Paris, 1954), quoted 222

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in Ulrich Kurowski, Michael Brandlmeier, and André Gerely (eds.), Nicht mehr fliehen: Das Kino der Ӓra Adenauer (Munich: Münchner Filmzentrum, 1979), p. 12. 65 Marc Silberman, German Cinema: Texts in Context (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995), p. 117. 66 Jenny, “Augen zu und durch”, p. 189. 67 “In the bourgeois dwellings of soft cosiness, there were roaring deer and cuckoo clocks, seascapes, and Alpine landscapes, with creamy-white mountain tops, a comfortable world of mountains and firns.” In the original: “In [den] Spießerhöhlen weicher Gemütlichkeit gab es röhrende Hirsche und Kuckucksuhren, Seestücke und Alpenlandschaften mit cremig-weißen Berggipfeln, eine NiveauWelt der Berge und Firne.” Hellmuth Karasek, “Sehnsucht nach dem Happy End: Fresswelle und Reisewut, Tütenlampen und Heimatfilme”, Der Spiegel, 3 (2006), pp. 72‒80, here p. 75. 68 Silberman, German Cinema, p. 117. 69 Abraham Moles quoted in Saul Friedländer, Reflections of Nazism: An Essay on Kitsch and Death, translated from French by Thomas Weyr (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 25. 70 Ibid., pp. 25‒26. 71 Pleyer, Deutscher Nachkriegsfilm, p. 165. 72 Christopher J. Wickham, “Representation and Mediation in Edgar Reitz’s Heimat”, German Quarterly, vol. 64, no.1 (1991), pp. 35‒45, here p. 35. 73 Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 186. 74 Ibid. 75 “Schön war das Kino, gut war es dort, warm. Niemand sah einen, niemand konnte mit einem sprechen, und man konnte, was man sonst nicht konnte: VERGESSEN.” Heinrich Böll, Haus ohne Hüter: Roman (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1954), p. 88. 76 Tassilo Schneider, “Reading against the Grain: German Cinema and Film Historio-graphy”, in Terri Ginsberg and Kirsten Moana Thompson (eds.), Perspectives on German Cinema (New York and London: Prentice Hall, 1996), pp. 29‒47, here pp. 40‒41. 77 “Der Heimatfilm, der sich von aktuellen Bezügen freihält.” [The Heimat film which keeps itself free of contemporary references.] Steiner Daviau, “Sprache und Bilder in österreichischen Heimatfilmen der fünfziger Jahre”. 78 John Sandford, The New German Cinema (London: Oswald Wolff, 1980), p. 11. 79 Alexander and Margarete Mitscherlich, The Inability to Mourn: Principles of Collective Behaviour, translated by Beverley R. Placzek (New York: Grove Press, 1984), p. 15. Cf. Schneider, “Reading against the Grain”, p. 41. 80 Cf. Robert Moeller, War Stories: The Search for a Usable Past in the Federal Republic of Germany (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), p. 16. 81 Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 98. The 1952 film Rosen blühen auf dem Heidegrab [Roses Bloom on the Heath Grave] provides an excellent example of such a fusion of past and present, guilt and hope, thus “dispelling any assumption that memory was sealed off in post-traumatic oblivion behind a ‘Zero Hour’ of 1945”. Claudia Koonz, “Between Memory and Oblivion”, in John R. Gillis (ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 265.

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Wolfgang Kaschuba, “Bildwelten als Weltbilder”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm, p. 11. Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, pp. 185‒86. Ibid., p. 186. Heiko R. Blum, 30 Jahre danach: Dokumentation zur Auseinandersetzung mit Nationalsozialismus in Film 1945 bis 1975 (Cologne: Horst May, 1975), p. 47. Leonie Naughton, “Recovering the ‘Unmastered Past’: Nazism in the New German Cinema”, in T. O’Regan and B. Shoesmith (eds.), History on/and/in Film (Perth: History & Film Association of Australia, 1987), pp. 121‒30. Johannes von Moltke, “Convertible Provincialism: Heimat and Mobility in the 1950s”, in Stephan K. Schindler and Lutz Koepnick (eds.), The Cosmopolitan Screen: German Cinema and the Global Imaginary, 1945 to the Present (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), pp. 39‒57, here pp. 55 and 54. Ibid., p. 54. “In the first years after the war when there was little to eat and little fuel for heating, the people wanted to see films.” In the original: “Das Volk wollte Filme sehen, wo es schon wenig zu essen und heizen gab in den ersten Nachkriegsjahren.” Til Radevagen, “Wie die blonden Tanten bei Capri baden gingen— Bundesrepubliks-deutscher Film in den 50er Jahren”, in Eckhard Siepmann et al. (eds.), Heiss und kalt—Die Jahre 1945-1969 (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1986), pp. 382‒95, here p. 382. Ibid., p. 383. The 1920 film was directed by Arthur Wellin and based on a screenplay by Robert Heymann. The 1929 film was directed by Victor Janson and based on a screenplay by Max Jungk and Walter Reisch. The 1933 film was directed by Georg Zoch and based on a screenplay by Franz Rausch. The libretto was by August Neidhardt, the music by Léon Jessel. “Der Heimatfilm-Profi: Hans Deppe”. Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre”, p. 72. Interestingly, Hans Deppe, just like Arthur Maria Rabenalt and Werner Klinger, restarted his post-war career with the East German DEFA. Prack was nearly fifty years old when the film was made. Cf. Willi Höfig, Der deutsche Heimatfilm, 1947‒1960 (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1973), p. 176. Von Moltke, “Evergreens”, pp. 27‒28. Product placement had been successfully trialled in Nazi films. One such example of synergistic enhancements was the cooperation between a furniture manufacturing firm and the Ufa for the 1938 problem film Das Leben kann so schön sein: “mit einer großen Möbelfirma […] eine wirkungsvolle GegenseitigkeitsWerbung vereinbaren”. Correspondence relating to Das Leben kann so schön sein, archived in Document File 9596, Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv Berlin. Post-war examples of product placement are common, especially in Hans Deppe’s films (for example, the red convertible and Volkswagen Beetle in Solange noch die Rosen blühen blühn [As Long as the Roses Still Bloom, 1956] and certain regions are promoted in Heimat films as tourist destinations. In the original: “ein etwas merkwürdig anmutendes Modell eines Motorrollers”. Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre”, p. 90. In the original: “überraschend und originell in der Konstruktion, unverwüstlich und wendig wie sein einfallsreicher Namensvetter vom Hause Eulenspiegel.” Ulrich Kubisch, MotorRollerMobil: Vom zivilisierten Zweirad zum Fast-Automobil (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1985), p. 40. 224

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Von Moltke, “Evergreens”, p. 24. Cf. Georg Seeßlen, “Der Heimatfilm: Zur Mythologie eines Genres”, in Christa Blümlinger (ed.), Sprung im Spiegel: Filmisches Wahrnehmen zwischen Fiktion und Wirklichkeit (Vienna: Sonderzahl, 1990), pp. 343‒62. Von Moltke, “Evergreens”, p. 25. Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 182. Ibid., p. 183. Ibid., p. 182. Ibid., p. 184. “Die Mehrzahl der Filmbesucher sind Frauen und Jugendliche.” Thome, “Der deutsche Filmbesucher”, p. 279. The rationing of food was not abandoned until the spring of 1950. Cf. Erich Böhme, “Ein Patriarch am Rhein: Der Kanzler Konrad Adenauer”, Der Spiegel, 20 (1999), pp. 110‒18, here p. 112. Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 184. Lutz Koepnick, The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 24. Pleyer, Deutscher Nachkriegsfilm, p. 165. Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 185. In the original: “knapp 40 Prozent der Bundesdeutschen, unter ihnen fast zehn Millionen Flüchtlinge und Vertriebene, wohnten 1950 notgedrungen zur Untermiete oder in Notunterkünften wie Kellern, Baracken und ‘Nissenhütten’ aus Wellblech. Trotz des Baubooms fehlten 1953 noch vier Millionen Wohnungen.” Gudrun Patricia Pott, “Die Flegeljahre der Republik: Der Aufstieg aus dem Nichts”, Der Spiegel, 20 (1999), pp. 148‒50, here p. 149. With the film Der Förster vom Silberwald [The Forest Ranger from the Silver Forest, 1954] the genre reached its zenith. By now nature had started to play a key role in Heimat films. Der Förster vom Silberwald was released at the Hunting Exhibition in Düsseldorf in 1954, featuring extended scenes of nature, deer, and landscapes. “When the genre (and movie attendance in general) began its gradual decline after reaching an all-time high in 1956, the unemployment rate was under four per cent, wages were up between two-thirds and three-quarters over their 1950 level (freeing most households from destitution for the first time in German history), the five-day work week had been instituted, and consumer goods like refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, washing machines, and phonographs were making their way into German homes. The Wohlstandsgesellschaft was becoming reality. Indeed, Heimatfilme themselves seemed to change the times; those produced after mid-decade struck as little more than advertisements for domestic destinations.” Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 185. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 10. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., p. 11. Ricarda Strobel, “Heimat, Liebe und Glück: Schwarzwaldmädel (1950)”, in Werner Faulstich and Helmut Korte (eds.), Fischer Filmgeschichte, Band 3: Auf

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der Suche nach Werten 1945-1960 (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1990), pp. 148‒70, p. 160. Silberman, German Cinema, p. 118. Ibid., p. 121. Ibid. Ibid., p. 122. Julia Anspach, “Antisemitische Stereotype im deutschen Heimatfilm nach 1945”, in Heinz Ludwig Arnold and Matthias N. Lorenz, Juden.Bilder (Munich: Edition Text & Kritik, 2008), pp. 64‒65. In the original film version from 1933, the attempts of the criminal element to fit into society had explicit references to Jewishness. In that adaptation of the original operetta, the jeweller is called Schmusmann (referring to the Yiddish term “schmu(s)” for talking nonsense/rubbish) and is clearly identified as a Jewish trader desperate to assimilate. Cf. Anspach, “Antisemitische Stereotype im deutschen Heimatfilm”, pp. 72‒73. In the original: “Die Eigenschaften und Merkmale, die ihn als falsch erscheinen lassen, entsprechen stereotypen antisemitischen Zuschreibungen.” Ibid., p. 66. Ibid. Mary-Elizabeth O’Brien, Nazi Cinema as Enchantment: The Politics of Entertainment in the Third Reich (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), p. 259. Ingeborg Majer O’Sickey, “Framing the Unheimlich: Heimatfilm and Bambi”, in Herminghouse and Mueller (eds.), Gender and Germanness, p. 205. Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre”, p. 88. In the original: “… bedenklich! Denn dies war Filmkonfektion, bei der nicht einmal die ‘Knöpfe’ richtig saßen—um im Bilde zu bleiben. Die Hände der Personen waren braun und die Gesichter hell [...], grobe Späße statt wirklichem Humor, deutsche Rührseligkeit und Biederkeit, penetrante Vorliebe fürs Direkte. Nach bewährtem Rezept ‘für jeden etwas’ war ‘alles dran’—von Eisrevuen (wieviel besser können Amerikaner das) und Marschmusik bis zum Orgelklang und frommen Kinderchören. Das Bedenkliche ist der turbulente Erfolg solcher Filme, die mit ihrer Suggestivkraft die Urteilsfähigkeit des Publikums weiter einlullen.” Erika Müller, “Eine Chance für den deutschen Film”, Die Zeit, no. 39, 28 Sep. 1950, p. 10. Ibid. Cf. “[D]amit wird eine der zukunftsträchtigsten und entwicklungsfähigsten Kunstgattungen auf das tote Gleis provinzieller Volksbelustigungen geschoben.” Wolfdietrich Schnurre, “Die Mörder sind unter uns”, Deutsche Film-Rundschau, iss. 8, 5 Nov. 1946. In the original: “Was uns dringend fehlt, ist der avantgardistische Film deutscher Prägung, der der deutschen Produktion den Weg weist und richtunggebend ist!” Müller, “Eine Chance für den deutschen Film”, p. 10. West German cinema has habitually been divided into movements and phases which were labelled accordingly; “Young German Film” designates the original movement of renewal following the Oberhausen Manifesto (1962) and up to 1970; “New German Film (feature-length directors since about 1971), New German Cinema (feature films which achieved international recognition beginning in the late sixties).” Timothy Corrigan, New German Film: The Displaced Image (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. xii. Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 178. 226

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135 Ibid. 136 Silberman, German Cinema, p. 127. 137 The 1932 film was directed by Hans Behrendt and scripted by Robert Erwin Konrad (called Bobby) Lüthge; the 1951 remake was again Bobby Lüthge’s work. 138 Grete is now called Helga (Sonja Ziemann), Ranger Walter’s surname becomes Rainer (Rudolf Prack). 139 The third adaptation of the script for the 1972 film Green Is the Heath is barely reminiscent of the previous version; only heath, music, and love remain as themes. Other than that, it is the story of three city dwellers, Norbert, Bernie, and Möps, who come to the heath to overcome their respective vices—alcohol, nicotine, and women—but soon forget their good intentions. 140 In the original: “das aktuell-moderne Motiv der Vertriebenen, denen die Lüneburger Heide zur zweiten Heimat geworden ist”. Lüthge quoted in “Drehbücher. Libbe, Erijotik und Zoff” [sic], Der Spiegel, 16 (1952), pp. 32‒33, here p. 33. 141 Ibid. 142 In the original: “Es scheint uns, daß dieser Film einige vielversprechende Ansatzpunkte für die Rückkehr zu einer bodenständigen deutschen Filmproduktion aufweist, die den seelischen Bedürfnissen unseres Volkes und den Problemen unserer Zeit gerecht wird. Das Rezept für eine solche Erneuerung unseres Filmschaffens […] wird […] gelingen, wenn sie auf die gesunden Kräfte unseres Volkes achten.” Herbert Hundt, “Das Geheimnis der ‘Grünen Heide’: Gedanken zum sensationellen Erfolg des Filmes Grün ist die Heide”, Süderländer Tageblatt, 21 Mar. 1952. 143 Eight million people, or one-sixth of the population in West Germany alone, were considered to be expellees. Cf. Axel Schildt, Ankunft im Westen: Ein Essay zur Erfolgsgeschichte der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 1999). 144 Christoph Klessmann, Die doppelte Staatsgründung: Deutsche Geschichte, 1945‒1955 (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1982), p. 39. 145 West Germany experienced a social, cultural, and religious fusion in which previously quite homogeneous communities in Germany’s north and south suddenly faced the arrival of many “others”. 146 The action surrounding the circus artiste Nora was inspired by Hedwig CourthsMahler’s novella Wo die Heide blüht (1884). 147 Lüdersen’s poaching is motivated in the film by the frustration of his dislocation. He complains to his daughter in response to her question how he could do this to her and the community when they are doing so well: “Are things going well for us here? We’re tolerated here […] Why isn’t one allowed to be a person any more, just because one has lost everything? Only when I’m out in the forest, surrounded by nature, can I at least forget all my misery.” In the original: “Gut geht’s uns hier? Geduldet sind wir hier […]. Warum darf man kein Mensch mehr sein, nur weil man alles verloren hat? Nur wenn ich draußen im Wald bin, in der Natur, dann vergesse ich wenigstens alles Elend.” 148 Wilfried von Bredow and Hans-Friedrich Foltin (eds.), Zwiespältige Zufluchten: Zur Renaissance des Heimatgefühls (Berlin: Dietz, 1981), pp. 118‒19. 149 In the original: “Es gibt eine ‘richtige’ Ordnung der Dinge, die wiederhergestellt oder erreicht werden muß. Über ihre Störung urteilt der consensus omnium. Für den Störenfried ist sie mit Schande verbunden.” Höfig, Der deutsche Heimatfilm, p. 389.

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150 Gerhard Bliersbach, So grün war die Heide … Thema: Film. Die gar nicht so heile Welt im Nachkriegsfilm (Weinheim and Basel: Beltz, 1989), p. 84. 151 In the original: “ein Vater, für den man sich schämen muß, eine familiäre Hypothek.” Ibid., pp. 99‒100. 152 Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 179. 153 An example of a difficult integration of an expellee is Josefa Rohrer, the female poacher in Der Wilderer vom Silberwald (1957). 154 Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, pp. 179‒80. 155 Ibid. 156 In the original: “An der Spitze der Hierarchien in den Heimatfilmen steht […] der meist adlige Guts- und Landbesitzer mit seinen Förstern, die als Vertreter einer nicht weiter definierten ‘heimatlichen Ordnung’, die auf ethnischmoralischen Werten und Normen beruht, auftreten.” Jürgen Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre: Motive, Symbole und Handlungsmuster (Cologne: Teiresias, 1998), p. 112. 157 In the original: “Die im Grunde undemokratischen Ordnungsutopien, die im Heimatfilm immer wieder begegnen […] sagen somit sehr viel über die Befindlichkeiten im Deutschland der frühen Nachkriegszeit aus.” Ibid., p. 113. 158 Walther Schmieding, Kunst oder Kasse: Der Ärger mit dem deutschen Film (Hamburg: Rütten & Loening, 1961), p. 29. 159 Cf. Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre, p. 115. 160 Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 82. 161 Von Moltke, for example, only seems to notice that “Silesians coexist peacefully with the locals, vagabonds interact regularly with (and act as relays for) the settled inhabitants, and a circus troupe seems no less out of place than the poaching baron.” Ibid., p. 91. 162 Ibid., pp. 4‒5. 163 In the original: “rührten die Herzen sowohl der Westdeutschen, die hier zu Hause waren und sich an ihrer eigenen Großherzigkeit freuen durften, wie auch die Herzen der Heimatvertriebenen, die im Kino Trost fanden für die Verachtung und Ignoranz, die ihnen anfangs die Westdeutschen entgegenbrachten.” Claudius Seidl, Der deutsche Film der 50er Jahre (Munich: Heyne, 1987), p. 77. 164 “Opulent shots in surprisingly tender colours demonstrate the manifold beauties of the Lüneburg Heath in the glow of summer and in the mysterious tissue of white fog. The sourness of the black elderberry bush, quiet wildlife shots, the colourful depiction of a local festival [heimatliches Volksfest] with traditional costumes and customs all delight the connoisseur of this jewel among German landscapes.” In the original: “Prachtvolle Aufnahmen in überraschend zarten Farben zeigen die vielfältigen Schönheiten der Lüneburger Heide im Glanz der Sommertage und im geheimnisvollen Weben der weißen Nebel. Die Herbheit der schwarzen Wacholder, stille Wildaufnahmen, die farbige Schilderung eines heimatlichen Volksfestes mit Trachten und Bräuchen erfreuen gleichermaßen den Kenner dieser Kostbarkeit unter den deutschen Landschaften.” Anon., “Grün ist die Heide. Ein Farbfilm”, Evangelischer Film-Beobachter (1951), pp. 411‒12, here p. 412. 165 “Vertreibung aus dem Paradies”. Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre”, p. 46.

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166 In the original: “denn es geht letztendlich eben nicht um eine geographisch exakte und wirklichkeitsgetreue Darstellung, sondern lediglich um eine idealtypische Zusammenstellung von Bildern, Eindrücken und Stimmungen”. Ibid., p. 61. 167 “Ersatz für die ‘große’ Heimatidee von Vaterland und Nation, nachdem die beiden Begriffe von den Nationalsozialisten so gründlich mißbraucht wurden […]. Der Heimatfilm bietet in dieser Situation Orientierung für alle.” Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre”, p. 82. 168 In the original: “Seht her, scheinen diese Filme zu sagen, so übel ist der neue Staat gar nicht. Er kann sich sehen lassen, mit seiner grünen Heide, seinem Schwarzwald, dem Spessart, dem Rheintal, dem bayrischen Voralpenland, den Alpen. Der Anblick dieser Idyllen macht das Publikum dann doch ein wenig stolz auf ihre Heimat. Was ungeheuer tröstlich war für jene, die in den Städten wohnten.” Seidl, Der deutsche Film der 50er Jahre”, p. 68. 169 Ibid. 170 In the original: “Der Heimatfilm erleichterte es den Bundesdeutschen, aus dem Provisorium Bundesrepublik eine wirkliche Heimat zu machen.” Ibid. 171 Cf. Pott, “Die Flegeljahre der Republik”, p. 148. 172 In the original: “nicht nur […] Erfahrungen der materiellen Verluste, sondern auch […] Ernüchterung mächtiger alter deutscher Größen-Fantasien.” Gerhard Bliersbach, “Der Heimatfilm. Sozialpsychologie eines deutschen Genres”, in Stefan König, Hans-Jürgen Panitz and Michael Wachtler (eds.), Bergfilm: Dramen, Trick und Abenteuer (Munich: Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung, 2001), pp. 91‒97, here p. 91. 173 In the original: “Man merkt’s am Gang und an den Worten / Es geht schon wieder allerorten / denn selbst im Flachland geht’s bergauf / der Mensch genießt den Lebenslauf.” CDU slogan quoted in Pott, “Die Flegeljahre der Republik”, p. 148. 174 “Die Großbesitzer des Ostens wurden mit Millionen entschädigt, der kleine Mann blieb klein.” Heinrich Albertz, “Flüchtlingspfarrer in Celle”, in Siepmann et al. (eds.), Heiß und kalt, p. 74. 175 In the original: “Mit allem, was zum Leben notwendig ist, gut ausgestattet, vergißt Lüdersen die alltäglichen ‘kleinen’ Sorgen der Mehrheit. Anstelle von beengtem Wohnraum, zu wenig Nahrung und Arbeitslosigkeit bedrücken Lüdersen der Verlust seiner Ländereien und vor allem der Verzicht auf seine geliebte Jagd.” Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre”, p. 82. 176 “Meine Heimat ist die ganze Welt.” Song composed by Rudolf Prack, sung by vagabonds in the film Wenn am Sonntagabend die Dorfmusik spielt (Rudolf Schündler, 1953). 177 The DKW (Dampfkraftwagen) [steam-powered car] was a contemporary middleclass vehicle produced by Auto Union GmbH, later Audi AG. 178 “Nora, who for most part of the film is adamant that America is fertile soil for a better future, explicitly rejects as sentimental the idea of the Federal Republic as new, redemptive Heimat. The district judge’s attempts to persuade her by wooing her with Hermann Löns songs […] are unsuccessful with such an independent, resilient, postwar survivor. At this point, with the inclusion of an element of selfreferentiality, the film acknowledges its own project: it lets the audience know that its sentimentality is part of a scheme to win it over to a commitment to the Heimat.” Alasdair King, “Placing Green Is the Heath (1951): Spatial Politics and Emergent West German Identity,” in Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy 229

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(eds.), Light Motives: German Popular Film in Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), pp. 130‒47, here p. 144. In the original: “Nicht der Vater ist es, der in den Familien der Heimatfilme fehlt, da dies viel stärker an die realen Bedingungen der deutschen Kriegs- und Nachkriegsgeneration erinnert hätte, […]. Durch das nicht dem realen Erleben entsprechende Fehlen der Mutter im Heimatfilm konnte man indirekt die tatsächlichen zerstörten Familienstrukturen thematisieren, vermied jedoch […] allzu direkte, authentische und schmerzliche Erinnerungen.” Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre, p. 81. In the West German town of Darmstadt, for example, 229 marriages were terminated in 1950, compared to 92 in 1934. Sabine Bode, Die vergessene Generation: Die Kriegskinder brechen ihr Schweigen (Munich: Piper, 2005), p. 59. “Der Rückzug in den Privatbereich von Ehe und Familie ist das Versprechen auf Harmonie und Glück”. Martin Osterland, Gesellschaftsbilder in Filmen: Eine soziologische Untersuchung des Filmangebots der Jahre 1949-1964 (Stuttgart: Ferdinand Enke, 1970), p. 183. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 24. In the original: “Die offiziell verkündete ‘Wohlstandsphilosophie’, die bereitwillig von der Mehrheit als kollektive Zielrichtung übernommen wird, schafft ideale Bedingungen für die politische und gesellschaftliche Restauration. Denn durch dieses neue Leitbild bleiben individuelle und kollektive Schuld am Faschismus ausgeblendet, die Vergangenheit wird tabuisiert.” Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre”, p. 85. Pleyer, Deutscher Nachkriegsfilm, p. 165. In the original: “Wenn man sich die deutschen Filme dieser Zeit […] ansieht, so hat man das Gefühl, als seien nicht Millionen Menschen, sondern Millionen Mitglieder von Gesangsvereinen aus ihrer Heimat vertrieben worden.” Curt Riess, Das gab’s nur einmal: Das Buch der schönsten Filme unseres Lebens (Hamburg: Nannen, 1956), p. 226. In the original: “Ihm gelingt es […], den Heimatfilm, von dem es Mitte der fünfziger Jahre ein Überangebot gibt, zum Reisefilm mit Schlagermusik-Einlagen weiter zu entwickeln. Damit reagiert er kommerziell angemessen auf neue Bedürfnisse der Wohlstandsgesellschaft: die Bundesbürger haben Fernweh und gehen auf Reisen.” Bessen, Trümmer und Träume, p. 264. Cf. Hans Deppe, Der Fremdenführer von Lissabon (1956). In the original: “Früher exportierten wir nicht nur Filme in großem Stil, sondern wir waren tonangebend und exportierten auch Persönlichkeiten des Films— Männer wie Lubitsch, Murnau, Dieterle und Berger verließen Deutschland lange vor 1933. Heute sind wir im Ausland noch nicht wieder konkurrenzfähig und im Inland kann sich der deutsche Film nur mühsam behaupten.” Müller, “Eine Chance für den deutschen Film”, p. 10. Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 17. This is the happy remark made by a young female character in Géza von Bolváry’s Schwarzwälder Kirsch (1958). Rabenalt, Die Schnulze, p. 57. Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, p. 178.

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192 In the original: “Für Naturliebhaber gibt es Landschaften wie aus dem Bilderbuch, Musikfreunde dürfen bald im Chorgesang, bald in Tschintara schwelgen, und wer sich am Tanze laben will, bekommt […] allerlei geboten.” Film-Dienst 41 (1950), quoted in Hoffmann and Schobert (eds.), Zwischen Gestern und Morgen, p. 352. 193 In the original: “… knüpften dramaturgisch, personell und motivisch immer sehr stark an den beiden Erfolgsfilmen Schwarzwaldmädel und Grün ist die Heide an, kopieren und zitieren diese.” Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre, p. 26. 194 “Consequently no Heimat film can do without an urbanite and there is no Heimat film set solely in the countryside featuring only rural folk.” In the original: “Folglich kommt kein Film des Heimatfilmgenres ohne den Städter aus, gibt es keinen Heimatfilm, der alleine im ländlichen Bereich spielt und alleine mit einem ländlichen Figureninventar auskäme.” Ibid., p. 72. 195 In the original: “… schnell und schlampig […]. Die Lüneburger Heide ist etwas wie der erste billige Teppich, den man sich 1951 ins mühsam erbaute Eigenheim legte. […] Daß die Flucht in die nächste beste Geborgenheit nur die Furcht vor den verdrängten Gespenstern der Vergangenheit vergessen machen soll, erhält in den wenigen ästhetisch relevanten Filmen der Ära Adenauer Evidenz.” Ulrich Kurowski, “Nicht mehr fliehen: Das Kino der Ära Adenauer”, quoted in Kurowski, Brandlmeier, and Gerely (eds.), Nicht mehr fliehen, pp. 5 and 7. 196 In the original: “Der Heimatfilm distanziert sich ganz bewußt von der Wirklichkeit, sein Ziel ist es, nicht die reale Welt zu zeigen, in der die Menschen leben.” Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre, p. 72. 197 In the original: “Die Heimatfilme stellen […] ein ganz konkretes und sehr bezeichnendes Zeugnis dar, wie die Deutschen nach 1945 mit ihrer Vergangenheit umgegangen sind.” Ibid., p. 147. 198 Osterland, Gesellschaftsbilder in Filmen, p. 72. 199 In the original: “Bebilderung eines Mythos von einer gerechten und humanen bundesrepublikanischen Gesellschaft.” Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre, p. 148. 200 Alon Confino, “The Nation as Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory, and the German Empire, 1871‒1918”, History and Memory, 5, no. 1 (1993), pp. 43‒86, p. 55. 201 For a comprehensive analysis of West German foundation myths, see Otwin Massing, Gründungsmythen und politische Rituale (Baden-Baden: NomosVerlag-Gesellschaft, 2000). 202 Pott, “Die Flegeljahre der Republik”, p. 148. 203 The term “betrogene Generation” was popularized by Matthias von Hellfeld and Arno Klönne (eds.), Die betrogene Generation. Jugend in Deutschland unter dem Faschismus. Quellen und Dokumente (Cologne: Pahl-Rugenstein, 1985). 204 Cf. the retrograde gender roles promoted in 1950s magazines such as FilmRevue, Film und Frau, and Star-Revue, but also in lifestyle magazines for men. Cf. the woman on the cover of Die Zeitschrift für den Herrn, no. 22 (1952). 205 Interestingly, many women in 1950s Heimat films run inns; cf. the female innkeeper in Im weißen Rößl (Willi Forst, 1952), Maria as resort proprietor in Die Trapp-Familie (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1956), and restaurant manager Inge in Am Brunnen vor dem Tore (Hans Wolff, 1952)—all create homely environments for tourists and diners alike.

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206 The last prisoners of war were freed following Konrad Adenauer’s visit to Moscow in May 1955, during which he agreed to resume diplomatic relations in exchange for the liberation of the remaining 10,000 prisoners of war. 207 Cf. Rüdiger Overmans, Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht: Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkriegs (Munich: Propyläen, 2000). 208 In the original: “Für mich ist das einer, der seine Heimat verloren hat. Und mit Heimat meine ich Familie. Jetzt ist er ein Suchender. […] Diese Figur ist leer. Sie hat ihre Identität verloren.” Peter Lohmeyer (actor) on his role as Richard Lubanski quoted in Das Wunder von Bern: Presseheft (Munich: Just Publicity, 2003), p. 13. 209 Bruno’s migration to the East can be compared with that of Wolf Biermann, who left Hamburg in 1953 at the age of seventeen, travelled to Schwerin, and settled in East Germany. 210 The train used in the film was the original, a VT 08.5, with its 1000 PS Mercedes Diesel engine bearing the title “Weltmeister 1954”. It was mobbed by 30,000 fans in Singen (its first stop on German soil after leaving Bern), and is still in use for special trips today. 211 Rachel Palfreyman, “Holding on and Letting Go: Trauma between the Generations in the Heimat Mode”, in Paul Cooke and Marc Silberman (eds.), Screening War: Perspectives on German Suffering (Rochester: Camden House, 2010), pp. 145‒64, here p. 154. 212 In the original: “Wir waren und sind eine Familie, die schonend über die Vergangenheit schweigt. So sind wir.” Gila Lustiger, So sind wir: Ein Familienroman (Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 2005), p. 37. 213 Cf. Eric Rentschler, “From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus”, in Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds.), Cinema and Nation (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 260‒77, here p. 264. 214 “Ehefrauen dürfen nicht ohne Zustimmung des Gatten Konten führen, die Zinsen gehören ihm. Der Vater hat bei der Kindererziehung immer das letzte Wort, zumindest den Paragrafen nach. Wer die Ehe bricht, muss mit sechs Monaten Knast rechnen.” Klaus Wiegrefe, “Blühende Landschaften: Die Deutschen entdecken die Gründerjahre der Bundesrepublik”, Der Spiegel, 48 (2005), pp. 46‒64, here p. 62. 215 In the original: “Das wirtschaftliche Wachstum schlug sich nieder in besserer Ernährung, besserer Kleidung und besseren Wohnungen, in den Anfängen der Modernisierungswelle und einer Reisewelle, im Wiederaufbau und Neubau der Städte.” Gerd Hardenbach, “Die Wirtschaft der Fünfziger Jahre: Restauration und Wirtschaftswunder”, in Dieter Bänsch (ed.), Die Fünfziger Jahre: Beiträge zu Politik und Kultur (Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 1985), pp. 49‒60, here p. 57. 216 Stuart Taberner, “Philo-Semitism in Recent German Film: Aimée und Jaguar, Rosenstraße und Das Wunder von Bern”, German Life and Letter, 58/3 (2005), pp. 357‒72, here p. 362. 217 Maggie Sargeant, Kitsch und Kunst: Presentations of a Lost War (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005), p. 24. 218 Cf. Jürgen Förster, “Motivation and Indoctrination in the Wehrmacht, 1933‒45”, in Paul Addison and Angus Calder (eds.), A Time to Kill: The Soldier’s Experience of War in the West, 1939‒45 (London: Pimlico, 1997), pp. 263‒73, here p. 263. 219 Taberner, “Philo-Semitism in Recent German Film”, p. 362.

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220 Cf. Alfred G. Frei, Finale grande: Die Rückkehr der Fußballweltmeisterschaft 1954 (Berlin: Transit, 1994); Dirk Schindelbeck, “Sieger Marke Deutschland oder: “Wie wir Weltmeister wurden”: Heldenstück in drei Akten”, in Andreas Weber et al. (eds.), “Elf Freunde müßt ihr sein!” Einwürfe und Anstöße zur deutschen Fußballgeschichte (Freiburg: Haug, 1995), pp. 71‒88; Peter Kasza, 1954—Fußball spielt Geschichte (Berlin: be.bra, 2004). 221 Cf. Michael Schaffrath, “’Wir sind wieder wer’: Die wachsende Bedeutung der Sportkultur”, in Werner Faulstich (ed.), Die Kultur der 50er Jahre: Kulturgeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2002), pp. 145‒57. 222 Andrew Plowman, “Screening the Federal Republic: West Germany in Wortmann Das Wunder von Bern (2002) and Haussmann Herr Lehmann”, in Donald Backman et al. (eds), OssiWessi (Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2008), pp. 89‒104. 223 Cf. F. C. Delius, Der Sonntag, an dem ich Weltmeister wurde (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1994), p. 116. 224 This omission is also noteworthy with regard to the reactions following the loss of the national football team to Sweden in the next World Cup: “How decisively important the football victory, the ‘Miracle of Bern’, was for the national selfconfidence of the Federal Republic became clearly evident four years later when we were defeated in Sweden. After Bern we thought we had a monopoly on the World Champions title. But on 24 June 1958 the Swedes defeated the Germans 3:1 as early as the semi-final in the Nya-Ullevi stadium in Göteborg. And in the Saar Newspaper you could read: ‘Swedish officials have maliciously authorized around 40,000 representatives (they meant those onlookers who were cheering on their team with cries of ‘Heja, heja’) of these mediocre people, who have never gotten over their average national achievements, to spew torrents of that hatred onto us, which can only come from inferiority complexes […]. It is the hate of a people who have to be forbidden from drinking schnapps because otherwise they would turn into a nation of excessive boozers.’ Goebbels had been dead for thirteen years by then, but his voice continued to live on, luckily he never ventured out onto the field of football honour.” In the original: “Wie entscheidend wichtig der Fußballsieg, das ‘Wunder von Bern’, für das nationale Selbstbewußtsein der Bundesrepublik war, wurde vier Jahre später, bei der Niederlage in Schweden, deutlich. Nach Bern glaubten wir, den Weltmeistertitel gepachtet zu haben. Aber am 24. Juni 1958 schlugen die Schweden im Göteborger Nya-Ullevi-Stadion die Deutschen schon im Halbfinale 3:1. Und da war in der Saar-Zeitung zu lesen: ‘Das offizielle Schweden hat hämisch genießend zugelassen, dass rund 40.000 Repräsentanten (gemeint waren die ihre Mannschaft mit ‘Heja, heja’—Rufen anfeuernden Zuschauer) dieses mittelmäßigen Volkes, das sich nie über nationale und völkische Durchschnittsleistungen erhoben hat, den Hass über uns auskübelte, der nur aus Minderwertigkeitskomplexen kommen kann […]. Es ist der Hass eines Volkes, dem man das Schnapstrinken verbieten muss, weil es sonst zu einem Volk von maßlosen Säufern würde.’ Goebbels war da 13 Jahre tot, sein Ton aber noch lebendig, glücklicherweise traute er sich nur auf dem Felde der Fußball-Ehre hervor.” Karasek, “Sehnsucht nach dem Happy End”, p. 76. 225 In the original: “Wir sind wieder wer, weil wir gemeinsam etwas leisten”. Rainer Gries, “Mythen des Anfangs”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 18/19 (2005), pp. 12‒18, here p. 18. 226 Hake, German National Cinema, p. 110. 233

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227 In the original: “50 Jahre nach dem Wunder von Bern will auch der Deutsche Fußballbund (DFB) an den großen Erfolg erinnern. Für Deutschland war die Fußball-Weltmeisterschaft […] nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg der Wiedereintritt in die internationale Völkergemeinschaft.” Gerhard Meier-Röhn, DFB Kommunikationsdirektor quoted in Das Wunder von Bern: Presseheft (Munich: Just Publicity, 2003), p. 22. 228 Tobias Dürr, “On ‘Westalgie’: Why West German Mentalities and Habits Persist in the Berlin Republic”, in Dieter Dettke (ed.), The Spirit of the Berlin Republic (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), pp. 37‒47. See also Andrew Plowman, “’Westalgie’? Nostalgia for the ‘Old’ Federal Republic in Recent German Prose”, Seminar, 40/3 (2004), pp. 249‒61. 229 Famous quotes from Herberger, such as “Der Ball ist rund.…” [The ball is round] or “Vor dem Spiel ist nach dem Spiel” [Before the game is after the game], are shown to originate from a Swiss cleaning lady who provides the trainer with such wisdom during a night-time conversation. 230 In the original: “Zu meiner eigenen Verblüffung habe ich festgestellt, dass ich am liebsten Heimatfilme produziere.” Hanno Huth, “Producer’s Note”, in Das Wunder von Bern: Presseheft (Munich: Just Publicity, 2003), p. 12. 231 Don Cupitt, The World To Come (London: SCM Press, 1982), p. 29. 232 In the original: “Das durch den Krieg leidgeprüfte deutsche Volk.” Gerhard Meier-Röhn, DFB Kommunikationsdirektor quoted in Das Wunder von Bern: Presseheft, p. 22. 233 Sönke Wortmann, “Zettels Traum: Aus dem Innenleben eines FußballWunders”, Der Spiegel, 39 (2006), pp. 156‒64, here p. 156. 234 In the original: “Seit diesem Moment habe ich nicht nur ‘wir’ gesagt, sondern auch ‘wir’ gemeint.” Ibid., p. 158. 235 In the original: “… mitten in dem Traum, den gerade Millionen in Deutschland träumten.” Ibid., p. 156. 236 In the original: “1954 hatte die deutsche Nationalmannschaft der jungen Bundesrepublik ein erstes Selbstwertgefühl gegeben, 2006 half eine deutsche Nationalmannschaft dem Land, sich selbst zu mögen.” Ibid., p. 164. 237 In the original: “Wir wollten zeigen, dass wir eine Identität aufbauen können, in der sich jeder wiederfindet […]. Das ist ein Kulturwandel.” Jürgen Klinsmann quoted in Wortmann, “Zettels Traum”, p. 164. 238 Hake, German National Cinema, p. 110. 239 Cf. Paul Cooke and Marc Silberman, “Introduction: German Suffering”, in Cooke and Silberman (eds.), Screening War, pp. 1‒17. 240 Barbara Kosta, “Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run and the Usual Suspects: The Avant-Garde, Popular Culture, and History”, in Agnes C. Mueller (ed.), German Pop Culture: How American Is It? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp.165‒79, here p. 176.

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6. Critical Heimat Films

A hiatus in the appreciation of traditional Heimat films, which was to last nearly two decades (1960‒80), marks a significant shift in the history of the genre. Brought about, among other reasons, by uninspiring, clichéd films and changing consumer tastes and then worsened by the technological revolution, cinema-goers turned away from the escapist staple summarized by the Zieprack formula—with “reduced character creation in the perpetually identical phenotypes, in the sentimentalization and privatization of the themes, […] in plots as stereotypical action”, and in the predictable happy ending.1 Instead, they tried to live out their own Heimat dream, which consumer culture had helped to bring about. The gap between the social reality for many West Germans and the Heimat film fictions seemed to be closing steadily, and the need for Heimat simulacra decreased accordingly. As television sets became a fixture in most West German households, the need to go out for entertainment was further diminished. The realization of the world of plenty depicted in early Heimat films was the final nail in the coffin for many cinemas from 1957 onwards, and, ironically, the type of society promoted in the 1950s Heimat films was one which was no longer in need of cinema. In analysing the reason for the decline in the number of cinema-goers in general, and viewers of German films in particular, market research found that investments such as cars, scooters, household equipment, and holidays required consumers to save their money rather than to fritter it away on items such as movie tickets2—even though the price of a ticket did not increase until 1957.3 Another factor standing in the way of unabated Heimat appreciation was the increasingly aggressive rhetoric of organizations dealing with the concerns of expellees. Their revanchist agendas, legalized after the lifting of the coalition ban4 in 1948/49 and increasingly audible after several expellee organizations came together under the umbrella group Bund der Vertriebenen [Union of Expellees] in 1960, resulted in the concept of Heimat becoming synonymous with “the irrationalisms of a way of thinking that is as aggressive as it is sentimental”.5 Heimat once again became a descriptor for (national) territory, soon monopolized semantically by expellees and shunned by most of those who considered themselves politically left of centre. By surrendering the notion to the Far Right, the term “Heimat” and the associated genre gradually became part of a “Zerfalls- und Verdrängungsgeschichte” [history of decline and suppression].6 In earlier years, in accordance with the motto “A hard life compensates for itself in cheerful dreams”,7 the notion of Heimat—and films attesting to its attainability—had thrived, and the nostalgia industry in general was booming. By 1956, however, the situation began to change drastically. Signs of a looming crisis started to 235

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show when both Allianz-Verleih and Mosaik-Filme folded. Besides this fallout, 1956 was also the year when the West German film industry completed its reorganization, with Bavaria-Filmkunst AG in Munich, the Ufa-Theater AG in Düsseldorf, and the AFIFA in Wiesbaden being reprivatized.8 Their privatisation had become possible only when the Allies relinquished, in 1953, control of the assets they had seized after the demise of Nazism. The proclamation of the birth of West Germany’s new film corporations coincided with a period of slowing demand at the box-office and growth in the number of international imports, as well as competition from television, which was feared as a rival as much as the American productions that were flooding the cinemas. Although record attendance numbers were documented in 1956 (West Germany’s 6,438 cinemas attracted 817.5 million patrons and grossed close to one billion Deutschmarks, half of which came from the screening of West German films),9 numbers declined in subsequent years,10 reaching a dramatic low point in the early 1960s. In 1961, just before the publication of the Oberhausen Manifesto, the critics’ verdict of West German films, especially Heimat films, seemed to reach an all-time low. German film “is bad. Things are going badly for it. It makes us bad. It wants to carry on remaining bad.”11 Another critic concurred, labelling West German film a nuisance12 and, as if to cement these condemnations, the Federal Republic’s Secretary of the Interior refused to award the annual Bundesfilmpreis [Federal Film Prize] in 1961; his committee found none of the entries to be worthy enough, nor any director deserving of the prize of Bester Regisseur [Best Director]. In the same year, as on many previous and subsequent occasions, the Venice Film Festival Committee also rejected all German entries as substandard. This state of affairs had been allowed to develop throughout the second half of the 1950s with the production of ever more formulaic Heimat film adaptations. Producers themselves commented, somewhat bemused: “please note—conflicts may not be resolved until after the parade of those dressed in traditional costume has dispersed”,13 thus admitting to routine and mass production according to a schema. The teleological master narrative of the typical genre film, in which all desires are fulfilled, no longer satisfied the entertainment demands of the majority of Germans. By 1960 at the latest, the stale representation of Heimat idylls in German culture (film, advertisement, and literature) resulted in the term “Heimat” and associated genres being widely dismissed, not just by critics but also by the majority of the general public. Increasing use of neologisms such as Heimatschinken [tiresome Heimat schmaltz] and Heimatschnulze [Heimat kitsch]14 during this period attest to this development.15 From 1956, audiences seemed to have tired of those Filmschnulzen [kitsch films], of “too much of the same kind of film genre”.16 The demise of the genre coincided with a general crisis in German film production, with fewer than one hundred films being released in 1960, compared to one hundred and ten in 1955.17 The increasing popularity and accessibility of television—especially in the wake of sports broadcasts in July 1954 and, from September of that year, the start of the first German TV series, Unsere Nachbarn heute Abend: Familie Schölermann [Our Neighbours This Evening: The Schölermann Family]— changed cinema demographics: middle-class audiences began increasingly to turn their backs on cinema in general and on Heimat films in particular.18 “Their simple charms no longer fit into the atmosphere of the economic 236

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upswing, of new lifestyles and modernistic consumer needs […] television now promises a private, more intimate ‘happiness being snuggled up on the sofa’.”19 The average citizen’s desire for comfort—material as well as psychological—had been satisfied, and placebo pills, in the form of Heimat films, no longer seemed necessary. Nature, so extolled in the early genre films, had become a standard setting which the majority sought in their households (in the form of paintings, photography, gardens, or Schrebergӓrten [small garden allotments]) and when on holiday; Heimat simulacracum-consumables were readily available to most West Germans from the late 1950s onwards. For those who did not associate themselves with the political Right during the 1960s, notions of Heimat had become more subjective, private, and perhaps less necessary, with the “economic miracle” and its low unemployment rates catapulting most West Germans into a consumer paradise. As Alexander Mitscherlich noted: “Heimat is certainly no objective fact”,20 but rather an increasingly undefinable feeling connected more with personal memories than national pride. This sentiment is also reflected by Heinrich Böll, who admits being moved to emotion “whenever discovering a Stollwerck vending machine somewhere in the most distant corner of Germany”.21 Similarly, in his book Theologie der Heimat [Theology of Heimat], Rudolph Lange notes that there was still a desire for Heimat at this time, but that it had taken on a more personalized quality,22 especially with the trend towards interpreting Heimat as “home”, which had developed as a side effect of economic prosperity and homeownership. The furnishing of one’s abode became a prime indicator of affluence. The importance placed on interior and exterior design (also evident in a flood of magazines) increased; keeping up with the Müllers became the paramount obsession for many middle-class Germans in the 1960s and 70s. Beyond the home, Heimat as a natural idyll was accessible for many through tourism; the world of Heimat films had turned into places of restoration in a more real and personal sense. With the increasing wealth and mobility of West Germans in the late 1950s and 60s, a real-life fulfilment of contemporary advertisements for the Volkswagen Beetle (which repeatedly featured excursions into Alpine landscapes) had brought the sights of the Heimat dream within reach for most. A wave of tourism saw the formerly “kleinen Leute” [little (or common) people] from modest and middle-class backgrounds travelling to the Alps and the Lüneburger Heath, and soon even further afield, with Italy becoming a favourite holiday destination of West Germans from 1954. “Beginning in 1953, approximately one-third of the adult population of West Germany was […] able to afford at least one annual vacation trip. By the end of the decade, the average citizen was spending up to a month’s income on vacation every year.”23 The sub-genre of Touristenfilme [tourist films]—also called Ferienfilme [vacation films] or Reisefilme [travel films]—exploited this nexus between increasing wealth and mobility,24 and in a more subliminal form this trend has continued ever since in TV format with series such as Das Traumschiff [The Ship of Dreams].25 While still drawing on “the locations, stars, plots, and the spectacle of the Heimatfilm”, the tourist films rewrote Heimat as a travel destination”26 by showing urban vacationers on their annual leave taking a holiday from reality, initially in mostly Alpine settings. Hans Deppe’s Ferien vom Ich [Holidays from Myself, 1952] and Eduard von Borsody’s Die Wirtin vom 237

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Wörthersee [The Landlady from Wörther Lake, Austria, 1952] are early examples of a trend that lasted well into the next decade.27 “Basically an extension of the tourist industry, the travel film served as a promotional vehicle for new recreational activities and consumerist attitudes.”28 In these films, the vacation period was promoted as an opportunity to attain a home away from home for a few weeks and to live a life that was not possible in one’s usual surroundings. Dreams initially realized solely on screen through the protagonists of Heimat films were now shown as coming true for city dwellers on ever more frequent holidays. Again, the tourist films promised a temporary escape from the realities of work and city life in a seemingly realistic fashion, as they publicized places that were promoted as real and accessible. Film titles such as Gruß und Kuß vom Tegernsee [Greetings and Kisses from Tegern Lake] by Rudolf Schündler (1957), Ferien auf dem Immenhof [Holidays on the Immenhof] by Hermann Leitner (1957), and Schön ist die Liebe am Königssee [Love Is Beautiful at King’s Lake] by Hans Albin (1960) foreground the way the temporal but also authentic dimension of the plot’s action serves as either “a welcome reminder of our own travels [or] as suggestions for future vacation destinations”. 29 However, just like the 1950s Heimat films, the tourist films relied on extremely staged mise-enscènes, in which idealized and synthetic landscapes created mere illusions of authenticity. Initially, and similar to the Heimat films of the 1950s, the tourist films were rather prudish in their visualization of the protagonists’ love interests and their physical fulfilment: “No sex takes place or it amounts to nothing more than depraved glances and tight clothing. Dirndl necklines are only cut low enough so as to avoid endangering the film’s suitability for young people.”30 The happy ending in the 1950s films nearly always involved a true, pure, exclusive eternal love between two well-suited candidates. Despite expectations of matrimony and procreation, the films restricted themselves to showing a tableau of couples embracing in anticipation of the coming addition to the family. Saving oneself for marriage and strict monogamy were the undisputed ideals, and fitted in with the conservative attitudes of the times summed up in Konrad Adenauer’s 1957 election motto, “Keine Experimente!” [No experiments!], which was displayed with his portrait on billboards.31 His patriarchal attitude set the scene, although it seemed to be more representative of times gone by. A changing of the guard of cinema-goers was becoming apparent, with “the traditional consumers of the ‘old’ genres” thought to be mainly middle-class females attracted by ‘chick-flicks’ visiting cinemas less often or watching television at home, resulting in the need to attract different sectors of the community to the cinema with “prime importance for economic success shift[ing] to younger, increasingly male, spectators”.32 For most of this target group, the 1950s renditions of the Heimat genre had little to offer, and one logical way forward was found in a transformation of the genre: this period saw the introduction of Heimat sex films such as Hans Albin’s Pudelnackt in Oberbayern [Stark Naked in Upper Bavaria, 1968] and Franz Marischka’s Liebesgrüße aus der Lederhose [Loving Greetings from out of the Lederhose, 1973]. After Marischka’s feature film became a box-office success, the producers wanted to cash in on the boom, and between 1974 and 1982 commissioned seven sequels (of sorts), all entitled Liebesgrüße aus der Lederhose, as well as another as recently as 238

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1992. Also known as Lederhosen-, Dirndl-, and Jodelfilm—derived from the words that appeared most commonly in the films’ titles—these “Alpenpornos” [Alpine pornography]33 boomed between the late 1960s and early 1980s. The Bavarian mountain musical “popularised by Hollywood in The Sound of Music […] served as the genre to be ‘deconstructed’ by pornography.”34 If Heimat film from the Nazi period onwards, and the 1950s in particular, promised “new lifestyles through consumption”,35 pornographic Heimat films promised this through consummation. They seemed to mark a natural culmination for tourist films; after one had reached the territorial goal in the geographical context, the next goal was concerned with personal satisfaction of a more Dionysian nature. Societal limitations and suppressed urges cried out for compensation through the pushing of moral boundaries and the fulfilment of long-harboured longings. “After almost a decade of conservative sexual morals and sexual taboos the need for permissiveness has emerged [...] it was not until the ‘sexy sixties’ that it found itself in full flower.”36 In this attempt to connect with a new audience, directors revitalized the Heimat film genre predominantly for male viewers. In stereotypical fashion, the lederhosen man, the dirndl girl, the city dweller (or any other nameless type) meet in rural surroundings, either Alpine or northern German, and redefine Fremdenverkehr [tourism] to Verkehr mit Fremden [copulation with strangers]. Casual relationships turn physical almost immediately, with sexual encounters providing excuses primarily for the display of female genitalia. This led to the promotion of sex tourism in a way that was surpassed only by the wave of sex tourism that followed the end of the Iron Curtain some thirty years later, when areas of East Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic experienced a similar influx of German testosterone.37 Other genre films also catering mainly to a male audience included Rialto-Filmproduktion’s Karl May films (eleven were produced between 1962 and 1968) and the Edgar Wallace crime film series (thirty-three films between 1959 and 1972),38 with German Westerns and German detective films going on to dominate popular taste throughout the 1960s. As for the Heimat sex films, the combination of spectacular landscapes and spectacular bodies, the breasts and legs of both sexes fetchingly framed by skimpy folkloristic attire, granted an extended lifeline to the genre, albeit in a transgressional way. The traditional iconography of green meadows, blue lakes, cloudless skies, romantic hay-barns, cosy inns, and down-to-earth folk remained a constant, but now served as the backdrop for sexual gratification. Franz Antel’s production 00 Sex am Wolfgangsee [00 Sex by Wolfgang Lake, 1966] pioneered the transition with its suggestive title and tested the water for such films. Box-office success confirmed that a new winning formula had been developed. Subsequent productions were suggestive, not only in title but also in action, and prepared for the gradual transformation from simply seductive to borderline hard-core. The ever-more-revealing cleavage and increasingly explicit love scenes were rudimentarily motivated by a storyline that customarily revolved around city dwellers finding sexual gratification with wholesome country girls in an environment that enabled everyone to lose their inhibitions, or around young country folk having a good time themselves. The true love ideal of the 1950s Heimat film was replaced with the truly pleasurable but ultimately meaningless affair. “[T]he settings of the 239

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always ribald folk plays are mixed here with the milieu of tourist films, […] in which the most backward regions of Germany (especially Bavaria and East Friesia) are presented as erotic regions to be colonized.”39 The manner in which hitherto suppressed passions were played out in the country seemed to imply that only in such a pleasant environment was it possible to shake off the shackles of urban life and find one’s way back to nature and the primal instinct. Rather than a sublimation of feelings, an instant gratification of one’s deepest and crudest desires and urges was sought. Instead of couples destined to spend their lives together, short-term partners played out their version of sexual liberation in front of the cameras, inviting middle-class audiences, stuck in the cities with their mundane daily routines, to identify with them. After the success of Franz Antel’s Liebe durch die Hintertür [Love through the Back Door, 1969], the formula was adhered to by many a German-Austrian co-production over the next few years, such as Georg Tressler’s Ach jodel mir noch einen [Oh, Yodel Me One More, 1974] and Franz Antel’s Das Love-Hotel in Tirol [The Love Hotel in Tyrol, 1978]. The number of films produced was steady, with several being released to a loyal fan base of cinema-goers every year—for those looking for sexual arousal, as well as those enjoying the ironic references to classic Heimat films packaged cleverly within them.40 Irrespective of their cinematic finesse or lack thereof, many of the Lederhosen films proved to be evergreens, as their successful cinema screenings were followed by popular video and eventually DVD releases. Most of these films (just like the Heimat films which shared costumes, settings, and soundscapes) had very reasonable production costs and achieved high returns at the box-office, as well as through subsequent licensing agreements. Thus the Lederhosen films can be regarded as one of the thriving branches on the tree of the Heimat film genealogy. With the advent of private TV channels and all-night programmes, these films experienced a revival in the early 1990s, and have become a staple for latenight audiences on several private channels in Germany ever since. Critics nowadays agree that the wave of 1960s and 70s Heimat sex films resulted mainly in “soft-sex film which you could almost show on the children’s channel on TV nowadays”.41 At the time, they made for unusual and rather revolutionary viewing, as they were essentially parodies of the Heimat film genre. These films abandoned the genre’s nostalgic features, showing “Bavaria as a displaced and degraded utopia, commercialised in the form of the tourist industry, its former rebelliousness ‘liberated’ as barnyard sex”, whereby “the so-called ‘yodel-wave’ […] with titles like Beim Jodeln juckt die Lederhose [Yodelling gives you an itch in your leather shorts] might be said to have ‘deconstructed’ the genre from within the Heimat film industry itself”.42 Ironically, this deconstructive tendency is shared with the productions of the directors of the New German Cinema,43 although for very different reasons. “The New German Cinema’s own sense of identity came at first from rejecting totally the associations that had formed around such genres”44 as Heimat, tourism, and sex films. With the Oberhausen Manifesto—which “was drafted one January evening in the back room of the Chinese restaurant Hongkong in Munich’s Tengstrasse”,45 and subsequently supported by twenty-six signatories at the annual West German Short Film Festival in Oberhausen in 1962, among 240

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them Edgar Reitz and Dr Alexander Kluge—a more intellectually minded group of directors prepared for a change in West Germany’s film scene. In response to genre productions in general, they sought to instigate a process of renewal. The manifesto was an attempt “to break out of a particular fatal history and to confront the persistence of a traumatic past”, aiming “to counter the official control of fantasy production, a commercial hegemony over the flow of images and representations”.46 Initially, these directors rebelled against the deceptive messages in Heimat kitsch—and West German films in general—and attempted to burn bridges by denouncing their cinematic forebears. However, their claim that they were forced to operate within a vacuum of national cinematic tradition because of a lack of quality West German films cannot be upheld. They certainly took their cues and ideas from French cinema, American genre films, and Italian neorealismo, although they rebelled against the perceived legacy of Americanism just as much as against Nazism. “Eager to speak for an ‘other’ Germany, these young filmmakers valorized narratives of national disidentification and images of displacement”,47 when they clearly responded to their uniquely German heritage with their “critique of conventional genre cinema” and “its stabilising functions within postwar society”.48 Thus Fassbinder’s lament that the “lack [and] the absence of an indigenous tradition”49 with regard to West German film-making had resulted in a generation of directors styling themselves as if they had “started out of a vacuum” and “had to begin from zero”50 should be regarded as an enfant terrible pose and provocation in one. Fellow film-makers followed in the same vein, including Werner Herzog who added: “there was no real German film. […] We, the new generation of film directors, are a generation without fathers. We are orphans.”51 Clearly, they had not started with nothing, as the very aim of their films was to challenge and contradict traditional (Heimat) film. Termed critical or leftist Heimat films,52 anti-Heimat films, “neuer Heimatfilm” [new Heimat film],53 or simply “the renaissance of the Heimatfilm”,54 works by the New German Cinema directors were thus directed against, but still in reference to, their precursors. As the following analysis of Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher, Schlöndorff’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, and Reitz’s Heimat trilogy will show, they rebelled against the heritage of German cinema to which they were irrevocably linked. They wished to reject their parent generation, yet they could not ignore their own heritage, and indeed made creative use of it. By declaring their “intention to create the new German feature film” and announcing the death of “old film”, they tried to redefine West Germany’s cinematic landscape by adding new modes of representation.55 “It was the reconstruction of the concept of Heimat as both a synthetic myth and a reality with historical roots which gave film-makers, at least temporarily, the sense of belonging to a ‘national’ cinema.”56 With their theoretical deliberations, they also brought about changes in West Germany’s film practice, administration, and funding, with one example being the foundation of the academic Institut für Filmgestaltung Ulm [Ulm Institute for Film Development] by Alexander Kluge, Edgar Reitz, and Detten Schleiermacher in 1962. In addition, a new funding agency under the umbrella of the Federal Ministry of the Interior was established as a direct result of their lobbying: the Kuratorium Junger Deutscher Film [Board of Young German Film], which supported twenty feature film productions by independent directors 241

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between 1965 and 1967, and also established a legal framework for TV coproductions. Changing an ingrained film culture proved to be a hard and slow process, with Nazi film-maker Kurt Hoffmann awarded the Filmband in Gold [Gold Film Ribbon] in 1965 for his feature Das Haus in der Karpfengasse [The House in Carp Lane], a film that the Cannes festival committee rejected for its substandard quality.57 Nevertheless, one year after the establishment of the curatorium, Alexander Kluge’s Yesterday’s Girl (1966), which won a Silver Lion in Venice, and Volker Schlöndorff’s Young Törless (1966) testify to a certain degree of renewal with their counter histories forming part of a cinema of protest and resistance “against the mass-produced entertainment industry of the Nazi period and the 1950s, against the visual pleasure of lavish productions, and against the ideology of conformism that flourished in the decade of the economic miracle”.58 However, by the time Kluge and others put their names to a second declaration, the Mannheim Declaration in 1967 (more than five years after the first), the total renewal they had desired had not yet taken place.59 The Oberhausen Manifesto had inspired a founding myth of a new generation, rather than a real defining point in German film history. Only when West German society entered a revolutionary phase, spurred on by “the politicised and media-conscious student movement”,60 did German cinema finally undergo a radical change brought about by the oeuvre of the directors referred to, in hindsight, as the proponents of the “Young German Cinema”.61 This period witnessed a spurt of creative and rebellious activity that—as numerous film histories would have the world believe62— changed the image of German cinema for local and international audiences. Nevertheless, it is important to view such claims, despite the fact that they have become self-fulfilling over time, as misrepresentations or, at best, exaggerations, as the Young German Cinema failed to register with large sections of society and was noted more for its accompanying political statements than its artistic merit. In this context, one needs to re-evaluate claims relating to its heritage, production practices, and the history of its reception. While film historian Anton Kaes points to the declaration’s “[r]omantic notion of authorship [which saw itself as] not bound by economics or the expectations of an audience”,63 the reality was that the producers had to operate within a strictly predefined medium and its market practices, especially when in 1968 “new laws tied government subsidies to a director’s commercial success and a film’s potential to bring in 500,000 Deutschmarks at the box offices”.64 However, with a groundswell of generational change in society and politics, these commercial parameters were becoming more realistic for young directors. Since the coming to power of a Grand Coalition in 1966—following the demise of Ludwig Erhard’s chancellery (1963‒66) in the face of a rise in unemployment (from a mere 155,000 in 1962, or 0.7 per cent of the population, to more than double that in 1968)65 and a deficit budget of four billion Deutschmarks—the conservative establishment and German academic youth had begun to clash openly. In the spring of 1968, the APO [Außerparlamentarische Opposition, or Extra-Parliamentary Opposition] was founded in an attempt to represent the many young people who felt their interests were not supported by the legitimate government. This feeling of disenfranchisement was aggravated by the limited critical discourse in German parliament, as the reigning coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD held a 242

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resounding majority of more than ninety per cent. Initially, protests were led by students who demanded reforms, primarily relating to the status and practices of those German professors whose complicity with the Nazi regime had been too easily forgotten and who, in many cases, had escaped punishment. Many students felt these representatives of the older generation were obstructing change and scrutiny to ensure their job security. Disgruntled students became increasingly vocal, coining phrases such as “Unter den Talaren der Muff von 1000 Jahren” [Under the university professors’ gowns hangs the fustiness of 1,000 years] at the 1967 graduation ceremony in Hamburg. Instead of entering into negotiations, some German professors were determined to sit out the onslaught, musing about the good old days that had provided easier solutions when dealing with delinquents: “Sie gehören alle ins Konzentrationslager.” [They/You all belong in concentration camps.]66 Mounting frustrations found a physical release in the Easter uprisings [Osterunruhen] of 1968 against the proposed Emergency Powers Act, marking the emergence of a generation that would later refer to itself and its uniting spirit of resistance as the “68er”. Many of these students and other protesters who also made up the SDS (Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund [Socialist Union of German Students]) would later go on to become part of the political establishment in the united Germany (including Gerhard Schröder, Chancellor from 1998 to 2005; Joschka Fischer, Minister for the Environment from 1990 to 1994 and later Foreign Minister from 1998 to 2005; and Otto Schily, Minister for the Interior from 1998 to 2005). In the late 1960s and early 70s, these protesters-turned-mainstream-politicians were part of a sub-culture that took action on many social issues, fighting against rearmament and sexual repression and for women’s rights and the protection of the environment. However, their biggest concern was the fact that many members of the Federal Republic’s establishment—whether in universities, industry, politics, or culture—were former Nazis who had not yet appropriately addressed their personal involvement and guilt. In response, the 68ers issued a blanket statement rejecting their parents’ generation as cryptoFascist and beyond redemption. Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger and his Minister for Agriculture, Hermann Höcherl, were both former members of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and, in the eyes of the protesters, typical representatives of the “old guard”. Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor Willy Brandt, one of the few with an untainted background, was initially seen as a figure of hope for Germans of all political persuasions. He seemed to hold moderate views, and his own sons were supporters of the SDS. Despite this, he was unable to unite Germans with comparable authority after Adenauer’s patriarchal reign. He too looked at the “Generation der Unrast” [generation of restlessness]67 with increasing unease and appeared helpless to address the issues at hand. In the meantime, the protesters felt a burning need to act, with indications all around them suggesting that history could be about to repeat itself. This seemed even more pertinent when the elections after 1965 saw the right-wing extremist party NPD (Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands [National Democratic Party of Germany]) enter the state parliaments in Hesse and Bavaria, followed by Bremen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Lower Saxony, and Schleswig-Holstein in 1967. In addition, West Germany had demonstrated undiminished support for the United States, even though the superpower was, 243

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it seemed, entrenched in unjust, imperial warfare against an impoverished Asian country, Vietnam. At the root of all contemporary evil, according to the 68-generation, was the continuation of Nazi traits in the form of crude capitalism. The fight against capitalism’s dehumanizing and demeaning aspects had become of paramount concern for rebellious youth and left-wing intellectuals alike. Proponents of the new generation of German film-makers were swept up in the new wave of civil disobedience68 that targeted, just as they had in their rejection of “Papas Kino” [Papa’s cinema], the parent generation and their tainted values. The events of 1967—including the fatal shooting of student Benno Ohnesorg at a peaceful demonstration, the attempted murder of SDS spokesperson Rudi Dutschke, the torching of shopping centres by protesters who were to later form part of the Red Army Faction, and the growing acceptance of violence as a means of communication on all sides—provoked responses from film-makers that can be summed up under the term “New German Cinema”, of which the critical Heimat films were but one branch. Since the late 1960s, new directors had emerged whose films were critical deconstructions of the familiar; they employed a new visual language to address common themes such as the formation of communities and material and physical wish-fulfilment. These films responded so credibly to the atmosphere of radical politicization in Western Europe (specifically Germany, France, and Italy), as well as abroad in the United States, that West German cinema and its intellectual concerns finally gained international recognition in the 1970s under the banner of New German Cinema. This rejuvenation was spearheaded by the colourful directors Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Werner Herzog, but was also contributed to by intellectuals such as Alexander Kluge and Peter Schamoni, who found critical acclaim beyond the art cinema circuit at international festivals. Fassbinder, Herzog, Wenders, and Schlöndorff in particular achieved commercial success thanks to their contracts with American distribution companies (United Artists and the CIC chain).69 Coincidentally, and parallel to the critical acclaim achieved by the New German Cinema in the international markets, crude Heimat sex films achieved commercial success within Germany during the 1970s. Ironically, the Heimat sex films that were shunned by academics were able to attract a much larger audience than the well-studied Heimat films of the 1950s, the critical Heimat films of the Young German Cinema in the 1960s, and the New German Cinema in the 1970s.70 Nevertheless, both the pornographic Heimat films and the anti-Heimat films (ranging from criticisms of the Volkstheater [folk theatre] to German Westerns)71 attest to the ongoing transformation of the genre, as a clear response to the fact that the desperate formulaic remakes of 1950s Heimat films72 had lost their aesthetic and cinematic edge by becoming too repetitive and socially irrelevant. While the sex films continued in the tradition of entertainment and escapism (despite their underlying rebellious nature), the critical Heimat films intended to engage the viewer by exposing the workings of the Heimat industry, “finding in its midst an inexorable tendency […] to disdain the foreign, fear the unusual, and torment the weak”.73 One graphic example of this brutal tendency inscribed in the concept of Heimat is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Katzelmacher.

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Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher (1969) The “Intellektfeindlichkeit” [hostility towards the intellect]74 of the Heimat film genre is deconstructed in Peter Fleischmann’s Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern [Hunting Scenes from Lower Bavaria, 1969], which is regarded as the first anti-Heimat film ever released. It tells the tale of an ostracized individual, a twenty-year-old homosexual mechanic Abram living in a small Bavarian village, and depicts the nasty side of Heimat: the exclusion of others, the dehumanization of outsiders, and the deadly effects of this behaviour. Abram—just like the Russian escapees in the Austrian docudrama Hasenjagd [Hunting Rabbits, Andreas Gruber, 1994]75—is hunted down like an animal so the local people may uphold their high moral values and preserve their community. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Katzelmacher introduces a constellation that could have allowed for the same fate for his outsider figure. Instead, he chooses to deny the audience a murder or a happy ending, condemning them to witness a placid reproduction of parts of their own mundane lives—uneventful, unsensational, uninspiring, and without resolve. In doing so, Fassbinder presents audiences with cryptoFascist images and tendencies which are initially unheimlich [uncanny] but which resonate deeply because viewers are forced to recognize them as part of themselves as much as of their Heimat.76 Katzelmacher is one of ten feature films made by auteur Fassbinder during an extremely productive two-year period (1968‒70). Shot in just nine days during August 1969 and released in October the same year, Katzelmacher—its name a disparaging slang term for “guest worker”77—was an “electrifying success”78 and aided Fassbinder’s breakthrough as a film-maker at the age of twenty-four. The script of his second feature film is based on a 1968 play of the same name, which was the first theatre piece Fassbinder had written and produced. Similar to Fleischmann’s Hunting Scenes, it is an early example of an anti-Heimat film which examines the treatment of a newcomer/outsider and his interactions with the local German community. Katzelmacher’s plot revolves around several loveless couples who are entangled in various changing interrelationships of abuse, dependency, and disdain, and whose obvious self-hatred and dissatisfaction are ultimately channelled into fantasizing about or brutalizing the newcomer—the Greek guest worker Jorgos. Before his arrival, life in their Munich suburb has been monotonous, the only highlights revolving around trivial power plays and petty abuse. In contrast to any sublimation of desire, Fassbinder’s characters are driven by a quest for sexual fulfilment without any sense of love. Marie “belongs” to Erich, Paul “sleeps with” Helga, Peter “lives on” Elisabeth’s money, and Rosy “sells” her body to Franz.79 Jorgos’s appearance provides the opportunity for a reshuffle, which duly comes about, albeit with questionable outcomes. In the end, Marie sides with Jorgos, Erich joins the army, and Paul and Helga decide to get married. However, no sense of a happy ending is evident, as the new arrangements seem to promise more procrastination and tedious repetition rather than progress. In contrast to his forty-minute play version, Fassbinder doubled the number of scenes from forty-seven to ninety, “each consisting of a single shot, in most cases running no more than a minute or two”.80 He relocated the setting from a rural Bavarian village to a suburban Munich apartment 245

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complex, and delayed Jorgos’s appearance from scene one to scene thirtyeight, thus allowing more time for the introduction and establishment of the milieu prior to the disturbance caused by Jorgos. The fact that the film was shot in black and white and introduces its characters as a gallery of representative types points to “the futility of hope, the immobility of youth, [and] the self-perpetuation of the status quo”.81 The barely varied camera work emphasizes this: stifling frontal shots present images that resemble stilllife more than moving pictures. Fassbinder himself attributed the fact that images in the film appear “curiously frozen and inert, doubly deprived of depth” to the necessity of “head-on shots and static camera set-ups” due to the weight and bulk of his hired camera,82 which allowed for very little mobility. However, this limitation, if it is one at all, was used very effectively. Reminiscent of Brechtian alienation effects, Fassbinder repeatedly forces the audience to reflect on the “reality” he presents in order to enhance his social commentary and with the hope of eliciting an intellectual response. “Uninterested in the psychological believability of characters”,83 Fassbinder emphasizes the model character of his syuzhet (plot) rather than the authenticity of the fabula (story). This technique was rejected most prominently by Wim Wenders in a scathing critique of the film;84 nevertheless, it struck a chord with the majority of viewers back then and continues to do so. Fassbinder’s ideological and political commitments are evident in this film: “those of the moderate, humanist, liberal left—precisely those of [his] middle-class audiences”85 who were concerned with lingering Fascist tendencies in German society. Katzelmacher’s focus on the response of a prototypical group of petit bourgeois Germans to Jorgos’s arrival in their community makes it clear from the outset that no one is directly threatened by the foreigner. However, as members of an underprivileged class themselves, the others’ reactions are prone to be defensive and aggressive. The dominant group of characters in Katzelmacher is made up of individuals who have become fairly homogeneous as a result of all being members of a deprived class in capitalist suburbia. They do not fit into the usual mould of victim or victimizer, oppressed or oppressor, but instead display a “sado-masochistic double-bind”86 and collectively uphold an unjust and inhumane society. The women are united by their addiction to romance fiction and desire for love, while the men busily pretend that they are the epitome of masculinity, acting out gangster fantasies—albeit only in walk and talk.87 Fassbinder admitted accordingly that he did not want to make movies about gangsters, but rather “about people who have seen a lot of American gangster films”.88 Within their depressed surroundings, each has held onto the dream of their respective utopias, yet knowing they are unattainable. Reflecting the real economic downturn in West Germany towards the late 1960s, they feel dispirited and tend to lash out verbally and physically with a violence fed by mental and sexual frustration. Although they are, as the character Erich remarks, filled with a desire to “lead a better life than we do now”, their actions betray this wish. Caught in a vicious circle of abuse, their conduct is more inclined to cement the misery than to break out of the cycle. They feed off gossip and are too busy with their adulterous intrigues to make any progress in life. At any rate, they are most afraid of change, as it harbours the possibility for them to fall further down the pecking order. They respond to Jorgos not as a potential bearer of opportunity 246

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but instead as a threat to their rituals and routines, which are clearly evident in the repetition of settings, character constellations, communication rituals, and generators of conflict—all powerful indicators of their stasis.89 The background to every scene highlights the extreme limitations of the characters’ horizons. The set itself indicates constraint, with the people’s lives revolving around aimless encounters in confined public spaces (in front of or behind the building and in the local tavern), as well as in their spartan private spheres. The apartments are interchangeable, lacking personal features or characteristic items and displaying the bare minimum in furnishings—perhaps just a bed or table and chairs. The noticeable over-lighting of the white walls in indoor scenes and the non-conformist style—“the film defies mainstream conventions of gesture, dialogue, mise-en-scène, and camera work”— make the film appear purposefully stylized, formalistic, and artificial.90 In his commentary on the making of his very first feature film Love Is Colder than Death, completed only weeks before shooting Katzelmacher, Fassbinder described his preferred style: “I would have liked to shoot this film against perfectly white walls, to make it unmistakably clear [that it is a film].”91 He decided against this alienation effect, in order to “have some identification in this”.92 Nevertheless, it is hard to empathize or sympathize with any of the characters in Katzelmacher, as their flaws are repellent and their class limitations, which seem to determine their responses, make them undesirable as emotional investments for the audience. They all remain curiously flat, and reveal only sketchy details about themselves. The German men have low-paying jobs, and resort to prostitution (one man sells sex to another) or concoct half-hearted, incompetent gangster schemes to make money. However, they do not pursue these options with any vigour, and prefer to daydream. One character, Erich, explains his wish to join the army as an easy option to escape his current situation. Likewise, the women are portrayed as deficient, selfish, and brutal; they display “no signs of sexual or social consciousness and seem completely acquiescent to male tyranny”.93 This may explain why most of them turn on Jorgos as a welcome, weaker victim to bully; he acts as “a catalyst, unleashing the pent-up jealousies, rivalries, antagonisms, and frustrations of the milieu into which he enters”.94 The men unite against Jorgos, supposedly to protect their women— if not for love, then at least for status. To them, Jorgos represents a peril to everything familiar and comfortable. As a result, their shared angst provides them with a sense of solidarity which is expressed in aggressive rhetoric and deeds directed against the initially helpless victim. They exaggerate their insecurity, spreading rumours about Jorgos’s threatening sexuality (he has a “better physique”) as well as his political affiliations (“where he comes from they have Communists”). In short, he is different and, as the typical “other”, might undermine German values with his “foreign habits”. They feel at their most honourable, however, when they try to justify their opposition to Jorgos by slandering him, calling him a threat to the weaker sex, and claiming “our women aren’t safe either”. This rationalization is supported by one of the women alleging that she has been raped by Jorgos. On every retelling of this lie, her claims become more outrageous, yet fail to provoke any of the others to question her motivations or their own. They are thankful for any pretence that affords their xenophobia and intolerance a cause and a target.

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Jorgos’s presence helps the other characters to gloss over the fact that they belong to their society only by way of submission to a latent Fascist and capitalist logic. Marie explains to Jorgos with regard to the males’ behaviour: “They always have to be together”, suggesting a need for physical and ideological uniformity which is crystallized in the view of an outsider, whether a foreigner or a woman. The women, in a mirror image of the way the males exclude Jorgos, also exclude one of their own. This is evident when the rest of the women gang up on the ugly duckling Gunta, or later, on Marie when she dates Jorgos. Being part of a larger unit provides the only true assurance of the stability of one’s social status, and it is in this way that members of a dominant group reveal their own insecurity. The presence of a scapegoat aids the process of group formation, which is central to any definition of Heimat. However, the lack of any morals, values, and loyalties within the changing groups indicates just how arbitrary, fragile, and hollow the concept of belonging—and thus the notion of Heimat—have become in a society marked by the downturn of the “economic miracle”. “Dog eat dog” seems to be the motto of all, with everyone trying to position themselves safely with their backs against the wall. Consequently, barriers and composition play key roles, as evidenced by “the unchallenged routine of the characters, and in particular […] the repetition of the unchallenged frontality of the group portrait in tableau”.95 When the Greek guest worker appears for the first time, entering the mise-en-scène from the left with his black suit and suitcase, the composition reinforces the message: he is a stranger whose arrival necessitates a response. All the locals are leaning against the railing facing Jorgos; from the first moment, they are at a stand-off, communication fails, and the demarcation line is clear—it is he against them. To the men, he represents a clear and present danger as competition for the women, whom they have become used to exploiting and swapping; whereas the women react to his arrival with sexual excitement, though not with a unified response. Jorgos is cast as a disturbance in both narrative and composition, because movement accompanies his introduction to the plot: he is traversing spaces, entering people’s flats and lives with new ideas, language, food, and dreams. He also interrupts the viewers’ perspective: “Unaccustomed as we are to the presence of any figure in the foreground of [any] tableau shot, the intrusion of Jorgos comes as a shock.” When he bursts onto the scene, “[he] literally challenges the horizontality and frontality of the shot by altering the optical perspective”.96 Jorgos soon swallows the stick with which he has been beaten and goes on to perpetuate the same crimes. Thus, though a victim of violence and slander, he fails to elicit sympathy, as he plays the ignorant when it suits him and pursues sexual pleasure whenever possible. A final twist is provided in the play version: Jorgos departs when Elisabeth invites another guest worker, this time a Turk, to share his room. Just as part of the group starts to accept him, the film version of Jorgos also speaks about leaving, when he finds out that his employer wants to hire another guest worker. Instead of looking forward to the prospect of having an ally, the Greek is not happy with the guest worker’s Turkish nationality, and refuses to cooperate. The German characters’ initial claim, “we belong here, and no one else”, has now also been internalized by Jorgos. Jorgos’s arrival in West Germany, in the first place, was due to the fact that labourers were needed and recruited as guest workers on a rotational 248

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basis, in order to fuel the German economy. However, this—albeit initially temporary—immigration of outsiders was not perceived as a necessity by the general public, whom the German characters in Katzelmacher are intended to represent. Their attempts at understanding their government’s policies remain superficial: “They increase production and the money stays in the country.” Without simply ridiculing the rudimentary logic of xenophobes or siding unconditionally with the perceived victim, the film treads carefully between these extremes. Fassbinder allows for limited identification with Jorgos (playing the role himself), without making a self-defeating and melodramatic film.97 He foregrounds not emotion but reason, reminding audiences that Jorgos has been invited and shows him gradually warming to the monetary benefits of this arrangement, despite the criticism he puts forward in grammatically reductive constructions: “Germany much cold”. This sentiment seems to be shared by Marie, who befriends Jorgos in an attempt to escape Germany for her romanticized vision of the Mediterranean. The industrious north of Europe is played off against the indolent south, although the setting in Munich is not intended to be recognizable as a real place. The city is presented more as a negative model which reveals the mechanisms of power and violence present in German society. The artificial dialect, the crude exchange of phrases, the unreflected utterances of prejudices and lies, and the verbal aggression all indicate the alienation of the speaker as much as of the addressee. Earlier Heimat myths are cleverly deconstructed in a society in which trust, love, and happiness have become alien concepts. Nevertheless, Fassbinder “uses a situation clearly recognizable to a German audience in order to dramatize the unification of characters, their arousal from lethargy, [thus] investing the narrative with the simplicity of a parable.”98 This reaction was observable in the wake of West Germany’s guest worker scheme, and had been demonstrated more dramatically during the Third Reich by the exclusion and prosecution of certain political and religious groups, as well as otherwise “undesirable” peoples. Fassbinder is thus able to advance the idea that “the Germans are predisposed in such a way that the idea of fascism, which you can argue about, […] can lead them to something like National Socialism, which you can’t argue about anymore.”99 Thus Katzelmacher—just like Fleischmann’s Hunting Scenes—highlights “täglichen Faschismus” [daily Fascism]100 and explores the roots of Nazism as a human precondition. As a consequence, history’s potential to repeat itself is foregrounded in the film’s mise-en-scènes, which are mostly “very precisely framed, with a preponderance of tableau effects and frontality; except for seven regularly spaced and identically executed tracking shots, no other shot involves camera movement of any kind”.101 The camera movement in these seven tracking shots is accompanied by prominent film music: Franz Schubert’s Sehnsuchtswalzer [Waltz of Longing].102 The characters’ steps appear choreographed to the synchronizing rhythms of the music and serve as a metaphor for stasis; the fact that nothing will ever change, as no one goes against the grain or moves out of time. Just like a waltz dance itself with its circular routine of turning, turning, and turning, the characters seem unable to break out of a vicious circle. The tracking shots too “are rhythmically so controlled by the slow, regulated movement of characters that they are drained of the dynamic and expressive import they convey in other films”.103

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Change in any form seems unlikely, adding to the icy (cold and static) atmosphere of the film. The stasis is also shown in the film’s lifeless colour scheme. Fitting with the mood of the film, “[t]he lighting is uniformly gray, creating an achromatic effect occasionally offset by black jackets. The dialogue is as sparse and elliptical as are the spatial and temporal articulations between shots.”104 The film’s stilted style seemed to correspond perfectly, nevertheless, with its intended reception, with a British critic noting: “Fassbinder has created a style which fits his content like a glove.”105 Although inspired in general by the structural principles of melodrama, with its dramatic symmetries and ironic reversals, Fassbinder strives for an inter-textual style which gives his oeuvre “a history” and a canvas onto which he was able to add his “deviancy and perversion” in a critical engagement with existing prototypes—such as the Heimat film genre106—which also plays off belonging against the “other”. Katzelmacher, like other Heimat films and folk dramas, represents a community faced with a disturbance and its attempts to reinstate order. The film intentionally foregrounds references to other films, as well as to theatre and to Fassbinder’s early antiteater [anti-theatre] period,107 thereby anchoring itself, if not explicitly in the cinematic tradition, then at least in its theatrical counterpart: the folk or village play. References to the medium and the genre are placed deliberately throughout the film, with a strong example evident in its stage-like feel overall, with every shot resembling a stage scene, as “there is no classical breakdown into long shots, medium shots, close-ups, and reverse angles to dissect narrative space”; in addition, “continuity between shots is often marginal, so that many of the sequences could conceivably be rearranged”.108 Katzelmacher’s closeness to the tradition of the heimatesque folk theatre is also evident in its use of dialect and vernacular forms of German, as well as its author’s dedication of the film to German novelist Marieluise Fleisser. Produced symbolically under the label of antiteater-X Film, in Katzelmacher Fassbinder seems keen to engage critically with (folk) theatre in the socially critical Volkstheater [folk theatre] tradition of Fleisser and Ödön von Horvárth, as well as Fassbinder’s contemporary Franz Xaver Kroetz.109 Fleisser’s 1920s folk tales, and their influence on Jean-Marie Straub’s theatre practices in Munich, greatly impressed Fassbinder, who copied aspects of their theatrical world in his films, such as “the climate of emotional violence, sexual oppression and alcoholism”.110 Fassbinder himself had staged Fleisser’s play Pioniere in Ingolstadt [Pioneers in Ingolstadt]—his first play as sole director—with the title Zum Beispiel Ingolstadt [For Example Ingolstadt, 1968] in the BüchnerTheater in Munich,111 and was thus very familiar with the themes and motifs of the Heimat plays against which Fleisser and others had rebelled. Moreover, Fassbinder was keenly aware of the nature of theatrical effects; after picking up the pieces of the “action” theatre in 1968, he had founded the antiteater performing Peter Weiss and Bertolt Brecht in Munich’s artists’ quarter Schwabing, in a pub called Witwe Bolte [Widow Bolte]. In this context, Fassbinder engaged not only with the critical folk theatre/Heimat tradition, epic theatre theory, and political theatre, but also with media and genre—and their restrictions—in general. He was vocal in his rejection of genre film, discarding any formulaic framework as restrictive, but cherished the “anarchy of imagination” and total freedom of creativity.112 The winning formula of 250

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Heimat films, with their appeal to emotion and the fulfilment of dreams, were counter-productive to Fassbinder’s intent. He wished to force the viewers to analyse for themselves and to observe critically, confront prejudices, and make connections between the filmic reality and the audience’s own lives. “Films should liberate the mind, not befuddle it” was his credo.113 In this way, he set himself and his films apart from the general “dumbing down” of society as depicted in the 1950s Heimat films or, indeed, in most TV programmes today. Consuming these narratives is numbing, according to Fassbinder, as the viewer must withdraw “into the kind of silence in which sooner or later you become a moron”.114 His aim was not to provide a soothing storyline that aims at the neutralization of discontent and the stabilization of society; rather, he intended to tell “stories in such a way that the moviegoer is entertained and is afterwards no stupider”.115 Fassbinder’s political art was meant to engage the viewer by foregrounding its artistic framework; he was determined “that a realism should come about in the audience, in the head of the viewer. It’s a collision between film and the subconscious that creates a new realism […] which changes the real reality.”116 His desire to improve West German society was grounded in a negative attitude towards the status quo of the 1960s and 70s, as expressed in most of his theatre plays, films, and interviews. His oeuvre thus became an agent of change, enquiry, and social discourse. Fassbinder especially lauded opportunities provided by the medium of film which allow “moviegoers the courage to continue expressing things, taking a position on them, making it known”.117 His inspiration for this kind of political film came from deeply personal experiences, anxieties, and frustrations which reveal a lot about his formative years: in those of his films that are set in the 1950s, Fassbinder engages with a society that has been deeply depressed and which has, as a consequence, sought temporary refuge in Heimat films. He described the mood of the time as lacking “euphoria; I think people kept themselves going with all sorts of external things; but didn’t actually love those times. Or somehow got through them by keeping busy”; however, Fassbinder continues, “they didn’t […] really experience them intellectually and psychically.”118 Fassbinder felt that the atmosphere in Germany was stifling: “[I]t’s provincial here in a certain way”119 was a sentiment that prevailed for him throughout his life. He certainly did not agree with the Heimat film ideals of content communities and unlimited prosperity fulfilled in a happy ending. Rather, Fassbinder was appalled by “the manipulability, the exploitability of feelings within the system that we live in, and that at least one generation or more after us will certainly have to live in”.120 For him, happiness and fulfilment were the responsibility of every individual—not a collective Heimat, but a personal dream and pursuit, or utopia, which he himself tried to realize in his relationships and in his work,121 yet did not find, least of all in one of the traditional Heimat spheres, nature: “I don’t find nature any more human than human beings. […] Just as cruel.”122 Likewise, he was critical of the exploitation of female actors and female audiences—a symbiosis that was successfully at work in 1950s Heimat films. He reflected critically on the role of women in film in general, a comment that applies to both Heimat films and Heimat sex films: “I take women more seriously than most directors do. To me women aren’t there just to get men going: they don’t have that role as object.”123 In his films, Fassbinder was keen to show 251

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new and different female figures and to create “new feelings” rather than replicate long-harboured dreams and urges.124 He did not wish to appeal to common conformist utopias, but rather to resurrect individual ones, as “what we are taught to experience as happiness is a pretext that a society shaped by various forms of compulsion offers the individual”.125 While rejecting the conventional dream-factory methods of the 1950s—which Fassbinder referred to as a “castration of the imagination”—he was indebted to his Heimat.126 Despite the lure of French and American movie industries, Fassbinder stayed in West Germany, because of “the language first of all which I grew up with and work in [and] my upbringing, my childhood”.127 Nevertheless, he never lost sight of the critical dimension of the Heimat concept. Swiss writer Max Frisch reminded himself that “[d]isgrace is part of my Heimat as well”, and added “Heimat is not defined by comfort [as] whoever says ‘Heimat’ takes on a lot more than that.”128 The same can be said for Fassbinder when he depicted a Heimat that is cruel, a Heimat that hurts. In view of 1950s Heimat films which defended “the turf of Heimat by constructing Germanized and hyper-masculinized bodies stuffed into lederhosen and hyper-feminized maidens laced into dirndls”, and persisted in “disavowing sexual diversity and multiculturalism in German society”,129 Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher proved a marked change in tradition. His conception in essence became the new understanding of Heimat by the New Left, an anti-Heimat that is “conscious, oppositional, and democratic, or, at least, has the courage for conflict”.130 Fassbinder’s early works helped to define this anti-Heimat movement, which must be viewed as a rebellion against the unsophisticated Heimat concepts of the genre films of the 1950s, with film-makers and audiences alike “recovering from what they now understood as a naive belief in utopias”.131 As a result, “people struck an antiutopian stance (anti-Heimat, anti-reason, anti-industry) that was uncritically accepted as an answer”.132 Although Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher can be regarded a successful feature and trialled a genre that the director himself was keen to follow up on—with the 1972 release of Wildwechsel [Jailbait], based on a play of the same title by Franz Xaver Kroetz—the genre of anti-Heimat films with its quotations of elements from the Volkstheater tradition, its rural settings, and references to traditional lifestyles never really became part of the mainstream. When these strictly defined criteria are applied,133 only a handful of films can be subsumed under this heading, including Reinhard Hauff’s Mathias Kneißl (1971), Uwe Brandner’s Ich liebe dich—ich töte dich [I Love You— I Kill You, 1971], Volker Vogeler’s Bavarian Western Jaider, der einsame Jäger [Jaider the Lonely Hunter, 1970], Reinhard Hauff’s Paule Pauländer (1975), as well as his Der Hauptdarsteller [The Principal Actor, 1977] and Wolf Dietrich’s Sachrang—Eine Chronik aus den Bergen [Sachrang—A Chronicle from the Mountains, 1977, screened on West German state television ARD in 1978].134 Even without labelling these films as “anti-Heimat”, critics at least saw a new genre in the making in the critical Heimatfilm. The label owed its inception to the deconstructivist style of these radically new films, in which idylls are repeatedly replaced by the uncanny as they question the very bases of the Heimat genre—“the assumption that life in the country is agreeable, desirable, and essentially unproblematic”.135 Thus the opening mood setting in Hauff’s film is that of a still-life dominated by a country house which is surrounded by locals standing in the snow; the 252

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closing image of Kombach in Volker Schlöndorff’s 1971 anti-Heimat film, Der plötzliche Reichtum der armen Leute von Kombach [The Sudden Riches of the Poor People of Kombach], is rendered in a naive art-style sketch; and Brandner’s film likewise foregrounds its rural setting with a series of landscape portraits showing fields, hills, and a settlement resounding to the chiming of church bells. In these instances, photography and painting— sister-arts to the medium of film—are used to connect distant times and places with people, all of which will be torn apart in the following scenes. These initial images of beauty, peace, and anti-modern bliss are contrasted with the brutality of the action unfolding in the course of these films, and are intended to comment on contemporary West German society with these “quiet, composed pictures, scenes from an idyll” proving illusory.136 The same applies to the etching in the background of Katzelmacher’s local pub scenes: the Heimat idyll depicted serves as a stark contrast to the horrific community congregating in front of it. In hindsight, Vogeler has likened the mood of the times to the image of bottled-up anger. He remembers “[w]e searched for a new narrative cinema [Erzählkino] and turned to the Heimatfilm” with its “welcome lie about an intact world. We took the genre and its myths and turned them on their heads until the blood began to flow. For us Heimat became the breeding ground for rebels, martyrs, revolutionaries, non-conformists and outsiders.”137 While von Moltke rightly sums up the new Heimat film developed by the rebellious directors of the 1970s in their concentration on “the local as a site of profound social ruptures, of unreconciled hierarchies and stark class divisions, of prejudices and backwardness”,138 he fails to acknowledge that Fassbinder and his contemporaries did not choose only rural settings in their critique of West German society; while it is true that the Jungfilmer [young film directors] “conceived of the countryside as a prison”,139 they certainly also diagnosed Fascist mentalities and spatial, mental, and material boundaries in urban and suburban environments. Perhaps because of his overall condemnation of the stereotypical German mindset, Fassbinder was held in higher regard internationally than he was in his native West Germany. There he was considered an enfant terrible rather than cinéaste,140 despite his overnight success in the late 1960s. Nevertheless, during Fassbinder’s first year of fame, Katzelmacher, which had cost a mere eighty thousand Deutschmark to produce,141 found an enthusiastic audience, won Fassbinder the 1969 Federal Film Prize in Gold (among other awards), and earned 650,000 Deutschmark in prize money, as well as another 300,000 Deutschmark from the Film Subsidies Board two years later.142 “Katzelmacher was liked, uniting the avant-garde critics (impressed by the disciplined formal experiments) and those who expected from the cinema a social message.”143 Most important in the context of this study is the fact that its success renewed interest in the Heimat genre—at least in its deconstruction, reformation, or as a “vehicle for his own feelings of social and political alienation”144—and influenced generations of film-makers to come.

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Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta’s The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (1975) Like Fleischmann and Fassbinder, Schlöndorff should be regarded as one of the key directors responsible for the first anti-Heimat films. Schlöndorff had already directed an anti-Heimat film in 1971. Der plötzliche Reichtum der armen Leute von Kombach [The Sudden Riches of the Poor People of Kombach] was based on authentic sources: specifically, the records of court proceedings from 1825 which dealt with a robbery. The crime is traced back to the villagers of Kombach who had, suddenly and collectively, shown signs of wealth. In his reconstruction of those events, Schlöndorff reveals the apparent alienation from their homeland demonstrated by the villagers as they appear staggering through the landscape, tripping frequently and falling over. They seem to have forgotten the lie of the land and its nature, a critique which Schlöndorff also directs against contemporary West German society. Indeed, it was from the comfortable background of this wealthy, democratic Western nation that dissatisfaction began to be voiced by the post-war generation to which Schlöndorff belongs. While economic prosperity was viewed as a sign of personal success by the generation that had suffered most during the Second World War, the new middle-class mentality seemed—at least to some of the younger people leading up to 1968—to be too materialistic, as well as morally defunct and politically disinterested, and therefore increasingly provoked frustration. In addition, the election successes of the right-wing party NPD in several states of the Federal Republic caused sections of the young adult population to react in a vehemently antiHeimat way. Ironically these two trends—one rejecting Heimat and one promoting Heimat—ran concurrently in an ever more irreconcilable fashion, and proved challenging to the government of the day. Despite legislation to the contrary, Willy Brandt believed that more freedom and self-determination could provide a better basis for a cultural and social Heimat: “It’s about freedom in everyday life. That’s where the self-determination of the individual begins.”145 However, at the same time—and not without Brandt’s active support—German society had moved further and further away from the basic principles of freedom and self-determination, a crisis which is explored in The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum.146 Based on Heinrich Böll’s quasi-autobiographical narrative of the same title,147 the film depicts the fate of a woman whose chance encounter with a terrorist suspect leads to her being hounded by police, media, and society at large. Böll had written the book—that subsequently formed the basis for his collaboration on the script with Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta—in response to the way he was treated by the media, police, and sections of the general public after publishing an article sympathetic towards Ulrike Meinhof and the Baader-Meinhof trial in the German weekly Der Spiegel. While Böll’s literary account is largely non-sequential, Schlöndorff and von Trotta’s film relies on the more familiar linear feature film narrative. In depicting the gradual destruction of the reputation or “honour” of Katharina Blum, both film and book condemn the erosion of civil liberties and democratic values in West Germany during the years following 1967, after authorities had legitimized extreme measures against the increasing 254

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radicalization of some protesters. Although Schlöndorff’s, von Trotta’s, and Böll’s works focused on the inhumane methods employed by the press and police, their accounts reveal much about the nature of Heimat in West Germany leading up to the incidents of 1970s terrorism in the young state. Hysteria, exacerbated by perceived threats from within and without— growing civil unrest at home and the Cold War on the international level— radicalized West German institutions, polarized the general public, and led to extreme representations in the media. By exaggerating the threat posed by rioting students in the late 1960s, Brandt’s Grand Coalition government was able to pass emergency laws and other new legislation between 1968 and 1972, effectively extending police and government powers.148 Anyone (though notably only those on the left-wing spectrum of politics) seen as threatening domestic security could be temporarily arrested and punished, as well as removed and/or barred from ever working in the civil service, which in West Germany also included school teachers and university staff. Correspondingly, distrust, denunciation, and surveillance dominate the society depicted in film and book. Schlöndorff and von Trotta’s version opens with the audience looking through the lens of an undercover agent’s camera, which is tracking the movements of terrorist suspect Ludwig Götten. The viewfinder is similar to the cross-hair of a rifle: the observer has isolated the target and has the power to destroy it. The police—more powerful, threatening, and covert than Götten—in collusion with the press, set out to destroy this individual and any suspected ally by presenting their own subjective perspective as reality. In the course of the events that unfold, the respectable domestic worker Katharina Blum meets Ludwig at a party and is compromised simply by taking a liking to him. Their joint departure from the social gathering and the night spent at Katharina’s flat are carefully, albeit incompetently, observed and documented, culminating the following morning with the police force deciding to raid the love nest which is supposedly harbouring the terrorist suspect. What unfolds is an inappropriate show of force by the police, who storm Katharina’s flat wearing body armour and waving high-powered weapons. All they find is Katharina in her dressing gown preparing breakfast for herself. Keen to present their operation as a success, the police brand Katharina a whore, a communist, and a terrorism suspect herself. Working hand in hand with the press in a vicious campaign to destroy her, both Katharina and civil society are under threat. The press, represented and led by Ernst Tötges, is shown to be unscrupulous, deceitful, and unethical to the core. Like Böll, Schlöndorff and von Trotta thus express their discontent with the media landscape in West Germany. The broadcasting and publishing industry was highly concentrated, having been dismantled and then reinstated after 1945 by the Allies, who— following an unsuccessful attempt at denazification—issued licences to those publishers who were willing to submit to their control. Although their official brief was to break apart the hierarchically organized, monopolistic structure of the German press, the Allies managed to cement the old channels of production and distribution rather than reform them. In the coming years, despite less restrictive regulations, print media outlets were able to survive in West Germany’s competitive news industry only if they could pitch their product to the mass market. Just a handful of supra-regional papers, including Bild Zeitung [Germany’s best-known tabloid newspaper], were able to 255

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establish themselves, especially since the removal of protectionist policies resulted in a highly centralized industry vying for a mass readership, and burgeoning sales and advertisement revenue, rather than integrity in reporting, became the hallmarks of a high-selling newspaper.149 This resulted in sensationalist and simplistic publications which were keen to scandalize the public while homogenizing the masses and their opinions. The journalistic style of the Bild Zeitung has dominated the media landscape ever since its inception in 1952, and is aimed at the lowest common denominator in society. This tabloid—West Germany’s most popular, boasting a wide readership even among the German expatriate community abroad—became the flagship of Axel Springer’s press empire, and was able to shape public opinion like no other publication at the time. A temporary stagnation of advertising revenues in 1966 led to a move further away from ethical journalism to cater to the primal urges of society with stories full of sex, envy, greed, and gossip.150 The formula proved victorious, with the Bild Zeitung becoming even more successful the further it moved towards sensationalism and scandal.151 The methods employed by Die Zeitung [The Newspaper] in Katharina Blum are clearly modelled on Springer’s Bild Zeitung; the brash, commercial style of reporting feigning a “high moralistic tone”152 is reflected in its malicious coverage of Katharina’s persecution, which causes even her friends and neighbours to condemn her. As a result of this elaborately executed witch-hunt, she is ostracized by almost everyone who had previously loved and respected her. The atmosphere of fear leading to her exclusion is grounded in the erosion of civil society.153 Anything perceived as a threat to the brittle security of the community calls for extreme measures to ensure its suppression or removal. The image presented of such a community is questionable, and raises doubts about the dominant ideology behind it. West Germany in the 1970s, as depicted by Schlöndorff and von Trotta, is in a state of sanctioned lawlessness, a society in which the individual always takes second place to political and monetary concerns. The viewer is already introduced to a bleak and cold place in the film’s exposition. Largely represented in shades of grey, a fog lifts to reveal images of a wharf, on which the lonely figure of Ludwig is being secretly surveilled. The fact that he moves about freely and undisguised, in stark contrast to the elaborate covert tactics employed by his persecutors (which include bugging, spying, and disguises, with one policeman infiltrating a Karneval party in a Sheik costume while Katharina and Ludwig remain undisguised), shifts sympathy away from the authorities. Nevertheless, in the filmic reality, the authorities succeed in isolating and marginalizing both Ludwig and, later, Katharina, confirming the cut-throat environment in which fear and hysteria have perverted the very concept of belonging in society, along with all Heimat values. For the majority, no sense of belonging exists other than the fear of being excluded themselves if they do not conform to the mainstream lifestyle. In this way, Schlöndorff and von Trotta suggest the hollowness of the concept of Heimat at the time and the restrictive practices of community, by exemplifying (as in other anti-Heimat films) the fate of “Normverletzter” [someone who violates the norm].154 On the whole, Schlöndorff works subversively with genre hallmarks. Hunting does not take place in the forest but rather in the middle of the city, with police hunting the suspects; the traditional festival of Karneval does not 256

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round out the plot with a happy gathering of all parties, but instead indicates deceit and divisions within society; and the festive or spectacular calendar fixtures used in Heimat films to promote the people and the region in the most flattering way are substituted with grim and grey cityscapes. In Schlöndorff and von Trotta’s version of 1970s West German reality, enemies are pursued relentlessly, out of an apparent fear that a young nation could fall victim to a variety of “others” if it does not vigorously defend its supposed homogeneity. In a similar fashion to the way Ludwig and Katharina are treated, other perceived enemies—including Else Woltersheim, Katharina’s godmother, who as the daughter of an East German citizen is suspected of having Communist sympathies—are ruthlessly berated and humiliated by the police and press. Katharina’s friends, the industrial attorney Dr Hubert Blorna and his wife Dr Trude Blorna, are also libelled by the press, purely because of their association with Katharina and their refusal to condemn her on flimsy evidence. “Belonging” thus turns out to be a brittle bond: not a strong pre-natal connection but a strategic affiliation that can be revoked. Accordingly, Katharina’s apartment block—initially a place of refuge—is shown to be surrounded by a windswept wasteland, devoid of vegetation or other life, with only a discarded newspaper page being blown around. The lifeless surroundings are indicative of the absence of a civil society. This point is also conveyed in a scene where Tötges visits Katharina’s home village, Gemmelsbroich, a small rural settlement that would conventionally denote the site of Heimat as opposed to the corruption of a big city. Rather than finding a link here to a support base for Katharina, the community in her “Heimat” has also abandoned her—the narrow-mindedness of its residents matching that of her city neighbours and former friends—when they show no signs of loyalty to, or any sense of fraternity with, Katharina. They rob her of her Heimat as a place to which she can return or retreat; unlike the way in which the prodigal sons or daughters of other Heimat films are re-embraced by their community, the citizens of Katharina’s village have betrayed her trust and severed any bond with her. She no longer belongs there, and the invasion of her flat indicates that she has lost the sanctity of her home and, with it, her Heimat. Labelled “a conspiracy hangout, a gang’s headquarters, [and] an arms cache”155 by the media, the flat has been violated and is open to all sorts of acts of trespass and slander, which result in Katharina physically realizing the psychological process of her destruction. She vandalizes her home and shoots Tötges, thus choosing to control the final act in the destruction of her Heimat. In her anger and hopelessness, Katharina feels driven to fulfil the allegations which led to her predicament.156 The blame is laid on the circumstances that have forced her to react in this way, and should result in the rejection of a society that functions along those lines. According to Herbert Marcuse, a “Widerstandsrecht” [right to resist] is ethically justifiable,157 although he does not condone violence against people in the way it has been perpetrated against Katharina—as well as by Katharina herself. The ease with which Katharina, “the nun” and the most honourable and decent of her circle of acquaintances, could fall under suspicion indicates the frailty of any meaningful bond between individuals and their community in a capitalist state in which humans have become mere commodities. The loss of honour, foregrounded by both Böll and Schlöndorff in the titles of book and film, is preceded by Katharina losing her freedom, her reputation, her job, as 257

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well as her Heimat in the village and her mother. The death of Katharina’s mother, seemingly accelerated by Tötges’s intrusion, symbolizes the state of Heimat in West German society. The concept of Heimat, irrevocably linked to the mother figure,158 is slowly dying at the hands of an invasive and malicious media. Katharina Blum thus suggests she is not alone in this “Heimatlessness”, but is instead one of many victims of the incidences of unjust criminal investigation and subsequent social exclusion which plagued the period. In Katharina Blum, Heimat becomes a nightmare, as a paradoxical situation emerges in which the desire to protect Heimat against threat destroys its very ideals. Tötges’s editorials purport to uphold the values of a free, liberal, democratic society of cohesion, demonstrating supposedly high and conservative morals. The hysteria and perversion evident in the hate mail that Katharina receives express the insecurities of a society that is everything but a community. Any sense of belonging and unity is based solely on the “construction of consensus”,159 resulting from the mass projection of internal fear and stateengendered hatred onto the “other”, rather than from an innate or organic sense of belonging. This shows the logic behind the perversion of Heimat into regressive and anti-modernist beliefs and the appropriation of these beliefs to expel those who do not belong. Like Fassbinder’s Katzelmacher, Schlöndorff and von Trotta’s film suggests that Fascist attitudes were retained by some in West German society after 1945, with legislation designed to deal with perceived threats bearing similarities to laws enacted by the National Socialists.160 The ideas and ideals of Heimat, used in this way as justification, become a vehicle for repression rather than for self-actualization, as they benefit those in power and support Koshar’s claim that Heimat is often a tool that “perpetuates a set of ideological formations beneficial to specific institutions” in society.161 Instrumentalized by politics, the sentiments of inclusion, security, peace, and community—which should form the basis of Heimat—lose their idealism and become instead euphemisms for exclusion, control, suppression, and enforced solidarity. Similar to the understanding that capitalism and crypto-Fascism erode civil society (as demonstrated by Fassbinder in Katzelmacher), Schlöndorff and von Trotta’s film criticizes the link between “das Kapital” [the capital] and Heimat.162 Boasting liquidity and might, benefits are distributed, with the dominant society favouring the “haves” over the “have-nots”. This is evident in the privileges enjoyed by Katharina’s wealthy “gentleman visitor”, Alois Sträubleder, as well as the Blornas. The monetary-cum-social standing derived from their professional and private connections provides these people with houses, holiday homes, country retreats, and a certain status which makes them appear to be above the law, or at least able to sidestep it. Sträubleder (an investment banker, party official, and university professor) and the Blornas (a corporate attorney and an architect) represent the upper middle class in Germany and occupy positions of influence. Katharina, despite her conscientiousness and industriousness, is clearly less well placed, living modestly and in dependency; she was able to buy her flat only with the Blornas acting as guarantors for her loan. This couple therefore literally hold the key to Katharina’s Heimat. The contrast between her flat and the refuges available to the rich—with the Blornas’ winter retreat and Sträubleder’s grand country villa mere holiday houses—emphasizes the social gap. At the 258

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same time, the different versions of Heimat evoked by the two modes of living symbolize differing capacities to realize any sense of Heimat in capitalist societies. Katharina’s high-rise, urban flat lacks the essence of what constitutes the traditional sense of Heimat: birthplace and/or a link to community and/or to nature. Her relative anonymity, as well as the desolate surrounds and distance from the natural environment, form a stark contrast to the Blornas’ mountain retreat (which evokes images of the Alpine sublime) and Sträubleder’s country villa, both of which are associated with the early Heimat genre. Not only does their wealth afford them a connection with a traditional sense of Heimat, it also removes them geographically from the constraints of civil society. Just as 1960s Heimat films responded to the psychological need for holidays and tourism, in Katharina Blum the Blornas likewise seek escape from the pressures of their professional lives and urban surroundings, as well as from the stressful climate associated with any period of civil unrest. In addition, Sträubleder seeks to escape his wife and children, his villa providing him with a parallel world in which he can live out aspects of the sexual desires that he must hide (in keeping with his respectable bourgeois image); hoping to advance his relationship with Katharina, he has given her the keys to his rural retreat. His ability to sidestep the confines of society stands in stark contrast to the options available to a single woman like Katharina, whose ability to socialize freely is restricted by the regressive attitudes of the dominant section of society. She can only drive aimlessly across the countryside in an attempt to escape temporarily, whereas the rich drive to a “second” home, a parallel Heimat. The depiction of such retreats clearly reinforces the arguments raised in the discussion of Katharina Blum’s representation of German civil society. However, a true sense of Heimat has been lost; the rich have the means to imbue geographically removed places with the “Heimat sentiment” that their primary homes are no longer able to provide. In contrast to Katharina, Sträubleder is, initially at least, able to circumvent the destruction of his Heimat, despite being implicated in illegal behaviour (he is able to exert influence on certain individuals and institutions, including Die Zeitung). In this way, Schlöndorff and von Trotta enable the viewer to perceive the Heimat of the Wirtschaftswunderzeit [economic miracle period] as a purchasable entity attainable mainly by the wealthy in a very real escapist sense. The collusion between institutions and different arms of the political executive, as represented in Sträubleder’s personal sphere of influence (industry, politics, media), is shown to be at the core of the malaise in Schlöndorff’s reading of West German society. Collaboration and corruption within the press, police, and state (police officer Beizmenne shares police information with the journalist Tötges, Sträubleder’s pulls strings in the corporate sector, and Hubert Blorna requests advice from his high-school friend, Peter Hach, a public prosecutor) are a critique of the self-serving behaviour of individuals in prominent positions. However, the film also indicates that a corrupt society is unpredictable and not likely to accommodate loyalty. Sträubleder, the Blornas, the investigating police officer Beizmenne, and the journalist Tötges all fall victim to the system they have helped to uphold, so that even for its proponents, West Germany (and its specific notion of Heimat) turns into a dystopia. Heimat has become all about the desires and needs of a small group of individuals in power, rather than about harmony between 259

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the needs of the community and the individual. It means the exclusion from, and denial of, Heimat to others in order to maintain it for oneself, rather than the creation of an innate or genuine sense of belonging: in short, Heimat has become anti-Heimat. Thus Schlöndorff emphasizes “an agonistic construction (and destruction) of local Gemeinschaft” [community]163 and continues “in the tradition of the critical Heimatfilm, using the genre for the merciless mise-en-scène” of West Germany.164 His film examines issues related to the “Heimatthematik” [Heimat topic], particularly in the way in which “Vergangenheitsbewältigungen wie Zukunftsmöglichkeiten” [coming to terms with the past as well as with future possibilities] are dealt with.165 This thematization seemed necessary in the context of the end of the “economic miracle” and the associated crises of the Western nations, starting with the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 and the intensification of the Cold War with the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962. Confronted with the Vietnam War from 1963 and the Auschwitz trials in the FRG between 1963 and 1965, some awareness grew that the past had not yet been dealt with adequately. In addition, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, and in West Germany of Benno Ohnesorg in 1967 (as well as the attempted murder of Rudi Dutschke in 1968), provided ample evidence of the increasing brutality of public discourse. The time seemed ripe for a critical engagement with the agents of power, with Schlöndorff choosing a style—in contrast to Fassbinder’s belief in alienation—which was much less inclined to offend mainstream viewers and which has been described as “political realism”.166 He aimed to reach a “wide audience through an American distributor” with accessible and moderate films,167 although his artistic ambitions were similar to Fassbinder’s in that he wished to bring about social change. His aim was “to raise the consciousness of his audience so that it would become more critical of political repression”.168 Schlöndorff’s Katharina Blum, among others, saw 1970s German cinema achieve enormous popularity, with audiences worldwide eager to see new German film productions. Their aesthetically driven criticism of ideology, with which they rebelled against the “Geisteshaltung” [attitude of mind] of their fathers’ generation and their conventional forms of artistic expression,169 saw them find a language which resonated with likeminded members of their generation in other countries. Nevertheless, the role that these directors play in the eagerly constructed history of German film and in associated theoretical debates seems curiously over-inflated, and is often dealt with in isolation from earlier and subsequent developments in the arts in West Germany. Only very few critics have pointed out consistencies and continuities and have made the crucial link with the Heimat film tradition. In the 1980s, Eric Rentschler noted “[t]he refurbishing of the Heimatfilm by a host of young directors at the start of the seventies”,170 and pointed towards a clear connection with and complex continuities between pre-1970s German cinematic traditions and the New German Cinema—which, nevertheless remained curiously under-researched, even after this novel contribution. Equally noteworthy and largely unacknowledged is the fact that this critical or anti-Heimat rejuvenation of the genre has been ongoing since the 1970s. Jo Baier’s Wildfeuer [Wild Fire, 1991], Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Siebtelbauern [The Inheritors, 1998], Didi Danquart’s Viehjud Levi [Jew Boy Levi, 1999], and Hans-Günther Bücking’s Jennerwein (2004) are just a few examples of films that were produced in the style of Schlöndorff and Fassbinder, 260

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who themselves owed credit to Brecht and Horváth.171 Despite these continuities, film historians closed the chapter not only on Heimat films but also on the Young German Cinema and later the New German Cinema. The year 1982 was seen to mark the end of the period now referred to as New German Cinema, with reasons for its demise including Fassbinder’s death that year at the age of thirty-seven, “the rise of the new CDU/CSU/FDP coalition, […] the presentiment of commercial television and the new media”,172 and “a new government minister who refused to subsidize ‘elitist’ films”.173 Fassbinder had been stylized as “the pulsating, vibrating core” of the New German Cinema, and his untimely death after an immensely intense and productive eleven years in the arts has been seen to spell the end of the epoch.174 Others, including Rentschler, have claimed that the end of the New German Cinema was long overdue, especially with the coming to power of a new coalition (CDU/CSU/FDP) in March 1983 and the declared war on Autorenkino [authors’ cinema] by one of its members (Zimmermann, CSU).175 Irrespective of these eulogies, the impulses of the critical Heimat films continue to be felt today. One of the heirs to the sentiment of Fassbinder’s and Schlӧndorff’s films is undoubtedly Edgar Reitz, whose Heimat trilogy spans twenty years of production and critical as well as popular acclaim.

Edgar Reitz’s Heimat Series (1985, 1992, 2004) Director Edgar Reitz rose to fame some twenty years after signing the Oberhausen Manifesto, when the first instalment of his Heimat series was screened, which “fused the legacy of the Heimatfilm from the 1950s with its revisions”.176 Indeed, the series “signalled its generic heritage […] in its title […], in the film’s rural milieu, its emphasis on the family as the basic narrative unit, and its appeal to tradition and the continuities generated by female work in particular”.177 It was noted that setting, plot, and conflicts such as those “between the rich, obnoxious locals and less well-to-do but quintessentially good locals might have been taken straight from Der Meineidbauer [The Perjured Farmer] or Waldwinter [Winter in the Forest]”,178 both traditional Heimat films from 1956 and 1958 respectively. Even the advertisement for Reitz’s first Heimat instalment set the scene for a fairly tame, largely apolitical rediscovery of the location and era of one’s childhood home: “Heimat is about leaving and returning. […] About mothers and sons. About fathers and how early morning light shines into the room. […] About the three eggs on the window sill. […] About the loaf of bread you hold up against your chest to slice. About pillows and chewing gum. […] About a letter from the USA and about blueberries. […] And always about rolling stones gathering no 179 moss.”

However, Reitz was quick to acknowledge the baggage carried by the term “Heimat” as well as by the associated film genre: “In German culture there is no more ambivalent feeling, hardly a worse mixture of happiness and brutality, than the experience embedded in the word ‘Heimat’.”180 He was also at pains to foreground the message of his monumental work with the 261

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seductive emotional pull intended to prepare the audience for the second phase of reception, a critical reflection on the place, the period and the modes of representation. The initial broadcast of the first series coincided with a heightened awareness of the controversial retelling of the Nazi period in history, namely, the Historikerdebatte [historians’ debate] of the mid-1980s.181 Back then, the idea of Heimat received “much creative and scholarly attention”, to the extent that a “renegotiation of the idea of Heimat became an important way through which Germany was attempting not only to escape from its political history but also to understand itself”.182 In response to what Reitz perceived as an Americanization of German history—the German TV screening in January 1979 of the NBC TV series Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss,183 which he labelled “made in Hollywood”,184 Reitz produced his German version of national and regional history.185 His Heimat opus now spans more than two decades of production and consists of three monumental series, which cover eight decades of narrated time and add up to about fifty-four hours of viewing: Heimat, 1984, with eleven episodes with a screen time of nearly sixteen hours; Die Zweite Heimat [The Second Heimat], completed in 1992, with thirteen episodes stretching over nearly twenty-six hours; and Heimat 3, with six episodes spanning more than eleven hours. Heimat seemed to hit a nerve from the start of its first screening on West German state television (ARD) at the prime time of 8:15 pm on Sundays and Wednesdays, following an unprecedented advertising campaign. Prior to its TV premiere on the ARD channel, the first opus toured international film festivals, including Munich and Venice, and was lauded there as the pinnacle of German film. Following extensive press coverage, the overwhelming interest in the first screening of Heimat in West Germany was fairly predictable. The statistics sum up its stellar success: “Twenty-five million Germans […] or 54 per cent of the total West German viewing public” watched part or all of the first instalment of the series.186 The chronicle of Schabbach, a fictitious village in the Hunsrück, and the fate of several local families and their offspring may have been so successful because of the opportunity for positive identification with the characters and setting. This fact has proved true for all three Heimat series and their documentation of German history from 1919 to 2000. United by their focus on Maria and later on her son(s), the three Heimat series problematize the concepts of Heimat and tradition (embodied in mother figures such as Maria), the fate of prodigal sons (evident in Paul’s and Hermann’s experiences), as well as the problem of narration and authority (highlighted in the dealings of Glasisch-Karl, Klärchen, and those of numerous artists), all of which resonate with audiences as issues relevant to their own experiences. The narrative of the first series, Heimat: Made in Germany, starts on 9 May 1919, with Paul Simon, Maria Wiegand’s future husband, returning from a French prisoner-of-war camp to his native Schabbach. Instead of immediately entering his parents’ house, Paul stops at his father’s forge and joins him at work on a piece of metal, finding solace and feeling more at ease in this environment than in the busy and inquisitive space of his mother’s kitchen. However, during the next eleven episodes, it is exactly to this latter sphere that the film returns repeatedly: the hearth with its warmth and its food for the stomach and the soul. The kitchen table becomes the epicentre of the 262

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action, as the camera angles clearly identify once Paul has finally entered the kitchen. By assuming positions around the table in a full circle, the camera underscores “the concentric and centripetal construction of space, anchoring the notion of Heimat that the film develops as if around a magnetic pole”, thereby foreshadowing that “this is a place to which the story will return over and over again, a place where large- and small-scale events become telescoped into the inner sanctum of Heimat”.187 The rural setting in the first Heimat series allows for a reduction to life’s essentials. Food (and its journey from field to hearth, its preparation and social consumption) and the seasons (and with them, the life-cycles of birth, ageing, and death as “essential life events”)188 structure time and people’s experiences more than world politics or changing ideologies in an “idyllic chronotope”.189 Following Mikhail Bakhtin’s logic, Heimat’s essence can be seen as an inscription of “folkloric time […] an organic fastening-down, a grafting of life and its events to a place, to a familiar territory, with all its nooks and crannies, its familiar mountains, valleys, fields, rivers and forests, and one’s home.”190 This familiar and seemingly idyllic sphere functions simultaneously within and outside history, because on the one hand such a “little spatial world is limited and sufficient unto itself, not linked in any intrinsic way with other places, with the rest of the world”.191 On the other hand, this rural location is taken as a starting-point for Reitz’s portrait of a century of German history, with the first film series of the Heimat trilogy concentrating on families in Schabbach as production units192 and emotional centres, while representing changes at large, as epitomized in particular by Maria. Born in 1900, Maria is introduced as a nineteen-year-old in the first episode. Not yet married to Paul, but already an integral part of the Simon household, Maria, as her name indicates, is identifiable as the ideal mother figure. She appears to be the solid base to which family can always retreat, especially in later years, when she maintains a sense of dignity and a positive attitude to life after her husband disappears, leaving her with their two young sons. Maria invites the audience’s sympathy by putting up a brave front and upholding the belief that her husband is still alive and will return, even after his own parents have given up hope. She is admired by all for her attitude and the sacrifices she makes as a loving and caring mother to her sons, always putting the greater good of her family and community before herself. Accordingly, her relationship with Otto Wohlleben, a tenant and engineer working on the construction of the Autobahn, is supported by everyone, including the mother of her missing husband. Initially cast as the archetypal good woman, a Madonna figure who is contrasted with the harlots of the series (first the gypsy girl Appolonia, Paul Simon’s former love, followed by the Berlin brothel madam Lucie, and finally Klärchen, Hermann’s first love), Maria herself unwittingly transforms from the saintly Mary into the sinner Mary Magdalene. The problematization of her behaviour begins with the announcement of her husband’s return to Germany on the eve of the Second World War, throwing her life into turmoil. Paul Simon is denied entry by the Nazi authorities, who suspect that he is Jewish, but the sheer confirmation of his survival and success in America unsettles many. Coincidentally, Maria’s lover, who is half-Jewish, has been moved on to the next phase of construction in Trier, a bigger city some one hundred kilometres away, and Maria 263

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falls into a state of depression and confusion. She abandons the relationship, despite finding out that she is pregnant to him and also because of the dangers awaiting the Jewish people. Though subtle, Reitz’s representation of her behaviour becomes more negative when she chooses to focus her energies and love on her youngest child, Hermann, who takes centrestage in her life, while her older boys grow up to become soldiers. One joins the propaganda unit at the Eastern Front, while the other thrives as a daredevil pilot in defence of his homeland. Only Hermann sails through the Nazi period untainted and well protected from any corrupting ideologies by his increasingly overbearing mother. The series challenges the audience’s sympathy for Maria, especially when she takes the lead in ostracizing those perceived as threats to her culturally closed community. Jealousy and the desire to protect her Heimat make her persecute people who disturb the concept of a homogeneous and morally superior society. Maria thus rejects Klärchen, her son’s first love, “a strange woman, who owns nothing, who is nothing but a whore in Maria’s mind, [who] allows herself to fall in love [and] wants to force her way into the house via her son’s bed”.193 On Maria’s initiative, Klärchen is expelled, despite her precarious situation: her homelessness—she is a refugee—evokes neither sympathy nor solidarity. In Maria’s world, there is no time for sentimentality and empathy. It is her practicality and focus on the task at hand that cause her to move on from her first husband Paul, drop her second love interest, largely ignore politics and ideologies, and rid herself of any complications. It may be this determination to make do against all odds that enables her life to be read as a “chronicle in which all of German history since the First World War reflects itself”.194 As the centre of the narrative in Schabbach, Maria becomes the epitome of Heimat, clearly endowing the concept with gender. Contrasted with the masculine and militaristic connotations of “fatherland” and “nation”, the Hunsrück Heimat is presented primarily as a maternal sphere with all its complexities. It is thus necessary to contradict those critics who have identified in Maria a peaceful agent and a feminized communal ideal.195 According to Confino, fatherland and nation “could go to war, while Heimat could never do that. Heimat was something one fought for, never something that participated in battle.”196 However, he clearly ignores Maria’s battles against outsiders and unsettling influences on the home front. With Maria, more so than with other characters, Reitz shows that the path of history can be altered by an individual’s decisions. Schabbach becomes pars pro toto, a small place which reflects the dramatic changes in German society on a personal scale. These changes are of a personal, technological, political, and societal nature, transforming a community that is close-knit but nevertheless interconnected with the wider world, and increasingly so, as is highlighted by Schabbach’s connection to the telephone network and the national road system. On a superficial level, the delicate balance of local residents in equilibrium within their village and its natural surroundings is shown to be under threat from outside influences, as technological and ideological trends make their way into, or close to, the perceived idyll. Telephone and radio, soon termed Volksempfänger [people’s radio], ensure that the village and the rest of the nation become ever more enmeshed. “Given this colonizing logic”, Heimat, just like the anti-modern parable of films such as Jew Boy Levi, portrays “National Socialism […] as an agent of modern264

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ization”.197 Reitz maps this transformation of Heimat throughout the twentieth century by showing the town becoming electrified, motorized, and polarized, as ever-new trends sweep through it with all their positive and negative pluralism.198 However, when critics such as Karsten Witte assert that the concept of Heimat—as the first series proves—does not denote “a place of rest [but] rather a transit camp for the utopia of social harmony”,199 they ignore the fact that the threats to the idyll are already part of the system itself, as are its terminating forces. Equally important to Maria’s ambivalent role are Schabbach’s mayor Wiegand and his son, who are keen developers and agents of change, introducing new modes of transport such as the motorbike and the automobile to the area, as well as the core values of the rightwing ideology of the period, including anti-Semitism and National Socialism. Ironically, these internal threats go largely unchallenged when compared with others which are introduced from the outside and are perceived as dangerous or different. Rather, as an integral part of the Heimat fabric, they move with the times, adopting new fads and fashions every few years, representing the country’s wider development and the prevailing ideology. Likewise, Maria’s double-edged role as a stabilizing figure as well as a cold eliminator of perceived dangers to the equilibrium (of Klärchen and Otto) is an integral part of this retrograde concept of Heimat. Reitz’s critique of the concept of Heimat also incorporates the tradition of the Heimat film, with his work containing many inter-textual references: quotes from other texts extend from the self-referential inclusion of a scene in which some of the Schabbach villagers are shown at the cinema in the neighbouring village of Simmern watching Carl Froelich’s 1938 film Heimat,200 to parallels in plot development or character depiction such as the mirroring of images from Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son. In the first instalment of Heimat, Reitz introduces Paul Simon, a soldier returning from the First World War, who fails to adjust again to life in rural Germany during the Weimar Republic and eventually leaves for America. Despite having a wife and two children in his native Hunsrück village, Simon disappears without goodbyes or explanations in 1927 and is presumed dead by most of his family and fellow villagers, as they do not hear from him for several years. It is evident that the concept of Heimat is to be upheld by women as the more stable members of society; the sequences from Carl Froelich’s film Heimat resonate here, with “Heimat as a site framed around women”, ensuring continuity despite any historical discontinuities.201 Only the audience is privy to Paul’s initial bad experiences abroad. Like Tonio in The Prodigal Son, he is a lost soul in New York. For Trenker, just as for Reitz, “America is the best example for showing how this new, second culture is emerging in the world, the culture of the emigrants, those who went away.”202 Sitting at the foot of the Statue of Liberty, he watches ships go by; yet ironically he himself is lost and trapped there without money. His first encounters with fellow migrants, Italians who have cultivated a vibrant community life despite the urban setting, are contrasted with his meeting with another German who seems mentally disturbed. It is only after these ominous glimpses of different experiences of migration and loss of Heimat that Paul disappears off the radar for the audience, only to make a reappearance several years later, in 1938, when he writes a letter foreshadowing his visit to his homeland on board a cruise liner. However, it is actually only years later, 265

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after the Second World War, that his journey comes full circle and he finally returns, arriving in a large black limousine with a black chauffeur one afternoon in 1946. “The industrialist and his driver, their motions matched, emerge from opposite sides of the car. Simon walks down the road and, like a shadow, the black [chauffeur] strolls behind him. The car and the Doppelgänger—with their connotations of capitalism, foreignness, and tempo—stand out conspicuously in 203 the all-but pre-modern village.”

America has brought Paul Simon wealth, but has apparently also initiated his moral decline. The way Reitz portrays Simon implies that America has transformed him into a new person who is part of a new society, a “society of people who only have themselves left to offer as merchandise and thus compete as if it were a matter of life and death”.204 In contrast to Tonio, Paul Simon has flourished in America, literally making it from dishwasher to millionaire status. He started his own radio manufacturing business and built it up from a small workshop to a factory employing eight hundred workers. His name and reputation have, superficially, brought him financial success and the obligatory happy American family. During his visit in 1946, however, he fails to reconnect with the villagers, despite showering them with material goods. He thinks he can also “buy” his wife back, although he has long since started another family in the United States, despite still being legally married in Germany. His morals and his motivations are questioned and criticized by the villagers on subsequent visits, particularly when— towards the end of the first series in the episode “The American”—he leaves prematurely, although his mother Katharina has just died and the funeral preparations are underway. The final episode of the first Heimat series reveals the price Paul Simon has paid for leaving the village: “he never finds his way back into the homeland community and to the end remains an outsider”,205 a “Weggeher” [someone who left],206 forever stigmatized, and lost and corrupted by alien ways. He cannot fulfil his role as father to his biological sons, who go to extreme lengths to surround themselves with tradition and history. One son, Ernst, collects art and antiques while selling only simulacra, and the other, Anton, tries to uphold traditional modes of production and operation in the factory which serves as an extension of the family unit. Rather than passing on his own father’s values, Paul Simon is shown as an ageing American businessman who is blind to his son’s quandary when Anton turns to him for advice on whether to sell his company. Paul does not understand his son’s scruples and urges him to make money by selling. His Heimat has become a far-off, Disney-like world that he can sponsor and call on at will, but with which he has lost a deeper connection. Paul’s endowment of a Heimatmuseum in Schabbach is more an act of selfindulgent benevolence, as he obviously derives most enjoyment from seeing his own name on the commemorative plaque. He embodies everything that runs contrary to the German sense of Heimat, above all the crude capitalism and the Americanization of West Germany after 1945. This alienation is also felt by Maria’s illegitimate son, Hermann, whom Paul Simon is ironically most fond of, as both share biographical milestones. Both are united in their departure from Schabbach as young men, the way they have broken with 266

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tradition, and their attempts to return. Like Paul, Hermann fails to reconnect with the villagers upon his return in the early 1970s, albeit for very different reasons. While Paul’s return is juxtaposed with Tonio’s experiences in Trenker’s The Prodigal Son, Hermann’s failure to rediscover and find Heimat in Schabbach is contrasted with the return home of the artist played by Zarah Leander in Froelich’s Heimat and mirrors, on an extra-diegetical level, experiences shared by Reitz himself. Hermann felt expelled from his community, leaving—as Second Heimat shows—full of resentment, studying and going on to become “an accomplished and respected composer of esoteric electronic music in the style of Karlheinz Stockhausen […] a parallel to Reitz’s own early technical innovations and experimentations with film”.207 However, this is not where the similarities end, as Reitz and Hermann also share a gesture of rapprochement: the artistic gift they give to their respective communities. Reitz’s gift—the entire Heimat series—“tackles the rather thorny task of thinking Ernst Bloch and Zarah Leander in one”.208 This conservative notion and the critical rejection of Heimat are combined in Reitz’s Heimat series in its narrative and form. To explain this logic, Zarah Leander and film-withinthe-film sequences are included in the first series, less for authentic reference than for meta-poetical commentary. She denotes “a crucial reference point for several characters in Heimat, for the women who stay at home (and dream of Spain, Italy, the south), as well as for the men at the front (who dream of returning home)”.209 Zarah Leander’s appearance in Detlef Sierck’s La Habanera, in which her cosmopolitan appearance is foregrounded, encourages Maria and her sister-in-law Pauline to imitate exotic women. They style their hair after the Latin-inspired coiffure of the film star, and are able to escape the stifling Nazi reality through their imitation of a seemingly autonomous female identity. The care Maria and Pauline take to appear well groomed and stylish makes them fulfil contemporary stereotypes of women. They sob in the movies, while a group of men pictured is unaffected by the melodrama on screen; they are prepared to forgo self-fulfilment in reality, and appear to be happy to live vicariously through their film stars in fiction and daydreams as well as thankful for the distraction, showing no desire to question the current situation in their country. This form of reception is contrasted with the way Zarah Leander inspires another character, Martina, who visits the movies with her male friend, a young soldier. While the man is moved to tears by the action, Martina first imitates the action on screen by also eating an apple and then continues to recreate scenes from the movie even after the two return home. When she manoeuvres herself and her beloved into the cellar in such a way that she is copying yet another scene from the film, she manipulates him into a marriage proposal. “In this scene, Reitz replicates almost exactly the camera angles and cuts of the Leander film, thus drawing attention to Martina’s imitation of film in life.”210 Just as in the previous Zarah Leander moment, when Maria and Pauline are inspired to impersonate the film star and to make fictitious scenes into reality in their own lives, Martina is shown to be the director of her destiny—at least within the confines of the expected norm of getting married—while Reitz in turn asserts his control as the author of these inter-textual references. In doing so, he draws attention to “the constructedness of the film and its overdetermination by cultural expectation: 267

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Martina is expected to get married, the soldier is expected to propose”,211 and the director as proponent of the Oberhausen tradition is expected to reflect self-referentially and critically on his medium. Thus Heimat becomes a late fulfilment of the New German Cinema, and is by no means “the antithesis of the critical films of the 1970s and a revival of the pre-1968 German cinema” as suggested by some.212 Ironically, the treatment of Reitz’s opus in critical discourse seems to be dominated by those denying or ignoring the subversive nature of the work. The story of the Simon family is, according to Ginsberg and Thompson, “in part a persistent and far from accidental retelling of a classic German (fairytale), its authoritorial reconstruction of national identity and character emphasized by the film’s subtitle, Made in Germany”.213 This caption is displayed as an inscription superimposed on the image of a tablet which resembles a gravestone, and “invites readings of Heimat and of the fictional village of Schabbach as a local metaphor for the (West) German nation”,214 so that it “resonates with a mythologized nationalism through its conflation of the regionalism and folkloristic milieu of the provincial villagers who live far from the urban centres (the particular), and the ethnic idea of the ‘German’ as it embodies a national myth (the universal).”215 Many have joined in the rejection of such national myth-making, while also criticizing Reitz’s oeuvre for its blanks, specifically for its inability or unwillingness to confront the horrors of the past. With regard to the first series in particular, critics disapproved of the reproduction of “the standard ellipses concerning the extermination of the Jews. Whenever real horror would have to be thematized, the film resorts to […] fade-out strategies which are analogous to the defensive mechanism of experience and as such elude critical reflection.”216 Jewish suffering is marginalized, major aspects are relegated to the background, and common stereotypes are reinforced rather than questioned. Throwaway lines about the persecution and dispossession of Jews, such as “Die habe es jetzt net mehr so einfach, die Jude” [They don’t have it so easy any more, the Jews] and the reference to the final solution “na, die Jude, husch durch de Schornstein” [well, the Jews, whoosh, up through the chimney], as well as the depiction of ugly Nazis in the form of the stereotypical father and son duo Wiegand, make evil easily identifiable and neatly localized. Reitz has tried to excuse such clichéd imagery with reference to the patchiness of oral history; from his point of view, Heimat should be allowed to concentrate mainly on children and nature. Despite this defence, critics have commented that sentimental identification and a concentration on personal memories dominated by family reunions, weddings, and funerals, cannot exclude the victims and perpetrators. However, Reitz’s films seem to do just that. Indeed, the viewer is not encouraged to identify or sympathize with the American Paul Simon, nor with the many faceless and nameless victims, be they Jewish landlords, foreign soldiers, or Russian civilians. The accusation was levelled at Reitz that “the film should have had as a theme, just how the characters remained the same despite the knowledge of these atrocities, endearingly rooted in the homely space where the family lives.”217 The audience knows that individuals in the film’s narrative knew about preparations for war, the persecution of minorities, and the war crimes, but chose not to act. In every respect, the characters in the series are living proof of the banality of life at that time, 268

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equating their grief at the loss of German soldiers who died for their fatherland with the grief felt by those who suffered under Nazi Germany.218 Another act of relativization of history is evident in the depiction in the first episode of a proto-Kristallnacht supposedly set in 1923: Pauline is marvelling at the jewellery display in a shop window in the neighbouring town of Simmern when a group of young men starts to hurl stones at the apartment of the Jewish landlord who lives above the watchmaker. She is injured by shards of glass and—in what turns into the beginning of their relationship—the watchmaker attends to her wounds. “The importance of this small ‘Kristallnacht’ sequence is that it shows how the shards of the Jew’s shattered existence—we never see him in the flesh—are immediately absorbed into a sentimental story of courtship and matrimony.”219 No one seems to care about the damage the intended victim has suffered, as the chance encounter between Pauline and Robert, the watchmaker, becomes more important when it is spun into a love story in which the Jewish neighbour does not feature other than in the form of a landlord desperate to sell, ten years on in 1933. When Robert remarks “The Jews don’t have it so easy any more”, it is as if to imply that they have indeed had it too easy for too long. Without denying Robert and Pauline their personal and material gain, as they even seem— according to Reitz’s narrative—deserving of it, it is in situations like these that Reitz holds a mirror up to society to demonstrate that the film’s characters and the audience alike are in collusion with evil, falling into the emotional trap that Reitz has set for them. This assortment of conservative, emotive, and critical elements has been received with mixed feelings. Thomas Elsaesser’s favourable critique applauds the fact that the film “implicitly criticises the West Germany of today for its corruption and its cynicism”, yet is at the same time “aesthetically pleasing” and “evocative of a certain historical stage”.220 Leonie Naughton, however, criticizes Reitz’s omission of class conflict and, above all, of the political content of Fascism itself.221 Naughton argues that Reitz’s film series “reconfirm[s] bourgeois aspects of German popular memory”222 rather than advancing, challenging, or undermining widely held notions of the topic. She rejects his account as “sentimental and revisionist”, and sees in it a sanitized version of events that make for a “palatable history” and allow for a “patriotism and nostalgia for a past that has become ‘denazified’”.223 Alon Confino rightly points out that the critical discussion in this context shifted “from what really happens in it to what should have happened, but did not”.224 Other critical voices spoke about an “obsession with memory” with regard to Reitz’s epos. This criticism contrasted sharply with the enthusiastic reception of the first instalment of Heimat by the public, who felt inclined to identify strongly with aspects of the story, especially those relating to the daily lives of the villagers, or for that matter, of most of the audience, as the “seemingly disinterested, objective, and documentary recording of memory […] carries great persuasiveness and the ring of authenticity”.225 At no time in the post-1945 episodes of the first series are past injustices addressed; the obsession with memory is thus to do with personal recollections rather than large-scale history. Many critics have concluded that the series sympathizes with the efforts of those who wish to suppress unpleasant memories of the Nazi period, presenting a selective memory and “Verdrängung des Grauenhaften” [suppression of the horrific].226 Critics have 269

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taken issue with the absence of Jews in the series, with its “structural elision of the Holocaust, as an event located firmly outside the borders of Schabbach, as well as its related displacement of Nazism and the Nazi Party onto the socially and sexually ‘decadent’ terrain of modern urban space, and its idealist projection of the central Nazi discourses of Volk (racial-ethnic community), Heimat (homeland) and Vaterland (fatherland) onto the imperialist context of Lebensraum (living space), the index of German neonationalist utopia”.227 Heimat in Schabbach is clearly a place of ethnic homogeneity, where outsiders such as the gypsy girl Appolonia stand no chance, and where Jews such as Otto Wohlleben’s mother (Hermann’s grandmother) and their ultimate fate are of no interest. Heimat in Reitz’s series is unforgivingly reserved for the deserving and is thus a retrograde concept, something supposedly evident in the prologue which states: “History tells you […] that the big topics in this world are not the most important, […] enjoy the beauty of the film, a modest, simple beauty which has become rare.”228 With this invitation to watch the series for enjoyment, albeit of a meditative sort, many could not help but suspect that Reitz himself favours this naive and uncontroversial view of the past: a view that forgives without question, that seeks harmony despite differences, and that happily ignores the injustices of the recent past. In reality, however, Reitz attempts to entice the audience to identify with this Heimat, thus making them complicit with the crimes against humanity perpetuated by its characters. By relying on oral history and storytelling, he manages to recreate experiences of historical events as they were perceived by the common people; in doing so, Reitz not only criticizes the moral shortcomings of his figures but also implicates the audience by way of its response. Timothy Garton Ash’s defence—“Remember, remember, this is a film about what Germans remember”229—prepared the ground for this understanding. What has been captured in the series, especially of the events between 1933 and 1945, is, according to Reitz, something that would ring true for the majority of Germans who lived through the period: it is not the suffering of minorities or official history which dominate memory, but rather personal experience. He rejects the moral high ground from which this criticism comes as being unrealistic and naive with regard to history as well as to humankind. His justification for the selective and self-referential approach to memory and forgetting, repressing, and reinterpreting is clearly stated: the Nazi Reich “was possible because the moral question does not play that role in the lives of people which we think it does.”230 What he aimed to achieve was the rediscovery of the issues concerning German history and identity and the notion of Heimat which is inevitably related to these contested concepts. Indeed, Reitz’s Heimat led to a critical engagement with the relationship between “history, memory, narrative, and national identity [and] its affirmative reconstruction of Germanness outside the realities of anti-Semitism”.231 He wishes to redress the void by providing a “meaningfully structured, aesthetically communicated experience”,232 while foregrounding the selective process of remembering at several key moments of the narrative. One noteworthy example is the construction of a character’s own vita. Supposedly sent to Schabbach by Ernst, Maria’s second oldest son, Klärchen’s attempts to prove her story with the aid of a photo album fail. The 270

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women listening to her account and commenting on the photographs presented as evidence remain unconvinced, as the images appear inconclusive. Less trusting than many men in the film, it is up to the women in Schabbach to expose the suspected fraudster by pointing out the fact that the arbitrary images presented to them could mean any number of things, and could be rearranged in a variety of ways to support a different narrative. This serves as a pointer, on the extra-diegetical level, to Reitz’s work as a narrator and presenter of images and snippets. The same can be said for the other narrator in Heimat, Glasisch-Karl. Initially, he seems to be the village idiot, but turns out—albeit only in the final episode of the first series—to be the illegitimate nephew of the Simon family. He was scarred in the First World War and has difficulty finding his place in the village, just like Paul Simon. Glasisch is ostracized by his fellow villagers because of a skin condition on his hands contracted during the Great War, and he is forced to keep his distance from his family and community. With the help of pictures taken by his amateur photographer cousin Eduard Simon, he is given the role of the narrator and lead-in voice at the beginning of the Heimat episodes two to nine. The fact that he makes his first appearance as a narrator presenting a photo that—as the audience would know by the second episode—is not representative, immediately calls his trustworthiness into doubt. The family group photo he describes was taken on the occasion of a picnic in front of the ruins of Baldenau castle, when Glasisch seems to be part of the happy family; he has chosen to recall an image of the family taken at a time when he was for a split-second unaffected by the quarrels, abuse, and rejection caused by his appearance. Reitz highlights the unreliability of the narrator just as he does the choices he himself makes as a film-maker. At the beginning of the third episode, among the pile of photos seemingly randomly selected by Glasisch, a photo of Nazis in uniform becomes visible and is immediately covered up with photos of Maria and her son Anton, demonstrating Reitz’s self-critical selection process. “By showing this covering-up of history on the part of the narrator”, Reitz calls into question not only the narrator but also the recipient—exposing selection as “an intentional act that taps into the audience’s desire for the domestic idyll”—and points out “the relationship between photographer, narrator (or interpreter, historian), and audience”.233 Reitz allows the audience glimpses of the persecution of Jews, a nearby concentration camp, war, and expulsion; he “does not ‘leave out’ these parts of history, but instead shows how they are left out”.234 Through the use of such fleeting references, obvious cover-ups, and the misrepresentation of Glasisch, Reitz admits to the impossibility of recording history or arriving at one truth. In addition, Reitz also admits to “something much more damning: to the extent ordinary Germans knew of the Jews’ fate—and they knew quite a lot—they simply did not care”.235 This lack of empathy is embodied by everyone, with each and every character shown to cross the ethical and moral divide at some point. From their own individual perspectives, their transgressions may seem minor, but Reitz is keen to include them, thereby replacing impeccable icons with rounded and flawed characters. Von Moltke claimed in his 2005 publication on the concept of Heimat that Reitz apparently “found the right mixture of nostalgia and critique (that is, of the 1950s and the 1970s)”.236 On the one hand, nostalgia is in most 271

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instances an integral part of the construction of identity, especially in view of the negotiation of a positive relationship with one’s cultural background, making it a logical choice of narrative mode for Reitz. On the other hand, his decision to include unsettling or unresolved elements of subversion in the series—such as the nude corpse of a woman uncovered in the forest—is a tribute to his formative years in the 1970s. Von Moltke suggests that this unexplained murder “remains an irritant in the topography of the film”, and constitutes “one of the most psychoanalytically explicit treatments of the forest as unheimlich”.237 Nevertheless, Reitz paints the Federal Republic—in its West German form as well as unified as a contemporary Heimat in his last instalment—as accommodating diverse narratives of the past and multiple versions of the present in a deliberately non-homogeneous composition. Glasisch’s artistic licence, which allows him to freely select and reinterpret, to harmonize and exaggerate, hints at the unreliability of history; the fact that he has a disfiguring skin condition also suggests that he in some way spoils and soils his own narrative,238 which is by no means presented as a master narrative. On the contrary, Glasisch’s role is clearly to problematize the claim to truth; the audience is not presented with an authoritative story, but rather with “half-finished stories and missing material. By attempting to break down the viewer’s confidence in the truth of photographs and film, Reitz side-steps the implications of a master-narrative”, thus opening up “a new discussion on memory […] documentation of history through film, photography and narration”.239 In this way, Heimat marries oral history with photography and film as a collective means of remembering, and official records of history are expanded to include the perspective of the “kleinen Leute” [little people],240 whose hopes, beliefs, and suffering form an integral part of historical reality. Reitz presents memory thereby as polyphonic and multifaceted, just like Hermann’s avant-garde composition “Bindungen” [connections, ties]. Ironically, despite its hopeful title, the piece fails to reconnect him with his hometown, despite even being transmitted into his mother’s kitchen via radio. The experimental nature of Hermann’s art is lost on his mother, whose sense of harmony is grounded in a much more traditional understanding of classical music. For her, as for most villagers, it is an incomprehensible cacophony; only Glasisch, the intermittent narrator, appreciates it and can make sense of it. Years later, after his mother’s death, Hermann returns to Schabbach for her funeral and re-evaluates his relationship with his childhood Heimat. Emotionally touched by the sounds of the local dialect and other particulars that bring back fragments of early memories, he writes a piece for the region, “enlists villagers to perform, and uses the local landscape [with its subterranean acoustics] as a setting, enhancing its natural properties with the technology at his disposal”.241 Not until he fuses his aesthetic ideas with familiar elements does the connection between tradition and avant-garde become accessible to a large audience. The parallel to Reitz’s own work is unmistakable;242 while the product of Hermann’s reunion and reconciliation with his roots “is a stirring oratorio in the Hunsrück dialect which is performed and recorded in a nearby cavern”, in reality “this oratorio is the film Heimat”.243 This connection is made explicit in the second series. Die Zweite Heimat—Chronik einer Jugend [Second Heimat—Chronicle of an Adolescence] retraces, on an extra-diegetical level, the steps of the 272

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generation of artists associated with the Oberhausen Manifesto and their intended break with tradition. This series clearly identifies a generation which is made up of individuals, with each episode focusing on a different character and his/her artistic calling. What unites these individuals is their inability to communicate meaningfully with the more homogeneous generation dominating the first series. The avant-garde and the provinces do not mix well, just as the art of the New German Cinema failed to register with the wider public in its country of origin. Reitz thus continues his commentary and critical reflection of his formative years in Second Heimat. In this second instalment, which was marketed as a sequel, but is in fact more of an extended footnote to the first series, Reitz leaves the chronological narrative to fill in the missing years of Hermann’s life between his departure from Schabbach and his mother’s death in 1980. Hermann’s flight from the provinces—because of the perceived hatred, jealousy, outrage, and petty incomprehension he associates with “this constricting […] hopeless shithole that we call Heimat”, leads the narrative to Schwabing, the artistic hub of 1960s Munich. Swearing his allegiance to music as his sole love and spiritual Heimat, the art student Hermann proclaims that he has been “born a second time. Not by my mother this time, but out of my own head. I set out to search for ‘my second home’.” Whereas the first series saw the development of several main themes, including Heimat, losing and finding oneself, as well as issues of narration and authority in the face of epochal changes, Second Heimat features only one generation of characters. These pale in comparison to the characters of the first series, who have been likened to seminal figures of world literature, as the narrative, despite its epic nature, does not lose focus on individuals. Whereas Reitz’s first series is arranged around Maria (albeit with very ambivalent connotations), who is represented here as the female keeper of tradition and values and the counter model to Paul Simon, the second series attempts a different evaluation of a Weggeher [someone who left]. In the first instalment, Paul Simon fails in a moral sense, yet Maria’s youngest son Hermann is shown in Second Heimat to be someone who can reconnect: with other Weggeher, as much as with his background and his native folk. While Paul Simon’s path is likened to a negative Bildungsroman [novel tracing the intellectual and spiritual development of the protagonist] in that he fails to find his way back into his native community, Hermann Simon is ultimately more successful, thus allowing Heimat discourses to be linked to the traditions of the Bildungs- and Künstlerroman [novel tracing the trials and tribulations involved in becoming an artist]. By means of his profession, Hermann is shown to work creatively with natural and technological elements, both old and new, and he is able to fuse such contrasts harmoniously, thereby overcoming limitations. Although he had left Schabbach vowing never to return to the heartless family who had destroyed his first intimate relationship—his teenage love affair with the much older Klärchen—his subsequent studies and life experience lead him to reconsider his resolution,244 enabling him to relate to the conservative and progressive aspects of his society. Encountering a group of fellow students who have all rejected their parents and place of birth and thus their origins, Hermann is able to create a substitute family. At this stage, Heimat exists within them: either as a nightmarish memory or as a hazy longing, with their art coming to signify Heimat at a 273

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later stage. These friends represent safety and comfort, although their longing for independence and freedom at the time of West Germany’s reconstruction, re-birth, and search for identity transforms them into rivals: their credo “we gave birth to ourselves, created ourselves” ultimately makes them all masters of their own universe, but their connection with one another fails to last. Hermann’s insistence on reinventing himself “out of [his] own head” suggests that Second Heimat no longer ties Heimat to territoriality, but rather to more performative modes of subjectivity—in this case, an existentialist freedom to choose one’s “authentic” self. Although the group members share the same passion for the arts and the same dream—to live well from their creative work—they are united only temporarily, with competition for lovers, friends, and jobs driving them far apart at times. In the end, Hermann chooses Schnüsschen as his partner, wife, and the mother of his child; albeit somewhat half-heartedly, as he remains obsessed with the cellist Clarissa, a woman from the Hunsrück just like him. Meandering between his Bohemian love affairs and a petit bourgeois existence, Hermann attempts a compromise that does not work. His relationship fails, and it is only through applying himself to his music composition with renewed vigour that he finds professional fulfilment at least. His path towards insight, typical for his entire generation, is sketched out over the entire decade between 1960 and 1970. Each of the thirteen parts of Second Heimat deals with a different member of Hermann’s circle of friends, all of whom are part of a fatherless generation who wish to negotiate their personal and national history through their art. Only one of them, Helga, is drawn to politics as a means of engaging with society; however, she chooses the outlawed Baader-Meinhof Gang. No one seems to succeed completely, either privately or professionally, in this cine-novel, allowing Reitz to introduce—even more overtly than in his first instalment—meta-critical and self-reflexive moments: not only to do with West Germany, but also to do with its New German Cinema. Discussions about the difference between folklore and art in relation to musical performances by one of Hermann’s friends, Juan, about dialect as opposed to standard German (which Hermann likens to a “lie”),245 as well as reflections on the arts in general and film in particular are to be found frequently, for example, when the students gather for a film premiere in Ms Cerphal’s old villa in Munich.246 This space, also referred to as their Fuchsbau [fox’s den], comes to symbolize their fruitful phase, their creative symbiosis, but also their diverging interests. In Reitz’s fictionalized account of their development, the artists’ retreat, as if in deliberate contrast to Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair, is a reminder of the rich German-Jewish past in pre-1933 Germany, as the house had belonged to a Jewish family for generations. These allusions are further supported by the episodes entitled “Christmas Wolves” and “Kennedy’s Children”, as opposed to the popular academic understanding of the 68generation as “Hitler’s Children”.247 Ironically, their retreat is owned by a lady whose name is associated with the phonetic homily for “Zerfall” [decay], as this is exactly the fate that befalls the group of friends once their careers and increasingly diverging interests and opinions have driven them apart. While the episodes introduce many characters, the cellist Clarissa Lichtblau and Hermann, students of music and composition, emerge as central figures. Just like their friends and fellow students, they are shown falling in 274

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and out of love, yet also forging an identity as artists. Hermann is easily recognizable as Reitz’s alter ego,248 just as his friends are identifiable as proponents of the Young German Cinema: Alex(ander Kluge), Volker (Schlöndorff) and Jean-Marie (Straub). Born in 1932 in the Hunsrück region of West Germany, a few years before his fictional Doppelgänger Hermann, Reitz was part of the generation of directors whose formative years were spent at the interface between old and new ideologies. Growing up in occupied Germany, he studied in Munich and soon took to film-making as a means of rendering his surroundings more meaningful in light of “the workings of history, power, and socio-economic forces”.249 However, Reitz wanted the series to go beyond the typecasting of artists associated with the New German Cinema and continued with a self-referential depiction of the different arts, introducing female artists into the series in order to problematize issues of representation and reception. One of them, Cerphal’s niece, Esther Goldbaum, a photographer and the child of Holocaust victims, visits the site of her family’s primal trauma, the concentration camp in which her loved ones died. She attempts to understand and document this suffering, yet fails in her ambition, as her inability to capture, preserve, and communicate a loss by means of images becomes apparent.250 While tracing her lover’s and mother’s death in Dachau, Esther realizes that she is unable to see anything that has not already been seen a thousand times, thus gaining a painful insight into the fact that most photos, although usually considered a truthful record of the past, are in reality ultimately inadequate. Her mourning, like Hermann’s inability to express the true dimension of loss in his Requiem, marks the nostalgia of the generation that had hoped to find Heimat in the arts. Initially, their gaze turned westwards towards France, to the “Nouvelle Vague”. Already in the first episode, Rob comments: “The [French] are ahead of us. Get out of the studios—into life! ‘Papa’s cinema is dead’.” [In the original: “Die [Franzosen] machen uns das vor. Raus aus den Studios— rein ins Leben! ‘Le cinema de papa est mort’.”] Moreover, the situation in West Germany seemed less promising, with Ansgar commenting: “Here [in Munich] you can still smell the sweaty feet of the Nazis.” [In the original: “Hier [in Munich] riecht man noch den Fußschweiß der Nazis.”] The group’s artistic programme is intended to provide an alternative to the old understanding of the arts. Nevertheless, and particularly with regard to film, the New German Cinema as a provider of a group identity affording lasting feelings of belonging remained as much a utopia as Heimat had in earlier film projects, thus “challeng[ing] the medium of film and photo as documentation and thereby indirectly draw[ing] attention to the fallibility of any constructed narration, including that of Heimat”.251 This also constitutes the single most important insight the students gain in Munich; although they experience wonderful times together, their Heimat is framed by the years of their shared youth and the discoveries which stimulated their development. In effect, time and their coming of age are the greatest threats to their experiences of Heimat. Reitz relates the paradigmatic experience of one of the friends in the novel he completed after the film project: “Reinhard has come back from a trip around the world and now he finds his friends, an entire generation, taking leave of the ‘yesterday’ that once held them together.”252 In time, everything has changed, including their creative identities, especially after the loss of the space of their artistic confluence in Munich. Die Zweite Heimat 275

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thus tells “the story of the birth of the New German Cinema out of the spirit of the artistic bohème in Munich”, and is “a farewell to the illusion that it has become, especially now that the New German Cinema only exists as a myth in the memory of its aged contemporaries”.253 In his ironic treatment of the juvenile attitudes of the artists with their anti-audience, anti-mainstream, and anti-“Papa’s Kino” attitudes, Reitz seems also to reject their anti-Heimat rhetoric. By allowing for a critical distance from the generation of artists who carried the ideas of the Oberhausen Manifesto, he offers a more inclusive idea of the arts in 1970s West Germany, rejecting the elitist understanding of the Munich group which had failed to reconnect with the rest of the country and with their parent generation. Symptomatic of this failure is Maria’s statement towards the end of her life, when she admits that she does not understand her son’s art. The rift between the generations is played out between Hermann’s fellow students and Maria’s age group. Symbolically, her death is linked to the material and spiritual loss of a sense of Heimat experienced by the 1968 generation, a loss which they mourn, yet which they also capitalize on artistically. Hermann’s friend, the cosmopolitan Juan, comments on the German obsession with longing: “Longing, that is a very beautiful German word: ‘Longing’—‘Nostalgia’, no, ‘Aniesdad’.” [In the original: “Sehnsucht, das ist ein sehr schönes deutsches Wort: ‘Sehnsucht’—‘Nostalgia’, nein, ‘Aniesdad’.”] He diagnoses and comments on their Sehnsucht [longing] several times, and it is this yearning to belong that underlies the entire three-part series. Heralded by the New York Times as an example of the best that world television has to offer, and by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera as being among the greatest achievements of European cinema,254 the Heimat trilogy has undoubtedly become a milestone in Germany’s discourse on Heimat. However, while Heimat, with an average of ten million viewers per episode, was a television sensation in 1984, achieving critical as well as commercial success in West Germany, Second Heimat appealed primarily to international critics. At home, the series attracted an average of barely two million viewers per broadcast, equating to only five per cent of the TV audience. For this reason, Reitz’s next instalment, Heimat 3, was a controversial project for financiers and distributors. With production costs reaching twelve million euros, Reitz was under considerable pressure to deliver. Co-authored by bestselling writer Thomas Brussig (who had grown up in East Germany), Heimat 3 premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2004 and was released to a captive audience in Germany during the notoriously heimatesque television period around Christmas. Its wide appeal in Germany, as well as further afield, was guaranteed by its focus on the period after the fall of the Berlin Wall, regarded as one of the most decisive moments in twentieth-century history. The final instalment of Reitz’s saga, six episodes, spans the years between 1989 and 2000. Once again, historical events are depicted through the prism of personal lives, and seem to connect most clearly with homecoming and the return to one’s roots. Heimat 3: Chronik einer Zeitenwende [Chronicle of a Historical Turning Point, 2004] begins in a Berlin hotel on the night of 9 November 1989, amidst the celebrations following the opening of the Berlin Wall. Reitz focuses on Hermann and his former lover Clarissa (who is familiar from Second Heimat) throughout the final series, following their chance encounter after nearly two decades apart. From the very beginning, 276

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the song “Maybe This Time”, performed by Clarissa Lichtblau, sets the scene for their rapprochement. After seventeen years, the now middle-aged composer and conductor Hermann Simon has the chance to rekindle his friendship with his long-lost girlfriend, who is now an acclaimed singer. When she confesses that she has always harboured the dream of living together with him in an old house at the site of her “Sehnsucht” [longing], Hermann does not hesitate. The dawn of a new era, mirrored in this epochal period, certainly provides the right backdrop to encourage them to start again. They acquire and renovate Clarissa’s dream home, which is located high up on the ridge of their shared Hunsrück Heimat, and transform it into a new family home. The object of Clarissa’s desire—more a ruin than a habitable home—is an eighteenth-century half-timbered house set amidst vineyards on the hills bordering the river Rhine near the mythical Lorelei rock. However, their personal reunion, which sees them not only returning to their old Heimat but also restoring this significant historical building, provides the catalyst for the forging of new friendships with people from all walks of life. Their private resumption of a harmonious relationship, the comprehensive renovation project, and the establishment of new contacts—especially with people from the former East, professionally as well as privately—makes the establishment of a new community in the Hunsrück pars pro toto for Germany’s transformation. Hiring tradesmen from the former East Germany, the couple undertake the repair of their home, mindful of respecting its unique history, with the romantic poet Karoline von Günderrode (1780‒1806) said to have lived and worked there. Hermann and Clarissa are eager to make a happy life within the given architectural framework, opening their home to acquaintances, friends, and extended family in an attempt to create a sense of community. The completion of the renovation coincides with the Football World Cup held in Italy in June 1990, which drew together many supporters of the West German football team and provided an outlet for the celebration of German national achievements. Hermann’s and Clarissa’s professions, as much as their relocation and the renovations they carry out, provide the backdrop for the new characters who are introduced throughout the series, at times for one episode only, but always for symbolic reasons. One such character is the Bosnian boy Matko, who appears in episode five and whose fate is a grim reminder of Germany’s ethnically purist citizenship legislation which existed until 2000, and which based the right to German citizenship on bloodlines (ius sanguinis) rather than on territoriality (ius soli or place of birth).255 Definitions of Heimat, nation, and identity loom large throughout, and are especially evident in the musical score. “Far beyond Western triumphalism, greed is a leitmotif of Heimat 3, and it becomes the base for elaborate allusions to Wagner’s Ring” as evident “in script, original score, and images (above all, the rainbow above the bridge to Ernst’s Alberich’s lair as the Rhine floods).”256 No doubt, music and the idea of construction (first, the renovation of the Günderrode house and, later, the underground music which signifies the heritage embodied in Ernst’s antique treasures) serve as the most powerful messages. Initially, Hermann carries this burden more than anyone else when he takes on the coordination of the massive project of fixing the historic house, as well as the composition of a Reunification Symphony. Later, the museum project becomes his daughter’s nemesis. As a commentary on the problematic and un277

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finished processes of nation-building, neither of the projects is completed; rather, they prove to be ongoing tasks hampered by all sorts of difficulties, including relationship problems and break-ups, Clarissa’s cancer, the deaths of loved ones resulting from accidents, suicides, and diseases, as well as natural disasters. The energy to return to their roots seems to originate from the desire to recreate their blissful early childhood memories. The concept of Heimat as problematized in Heimat 3 therefore corresponds closely with that described by Ernst Bloch: “The real genesis is not at the beginning, but at the end and it only begins to start when society and existence become radical, i.e. when they take hold of their own roots. The root of history however is the working, creating human, who shakes up the actualities and overhauls them. Once he’s caught on and established his being without alienation in real democracy, then something comes into being in the world that appears in everyone’s childhood and where no-one has ever been: 257 Heimat.”

Indeed, Hermann and Clarissa are rounded, complex, and grounded individuals, no longer alienated or naive about life and its challenges, but rather active agents of change. Nevertheless, as becomes evident in the concluding episodes of this series written by Reitz together with Thomas Brussig, Heimat remains elusive even for them, retaining a utopian dimension. As a place and state of mind, Heimat ultimately is grounded in the identification with a region and/or people, yet is prone to dissolution as soon as problems arise. Likewise, the subjectivity of the concept is expressed, with every individual’s association with his/her childhood unique and potentially subject to change. Whichever stage in life one is at, Heimat is a more or less idealized and naive fiction, as childhood itself is never static but rather a process of remembering something which is dominated by a myriad of emotions. “The remembering of the adult back into their childhood Heimat is also the thinking back to the hope for the future: the temporal specificity of that Heimat.”258 Heimat as a project and relationships as a work in progress, also highlight the need to continuously protect as much as to negotiate boundaries. “Maybe This Time”, the theme song of Heimat 3, stands at the beginning as a motto for the search for Heimat, but also points to the transgression of borders. The song has its origins in the popular cabaret tradition, although it has now been elevated to classical interpretation and seems to herald the possibility of alternative narratives and interpretations of music, as much as of history. Reitz seems to use the music to stress the general possibility of finding a Heimat, be it physical or psychological. Appropriately, Heimat 3 focuses on characters who traverse rural and metropolitan spaces with ease, bridging East and West Germany and thus uniting Europe and drawing together members of different generations and persuasions. Their new idea of Heimat describes a return to region, family, and national history, in which the political left and right can come to a consensus. In his essay “Wissenschaft in der Kulturkrise und das Problem der Heimat” [Academia in the Cultural Crisis and the Problem of the Heimat], Oskar Negt describes Heimat as a “Zukunftsbegriff” [term for the future] that “has removed from itself all traces of the reactionary irrationalism to which blood and soil are clinging”.259 Hermann and Clarissa 278

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achieve just this, by working on projects which will themselves leave a legacy. They are therefore a credit to Reitz’s success in providing the term “Heimat” with a new cachet, something which Reitz himself reflected on: “Heimat was used as a propaganda word by the Nazis. Then in the fifties there were the shallow-kitsch Heimat films. However, I was convinced that the word can be freed of its ballast, and said to myself: neither the Nazis, nor the folklore260 musicians invented the word; it‘s true meaning is actually innocent.”

In the 1980s, after a period of withdrawal following a personal crisis, Reitz embarked on the monumental project of cleansing the word “Heimat”: “I said to myself, if I name the film that and if the film can actually manage to purify this word and simply extinguish any false associations, then it has succeeded.”261 He had to reinvent the genre that had been discredited “by both the Nazis and their postwar successors in the entertainment industry. The Heimatfilm always had the odor of the cheapest fantasies of law and order, the most stupid idealization of rural customs and the meanest exploitation of peasant culture […]. The genre was beyond repair.”262 Reitz initiated a renewal of the genre, with other film-makers following in his footsteps and using the genre for more realistic representations of home and homeland. Heimat (1980‒84), Die Zweite Heimat (1988‒92), and Heimat 3 (2004) have become milestones in this revival, as they have fused the genres of Heimatfilm and Problemfilm [films dealing with social problems], by critically examining relevant societal issues and changing attitudes towards identity and homeland.263 Prompted by larger debates about personal memory and history that took place in Germany throughout the 1970s,264 Reitz dared to give the tainted term a new meaning in contemporary society, making it acceptable even to left-wing intellectuals. Reitz explains that his initial title for the mammoth project had been “Geheischnis”, a Hunsrück word for the trust, security, comfort, and warmth one feels among the members of a small, tight-knit community,265 as represented by the village of Schabbach in the first series, the artists’ Fuchsbau [fox’s den] in Second Heimat, and the Günderrode house in Heimat 3. The term “Geheischnis” subsequently becomes the title for Hermann’s composition, which is performed in the cave system beneath Schabbach in 1982, accompanied by local musicians and featuring villagers singing in chorus in the Hunsrück dialect. In Heimat 3, his composition, which was written for Günderrode’s poems and is sung by Clarissa, harmoniously marries the classics and the post-modern, just as Reitz has managed to do in his oeuvre. By the end of the third series, the story has turned full circle, with central characters gaining insight into their place of origin only by leaving and returning, wiser for their experiences. This cycle of personal development is replicated many times over: most promisingly when the last episode of Heimat 3 concludes with a long portrait shot of Hermann’s grown-up daughter from his first marriage with Schnüsschen, Lulu, a confident young woman making her mark in architecture. Having lost her boyfriend Lutz, the father of her baby boy Lukas, in a car accident, she has already experienced personal tragedy. Moreover, miscalculations surrounding her Nibelungenhort project, which was to be an underground exhibition space for Ernst’s collection of antique German furniture and artworks, have led to cave-ins, flooding, and 279

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the total destruction of the cave system underneath Schabbach, leaving her professional future in doubt. In the last frame of the final episode, her tearstreaked face invites the viewer to identify and sympathize with Lulu, perhaps foregrounding her as the focus of a fourth instalment of Heimat.266 In the background, the audience hears her gifted little son playing a Mozart sonatina on the piano. Amidst the insecurity, change, and disruption, this recital of a classical piece by a member of the future generation offers some degree of continuity at the end of the millennium. By highlighting the fact that German history takes place against the tradition of a German Kulturnation, Reitz points towards a set of cultural values that will not be lost in the process of transformation. Roger Hillman’s discussion of music as a cultural marker for German film in general applies just as much to Reitz’s coda for Heimat 3: “The music evokes not just a different historical stage of German cultural development but an era with a different concept of history, one with a more linear path than in the dislocations of the twentieth century.”267 While the country is undergoing change all around them—geostatically as well as socially—Mozart’s pan-German, if not European, composition transmits a sense of groundedness in a cultural tradition that promises a point of reference for the future, however precarious it might appear at the moment. The same can be said for Heimat films, regardless whether the engagement with them is affirmative or critical. NOTES 1

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In the original: “… reduzierten Figurengestaltung der ewiggleichen Phänotypen, in Sentimentalisierung und Privatisierung der Themen, […] in Handlungen als stereotype Aktion”. Thomas Hoffmann and Ines Steiner, “Die Sechziger Jahre: Zwischen Jagdszenen und Jägerporno”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm: Bildwelten und Weltbilder: Bilder, Texte und Analysen zu 70 Jahren deutscher Filmgeschichte (Tubingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1989), pp. 97‒129, here p. 100. Cf. C. Riechmann, “Wandlung des Geschmacks: Gedanken zur Filmwirtschaft der Gegenwart”, Westfälische Rundschau, 25 Aug. 1958. A writer for Film-Echo notes in 1957 that “the much praised German economic miracle has passed the middle-class entrepreneurs of the cinema industry by without a trace. […] In comparison with other branches of industry it […] has become clear that we have reached the limits of what we can achieve with the level of admission charges, which have remained essentially the same up to this point, and that a rise in cinema admission charges can now scarcely be avoided.” In the original: “… das vielgepriesene deutsche Wirtschaftswunder an den Mittelstandsunternehmen der Filmtheaterwirtschaft spurlos vorbeigegangen sei. […] Beim Vergleich mit anderen Wirtschaftszweigen ist […] klar geworden, daß man mit dem, bis heute im wesentlichen konstant gebliebenen Eintrittspreisniveau an die Grenze der Leistungsfähigkeit gekommen ist und daß nun eine Erhöhung der Kino-Eintrittspreise kaum mehr umgangen werden kann.” Anon., “Filmwirtschaft am gemeinsamen Tisch”, Film-Echo: Fachzeitschrift der Deutschen Filmtheaterwirtschaft, no. 59, 24 July 1957, pp. 1032‒34, here p. 1032. The Allied “coalition ban” (spring 1946‒July 1948) prohibited refugees from organizing themselves in any way. Not until July 1948 did the American Military

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government finally grant expellees the right of association at local level, and refugees and expellees began to publish their own papers. In the original: “Irrationalismen eines gleichermaßen aggressiven wie sentimentalen Denkens.” Frieder Stöckle, “Heimat heute: Probleme der Sozialisation und Identitätsbildung im Rahmen eines regionalgeschichtlichen Unterrichts”, in Peter Kroch and Thomas Leeb (eds.), Heimat oder Region? Grundzüge einer Didaktik der Regionalgeschichte (Frankfurt: Diesterweg, 1984), pp. 17‒29, here p. 17. Cf. Jürgen Bolten, “Heimat im Aufwind: Anmerkungen zur Sozialgeschichte eines Bedeutungswandels”, in Hans-Georg Pott (ed.), Literatur und Provinz: Das Konzept “Heimat” in der neueren Literatur (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schönigh, 1986), pp. 23‒38, here p. 24. In the original: “[E]in hartes Leben kompensiert sich in heiteren Träumen.” W.G. Becker, “Ernst ist das Leben/Heiter ist die Kunst”, Die Wandlung: Eine Monatsschrift (Heidelberg), Oct. 1946, p. 893. In a letter to the editor, Luis Trenker wrote about the Ufa in 1959: “I have no reason to sing the praises of the Ufa, not the old version and not the new version, for I could only make my successful films at Universal, Terra and Tobis, where there was a freer wind blowing in the production offices, which of course enabled one’s work to be more artistically free and more successful.” In the original: “Ich habe keinen Grund der Ufa ein Lied zu singen, der alten nicht und der neuen nicht, denn meine Erfolgsfilme konnte ich nur im Rahmen der Universal, der Terra und der Tobis drehen, in deren Produktionsbüros ein freierer Wind wehte, der ganz natürlich auch ein künstlerisch freieres und erfolgreicheres Arbeiten ermöglichte.” Der Spiegel, 8 (1959), p. 3. Johannes Hauser, Neuaufbau der westdeutschen Filmwirtschaft 1945-1955 und der Einfluß der US-amerikanischen Filmpolitik: Vom reichseigenen Filmmonopolkonzern (UFI) zur privatwirtschaftlichen Konkurrenzwirtschaft (Pfaffenweiler: Centaurus, 1989), p. 374. Cf. Hans Günther Pflaum and Hans Helmut Prinzler, Film in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: Der neue deutsche Film. Herkunft/Gegenwärtige Situation (Munich: Hanser, 1979), p. 134. Cf. Ursula Bessen, Trümmer und Träume: Nachkriegszeit und fünfziger Jahre auf Zelluloid, Deutsche Spielfilme als Zeugnisse ihrer Zeit, Eine Dokumentation (Bochum: Studienverlag Dr N. Brockmeyer, 1989), p. 241. In the original: “Er [der deutsche Film] ist schlecht. Es geht ihm schlecht. Er macht uns schlecht. Er will auch weiterhin schlecht bleiben.” Joe Hembus, Der deutsche Film kann gar nicht besser sein (Bremen: Carl Schünemann, 1961), p. 3. Hermann Heimpel quoted in Walther Schmieding, Kunst oder Kasse: Der Ärger mit dem deutschen Film (Hamburg: Rütten & Loening, 1961), p. 27. Schmieding also popularized the phrase “Urlaub von der Geschichte” [holiday from history], with reference to 1950s films from West Germany. In the original: “merken Sie sich—die Konflikte dürfen erst nach dem Trachtenumzug aufgelöst werden”. Producer Kurt Ulrich quoted in Manfred Barthel, Als Opas Kino jung war: Der deutsche Nachkriegsfilm (Frankfurt: Ullstein Sachbuch, 1991), p. 98. The term’s origin is contested; one theory credits the neologism to Harry Hermann Spitz (1899‒1961), who supposedly used it around 1948 in a meeting at the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR). Other theories see the origins in German dialect terms like “snulten” [speaking emotionally] or in the colloquial

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15 16 17

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adjective “schnulle” [hübsch, lieb, nett]. Cf. Heinz Küpper (ed.), PONSWörterbuch der Umgangssprache (Stuttgart: Ernst Klett, 1990), p. 736. Alfred Herberth, Neue Wörter: Neologismen in der deutschen Sprache seit 1945, vol. 1 (Vienna: Verband der Wissenschaftsgeschichte Österreich, 1977), p. 89. In the original: “Zuviel an einer gleichartigen Filmgattung.” Österreichische Film- und Kinozeitung, no. 568, 15 June 1957, p. 3. Friedrich P. Kahlenberg, “Film”, in Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, vol. 4: Kultur (Frankfurt: Fischer Taschenbuch, 1989), pp. 464‒512. This compares to 500 films produced in 1919 in Germany. Cf. Angela Vaupel, Frauen im NS-Film: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Spielfilms (Hamburg: Dr Kovac, 2005), p. 3. Cf. Margit Szöllösi-Janze, “’Aussuchen und abschießen’—der Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre als historische Quelle”, Geschichte in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, 5 (1993), pp. 308‒21, here p. 313. In the original: “Ihr Charme des Schlichten paßt nicht mehr in die Atmosphäre ökonomischen Aufschwungs, neuer Lebensstile und modernistischer Konsumbedürfnisse. […] überdies verspricht das neue Medium Fernsehen jetzt ein privates, intimeres ‘Glück in der Sofaecke’.” Wolfgang Kaschuba, “Bildwelten als Weltbilder”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm, p. 11. In the original: “Heimat ist gewiß kein objektiver Tatbestand.” Alexander Mitscherlich, Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1965), p. 124. “... wenn ich irgendwo in der entferntesten Ecke Deutschlands einen StollwerckAutomaten entdecke.” Heinrich Böll, “Heimat und keine”, in Bernd Balzer (ed.), Heinrich Böll: Essayistische Schriften und Reden, vol. 2 (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1980), p. 113. Rudolf Lange, Theologie der Heimat: Ein Beitrag zur Theologie der irdischen Wirklichkeiten (Freilassing, Salzburg: O. Müller, 1965), p. 126. Johannes von Moltke, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 123. One such example, Unter Palmen am blauen Meer [Under the Palms by the Blue Sea, 1957], was reviewed as “Italian salad, though prepared by German cooks […] is pleasing because it grants [the audience] a cheap trip to Italy with its splendid landscape shots.” In the original: “Italienischer Salat […] allerdings von deutschen Köchen angerichtet […] gefällt, weil ihm [dem Publikum] mit den prächtigen Landschaftsaufnahmen eine billige Italien-Ferienreise vergönnt ist.” Anon., “Echo der Filme”, Film-Echo: Fachzeitschrift der Deutschen Filmtheaterwirtschaft, no. 59, 24 July 1957, p. 1043. With more than 50 episodes, Das Traumschiff (starting in 1981) remains one of ZDF’s most popular series [ZDF = Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen, the second free-to-air TV channel in Germany], fusing the lure of exotic places with a mix of love and intrigue. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 133. For a later example, cf. Harald Reinl, Verliebte Ferien in Tirol (1970). Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 110. Peter-Ostermayr-Express, 4, no. 12:3 (POA, catalogue no. W100614), quoted in von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 133.

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In the original: “Sex findet nicht statt oder erschöpft sich in verworfenen Blicken und engen Kleidern. Dirndl-Ausschnitte sind nur bis zu jener Grenze erlaubt, die die Jugendfreigabe des Films nicht gefährdet.” Barthel, Als Opas Kino jung war, p. 97. This motto was re-used in 1961 when the CDU billboards read: “Auch morgen keine Experimente.” Tassilo Schneider, “Genre and Ideology in Popular German Cinema, 1950‒1972”, PhD diss. (University of Southern California, 1994), p. 134. Hoffmann and Steiner, “Die Sechziger Jahre”, p. 97. Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 70. Lutz Koepnick, The Dark Mirror: German Cinema between Hitler and Hollywood (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 26. In the original: “Nach beinahe einem Jahrzehnt biederer Sexualmoral und Tabuisierung von Sexualität entsteht auch in diesem Bereich das Bedürfnis nach Freizügigkeit. Noch verdeckt artikuliert sich Ende der Fünfziger Jahre das ‘dunkle Verlangen’; so richtig findet es erst in den ‘Sexy Sixties’ zur vollen Blüte.” Gertrud Koch et al., “Die fünfziger Jahre: Heide und Silberwald”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm, p. 87. Cf. Stefan Betz’s Grenzverkehr [Border Traffic, 2005], a Heimat film comedy about three teenage boys from Bavaria who lose more than their innocence when they visit a brothel in the Czech Republic. Cf. Tim Bergfelder, “Exotic Thrills and Bedroom Manuals: West German BFilm Production in the 1960s”, in Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy (eds.), Light Motives: German Popular Film in Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), pp. 197‒219, here p. 198. In the original: “Versatzstücke des schon immer deftigen Volksstücks werden hier vermengt mit dem fremdenverkehrsgeprägten Milieu der Touristenfilme, […] in denen sich die rückständigsten Regionen Westdeutschlands (vor allem Bayern und Ostfriesland) als erotisches Kolonisierungsgebiet präsentieren”. Manuela Fiedler, Heimat im deutschen Film: Ein Mythos zwischen Regression und Utopie (Alfeld/Leine: Coppi, 1997), p. 44. Alois Brummer’s Unterm Dirndl wird gejodelt, Teil 1 & 2 [Yodelling under the Dirndl, Parts 1 & 2, 1973 & 1974], Wolfgang Bellenbaum’s Ob Dirndl oder Lederhose—gejodelt wird ganz wild drauflos [Whether Dirndl or Lederhose—the Yodelling Goes on and on, 1974], Ulli Lommel‘s Jodeln is ka Sünd [Yodelling Is No Sin, 1974], Franz Josef Gottlieb’s Auf der Alm, da ginbt’s koa Sünd [There’s No Sin in the Alpine Pasture, 1974], Jurgen Enz’s Gaudi in der Lederhose [Fun in the Lederhose, 1977], Walter Boos’s Wirtshaus der sündigen Tӧchter [Inn of the Sinful Daughters, 1978], Franz Marischka’s Zwei Dӓninnen in Lederhosen [Two Danish Girls in Lederhosen, 1979], Zum Gasthof der spritzigen Mӓdchen [The Inn of the Lovely Girls, 1979], and Der Kurpfuscher und seine fixen Tӧchter [The Quack and His Fast Daughters, 1980], and Ernst Kalinke’s Die liebestollen Lederhosen [Love-crazy Lederhosen, 1982]. In the original: “Softsexfilme, die man heute beinahe im Jugendprogramm des Fernsehens zeigen könnte.” Gertraud Steiner Daviau, “Sprache und Bilder in österreichischen Heimatfilmen der fünfziger Jahre”, in Die Namen der Berge: Anschauungen, 2001, http://www.inst.at/berge/perspektiven/steiner.htm, retrieved Aug. 2005. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 147. 283

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By way of definition, “New German Film” refers to feature-length productions from circa 1971, “New German Cinema” is the term used to refer to “feature films which achieved international recognition beginning in the late sixties”. Timothy Corrigan, New German Film: The Displaced Image (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. xii. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 70. Eric Rentschler, “Manifestos and Declarations”, in Eric Rentschler (ed.), West German Filmmakers on Film: Visions and Voices (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), pp. 1‒2, here p. 1. Ibid. Koepnick, The Dark Mirror, p. 258. Hake, German National Cinema, pp. 144‒46. Wim Wenders quoted in Corrigan, New German Film, p. 25. Eric Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time: Reflections on the Twenty Years since Oberhausen (Bedford Hills, NY: Redgrave, 1984), p. i. Werner Herzog, “Die Eisnerin, wer ist das?”, Film-Korrespondenz, 30 Mar. 1982, pp. 1‒2. Cf. Wolf Donner, “Wenig Lärm um viel: Volker Schlöndorff’s filmische Bauernchronik”, Die Zeit, 2 Feb. 1971; and Alf Brustellin, “Die andere Tradition: Volker Schlöndorffs Der plötzliche Reichtum der armen Leute von Kombach im Münchner Theatiner”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 8 Feb. 1971. Pflaum and Prinzler, Film in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, pp. 24‒39. Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time, p. 20. “The Oberhausen Manifesto (1962)”, in Rentschler (ed.), West German Filmmakers on Film, here p. 2. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 70. Lothar Hack, “Soziologische Bemerkungen zum deutschen Gegenwartsfilm”, in Wilfried von Bredow and Rolf Zurek (eds.), Film und Gesellschaft in Deutschland: Dokumente und Materialien (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1975), pp. 335‒31, here p. 335. Anton Kaes, “The New German Cinema”, in Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (ed.), Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 614‒27, here p. 617. “The Mannheim Manifesto (1967)”, in Rentschler (ed.), West German Filmmakers on Film, here p. 2. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 8. “Young German Cinema of the 1960s and the New German Cinema […] of the 1970s.” Maria Pramaggiore and Tom Wallis, Film: A Critical Introduction (Boston: Pearson, 2006), p. 371. Cf. Ulrich Gregor claims that the Young German Cinema represented the first change in direction for the West German Film Industry since 1933. Ulrich Gregor, Geschichte des Films: ab 1960 (Munich: C. Bertelsmann, 1978), p. 123. Kaes, “The New German Cinema”, p. 614. Pramaggiore and Wallis, Film, p. 371. Data obtained from the Bundesagentur für Arbeit, Statistisches Bundesamt, http://www.destatis.de, retrieved Sep. 2010. Bertold Spuler, Professor of Islamic Studies and former member of Hitler’s SA, in 1967, quoted in Hans Halter, “Bürger, laßt das Gaffen sein! Die Apo und die Große Koalition”, Der Spiegel, 20 (1999), pp. 154‒57, here p. 154. Willy Brandt quoted in Halter, “Bürger, laßt das Gaffen sein!”, p. 154. 284

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Events like the shooting of Martin Luther King in Memphis (April 1968) and the attempted assassination of Rudi Dutschke (a few days later) sparked protests that came close to becoming riots. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 15. Elsaesser explains that “distributors became the real force in the industry and gained the upper hand over both production and exhibition. […] American Major companies […] controlled the German market […]. West German producers as a rule had to go to an American company in order to get their own film into German cinemas, a situation that applied not only in the 1950s and 1960s. […] Of course, this works both ways: it meant that from a certain point onward, the star directors did begin to have access to production guarantees and a world market.” Ibid., p. 15. For example, of all German films in 1973, one-third of the audiences watched Heimat sex films. Cf. Helge Schneider, Texas: Doc Snyder hält die Welt in Atem [Doc Snyder Keeps the World in Suspense, 1993]. Examples include the 1972/73 version of Grün ist die Heide by Harald Reinl, starring popular “Schlager” singer Roy Black, and also remakes of classic titles such as Harald Reinl’s Schloß Hubertus [Hubertus Castle, 1973], and Alfred Vohrer’s Der Edelweißkönig [The Edelweiβ King, 1975]. Reinl, who was discovered by Arnold Fanck as a skiing actor for mountain films and worked with Leni Riefenstahl, is another actor/director who stands for the continuity of the genre. Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time, p. 124. Elisabeth Eisert-Roth et al., “Heimat”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm, here p.19. Andreas Gruber, Hasenjagd: Vor lauter Feigheit kein Erbarmen (literally: Hunting Rabbits, English title: The Quality of Mercy), Austria, Germany, Luxemburg, 1994. Cf. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 269. Cf. “Katzelmacher […] is a Bavarian slang word for a foreigner, especially someone from one of the Mediterranean countries, who is supposed to be good for nothing other than turning out litters of children […] translated as ‘cockartist’.” Robert Katz and Peter Berling, Love Is Colder than Death: The Life and Times of Rainer Werner Fassbinder (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987), pp. 42‒43. Ibid., p. 61. Text used on the cover of the Katzelmacher DVD released in 2002. Cf. Kurt Raab and Karsten Peters, Die Sehnsucht des Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1982), p. 337; and Wilhelm Roth, “Kommentierte Filmographie”, in Peter W. Jansen and Wolfram Schütte (eds.), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1992), pp. 119‒269, here pp. 123‒24. Wallace Steadman Watson, Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder: Film as Private and Public Art (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1996), p. 79. Cf. text version of the play Katzelmacher in Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Antiteater (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1973). Tony Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, October, vol. 21, Special Issue on Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1982), pp. 82‒119, here p. 97. Thomas Elsaesser, Fassbinder’s Germany. History, Identity, Subject (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1996), p. 45. Pramaggiore and Wallis, Film, p. 70. “The most terrible thing about this film is its apathy down to the last detail. […] And the fact that the actors look so rigid doesn’t come from them having to rep285

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resent the provinces, but from the rigid schema, which loves to press them into acting as mere puppets, or maybe as a photo-novel.” Wim Wenders, “Kritischer Kalender”, Filmkritik, Dec. 1969, pp. 751‒52. The journals Filmkritik and Film both established themselves as important tools in film criticism and avenues of theoretical engagement throughout the 1960s. Film, however, collapsed in 1970, Kraft Wetzel’s Kino in 1974, and Filmkritik was criticized for its “increasingly obscure and random contents”. Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time, p. 50. 85 Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, here p. 90. 86 Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 228. 87 “[A]n underclass aspiring to the stuffy self-righteousness of the German petitbourgeoisie was held up to somewhat ridiculous pity as well as inviting pitiful ridicule. […] [T]he rabid provincial male chauvinists from the Munich suburbs playing at Chicago underworld bosses or hired guns conveyed with their strong need for impersonification one enduring element of all popular entertainment: the pleasure in perverse and reverse identification, the mimetic impulse in masquerade, in short, some of the carnivalesque utopias and transgressions preserved at the heart of much movie lore.” Elsaesser, Fassbinder’s Germany, p. 49. 88 Fassbinder quoted in John Hughes and Brooks Riley, “A New Realism”, Film Comment, 11/6 (1975), p. 14‒17, here p. 15. 89 This is also reflected in the composition of scenes: “The action within shots is generally limited to one gesture or idea that disrupts an otherwise unrelieved sense of stasis. Often the gesture comes so late and so suddenly into a prolonged shot/scene that its narrative function is less important than the startling effect it exerts on the composition of the image.” Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, p. 96. 90 Watson, Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder, p. 80 91 Fassbinder quoted in Joachim von Mengershausen, “The kind of rage I feel” (1969) in Michael Töteberg and Leo A. Lensing (eds.), The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, translated by Krishna Winston (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 3‒15, here p. 7. 92 Ibid. 93 Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, p. 97. 94 Watson, Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder, p. 80. 95 Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, p. 97. 96 Ibid., p.98. 97 Jorgos’s life was modelled on the guest workers whom Fassbinder’s father— after his decision to leave the medical profession and become a poet— accommodated in rental “hovels” in “a run-down tenement” that he had bought for this purpose in Cologne. Thus Fassbinder’s father became “a slum-lord to support his literary pretensions”. Katz and Berling, Love Is Colder than Death, p. 19. 98 Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, p. 98. 99 Fassbinder quoted in a discussion with Hans Günther Pflaum, “I make films out of personal involvement, and for no other reason” (1974), in Töteberg and Lensing (eds.) The Anarchy of the Imagination, p. 46. 100 Fleischmann quoted in Thomas Schröder, “Pralles Beispiel, sinnliche Fabel”, Die Welt, 3 May 1969. 101 Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, p. 95. 286

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102 Peer Raben interpreted Franz Schubert’s “Sehnsuchtswalzer”. 103 Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, pp. 95‒96. Cf. Wilfried Wiegand, “Die Puppe in der Puppe: Beobachtungen zu Fassbinders Filmen (1974)”, in Jansen and Schütte (eds.), Rainer Werner Fassbinder, p. 35. 104 Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, p. 96. 105 Quoted in Bernd Eckhardt, Rainer Werner Fassbinder in 17 Jahren 42 Filme (Munich: Wilhelm Heyne, 1982), p. 87. 106 Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 139. 107 “Fassbinder, who had trained as an actor, tried unsuccessfully in 1966 to enter the recently established German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. In 1967 he joined a Munich ‘basement theater’ group, whose space was soon closed by the police; his colleagues and he immediately created another group, the antiteater, for which he wrote, directed, and acted.” Laurence Kardish, “Introduction”, in Laurence Kardish and Juliane Lorenz (eds.), Rainer Werner Fassbinder (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997), pp. 9‒13, here p. 9. 108 Pipolo, “Bewitched by the Holy Whore”, p. 96. 109 The play Katzelmacher is “clearly indebted to Marieluise Fleisser, to whom it was dedicated. Her influence can be seen in both the play’s dramatic structure and its dialogue style: snippets of everyday life depicting passive people striking out against the limitations of their consciousness in an artificial, cliché-ridden speech heavily flavoured with Bavarian dialect. It also follows Fleisser’s play in depicting the disruptive effects of an outside presence on a closed community.” Watson, Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder, p. 49. Cf. “Straub was the first important influence on me at his theater in Munich where he staged plays. I was very impressed with his work.” Fassbinder quoted in Hughes and Riley, “A New Realism”, p. 15. 110 Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 141. 111 It was later made into a film by Fassbinder, with the title Pioniere in Ingolstadt (1970). 112 “I’m for the anarchy of the imagination.” Fassbinder quoted in Leo A. Lensing, “Preface”, in Töteberg and Lensing (eds.), The Anarchy of the Imagination, p. xiii. 113 Michael Töteberg, “Introduction”, ibid., p. xvi. 114 Fassbinder quoted in a conversation with Hella Schlumberger, “I’ve changed along with the characters in my films” (1977), ibid., p. 30. 115 Ibid. 116 Fassbinder quoted in Hughes and Riley, “A New Realism”, p. 16. 117 Fassbinder quoted in a conversation with Schlumberger, ibid., p. 30. 118 Fassbinder quoted in a conversation with Frank Ripploh, “I’m a romantic anarchist” (1982), ibid., p. 67. 119 Fassbinder quoted in a conversation with Der Spiegel, “I’d rather be a streetsweeper in Mexico than a filmmaker in Germany” (1977), ibid., p. 139. 120 Fassbinder quoted in a conversation with Schlumberger, ibid., p. 28. 121 Ibid., p. 22. 122 Ibid., p. 24. 123 Ibid., p. 20. 124 Fassbinder quoted in von Mengershausen, “The kind of rage I feel” (1969), ibid., p. 7. 125 Fassbinder quoted in a conversation with Schlumberger, ibid., p. 21. 126 Ibid., p. 16. 287

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127 Ibid. 128 “Shame is also part of my Heimat. Heimat is not defined by homeliness. Whoever says Heimat is taking on something more.” In the original: “Zu meiner Heimat [gehört] auch die Schande. Heimat ist nicht durch Behaglichkeit definiert. Wer Heimat sagt, nimmt mehr auf sich.” Max Frisch, “Rede zur Verleihung des Großen Schillerpreises 1974”, Spielhaus Zürich, 12 Jan. 1974, recorded and transmitted on SF DRS, 7 Apr. 2001, 10:20 pm. 129 Ingeborg Majer O’Sickey, “Framing the Unheimlich: Heimatfilm and Bambi”, in Patricia Herminghouse and Magda Mueller (eds.), Gender and Germanness (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1997), pp. 202‒16, here p. 205. 130 Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (Rochester: Camden House, 2002), p. 146. 131 Ibid., p. 147. 132 Ibid. 133 Critics have repeatedly insisted that these kinds of films have to be set in regional areas and must thematize problems by negating Heimat values and/or myths, that is, the criteria of “Negation” and “Regionalität” [regionality] are widely accepted as typical for this sub-genre. Cf. Daniel Alexander Schacht, Fluchtpunkt Provinz: Der neue Heimatfilm zwischen 1968 und 1972 (Munster: MakS, 1991), pp. 25‒26. 134 Suggestions have been made to include “more than a dozen anti-Heimat films” by Herbert Achternbusch in this list. O’Sickey, “Framing the Unheimlich”, p. 204. 135 John Sandford, The New German Cinema (Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1980), p. 134. 136 Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time, p. 104. 137 Volker Vogeler, “Die ungerechte, trostlose, grausame Heimat”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9 July 1971. Cf. Schacht, Fluchtpunkt Provinz, p. 228. 138 Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 206. 139 Ibid. 140 Cf. Watson, Understanding Rainer Werner Fassbinder, pp. 6‒7. 141 Katz and Berling, Love Is Colder than Death, p. 43. 142 Cf. Elsaesser, Fassbinder’s Germany, p. 347. 143 Ibid., p. 45. 144 Rita C.-K. Chin, “Imagining a German Multiculturalism: Aras Ören and the Contested Meanings of the ‘Guest Worker’, 1955‒1980”, Radical History Review, 83 (2002), pp. 44‒72, here pp. 59‒60. 145 In the original: “Es geht um die Freiheit im Alltag. Dort fängt jene Selbstbestimmung des einzelnen an [...]. In ihr soll der Bürger seine soziale und seine geistige Heimat finden.” Willy Brandt quoted in Ina-Maria Greverus, Der territoriale Mensch: Ein literaturanthropologischer Versuch zum Heimatphänomen (Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1972), p. 16. 146 Hoffmann and Steiner had already identified The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum as a Heimat film prior to this study. Cf. Hoffmann and Steiner, “Die Sechziger Jahre”, p. 97. 147 Heinrich Böll, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum: or How Violence Develops and Where It Can Lead, translated by Leila Vennewitz (London: Secker & Warburg, 1975). 148 The parliament passed emergency laws in 1968, introducing the “Berufsverbot” [exclusion from civil service by government ruling] or “Radikalenerlaß” [gov288

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ernment decrees intended to stifle dissent by present and potential civil servants] on 28 Jan. 1972, before drastically extending police powers in the summer of 1972. Cf. Peter J. Humphreys, Media and Media Policy in Germany: The Press and Broadcasting since 1945 (Oxford: Providence, 1994), pp. 34‒79. Günter Wallraff, author undercover investigating Bild-Zeitung practices from within one of their offices, confirms: “We print whatever will sell.” In the original: “Gedruckt wird, was den Verkauf fördert.” Günter Wallraff, Der Aufmacher: Der Mann, der bei Bild Hans Esser war (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1977), p. 160. Cf. Humphreys, Media and Media Policy in Germany, p. 90. Ibid., p. 94. Cf. “Fear and Loathing in the Federal Republic”. Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time, p. 53. Schacht, Fluchtpunkt Provinz, p. 211. Böll, The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, p. 37. Cf. “You have to see that people can be driven so far that they can only free themselves by irrational aggressive actions.” Bommi Baumann, Terror or Love? The Personal Account of a West German Urban Guerilla, translated by Helene Ellenbogen and Wayne Parker (London: John Calder, 1979), p. 31. “There is a violence of liberation and a violence of oppression. […] This conflict of both rights, of the right to resist and of institutionalized violence carries with it the constant danger of clashing.” In the original: “Es gibt eine Gewalt der Befreiung und es gibt eine Gewalt der Unterdrückung. […] Dieser Konflikt der beiden Rechte, des Widerstandsrechts und der institutionalisierten Gewalt bringt die ständige Gefahr des Zusammenstoßes mit sich.” Herbert Marcuse, “Ziele, Formen und Aussichten der Studentenopposition”, Das Argument, no. 45 (Berlin, 1967), pp. 398‒408, here p. 404. Blickle, Heimat, pp. 82‒96. Olaf Hoerschelman, “’Memoria Dextera Est’: Film and Public Memory in Postwar Germany”, Cinema Journal, vol. 40, no. 2 (2001), pp.78‒97, here p. 89. The Radikalenerlass was nicknamed the Berufsverbot, after the National Socialist law which saw Jewish citizens banned from public office. The emergency laws (Notstandsgesetze), passed in 1968, were likened to those of the Reichstag in the 1930s, extending state power and enabling Hitler to take power. The “Law for the Protection of Communal Peace”, passed in 1976, which criminalized any publication glorifying violence, was called the “Muzzle Law” and likened to Nazi book-burnings. Tedd Rippey, Melissa Sundell, and Suzanne Townley, “’Ein wunderschönes Heute’: The Evolution and Functionalization of ‘Heimat’ in West German Heimat Films of the 1950s”, in Jost Hermand et al. (eds.), Heimat, Nation, Fatherland: The German Sense of Belonging (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 137‒59, here p. 144. His social criticism is informed by Marxist ideology. Cf. Karl Marx, Das Kapital: Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Hamburg: Otto Meissner, 1867). Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 236. Ibid. Hoffmann and Steiner, “Die Sechziger Jahre”, p. 97. Corrigan, New German Film, p. 71.

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167 Jack Zipes, “The Political Dimensions of The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum”, New German Critique, 12 (1977), pp. 75‒84, here p. 82. 168 Ibid. 169 Hoffmann and Steiner, “Die Sechziger Jahre”, p. 97. 170 Rentschler, West German Film in the Course of Time, p. 19. 171 Fassbinder cited Brecht as a stylistic influence and shared with “Horvath, who is deeply interested in people” a keen humane affinity. Fassbinder quoted in Christian Braad Thomsen, “Conversations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder”, in Kardish and Lorenz (eds.), Rainer Werner Fassbinder, p. 88. 172 Eric Rentschler, “Introduction: The Writing Out of West German Film History”, in Rentschler (ed.), West German Filmmakers on Film, p. xvii. 173 Pramaggiore and Wallis, Film, p. 371. 174 Wolfram Schütte, “Sein Name: eine Ära. Rückblicke auf den späten Fassbinder (1974/82)”, in Jansen and Schütte (eds.), Rainer Werner Fassbinder, p. 73. 175 Cf. Eric Rentschler, “From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus”, in Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds.), Cinema and Nation (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 260‒77, here p. 265. 176 Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 207. 177 Ibid., p. 210. 178 Ibid. 179 German Films Service and Marketing GmbH, Film-Archiv: Heimat, http://www.german-cinema.de/archive/film_view.php?film_id=381, retrieved Nov. 2005. 180 Reitz quoted in Stuart Liebman, “Heimat: A Chronicle of Germany”, Cineaste, vol. 22, iss. 3, (1996), pp. 42‒46, here p. 42. 181 Cf. Christopher J. Wickham, “Representation and Mediation in Edgar Reitz’s Heimat”, German Quarterly, 64/1 (1991), pp. 35‒45, here p. 39. 182 Blickle, Heimat, p. 143. 183 Marvin Chomsky, Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss, USA, 1978. 184 “With Holocaust the Americans have taken our history away from us.” In the original: “Die Amerikaner haben mit Holocaust uns Geschichte weggenommen.” Edgar Reitz, “Unabhängiger Film nach Holocaust?” (1979), in Edgar Reitz, Liebe zum Kino: Utopien und Gedanken zum Autorenfilm, 1962‒1983 (Cologne: Verlag Köln, 1984), pp. 98‒105, here pp. 100‒1. This is an extremely questionable point of view—after all, the Second World War and the Holocaust affected millions of people who were not “German” and who also have every right to come to terms with aspects of world history. 185 Reitz felt the need to explain the motivation behind his Heimat series and to somehow justify it repeatedly. However, the idea came really from a period of withdrawal, following a critically and commercially unsuccessful film project in 1978 (The Tailor from Ulm). Reitz retreated to the North Sea island of Sylt to reflect on film-making and sketch stories that later formed part of the novel which, in turn, served as a basis for the screenplay to Heimat. Cf. Eric L. Santner, Stranded Objects: Mourning, Memory, and Film in Postwar Germany (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), p. 59. 186 Blickle, Heimat, p. 143. 187 Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 217. 188 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, “Forms of Time and Chronotope in the Novel”, in Mikhail M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 84‒249, here p. 227. 290

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205 206 207 208 209

Ibid., p. 224. Ibid., p. 225. Ibid. Cf. Paul Simon’s return from the First World War: his reunion with family and friends takes place only after he has helped his father whom he had heard working in the smithy adjacent to the parental home. “He [Paul] instinctively drops his knapsack and silently—mutely—joins his father in the work at hand. Only after the task is completed and he is greeted by his mother does his father utter ‘God be praised!’” Santner, Stranded Objects, p. 60. In the original: “... eine fremde Frau, die nichts besitzt, die in den Vorstellungen von Maria eine Hure ist, [die] alles zerstören kann, weil sie sich in der Liebe hergibt [und] über das Bett ihres Sohnes in das Haus eindringen [will].” Edgar Reitz, “Aus dem Produktionstagebuch (Heimat, eine Chronik)”, in Reitz, Liebe zum Kino, p. 151. Blickle, Heimat, pp. 143‒44. Cf. Heide Fehrenbach, “Cinema, Spectatorship, and the Problem of Postwar German Identity”, in Reiner Pommerin (ed.), The American Impact on Postwar Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 1995), pp. 165‒95, here p. 177. Alon Confino, “The Nation as Local Metaphor: Heimat, National Memory and the German Empire, 1871‒1918”, History and Memory, 5, vol 1 (1993), pp. 46‒86, here pp. 73‒74. Johannes von Moltke, “Heimat and History: Viehjud Levi”, New German Critique, no. 87. Special Issue on Postwall Cinema (2002), pp. 83‒105, here p. 97. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 226. Karsten Witte, “Of the Greatness of the Small People: The Rehabilitation of a Genre”, reprinted in Miriam Hansen, “Dossier on Heimat”, New German Critique, no. 36, Special Issue on Heimat (1985), pp. 3‒24, here p. 8. In this film, Zarah Leander plays the role of Madga von Schwartze, known internationally by her artistic pseudonym Maddalena dall’ Orto, who returns to her native village. Florentine Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close: Carl Froelich’s Heimat”, in Robert C. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000), pp.109‒32, here p. 110. In the original: “Amerika ist das beste Beispiel, um zu zeigen, wie diese neue, die zweite Kultur auf der Welt entsteht, die Kultur der Emigranten, der Weggegangenen.” Reitz, “Aus dem Produktionstagebuch”, p. 145. Eric Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home: Luis Trenker’s The Prodigal Son (1934), New German Critique, no. 60, Special Issue on German Film History (1993), pp. 33‒56, here p. 54. In the original: “Eine Gesellschaft von Menschen, die nur noch sich selbst als Ware anzubieten haben und so Konkurrenz auf Leben und Tod treiben....” Reitz, “Aus dem Produktionstagebuch”, p. 146. Rentschler, “There’s No Place Like Home”, p. 54. The word “Weggeher” is a neologism coined by Reitz. Cf. Reitz, “Aus dem Produktionstagebuch”, p. 145. Cf. Santner, Stranded Objects, p. 63. Franz A. Birgel, “You Can Go Home Again: An Interview with Edgar Reitz”, Film Quarterly, vol. 39, no. 4 (1986), pp. 2‒10, here p. 3. Karsten Witte quoted in Hansen, “Dossier on Heimat”, p. 6. Elsaesser, New German Cinema, p. 276. 291

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210 Julia F. Klimek, “Elusive Images of Women, Home, and History: Deconstructing the Use of Film and Photography in Edgar Reitz’s Heimat”, Women in German Yearbook, 15 (2000), pp. 227‒46, here p. 235. 211 Ibid. 212 Village Voice, 16 Apr. 1985, quoted in Hansen, “Dossier on Heimat”, p. 10. 213 Terri Ginsberg and Kirsten Moana Thompson, “Radical Disorderliness at the Postnationalist Moment”, in Terri Ginsberg and Kirsten Moana Thompson (eds.), Perspectives on German Cinema (New York and London: Prentice Hall, 1996), pp. 3‒24, p. 14. 214 Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 16. 215 Ginsberg and Thompson, “Radical Disorderliness at the Postnationalist Moment”, p. 14. 216 Gertrud Koch, “Kann man naiv werden? Zum neuen Heimat-Gefühl”, Frauen und Film, 38 (1985), pp.107‒9, reviewed in Hansen, “Dossier on Heimat”, p. 13. 217 In the original: “… der Film hätte thematisieren müssen, wie die Personen trotz des Wissens um diese Greuel mit sich identisch bleiben, liebenswert verwurzelt in ihrem heimatlichen Familienraum.” Fiedler, Heimat im deutschen Film, p. 70. 218 Cf. Wilfried mentions the extermination of Jews “The Final Solution is being carried out radically and without mercy […]. Up the chimneys, every last one of them.” Because the audience can only picture this within the story in abstract terms, as no Jewish Germans have been included in the plot, the mention of a child soldier, Hans, who recently died at the front is likely to evoke more sympathy. 219 Eric L. Santner, “On the Difficulty of Saying ‘We’: The Historians’ Debate and Edgar Reitz’s Heimat”, in Ginsberg and Thompson (eds.), Perspectives on German Cinema, pp. 261‒79. Cf. Hake, German National Cinema, p. 126. 220 Thomas Elsaesser, “Heimat”, Monthly Film Bulletin, Feb. 1985, pp. 48‒51, here p. 51. 221 Leonie Naughton, “Heimat: Backs to the Past”, Filmnews, Aug. 1985, pp. 13‒14. 222 Ibid., p. 13. 223 Ibid., p. 14. 224 Cf. Alon Confino, “Edgar Reitz’s Heimat and German Nationhood: Film, Memory and Understandings of the Past”, German History, 16, no. 2 (1998), pp. 185‒208. 225 Gerd Gemünden, “Introduction: Remembering Fassbinder in a Year of Thirteen Moons”, New German Critique, no. 63, Special Issue on Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1994), pp. 3‒9, here p. 8. 226 Fiedler, Heimat im deutschen Film, p. 74. 227 Ginsberg and Thompson, “Radical Disorderliness at the Postnationalist Moment”, p. 14. 228 In the original: “Die Geschichte erzählt Ihnen […] daß die großen Themen dieser Welt nicht die wichtigsten sind, […] genießen Sie die Schönheit, die der Film hat, eine bescheidene, einfache, aber selten gewordene Schönheit.” Reitz, “Aus dem Produktionstagebuch”, pp. 206‒7. 229 Timothy Garton Ash, “The Life of Death”, New York Review of Books, 19 Dec. 1985, p. 26. 230 Reitz quoted in Birgel, “You Can Go Home Again”, p. 7. 231 Hake, German National Cinema, p. 171. Cf. Anton Kaes, From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989); and Santner, Stranded Objects. 292

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232 Reitz quoted by Thomas Elsaesser, “Memory, Home, Hollywood”, Monthly Film Bulletin, vol. 52, no. 613 (1985), on back page. 233 Klimek, “Elusive Images of Women, Home, and History”, p. 240. 234 Ibid. 235 Liebman, “Heimat”, p. 46. 236 Von Molte, No Place Like Home, p. 32. 237 Ibid., p. 94. 238 “His outsider status makes him suited to serve as observer and yet he seems to contaminate everything he touches.” Ibid., p. 245. 239 Ibid., pp. 242‒43. 240 Reitz quoted in Koch, “Kann man naiv werden?”, p. 107. 241 Wickham, “Representation and Mediation in Edgar Reitz’s Heimat”, p. 43. 242 Reitz called his Heimat opus “this European requiem of the little people”. In the original: “… dieses europäische Requiem der kleinen Leute”. Reitz quoted in Koch, “Kann man naiv werden?”, p. 107. 243 Birgel, “You Can Go Home Again”, p. 3. 244 Reitz confessed his “Wesensverwandtschaft” [relatedness of character] with Hermann when he stated: “Hunsrück remains as always the Heimat that I left. My love of this landscape and of these people suffered a knock in earlier years. I can’t repair that through this work either.” In the original: “Der Hunsrück bleibt nach wie vor auch die von mir verlassene Heimat. Meine Liebe zu dieser Landschaft und zu diesen Menschen hat in früheren Jahren einen ‘Knacks’ bekommen. Das kann ich auch durch die Arbeit nicht reparieren.” Reitz, “Aus dem Produktionstagebuch”, p. 168. 245 Hermann, who speaks in his Hunsrück dialect upon his arrival in Munich, comments: “It’s terrible that I speak like this. But with high German I have the feeling that I am lying.” In the original: “Es ist füchterlisch, daß isch so spreche. Aber bei Hochdeutsch komme ich mir vor, als ob ich luge.” [sic] 246 Cf. Johannes von Moltke, “Home again: Revisiting the New German Cinema in Edgar Reitz’s Die Zweite Heimat (1993)”, Cinema Journal, vol. 42, iss. 3 (2003), pp. 114‒43. 247 Cf. Jillian Becker, Hitler’s Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang (London: Joseph, 1977). 248 Cf. Reinhold Rauh, Film als Heimat: Edgar Reitz (Munich: Heyne, 1994). 249 Santner, Stranded Objects, p. 58. 250 Ironically, a friend she confides in writes a filmscript entitled “Deutsche Angst” in response and (mis)appropriates her memory, going as far as to tell her “Your story is now my story.” 251 Klimek, “Elusive Images of Women, Home, and History”, p. 231. 252 Edgar Reitz, Die Zweite Heimat: Chronik einer Jugend (Munich: Goldmann, 1993), p. 689. 253 In the original: “Ins Kino gehört Die zweite Heimat auch deshalb, weil sie in manchem die Geburt des Neuen deutschen Films aus dem Geiste der künstlerischen Boheme in München erzählt—als Abschied von einer Illusion, die erst recht heute eine geworden ist, da der Neue deutsche Film nur noch als Mythos in der Erinnerung seiner gealterten Zeitgenossen existiert.” Wolfram Schütte, “Reise zu den siebziger Jahren in drei Wochen”, Frankfurter Rundschau, 24 Aug. 1994. 254 Cf. Stephen Holden, “Die Zweite Heimat: Leaving Home (1992), A 25 1/2-Hour German Epic of Discovery and Art”, New York Times, 17 June 1993. 293

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255 Cf. Roger Hillman, “Heimat 3: Signing Off On The German Century”, Rouge, 6 (2005), http://www.rouge.com.au/6/heimat.html, retrieved Sep. 2006. 256 Ibid. 257 In the original: “Die wirkliche Genesis ist nicht am Anfang, sondern am Ende, und sie beginnt erst anzufangen, wenn Gesellschaft und Dasein radikal werden, das heißt sich an der Wurzel fassen. Die Wurzel der Geschichte aber ist der arbeitende, schaffende, die Gegebenheit umbildende und überholende Mensch. Hat er sich erfaßt und das Sein ohne Eräußerung und Entfremdung in realer Demokratie begründet, so entsteht in der Welt etwas, das allen in die Kindheit scheint und worin noch niemand war: Heimat.” Ernst Bloch, “Das Prinzip Hoffnung”, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 5 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1959), p. 1628. 258 In the original: “Das Rückerinnern der Erwachsenen in ihre kindliche Heimat ist also das Rückerinnern an die Hoffnung auf die Zukunft: Der Zeitcharakter der Heimat.” Wilfried von Bredow and Hans-Friedrich Foltin (eds.), Zwiespältige Zufluchten: Zur Renaissance des Heimatgefühls (Berlin: Dietz, 1981), p. 23. 259 Oskar Negt, “Wissenschaft in der Kulturkrise und das Problem der Heimat”, in Will Cremer and Ansgar Klein (eds.), Heimat, vol. 1 (Bielefeld: Westfalen, 1990), pp. 185‒95, quoted in translation by Blickle, Heimat, p. 147. 260 In the original: “Heimat war bei den Nazis ein Propagandawort. Dann gab es in den fünfziger Jahren die seicht-kitschigen Heimatfilme. Ich war aber überzeugt davon, dass man das Wort von seinem Ballast befreien kann, und sagte mir: Weder die Nazis noch die Folklore-Musiker haben das Wort erfunden; sein wahrer Inhalt ist eigentlich unschuldig.” Edgar Reitz quoted in Johannes Waechter and Jan Weiler, “Interview mit ‘Heimat’-Regisseur Edgar Reitz, ‘Das Fernsehen ist kein narratives Medium mehr’, Der gebürtige Hunsrücker hat sein Lebenswerk vollendet: 54 Stunden ‘Heimat’, das größte Filmprojekt aller Zeiten, Ein Gespräch mit dem erschöpften Genie”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 Sep. 2004. 261 In the original: “Ich habe mir gesagt, wenn ich den Film so nenne und wenn der Film es schafft, dieses Wort zu reinigen und ihm die falschen Assoziationen einfach auszutreiben, dann ist er gelungen.” Ibid. 262 Karsten Witte quoted in Hansen, “Dossier on Heimat”, p. 7. 263 Despite its national and international success, the film has not escaped criticism, most notably for its “revisionist approach”. Hansen, “Dossier on Heimat”, p. 4. 264 “… in France and Britain strongly indebted to Foucault, in Germany to Negt and Kluge.” Ibid. 265 Cf. Reitz, Liebe zum Kino, p. 206. 266 Reitz’s 2006 feature film Heimat—Fragmente [Fragments]—about Lulu, now 35 years old, and her search for “the old future of childhood”, as she calls it— revisited scenes from the three earlier Heimat instalments in forty snippets focusing on the female characters in the series. 267 Roger Hillman, Unsettling Scores: German Film, Music, and Ideology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), p. 30.

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)Discoveries of Heimat

A meeting of art, entertainment, and ideology, Heimat films have always been political. Whether in a subversive or coercive fashion, or as critical or supportive of the status quo, they have been used as a medium to influence, propagandize, and provoke. The long and ambivalent tradition of the Heimat topos in German film (encompassing the mountain dramas of the 1920s and 30s, the “non-political” entertainment productions of Heimat films during the Third Reich, and the heath, Alpine, and Black Forest melodramas of the postwar decades popular in both West and East Germany) reveals the suitability of the genre as a vessel for dreams and desires, as well as an argumentative backdrop for diverse ideologies in politically charged times. As demonstrated in the 1980s in West Germany with Edgar Reitz’s first Heimat instalment, the concept experienced a resurgence as a political tool in the Federal Republic—though Heimat-themed productions had long been employed by the government film agency Deutsche Film AG (DEFA) in East Germany. While Heimat appreciation and its close association with the political Heimat were never in doubt in the GDR, West Germany moved through phases of positive and negative associations. During the 1970s and 80s, a gradual reclaiming of Heimat began to form part of the anti-nuclear, peace, and ecological movements in the FRG, and steadily began to affect other aspects of life.1 Heimat became “a concept favored and exploited [...] in the party slogans of the Christian Democrats who claimed ‘security and identification of Heimat’”.2 Somewhat surprisingly, the left-wing parties also used the term in their promotional material: “the Social Democrats, whose identity is clearly carved out, along with their Heimat” and the KBD (Kommunistischer Bund Westdeutschlands [Communist League of West Germany]), inspired by East German rhetoric, used the slogan “To defend oneself here, means to honour Heimat.”3 Even Helmut Kohl, West Germany’s Chancellor in the 1980s, promoted a new national pride through the veneration of Heimat: “What is Heimat? […] To it belongs the commitments of values and eternal ways of living […] heritage and possession.”4 This positive assessment of Heimat was soon identified as an expression of a “new regionalism” that cemented itself in the late 1970s and early 80s. It could be traced back to the peace movement—which had grown in strength, partly because of the awareness of West Germany’s precarious location on the border between the superpowers during the Cold War—as well as to the unsettling possibility of a nuclear catastrophe.5 It achieved wider representation with the early successes of the political party Die Grünen [The Greens], which generally promoted a new sense of care and custodianship for regional issues related to the country’s native soil. Heimat quickly became en vogue with other parties associated with the political left and with West Germany’s conservative es295

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tablishment alike; the latter in particular exploited a sense of regional identity by showcasing their figureheads Helmut Kohl and Franz-Josef Strauß as being deeply rooted in the Palatinate and in Bavaria respectively. The hunger for Heimat-themed productions saw 1950s Heimat films rereleased on television to wide acclaim and resulted in investment in TV productions which replicated the successful formula. Throughout the 1980s, series such as Schwarzwaldklinik [Black Forest Clinic], Das Erbe der Guldenburgs [The Legacy of the Guldenburgs], Oh Gott, Herr Pfarrer [Oh God, Mr Vicar] and other soap operas promoted traditional families, German landscapes, and a sense of security and comfort in one’s own land.6 Attractive rural settings, character constellations which allowed lovers to find one another, and society as the provider of a stable, cosy, and comforting environment were successfully recycled and adapted for the contemporary context. Shows such as Black Forest Clinic, which developed into a long-running series (Dauerbrenner), took their cues from the melodramas of the 1950s with regard to their choice of motif, theme, and message. Not only did the subject matter screened in the early 1980s seem to recall that of the 1950s, critical voices also lamented the way it was received by viewers. “The Black Forest Clinic is the uninhibited regression into the mentality of the 1950s—to that place where kitsch and sentimentality, false inwardness and a conservatism existed which desperately tried to stave off anything new.”7 After the initial boom in the genre manifested itself in record audiences for 1950s re-releases on cinema screens and television, the film industry changed its strategy for new Heimat film productions noticeably. Half of all German films produced since 1982 have been subsidized by TV stations,8 and a change towards a hybrid format suitable for the big screen as well as for the living room has been evident since then. Indeed, producers have moved away from feature films for cinema releases in favour of serialized TV productions, hoping to develop audience dependency and thus to profit in the long term. The strategy worked: although audience numbers plateaued, their stability ensured a steady stream of income. To this day, Schloß am Wörthersee [The Castle on Wörther Lake], Der Bergdoktor [The Mountain Doctor], and Der Landarzt [The Country Medico] are examples of an unbroken trend, from which state TV channels and private providers alike continue to benefit, while serious critics remain as embarrassed and disapproving as their colleagues of the previous generation. The aesthetic and thematic resurrection of the 1950s was bemoaned as the revitalization of a corpse and a time long since gone: “The kitsch cloying films of the 1950s were resurrected from the tomb.”9 Positive voices stressed the fact that these home-grown series were the only ones able to compete with such popular contemporary American imports as Dallas and Dynasty. Holding up Black Forest Clinic as a retort to American cultural imperialism may seem a rather weak justification for bad storylines and B-grade actors. Nevertheless, these productions proved to be the only weapon which could defend a threatened cultural identity with something specifically German, or “Hausmannskost” [plain fare].10 Audiences of the 1950s and the 1980s proved receptive to sentimental and trivial plots; they were hungry for distraction and open to other—if only more affluent—realities. This explains the success of the Heimat genre as well as that of soap operas such as Dallas, in which dream worlds became an extension of people’s lives, “neither a compensation for the supposed colourlessness of every-day life, nor an es296

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cape from this life but instead a further dimension of it”.11 The socio-political realities of West Germany in the 1980s—despite their marked differences to the 1950s—meant that the population was just as susceptible to the promise of ever greater prosperity, progress, and comfort, with problems only featuring in the resolvable drama on screen. The prime timeslots on West German television were occupied by Heimat films (remakes as well as re-releases on television) coupled with music shows promoting German Schlager [popular German-language tunes] on the weekly TV Hitparade on the one hand, and German folk musicians and brass bands (in particular the Saturday night fixtures of Musikantenstadl and Volksmusik, both folk music extravaganzas) on the other. These forms of entertainment seemed ideally suited as a vehicle of a “very consciously chosen and desired opting out of the complexity and confusion of real every-day life”.12 While recognition of oneself in, and substitution of oneself with, the heroes and tragedies on screen had become fractured—after all, it was quite obvious that the 1950s studio set, just like the American ones, were rather further removed from reality than the contemporary and relatively local settings of the Black Forest Clinic. It seemed evident that the typical panoramic family saga of American television was crying out for its German counterpart. Interestingly, the most convincing response to American cultural imperialism had already emerged from a most unexpected quarter: from one of the founders of the New German Cinema, Edgar Reitz, with his critical approach to Heimat. An unequivocally positive resonance of the term “Heimat” since the successes of the 1950s Heimat films was yet to emerge in the West, although a broader understanding of films subsumed under the heading “Heimat” had developed there in the 1980s: “For me every film is a ‘Heimat film’ which contributes to us feeling more at home on this earth, no matter whether it’s set in the country or in the city.”13 Detlev Buck’s Erst die Arbeit und dann [Time to Knock Off, 1984] and Klaus Gietinger and Leo Hiemer’s Daheim sterben die Leut [People Are Dying Back Home, 1984/85] combine social critique with humour and appeasing tones in plot and presentation, thereby fusing entertainment and thought provocation. Indeed, the concept of Heimat seemed to increasingly lose “the unholy connotation acquired through the Nazi’s blood and soil ideology” with film-makers and writers understanding it “simply as a place of origin and the heimat film as a balanced reflection of this”.14 Joseph Rödl’s films Albert—Warum [Albert— Why, 1977] as well as his Grenzenlos [Borderless, 1982] are examples of this trend, realistically depicting Heimat in landscapes, costumes, and dialect without ridiculing these as backward or flaunting them as touristy. Xaver Schwarzenberger’s Der stille Ozean [The Silent Ocean, 1982] and his adaptation of Ganghofer’s Gewitter im Mai [Thunderstorm in May, 1987] still fed off the conflict between individual and society, however, without obvious political overtones. Rather, personal living environments are introduced, warts and all, such as in the adaptation of Ganghofer’s Der Unfried [The Troublemaker, 1986] by director Rainer Wolffhardt, who “distilled from it the ‘left-wing’ theme of the rejecting village community, against which the illegitimate daughter of a supposed murderer has to assert herself”.15 In summary, by reclaiming the term during the 1980s, West German film seemed to experience a renaissance of Heimat—a process that DEFA films in East Germany had long since passed. It appeared as if the love of Heimat in 297

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the West gained its aesthetic pinnacle only after the division of Germany had been addressed—as if German cinema needed to be revitalized via a detour through the East. DEFA films, with their universally positive depiction of East German Heimat, deserve closer examination—for the reverence they express for Heimat as well as for the cues they provided decades later for Ostalgie movies and indeed for Westalgie films, which they indirectly encouraged and which ultimately led to a positive rediscovery of a pan-German Heimat. This point was powerfully stressed by a 2007 film music concert entitled Grün ist die Heimat [Green Is the Heimat],16 which was intended to be a medley of powerful Heimat film soundtracks. Hosted by the Admiralspalast, Berlin, the Deutsche Filmorchester Babelsberg under conductor Frank Strobel played songs from Weimar and Nazi Heimat films such as “Lili Marleen” sung originally by Zarah Leander in Die große Liebe [The Great Love, 1943], West German Heimat film classics such as “Und ewig singen die Wälder” [The Forests Sing Eternally], “Immensee”, and “Die Geierwally”, as well as music from Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), Winnetou, Serengeti darf nicht sterben [Serengeti Must Not Die, 1959], the TV series Raumpatrouille Orion [Space Patrol Orion, from 1966],17 as well as DEFA classics such as the Sandmännchen-melody [Sandman melody] and the film music by the Puhdys to the GDR evergreen Die Legende von Paul und Paula [The Legend of Paul and Paula, 1973].

DEFA HEIMAT FILMS From the time the Ufa studios in Potsdam-Babelsberg came under Soviet control and were renamed Deutsche Film AG (DEFA) on 17 May 1946— going on to become a state-owned and state-controlled monopoly film factory in the Arbeiter- und Bauernstaat DDR [Workers’ and Farmers’ State GDR] —its stated mission was to enlighten and educate the people. While the Western Allies did not consider the rebuilding of the German film industry a priority, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) took to the medium as an effective means of mass communication. The Allies soon followed suit by issuing licences for some twenty production companies. Barely one year after the end of the Second World War, the film industry was reorganized and “in business”, whereas most of the country remained rubblestrewn. The topics addressed in both East and West were initially rather similar: DEFA films such as Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns [The Murderers Are Among Us, 1946]), Kurt Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten [Marriage in the Shadows, 1947], and Erich Engel’s Affaire Blum [The Blum Affair, 1948] examined the “moralische Wiederaufrüstung” [moral rearmament]18 following the Nazi period— as did their Western counterparts such as Helmut Käutner’s In jenen Tagen [In Those Days, 1947] and Eugen York’s Morituri (1948). Not until 1949, parallel to the foundation of the two German states, did the direction in film production start to differ. Slatan Dudow’s Unser täglich Brot [Our Daily Bread, 1949] was the first DEFA film to demonstrate a clear socialist perspective in the way it promoted the “collective spirit of the ‘new order’ in the Soviet occupied zone”,19 as opposed to the alleged moral decline in the Western sectors. In this exemplary tale of proud virtue and honesty maintained even at the price of poverty, the material 298

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wealth of the other zones is shown to be built on greed and deceit. The West German melodrama Nachtwache [Nightwatch, 1949], by Harald Braun, provides a counterpoint to Our Daily Bread, demonstrating that the individual is the cornerstone of his/her own destiny. Hence these films served as “Staatsauftaktsfilme” [films unveiling the new direction] for both states.20 While film production in the West was guided mainly by consumer culture rather than being seized on as an educational tool, the Soviet occupiers had “little doubt about the educational potential of cinema […] reopening cinemas before the end of the war on 28 April 1945 with dubbed versions of Soviet films that had been banned by the Hitler regime”.21 As early as August 1945, they began to recruit Germans with film-making experience and worked towards the revival of German cinema. “On 22 November 1945 a historic meeting took place in the former Hotel Adlon in Berlin”, where directors such as Wolfgang Staudte, Gerhard Lamprecht, and Peter Pewas were lobbied to create “a form of critical cinema […] which would assist in bringing about a ‘new and better Germany’”.22 However, the intimate knowledge of the power of the medium and a certain lack of trust in the German filmmakers seemed to be an issue for the Soviets, with the first licence for a film not granted to DEFA by the Soviet Military Administration until May 1946. Control remained tight. Since its inception, DEFA was subjected to scrutiny on the basis of ideological message. The planning, production, editing, and release phases of every film were closely monitored, with the state-controlled “DEFAKommission” empowered to act as a censor from 1947. Falk Harnack’s Das Beil von Wandsbek [The Axe of Wandsbek, 1951] and Konrad Wolf’s Sonnensucher [Sunseeker, 1958] were pulled from distribution even after their initial release because of ideological concerns relating to the representation of workers and Nazi history. State control, also referred to as the Stalinization of the film industry, made for feature films of a very different nature compared to those produced in the West. In July 1950, the Third Party Congress of the Socialist Unity Party (SED) issued the clear directive that film must serve a political function and reflect the ideology of the time.23 Between 1950 and 1956, in particular, Socialist Realism was the doctrine for East German films, and in many films the message seemed to dwarf the narrative and art form. During the high point of Heimat film production and reception in the West, the GDR released primarily one-dimensional ideology-endorsing films in the aesthetically unambitious style of Socialist Realism which served as decidedly anti-Western propaganda, such as Martin Hellberg’s Das verurteilte Dorf [The Condemned Village, 1952]. In contrast to their Western counterparts—which were said to seek primarily “entertainment and a retreat from history and politics”24—films from the East were promoted as critical tools to be employed broadly for the betterment of society and generally came in the form of “socialist-style problem films, worker heroes, and antifascist epics in the service of the state”.25 These fundamental differences in film conception and perception, which divided German cinema between 1945 and 1989 into the entertainment industry of the West and the didactic and ideological tool of the East, have dominated scholarship. DEFA cinema was presented as the moral counterpart to the commercial cinema in the capitalist West, with the socialist regime priding itself on a film culture that was “devoid of violence as spectacle, gratuitous sex, psychopaths, obscenity, brutal crime, sexually 299

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explicit scenes, and sensational action”.26 Most critics have been united in their black-and-white assessment of DEFA films; as a truly national cinema, if ever there was one, GDR film production was subsumed under one marketing label and one ideological message. This point of view, pertaining to a “rather limited, narrow understanding of the nature of art” in East Germany, namely, an “often purely didactic” one, was upheld by past DEFA directors such as Wolfgang Kohlhaase even after the fall of the Berlin Wall.27 Indeed, it has been “tempting to dismiss East German cinema as dull and propagandistic, as merely an appendage of the state ideological apparatus”, when compared with the relatively unhampered development of West Germany’s entertainment film industry.28 Research has thus far mainly cemented the dichotomy, despite recent calls for a “New Film History”.29 The dominant narrative claims that East German cinema frequently produced “didactic expressions of commitment to socialist ideals and attitudes [...] by placing emphasis upon the importance of industrial expansion, the development of new housing estates, and increased productivity.”30 However, the 677 feature films produced by DEFA between 1946 and 1990 can hardly be described as indistinguishable from one another,31 and they deserve closer examination to document the “often considerable tensions that existed between the filmmakers and their political masters”, as well as to note the “excellence and originality of a number of films produced by DEFA”.32 Moreover, understanding DEFA films solely as a product of East Germany’s political reality ignores the fact that DEFA productions up until 1961 did not have an “exclusively Eastern identity”.33 Connections with West German, as well as with other international players, were forged throughout DEFA’s existence.34 Nevertheless, it is true that the divergences in aesthetics and ideology had led to a cinema that had a decidedly different flavour from that of the West. Especially with regard to the Heimat sub-text, films from East Germany chose a different path from the commercialization of the genre as seen in the West. By highlighting the productive nature of the socialist homeland—for example, in Frank Beyer’s Karbid und Sauerampfer [Carbide and Sorrel, 1963] and Ralph Kirsten’s Netzwerke [Networks, 1970]—a sense of pride and happiness was instilled, assisting the cause of making East German citizens sensitive towards their Heimat. Though transparent in their ideological and didactic intent, DEFA films were often subsumed under the heading “Gegenwartsfilm” [contemporary social drama], as opposed to the heritage films or Heimat melodramas favoured in the West. “Love of Heimat, Heimatfilme, being banished from Heimat, and local history were concepts that were on everyone’s lips in the Federal Republic during the 1950s. Not so in the East. Morphologies with Heimat were viewed with suspicion there, as it was assumed that the bourgeois ideology of Heimat served to dis35 guise class struggle above all else.”

Linguistic Heimat compounds, common in West German parlance, were forbidden in the East, where Heimatvertriebene [expellees], for example, were referred to as Umsiedler [resettlers]. In addition, East German policies were not very accommodating of the suffering of expellees, as they were not allowed to publicly plead their case; on the contrary, if the issue was brought up, it was in regard to the justness of the repossession of the lost territories by 300

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the Soviet Union. Claus Dobberke’s Verspielte Heimat [Wasted Heimat, 1971] criticized not only the tendency towards political revanchism, as articulated by expellee organizations in the West, but also the West German government for failing to curb latent proto-Fascism in its state. As Johannes von Moltke highlights in his analysis of Artur Pohl’s DEFA production Die Brücke [The Bridge, 1949], integration of Umsiedler [resettlers] and Einheimische [locals] into a socialist Heimat was of great concern and political currency.36 An appealing image of GDR Heimat was required not least due to the need to integrate some four million expellees. “To entice this relatively mobile proportion of a total population of 17.5 million to stay, the state tried hard to integrate these migrants not just economically, but also culturally.”37 This led to the state discouraging the use of local dialects and idiosyncrasies in favour of a homogeneous pan-German socialism. Although the GDR discouraged the idea of parallel worlds and identities, there was no escaping the seductive power which ideals of Heimat and cultural heritage had over the people. Unable to discourage or marginalize enthusiasm for Heimat, particularly in regions along the periphery of the country,38 functionaries had to tolerate if not capitalize on the Heimat appreciation of their workers and peasants. As a result, within the context of the overarching socialist Heimat being synonymous with the state, regional and local identities were allowed to flourish.39 In order to break the stranglehold of the lingering Fascist Heimat concept, the local perception of Heimat was seen as a means of commingling socialism and the state with heimatesque connotations. Through the foregrounding of regional and local rather than national Heimat aspects, Heimat was seemingly liberated from the blood-and-soil connotations of the Nazi period by establishing the correlation between Heimat and the willingness to work for the community. By making the love of one’s Heimat synonymous with “a sense of responsibility for the greater good”,40 Heimat could legitimately become “central to public constructions of a GDR identity, despite initial concerns about an ideological incompatibility of Heimat within Marxist-Leninist socialism”.41 Heimat was the place of the worker and peasant, its rightful owners. Mindful of the necessity to forge a cohesive nation-state, GDR officials sought to suppress the types of regional identities often celebrated in West German Heimat films, going as far as resorting to linguistic cleansing by renaming some traditional regional dishes—with Königsberger Klopse [Königsberg meatballs], for example, becoming Kochklops [boiled meatballs]. By definition, Heimat in the GDR had to encompass the whole GDR—as a paradise for workers and farmers, including heavy industry and socialist ideology. This understanding of Heimat has led many scholars to claim that “[o]fficially the genre of the Heimat film did not and does not exist in the GDR”.42 The 1950s West German conception of Heimat was clearly not being copied in the East, as it was deemed “ideologically offensive to the SED and socialist imperatives and values. […] DEFA films were more inclined to support the objectives of the Aufbaujahre, the construction years.”43 However, while the East followed a significantly different path to West German entertainment, both film industries, preoccupied with rebuilding and forging their respective nations, were unable to ignore the fact that the Heimat motif

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was a powerful amalgam. Heimat and Heimat films in effect played a key role in both systems, albeit in very different conceptualizations.44 In an overview of East German society, Harry Blunk points out the importance of the notion of Heimat in the political education of the young in the former GDR. It formed a central concept in the maturity ceremony known as Jugendweihe [an East German initiation ceremony, in which fourteen-yearolds are awarded adult status], and also featured strongly in the young Pioneers’ song “Unsere Heimat, das sind die…” [Our homeland, that is the…].45 This folk song not only praises the beauty of the natural features of the East German landscape but, most importantly, also affirms the East German state ideology: “Und wir lieben die Heimat, die schöne, / und wir schützen sie, weil sie dem Volke gehört, / weil sie unserem Volke gehört.” [And we love our Heimat, the beautiful Heimat, / and we protect it because it belongs to the people, / because it belongs to our people.]46 On crossing the threshold from childhood to adulthood at the age of fourteen, every citizen in the GDR received the booklet Vom Sinn unseres Lebens [On the Meaning of Our Lives], which contained a discussion of Heimat and Vaterland [fatherland] in a chapter entitled “The GDR—Our Fatherland”. Heimat was defined as “a beautiful place” that, “when we are far away, we miss”.47 Vaterland, in contrast, usually only referred to a legal entity. Nevertheless, the booklet emphasized the ideal of the GDR consisting of Heimat and fatherland in one, as its citizens “feel cared for” and are “happy to live” there. Indeed, according to the Jugendweihe booklet, the perception of the homogeneous nature of the GDR, as ensured by socialism, made it “a country which is worth living in and fighting for”.48 Heimat was therefore undeniably a value to reckon with, in East Germany as well as in the West. It promised box-office success, but also strengthened, in East and West alike, the self-image of these new political states, which rested on somewhat precarious foundations. In addition, the stabilizing project had to address, explain, and motivate the German-German division, especially since until “the mid-1950s, there was a pointed ambiguity to the concept of Heimat in the GDR [distinguishing] between the eastern and western parts of one German Heimat”.49 To combat this perception, 1952 saw the creation of the Zentralhaus für Laienkunst [Central Folklore Art Institute] in Leipzig, with the brief to include folklore from the pre-GDR East and the pre-FRG West under the one banner of Heimat. In 1955, when the two Germanys and Austria formally received their sovereignty, Heimat was introduced as a school subject in the GDR in an attempt to turn innate “feelings of Heimat towards a true, socialist Heimat”.50 In doing so, Heimat became a synonym for the ideals of East Germany: the classless Heimat of every worker. Not geography but rather Gesinnung [political conviction], in line with socialist and communist ideals, formed the realm of Heimat. With the concept no longer defined by birthplace, but instead by attitude and disposition, even German expellees had been encouraged to call their new socialist homeland, the GDR, their Heimat. By rewarding workers with vacations in socialist resorts scattered throughout the GDR, from the island of Rügen to the East German mountain range referred to as Saxonian Switzerland, the state demonstrated its intention of instilling an appreciation of homeland as much as socialism in a holistic Heimat experience. Realizing the power of Heimat, the GDR used it in its “official ideological and cultural self-definition. […] Ideologically, Heimat be302

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came an integral part of the socialist utopia.”51 This may have been the reason why the manager of the Filmmuseum Potsdam, Bärbel Dalichow, referred in a blanket statement to all DEFA films as “Heimatfilme”.52 She singled out Gerhard Klein’s Berlin—Ecke Schönhauser [Berlin—Schönhauser Corner, 1957] as a prime example of a film conveying the feeling of the GDR as “Heimat”.53 Set in the working-class district of Prenzlauer Berg, the director’s use of film stock (Ultra Rapid) is identical to that of the Wochenschau [newsreel], resulting in a coarse, black-and-white optic reminiscent of a documentary. Its neo-realistic style, which foregrounds the woes of disenchanted youth in East Germany and the conflict resolution based on the message that socialism has a human face, demonstrate that Berlin—Schönhauser Corner is committed to the socialist cause—albeit without ignoring the contradictions and tensions existing in GDR society. Popular with audiences in the East and noted by colleagues in the West for its similarities to Die Halbstarken [The Young Hooligans, 1956], this DEFA film shows a way back into society for the repentant protagonist, who will redeem himself through work and by raising a child in the ideology of his country, which— after a stint in the West—he finds to be the better place, thus affirming the notion that the GDR has become a “Heimat des Neuen” [Heimat of the new].54 If the Heimat film genre, as it was played out in the West in the 1950s, was a form of cultural resistance against Americanization, its East German counterpart constituted more of a resistance towards capitalism in general. Bärbel Dalichow therefore identifies Heimat film themes in the DEFA’s antiFascist films in particular.55 The logic that capitalism supposedly equals Fascism was explored in numerous films, and was especially notable in Das verurteilte Dorf [The Condemned Village, 1952] and Der Ochse von Kulm [The Ox of Kulm, 1955], both directed by Martin Hellberg. To substantiate their criticism, the two films are set in 1950s West Germany, although they were actually shot in the GDR for an East German audience and released only in the East because of the “ban on DEFA imports issued by the West German government”.56 In Hellberg’s first Heimat film, the small village of Bärenweiler seems to have no future, with the American occupiers intent on establishing a military base there and demanding that the villagers leave their ancestral homes. Resistance builds and in a typical class action, farmers and workers unite against an unreasonable anti-communist foreign force. Their protests and the film’s iconography foreground Heimat as a central value. Although the film is clearly critical of Western occupation, it instils a sense of pride in and ownership of German soil. The fictitious West German farmers and workers greet the Americans with slogans such as “Bärenweiler—a German village, not an American airport!”, “Hands off our Heimat”, and “We won’t give up our Heimat”, and provoke a tense stand-off. Audience sympathies are clearly directed towards the villagers, who live in peace and harmony with nature. The camera frequently lingers on images depicting their daily routines as idyllic and Eden-like. Work in the fields is tackled with loving hands and old-fashioned ploughs rather than modern machinery. The imperialists, with their high-tech equipment and the associated industrial noise are demonized—their sunglasses and arrogance setting them apart from the wholesome sons and daughters of the land.

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The film has a clear political message: it is intended to condemn American occupation and military behaviour while encouraging West German citizens in their resistance against the foreign occupiers. However, East German audiences, particularly those living along the soon-to-be-fortified border between East and West, saw the Americans in the film as substitutes for the Soviets in their own lives. Enraged as they were by the requisition of East German land by the Soviet Union, The Condemned Village seems to depict less of a West German problem than their own plight in contemporary East Germany, resulting in outspoken protests and forcing GDR authorities to withdraw the film from several cinemas along the border.57 More successful in appeasing audiences was The Ox of Kulm, with dialect, traditional attire, and zither music indicating a setting in the Bavarian countryside—although the hilly terrain betrays the fact that it was actually shot in East Germany! Again, the film derives part of its appeal from a confrontation between local residents and American occupiers. However, the soldiers and administrators can barely be taken seriously and pose little threat to the local people, given that even a domesticated ox can cause panic among the city-dwelling interlopers who hide under cars or up trees when the supposedly wild bull seems to be chasing them. The film is less didactic and political than most DEFA productions, and more in line with the entertainment priorities of West German Heimat films. A festival, a wedding, idyllic farm scenes, pretty village locations, and down-to-earth country folk combine to create, if not a Heimat film, then at least a spoof of one. Another DEFA Heimat film taking its cue from the West German cinema phenomenon is Konrad Wolf’s Einmal ist keinmal [loosely translated as Once Doesn’t Count, 1955]. This film has been described as loaded with typical Heimatfilm elements—panoramic landscape views, Trachten [traditional dress], popular music, as a “musical love comedy […] remixed in the context of a burgeoning socialist community”58 and “a kind of socialist Heimatfilm”.59 In the 1950s, Wolf produced several films based on this “compromised” cinematic formula, which have also been read as indicative of the film-maker’s slow maturation towards more realistic, especially Socialist Realistic, films.60 The plot of Once Doesn’t Count is centred on a young refugee from the West, the composer and pianist Peter, whose talent seems to be wasted playing boogie-woogie music in a bar. He plans to visit his uncle in East Germany, Mr Edeltanne, who works as a glue manufacturer in a town where most employment is provided by the VEB Akkordeonbau [Stateowned Factory: People’s Accordion Manufacturing Factory]. Programmatically called Klingenthal [ringing valley], the village is located in a picturesque valley surrounded by forest and seemingly magical woods, and its people are able to make a living from music. The journey to Klingenthal provides both professional insights for Peter (that different musical styles can be cherished and can co-exist) and personal fulfilment—he falls in love with a local girl, Anna. In the end, Peter “has found his proper home in the new socialist community of music-loving, happy people”.61 Because of its stress on personal rather than societal development and politics, critics in East Germany remained somewhat unimpressed. Indeed, Wolf’s first feature film can be read “across a personal, if not autobiographical matrix”,62 reflecting his own development as an artist, with Peter representing Wolf’s alter ego. As a film seemingly much more in tune with its Western Heimat film counterparts, 304

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Once Doesn’t Count was rejected by GDR officials: “Its idiosyncratic narrative structure and imagery privileging individualistic sensibilities instead of political slogans and ‘real’ conflicts […] disqualified it from being accepted as a contribution to the construction of socialism.”63 Nevertheless, Peter and Anna are portrayed as integral parts of Klingenthal’s community, and at no time is it suggested that Peter would return to the West. He has arrived in East Germany for good, and has made some artistic adjustments to fit in. Irrespective of their level of propagandistic undertones, the abovementioned Eastern examples of the Heimat genre, just like the Western versions, form an integral part of the national agenda of both systems. Contradicting those who saw in West German Heimat films apolitical expressions and purely escapist fare, Western and Eastern Heimat films alike are focused on the tension between insider and intruder; a threat to society must be overcome to reinstate order and harmony. Neither variant can be called free of propaganda or purely escapist; although their narratives may suspend reality, their messages are clearly tied to the values of their respective societies. The same can be said for the two-part series Schlösser und Katen [Castles and Cottages], by DEFA director Kurt Maetzig (1957), which in hindsight has been labelled “a valuable corrective to Edgar Reitz’s Heimat”,64 although Maetzig rejected the label “Heimatfilm”.65 Dealing with issues of village life during the controversial period of land reform (encapsulated by the slogan “Junkerland in Bauernhand” [property of the landed gentry in the hands of farmers]), the series chronicles—in a synthesis of fiction and documentary styles—the hardships and political reorientation of the villagers between 1945 and 17 June 1953. Maetzig defied the official hardline approach to collectivization of industry and the founding of the agricultural collectives, and criticized the “excessive acceleration of changes and the use of unnecessary force”.66 After the erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, DEFA film production dared to try out popular elements in its political projects. Similar to the narrative idea employed by Rudolf Jugert in Film ohne Titel [Film without a Title, 1948], DEFA directors self-reflexively thematized the difficulties they experienced with their choice of genre and message. The self-referential DEFA musical Revue um Mitternacht [Revue at Midnight, 1962] by Gottfried Kolditz criticizes the tightrope act directors were required to perform when choosing between political film and entertainment. “It’s easier to buy a Trabant [smallest and most common car available in the GDR, though nevertheless inaccessible for many] / Than to make an entertainment film!” is the message of a comical song-and-dance number in the film, and the chorus proclaims: “It’s too hot to handle! Too hot! Too hot!” Nevertheless, the characters in the film have to tackle just this topic, as four DEFA employees (a script editor, composer, author, and set designer) are held hostage by a female assistant producer, and will only be released once they have completed a revue film that appeals to everyone. “In a clever, tongue-in-cheek manner it addresses the dilemma of GDR filmmakers who were urged to produce popular entertainment films, only to be criticised when they actually did.”67 Once the building of the Wall put an end to people being able to vote with their feet and thus give in to Western temptations, DEFA experimented with a rapprochement towards the garish films produced in the FRG, which depicted the lives of the class-enemy—loud, exuberant, capitalist, and degenerate. On 305

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the one hand, this was in response to consumer tastes which favoured those signals transmitted from the West. The East sought to replicate in part what obviously had such mass appeal—despite the fact that Western radio and television were outlawed. On the other hand, DEFA’s musical productions after 1961 can be seen as an indicator that East German film-makers could dare to look West without danger. “Repeatedly films transgressed the spatial and temporal boundaries of the GDR, one was interested in the lives and events in West Germany and in other countries of the world.”68 DEFA also wanted to win back audiences by proving that they too were capable of satisfying viewer tastes. DEFA musicals were one way of creating the illusion that Western conditions relating to goods and services were possible under socialism, celebrating “affluence, consumerism, and mobility in a socialist utopia projected as a land of plenty”.69 In an attempt to make the action relevant to East German audiences, the mass chorus scenes take place at a busy filling station rather than at a village festival. Storyline and setting closely link entertainment with work environments and workers who are depicted as a happy, hard-working collective. While this film managed to appease officials and succeed at the box office, the dearth of Western imports shortly after August 1961, as well as the awareness of alternatives that were to become ever more unattainable, made many viewers even less convinced about the style of older DEFA films. In response, previously shunned productions that had been popular in the West, including romantic comedy and genre films, now made an appearance in DEFA productions. However, in their partial appropriation of Western themes and techniques, audiences could not help but see propaganda at work. This fact is addressed self-critically in Gerhard Klein and Wolfgang Kohlhaase’s Berlin um die Ecke [Berlin around the Corner, 1965]. “Liebespaar macht Selbstkritik” [lovers performing self-criticism] is the disapproving comment muttered by the protagonist, young Horst from East Berlin, as he dismisses East German studio films. Horst expresses a frustration felt by many GDR cinema-goers in the early 1960s. “[W]hereas cultural functionaries decried the not-yet-didactic-enough efforts of DEFA, the target audience [was] tired of being edified and agitated. They wanted to be entertained”,70 and wanted what they knew from the 1950s: Heimat films. Initially, West German box-office hits such as Schwarzwaldmädel [Black Forest Girl, Deppe, 1950], Auf der Alm da gibt’s koa Sünd [There Are No Sins on the Alpine Pastures, Antel, 1950], Wenn der weiße Flieder blüht [When the White Lilac Blooms, Deppe, 1953], Ich denke oft an Piroschka [I Often Think of Piroschka, Hoffmann, 1955], and Das Wirtshaus im Spessart [The Inn in the Spessart Forest, Hoffmann, 1958] were imported by DEFA and released soon after they hit screens in the West. This in itself is not so surprising, as about thirty per cent of all films screened in the GDR in the 1950s were imports from non-socialist countries such as West Germany.71 In response to their popularity with socialist audiences, and just in time before their virtual disappearance from GDR screens in the 1960s,72 DEFA started to produce its own Heimat films, under the premise of aspiring towards “Unterhaltung mit Moral” [moral entertainment].73 Films such as Hans Heinrich’s entertainment features Kahn der fröhlichen Leute [Barge of Happy People, 1950] and Alter Kahn und Junge Liebe [Old Barge and Young

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Love, 1957] are two of DEFA’s home-grown productions to open Heimat up “to labour”.74 In the latter: “[W]e observe Karl handling the rudder and painstakingly sealing the barge with tar, images of cement being loaded into the hold, and a busy shipyard, with its cranes and hoists. These images assume a natural place among the conventional Heimat scenes […]. They expand the spaces of Heimat to include the physicality of material production and stand in for the context of Aufbau (renewal and 75 construction) in the GDR society at large.”

In accordance with the long-held conviction that the difference in storytelling in Eastern and Western productions may be summarized in the thematic brief of “boy meets girl” for the West and “boy meets machine” for the East, the barge films foreground the world of the labourer with “shots of the crew below deck, attending to the hot engine and shovelling coal into cramped quarters […] sympathies for the crew […] interest in the engine […] and a material aesthetics of work”.76 The place of work as an emotional and professional centre in the pursuit of socialist ideals was promoted in film, literature, and craft alike. Fittingly, even the “emblem of the first German folklore festival depicted a dancing couple in stylized Heimat costumes in front of a building surrounded by scaffolding”, suggesting “that it was at the halfway point to completion (Richtfest [topping-out ceremony])”.77 The focus on work and the didactic overtones of the party politics that permeated East German society have to be regarded as Heimat veneration, and not surprisingly the value of Heimat as a term in GDR ideology has slowly been incorporated into GDR historiography.78 The strict Socialist Realist model and the film industry’s commitment to the political and ideological status quo, have always overshadowed the investigation of creative representations of Heimat in East Germany. Very little room to move is evident, and film histories seem to focus more on times of crisis than on times of opportunity. One such crisis was the abrupt end put to a period of cultural liberalism in 1965; at the 11th Plenum of the Central Committee (ZK) of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the committee members “struck down on what they termed a ‘bourgeois scepticist’ movement by banning almost a whole year’s production of films”,79 sacking managers and functionaries and blacklisting many film-makers. Also referred to as Kahlschlag [clear felling], the ZK attacked established talent and budding potential alike, and the following period was clouded by an atmosphere of angst and distrust. Scholarship has attested to the cultural climate in the GDR, reaching freezing-point in the second half of the 1960s, though ironically it also proved to be the starting-point for purely escapist, entertaining films, with DEFA commissioning ten American-style “Western” films and four musicals over the next decade.80 This was seen as an attempt to replicate aspects of the capitalist entertainment formula while staying true to socialist values; accordingly, the credo in 1967 was to create a socialist Unterhaltungskunst [entertainment art].81 Striving to keep up the population’s morale, GDR officials were at pains to exploit film production to the extent of its potential Massenwirksamkeit [effectiveness with the masses],82 although it was not for want of trying that they had been unable to effectively capture the imagination of the masses with their primarily ideological fare. For this rea307

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son, DEFA contemplated making genre films, which “producers and filmmakers were hoping [would] infuse what state officials considered a sensationalist and escapist genre with an enlightening and educative purpose, thus creating politically correct entertainment”.83 One film that achieved this mass appeal—a musical responding to Western Schlagerfilm and Heimat models rather than Eastern Socialist Realism— was Jo(achim) Hasler’s beat musical Heißer Sommer [Hot Summer, 1968]. The storyline follows a group of eleven boys and another of ten girls to a small fishing village on the Baltic Sea and onto the beach during their summer holidays. The characters, setting, and focus on leisure appealed to GDR cinema-goers, whose average age had fallen during the 1960s, making the film’s protagonists and their occasionally rebellious nature suitable for identification. The mood in the film is one of “carefree fun in the sun, with girls and boys playing, flirting, and singing on the beach, in the fields, and in the haystacks”84—the unspoilt nature resorts on the Baltic island of Rügen, as well as the backdrop of tourism icons and landmark buildings in Leipzig, Karl-Marx-Stadt, and East Berlin make for typical Heimat settings. As most of the males in the film want to break free of the restraints of their everyday lives, it is left to the females—especially the exemplary Stupsi—to uphold societal values, reinstate order, and ensure that the status quo in this socialist paradise is not endangered. In line with the generic Heimat film ending, opposites are reconciled, with the young people happy to regard themselves as part of a collective as much as part of the GDR, thus inviting “East German viewers to feel pride in the beauty of their Heimat, the homeland GDR, and in the achievements of their young state”.85 Like its West German counterparts, this DEFA Heimat film relied on the popular appeal of stars (in the case of Hot Summer, Frank Schöbel and Chris Doerk) and popular songs (Schlager) such as the title song “Hot Summer”. The film’s commercial success found state approval: Hot Summer, the censors felt, “reflects moral, ethical attitudes of young people in our country, shows conflicts between them that they then resolve mainly on their own due to a sense of responsibility towards one another instilled by society”.86 Jo Hasler, the director of Hot Summer, explained in the early 1970s that he wanted to portray a sense of happiness in narrative and style, using cheerful colour tones, for example, which he felt were appropriate to represent the socialist world.87 On reflection, however, and in comparison, his palette seems to be derived directly from the 1950s’ West German Agfa-coloured Heimat cosmos. In any case, the formula—appropriating the Heimat genre with East German stars in the lead—worked: Hot Summer was the second biggest grossing film in 1968, out-performed only by another genre film, Gottfried Kolditz’s “Western” Spur des Falken [Trace of the Falcon, 1968], featuring Red Indians as heroic figures able to withstand the corrupting influences of the imperialist cowboys. Despite some academic scholarship attesting to the evidence of Heimat sensibilities in DEFA films, most critics would still insist that all those images of Heimat are political rather than escapist fare, as they bear the “political label of ‘Socialist Fatherland’”.88 As a result, many scholars remain convinced that “the concept and characteristics of the genre had little significance in films produced at DEFA”.89 It is true that these films never reached an audience comparable to the box-office hits of West German Heimat film 308

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imports of the 1950s.90 Also indisputable is the fact that DEFA films featuring the iconography and basic storylines familiar from the West German Heimat genre “ranked behind the future orientation of the ‘new’ as the centre of gravity for Socialist Realism, [nevertheless,] Heimat values remained indispensable within the ideological universe of late Stalinism”.91 It is evident then that the long-held conviction that the GDR produced no Heimat films must be revised, as several productions did dabble in the genre. “[T]he GDR movie industry was […] interested in finding a politically acceptable way of tapping into the symbolic space of Heimat as a way of attracting moviegoers.”92 On the whole, GDR film from the late 1960s onwards knew how to showcase natural beauty and to highlight the aesthetics as well as the morals of the GDR homeland. The appeal of beauty—implying the existence of citizens working hard to attain and maintain it (and thereby linking ideologies of personal and political productivity)—is evident in a number of productions which could be labelled Heimat films, including Gottfried Kolditz’s Geliebte weiße Maus [Beloved White Mouse, 1964] and Helmut Brandis and Hans Kratzert’s Weil ich dich liebe [Because I Love You, 1970]. Parts of the latter film are like “mini-advertisement spots, designed to promote the concept of Heimat-GDR as a natural paradise”.93 The proclamation of love in the film’s title is extended from person to country, especially in the final shot, “in which the use of the zoom lens leaves the viewer with a lasting image of wide open expanses of natural beauty […] and renders the film a Heimatfilm in a traditional sense of the term”.94 Following the change of leadership in East Germany in 1971, with Erich Honecker succeeding Walter Ulbricht, GDR film production entered a phase of consolidation. An undisputed loyalty to the Soviet Union and a strong belief in its ideological position allowed the state to demonstrate a more generous approach to the arts. Honecker assured the artistic community: “If one starts from the firm position of socialism, in my opinion, there can be no taboos in the field of art and literature.”95 Nevertheless, at a time of creative and societal upheaval in the West, which saw many a challenge to the establishment in the 1970s, the East remained under the strict guard of Socialist Realism, with a few notable attempts at a less restrictive interpretation of artistic freedom. A hippie love story, of sorts, Heiner Carow’s Die Legende von Paul und Paula (1973) and the portrait of an artist in Konrad Wolf’s Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz [The Naked Man on the Sports Field, 1974] were indicative of a period of thawing in the arts. However, this easing of restrictions ended once more with the expatriation of the singer and songwriter Wolf Biermann in November 1976, an act which was criticized by some members of the film industry in East Germany, including, among others, directors and actors such as Frank Beyer, Egon Günther, Heiner Carow, Jutta Hoffmann, Armin Müller-Stahl, and Manfred Krug. Most were subsequently shunned and had little opportunity of fulfilling their artistic goals in the East. Krug and Müller-Stahl were among the many GDR actors who pursued and achieved migration to the West. The film industry barely recovered from the setbacks of the late 1970s. Like his first DEFA production Once Doesn’t Count, a film about contemporary GDR society, Konrad Wolf’s feature Solo Sunny (1980) expressed both a “youthful style and issues of alienation in socialism”.96 Solo Sunny did provide some optimism for an artistic 309

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renewal, but Wolf’s death in 1982 ended this hope. Film historians have applied the term “Stagnationszeit” [period of stagnation] to the 1980s in East Germany. Mindful of the long arm of state security and the potential for open or indirect consequences, film-makers were among the last to react to the winds of change from the Soviet Union. “Glasnost” [opening and transparency] as well as “perestroika” [restructuring and reform] had inspired the ordinary citizens of East Germany long before its politicians and state artists could respond adequately. The missed opportunities from 1985 onwards had serious repercussions: “According to plan DEFA produced up to fifteen of its films each year. The film production department of the ‘Main Administration Film’ continued to write the appropriate assessments for every film. Critics reacted somewhat wearily to the new film offerings from DEFA, and the majority of viewers stayed away from East German productions, preferring to watch the Western films which had made it 97 into the cinemas of the GDR.”

In a last act of acknowledgment, the Präsidium des Verbandes der Film- und Fernsehschaffenden der DDR [Committee of the Union of Film and Television Workers of the GDR], which met on 21 and 22 October 1989—just days before the fall of the Wall—to lobby for a new form of film-making that would be more relevant to the people of East Germany, in order to take account of their social psychology, and to incorporate more democratic procedures into the socialist media.98 However, the changes came too late. “When the GDR began during 1989 to conceive contemporary films in the ‘glasnost’ style in response to the looming changes, due to the lead time of production and because of the dynamics of the changes taking place in the GDR the finished films came into cinemas too late to even be able to take part in the self99 clarification process.”

GDR films played to empty seats from November 1989 onwards, with East German citizens finally turning their backs on home-grown film production and West Germans on the whole showing little curiosity. As a result, the industry folded. The year 1990 saw DEFA’s reorganization,100 which officially meant the end of GDR film, though not of films about East Germany. Credit is due to Leonie Naughton who first identified the resurrection of the Heimat film genre in films made about the GDR after 1989.101 In a return to familiar structures, teleological narratives, and happy endings, consumers expressed their desire for normalization and reassurance. With a view to the return of genre films in the 1990s, and irrespective of how “bland, and provincial, infantile and harmless” they may be perceived according to Eric Rentschler,102 von Moltke speaks of a desire for “normalization” at the expense of historical retrospection.103 Fuelled by a disdain for the generation of 1968 and its dreams, it seemed that aiming to please the lowest common denominator, rather than to achieve intellectual heights, was the motivation behind popular cinema in united Germany throughout the 1990s.104 There was certainly a receptive audience, on both sides of the disappearing Iron Curtain, who were eager to consume new Heimat tales from and about the West and East alike. 310

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Unification films and Ostalgie films in particular should be perceived as a clear response to the DEFA tradition as well as to the long admired, but forbidden, Western fare. OSTALGIE FILMS Ironically, the East German Heimat film genre experienced something of a renaissance in the wake of a mental rebound after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent accession of the GDR to the FRG in 1990. Described as one of the most seminal moments in modern history, the events led to largescale change in world politics and strategic alliances, but were perhaps most closely felt at the personal and societal level, reshaping community and belonging. Feelings of disbelief and euphoria occupied the hearts and minds of people all around the world in the days following 9 November 1989. In addition, the fall of the Wall created within weeks what the Soviet Union had been unable to manage in the previous forty years: the sense of a distinctly Eastern identity.105 Free to travel and to “test the West”, the latter aided by the gift of 100 Deutschmark “welcome” money, many East Germans ventured for the first time in their lives into the capitalist world. In awe of the colours, goods, technology, and general affluence, what they saw seemed to confirm for many their idealization of the West. Only now it was within reach, or at least certain to become their own not-too-distant economic future. The proof was everywhere; West Germany’s used car markets experienced their highest-ever sales figures, and shops along the former border experienced rare shortages and supply problems. The initial pro-unification feelings were—as Jürgen Habermas rightly asserted—less grounded in nationalist sentiment than in a “DM-Nationalismus” [Deutschmark nationalism],106 and this love affair could not last. Indeed, most of the initial positive perceptions slowly gave way to a hangover when the consequences of the drastic societal changes became apparent in their effects on the populace. Feelings of disenchantment and disillusionment followed the jubilation and dominated the second phase of socio-cultural unification, when individuals were faced with economic and emotional hardship or were forced to relocate as companies folded, politically tainted degrees and professions were abolished, and entire industry sectors disappeared. Compared to other COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) countries, East Germany had prided itself on being “a prosperous and successful industrial state”.107 According to its own self-assessment, it was a society of predominantly skilled workers with a high employment rate, especially among women.108 Yet all these achievements did not seem to count for much in the eyes of the now dominant society; the reassessment of almost every aspect of people’s lifestyles led many East Germans to feel that their familiar world had dissipated and their Heimat had been lost. In the ensuing struggle for survival of the most capitalist, Germany’s media landscape became fairly homogenized. East German daily newspapers and other magazines disappeared in the early 1990s and, as a result, Western perspectives dominated public discourse.109 The views expressed in the mainstream and popular press did not ring true for many readers and consumers in the East, as any representation of the Eastern regions tended to be associated with problems, economic depression, and political minefields. The Cold War division 311

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between East and West seemed to resist unification on the basis of proclaimed cultural differences. The terms “East” and “West” had become entrenched in common use, and seemed to imply “a meaningful axis of social classification from which one [could] infer stable distinctions of culture, behaviour, and character”.110 A rhetoric of “us” versus “them” confirmed the conceptual divide and was cemented by the perceived difficulties in integration that had emerged, manifesting a consciousness of difference that was expressed metaphorically in the references to the “Wall in the mind”.111 Using the former political demarcation line as a means of simplifying discourse, the schismogenetic properties of longitudes112 did indeed come to dominate debate throughout the 1990s, as did the reciprocal ethnicization of Easterners and Westerners.113 Infuriated by the self-righteousness of the historical winners, many East Germans became self-fulfilling prophecies of the caricature painted of them in the media: the Ossi, “a creature and sign of habit, of formal duration […] a kind of country bumpkin in a polyester suit” or “inveterate ingrate, the Jammerossi (whiny Eastie), who exists precisely to blame the West and capitalism for all of his miseries”.114 Equally insulting, the image of the typical West German citizen evolved as that of a “Wessi […] if not selfassertive, a bit loud, a bit flashy and aggressive, and, in the more extreme instances [a] Besserwessi, [a] know-it-all”.115 Partly as a reaction to these feelings and partly as a concession to the new citizens from the East, Western backed and produced unification films used the soothing cosmos of the Heimat genre—so well rehearsed in the 1950s— as a framework for tales about unification. Peter Timm’s Go, Trabi, Go (1991) and Wolfgang Büld’s sequel Go, Trabi, Go 2: Das war der Wilde Osten [That Was the Wild East, 1992] are two such films which revive “Heimat as a central cultural construct through which aspects of life in the new Germany could be sketched and grasped”.116 The films’ references to Eastern and Western identity served as a powerful guarantor of feelings of belonging, reassuring audiences on both sides of the mental divide of their idiosyncrasies, while also showing a way to overcome separation. These Heimat films thus united in spirit, emotion, and consumer behaviour that which had otherwise not yet “grown together”.117 The renaissance of the Heimat genre in the 1990s gained further momentum in the media with new Heimat film releases as well as TV screenings of 1950s classics. Indeed Heimat films, both old and new, were generally well received, as they responded to a fragile psychological predisposition at a time of change and general uncertainty. Similar feelings were shared by many in the post-war society of the 1950s and the post-Wall Europe of the 1990s. After the Second World War and following restructuring after Nazism, it was necessary to integrate large expellee groups into the young nations of West and East Germany. In the 1990s, the integration of similarly displaced people was required, though this time they were required to cope less with territorial loss than with ideological implosions. Then and now, Heimat films sought to aid integration and to “transcend those differences”118—while not disputing their existence—particularly in view of the fact that Germany had 16 million new citizens who clearly had a different cultural background, many of whom were struggling with perceptions of otherness as popularly expressed in the stereotypical ethnographies of “Easterners” and “Westerners”. The rediscovery of the concept of Heimat in the years after unification therefore not only 312

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mirrored the status quo but also allowed “for the delineation of a common heritage, shared priorities, and values with which Germans in the old and new states could identify”.119 Closely copying the optimism of the 1950s, which promised audiences prosperity and pride as well as a sense of belonging and homecoming into a larger community, the films produced in the early 1990s anticipated prosperity for a mobile and flexible people. Like their 1950s counterparts, “unification films ‘made in West Germany’ imagined a German Heimat as a place of social cohesion, opportunity, and prosperity”.120 In contrast to the claim that these productions do not demonstrate “evidence of suspicion, hostility, and resentment, [m]ass unemployment, destitution, pollution, xenophobia and escalating right-wing violence”,121 films such as That Was the Wild East do indeed confirm the pseudo-ethnic differences between Ossi and Wessi, playing to the fears and prejudices of the man on the street. Although the films “invest in the construction of a national imagery through emphasizing the mythical plenitude and social cohesion that the concept of Heimat supposedly affords”, they certainly do not, as Naughton asserts, ignore “the disparity and discord that have characterized GermanGerman relations in the 1990s”.122 It is also regrettable that the blame game is fairly one-sided, as many unification films concentrate on the positive aspects of East German society deserving of preservation while ignoring the “invidious aspects of life in the ex-GDR”,123 such as the omnipresent threat of the Stasi. Instead, escapist strategies were at the forefront of the wave of unification Heimat films from the West, with a focus on the social and material rise of the until recently deprived Easterners. One such example is explored in the metaphoric arrival in Arcadia of the Struutz family from East Germany in the blockbuster Go, Trabi, Go.124 The sequel, That Was the Wild East, deals with the family Struutz’s return to Germany, albeit not to their native Bitterfeld with its industrial devastation, but instead to Landwitz, a pristine alternative. This Eden is only “threatened with contamination by the west”,125 and ably promotes the beauty of East Germany’s countryside as a Heimat ideal, in particular the region known as the Sächsische Schweiz [Saxonian Switzerland]. Having settled here, the protagonist Udo Struutz goes on to become a millionaire by reviving a local business that manufactures garden gnomes which—like most of the remaining economy of the forgotten East—is under threat of appropriation by the West. Udo believes in the success of the garden gnome—a dwarfed and seemingly outmoded version of himself, a remnant of a bygone era and the very essence of the ultimate “deutsche Michel” or Biedermeier, which stands for the sleepy, apolitical citizen keen to retreat into the private sphere of Heimat. Yet the gnome produced by this East German cottage industry also performs Heimat functions: “Gnomes are linked to the earth, and with their night-lights they fulfil the role of guardian of the homeland, making them an appropriate mascot for the east as it faces the menaces associated with unification and modernization.”126 The outcompeted and superseded state of the East German economy has a chance to reinvent itself, albeit not quite as intended by Udo: rather than being appreciated for their decorative value, his gnomes become a vehicle for stress relief! Just like the prodigal son Tonio Feuersinger in Trenker’s Heimat film, Udo leaves for America to achieve his dream. Even his arrival in New York mirrors Tonio’s: locations, camera angle, and even the film’s score highlight the similarities in the two men’s experiences in trying to find their way in a seemingly chaotic 313

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metropolis which initially dwarfs them. Like Tonio, Udo ascends to the top of skyscrapers, using lifts and marvelling at the view. Ultimately though, keen to meet a tycoon in order to negotiate a business deal, Udo proves to be more courageous and inventive, hijacking a window-cleaner’s box and entering the management floor through the roof space. After failing to sell his gnomes to the American company as ornamental items, he vents his frustration on his own product, smashing one of his samples on the foyer floor. Ironically, the tycoon likes the idea of relaxation through destruction, and places an order that saves the struggling East German company. Udo returns to Germany as a hero, and the village of Landwitz is spared destruction as a casualty of Western progress by reinventing itself based on Eastern products and production methods—if ultimately only to service the crudest of capitalist lifestyles. Such upbeat messages did indeed seem to appease audiences by confirming that all was not lost in the East, despite many ruthless Westerners doing their best to sell off and close down faltering East German companies. Following the unification comedies of the early 1990s, which were set in the period following the fall of the Wall, another wave of German film production shifted the focus onto the past, sacrificing the future dimension of the unification films. Leander Haußmann’s Sonnenallee (1999) is set in the 1970s and subscribes to a reinvention of childhood, while Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin (2003), in which East Germany is preserved in a private parallel world in the space of 79 square metres, advocates a revival of aspects of the socialist past. This rose-tinted view of the past was referred to as “Ostalgia”—a nostalgia for the old East, “a ‘GDR revival’ or the ‘renaissance of a GDR Heimatgefühl’ [feeling of Heimat]”.127 The Oxford English Dictionary defines nostalgia as a “sentimental longing for or regretful memory of a period of the past, especially one in an individual’s own lifetime; (also) sentimental imagining or evocation of a period of the past”.128 Ostalgie—the neologism coined in 1992 by Uwe Steimle, an actor and comedian from Dresden—is exactly that feeling invested in the “Ost/East” that has been lost to the past.129 In response to their experience of loss and feelings of disappointment, many East Germans saw in the Western model an “unheimliche Heimat” [an uncanny Heimat].130 Estranged by the one-sided representation of the newly unified Germany, a certain return to the values, routines, and behaviours that had been devalued or questioned since the fall of the Wall took place in their minds and consumer habits.131 Ostalgie was soon transformed from emotional and imaginary reflection into an entire industry. In the 1990s and early twenty-first century, this nostalgia industry manifested itself in the “recuperation, (re)production, marketing, and merchandising of GDR products as well as the ‘museumification’ of GDR everyday life” which was in part “resistance to western German hegemony in terms of product choices and mass merchandising”.132 This trend found further expression in a culture of exhibitions,133 books, films, and cabaret acts, in fashion and theme parties, as well as in Trabi-rallies which celebrated or parodied East Germany in response to the perceived public humiliation at the hands of West German media outlets, historians, and economists. The dismissal of anything associated with the communist East in mainstream Germany resulted in an attempt to react to negative value judgements with self-enhancement. This search for a delimiting and distinguishing identity created solidarity.134 The resulting feeling of reassurance on discovery that 314

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they were not alone in their longing for a new “East identity” with positive connotations brought many former East German citizens together. As a consequence, a widespread “Wiederverankerung” [re-anchoring] in the past took place in a period of otherwise growing uncertainty.135 This constituted a radical reversal of the fetishization of material culture displayed by many East Germans in the pre-Wende period, in which the glorification of products from the West reached the extent that “[e]mpty western beer or cola cans were placed as ornaments on the shelves of the wall unit, plastic bags bearing Western advertisements were bartered, Western clothes made the man”.136 The consumer frustration felt by many East Germans in the 1970s and 80s was based on bitter personal experience of waiting times lasting several years (for telephone services or for a Trabant or Wartburg automobile), shortages of consumer goods, and endless queues for inferior products made in the Eastern bloc. Back then, these dissatisfactions could be compensated for if one owned a pair of jeans or any other product from the West. The love affair with Western products blossomed fully upon the opening of the Wall, which allowed for the first shopping sprees to take place. As a direct result, Western consumer products made their victorious appearance in the territory of East Germany within just a few weeks. However, soon after the currency reform in July 1990, it became obvious that the consequences of the obsession with products made in West Germany would have serious ramifications for the post-socialist country. Home-grown companies folded, were bought up, or simply closed down, causing mass unemployment and the disappearance of household names and products. The slow realization that their consumer products, like their national history, were disappearing in the face of “Kohl-onisation”137 sparked a retro-Heimat cult: the rediscovery of aspects of the past, freed from state control and softened by a nostalgic and selective gaze. Just as many had been proud of their jeans and Coca-Cola cans when they had denoted a subversive import, or of their personal piece of the Wall, the obsession with historical materials now extended to relics from East Germany, which—similar to the status of Western wares some years earlier—now had an aura of protest and social critique about them. Tempolinsen [Tempo lentils] and P2 [the most common Socialist apartment model], Spreewald-Gurken [Spreewald gherkins] and Karo cigarettes quickly had a cult following, with these GDR products seen as “Germany’s last real alternative culture, the remaindered hardware of a non-capitalist consumer society”.138 Soon to be extinct GDR products were now sought after for preservation and protection, as much as for personal souvenirs. In response, a rediscovery took place of what had seemed lost, as much as the preservation of what could otherwise be lost, including material and spiritual memories.139 In this first wave of effort relating to the selective resurrection of East Germany, “everyday objects assumed their role as new privileged sites of memory, narrative production and unbetrayed intimacy”.140 Thus Ostalgie can also be explained as “a response to fears among East Germans that the true nature of their everyday experience is being elided from the historical record”.141 Social commentators were quick to diagnose Ostalgie as an expression of “phantom pain”, like that felt by amputees for a lost limb, as the “unsettled business of German unification”,142 or as a Heimat cult. Indeed, the reaction to the disappearance of GDR culture and the ensuing nostalgia bears all the hallmarks of Heimat appreciation, a sense of bereavement that only manifests 315

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itself once the Heimat has been lost. “Those for whom the GDR is part of an uninterrupted childhood experience will certainly have their concept of Heimat more thoroughly transfigured than the younger generation which had a sceptical attitude towards it.”143 However, even former sceptics were tempted to stand up for a formerly despised culture, as any criticism directed against it was accepted only if it had come from former citizens of the GDR—not from outsiders. In an attempt to reclaim their own history, many people from the East were united in their resistance against “the fastest disappearance of a culture in modern history”.144 In an attempt to instil their individual pasts with a sense of legitimacy and as a means of preserving the memories of their former lives,145 in this context aspects of GDR identity were cherished. Far from the re-emergence of an old GDR identity, it is the recognition of an otherness, a Trotzidentität [identity of defiance],146 that spells out the resistance of a minority fighting against being subsumed by the West German mainstream which “denies any value in the GDR heritage or even the desirability of an alternative set of values and presuppositions to that of the capitalist West”.147 When Walter Jens made an impassionate plea for the preservation of GDR culture, he was thinking more of the GDR’s unique literary style than of popular and material culture, but his “Plädoyer gegen die Preisgabe der DDR-Kultur” [plea against the surrender of GDR culture] certainly found enthusiastic support amongst many former GDR citizens.148 Ironically, however, the revival of the past led to the emergence of a “new” GDR,149 an “imaginary country put together from the remnants of a country in ruins and from the hopes and anxieties of a new world”,150 a fictional construct rather than a historical reality.

Peter Timm’s The Living Room Fountain (2001) One of the earliest examples of Ostalgie in literature is Jens Sparschuh’s Der Zimmerspringbrunnen [The Living Room Fountain, 1995],151 in which “the potentially subversive nature” of this remembering of material culture from East Germany is played out.152 The Living Room Fountain had been advertised as a Heimatroman in 1995, and Heimat images are foregrounded throughout the narrative. Peter Timm’s film adaptation (2001)—which follows the narrative closely until it changes the original tragic ending to a happy one—has therefore also been called a “Heimatfilm”.153 The protagonist, Hinrich Lobek, formerly “Plattenbau-Wohnungsverwalter” [manager of a Stalinist block of flats], overcomes long-time unemployment and his self-fulfilling prophesy of being a “Wende-Opfer” [victim of the changes after the collapse of East Germany].154 Instead, he comes to experience success by marketing miniature indoor fountains—symbolically called “Waldeinsamkeit” [alone in the forest] or “Wasserfrosch” [water frog], which are supposed to evoke a sense of Heimat and its natural surroundings. When one of his models is damaged, Lobek improves it by attaching GDR memorabilia to it, thus transforming it into a “Ostzonen-Zimmerspringbrunnen-Nostalgiemodell” [miniature indoor fountain “Eastern Zone Nostalgia Model”] with “den Umrissen der DDR, meines untergegangenen Landes” [the outline of the GDR, my lost country].155 At its centre stands the ultimate East Berlin icon, the TV Tower at the Alexanderplatz, which rises as the 316

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fountain out of the GDR-shaped island to the melody of “Auferstanden aus Ruinen” [Risen from Ruins], East Germany’s official anthem. The construction becomes a symbol of the lost GDR as a sunken Atlantis which some would obviously like to resurrect. This playful reinstallation of the GDR as a decorative object is undeniably successful with customers from the former East because it addresses a psychological need and Lobek records this in his notebook using typically cryptic and wooden Stasi-file language: “keyword ‘identity crisis’, keyword ‘fear of the future’; Zone of Soviet Occupation as a ‘place of spiritual experience of self’.”156 The narrative plays to a fear that many East Germans felt at the time. Frustration with the status quo, as experienced by many during the reign of Erich Honecker, had now been replaced by angst, which provoked an emotive though paradoxical response. As early as 1995, the weekly Der Spiegel published research data which indicated that the majority of the former GDR citizens surveyed were happier with their personal lives now than during GDR times (nine per cent “much better”, forty-one per cent “better”, and only twenty-three per cent noted a decline).157 Yet in spite of this, only twenty-five per cent indicated that they had not in some way lost out as a result of unification.158 This suggested a severely suppressed sense of selfworth, which acknowledged the benefits of material gain without connecting it to psychological well-being. Overpowered by the supposedly richer and more self-righteous West Germany, many East Germans felt like secondclass citizens (seventy-one per cent according to the same Spiegel research).159 This very real social and psychological predicament may explain the desire—which found expression in The Living Room Fountain—to revive and celebrate aspects of their vanished state, which allowed former GDR citizens to reconnect with one another in their sense of loss. The veneration of The Living Room Fountain thus serves as an example of one form of Ostalgie. In an attempt to pinpoint the genesis of the Ostalgie-Welle [wave of nostalgia for the East], several theories have been put forward: “In the first place East Germans had made enormous efforts to fit in with the structures and rules adopted from the FRG and in this context had undergone enormous life changes. Secondly, they gradually realized East/West differences to do with ownership and property, thus giving them the chance to participate as independent players in the economic construction of the new Federal states. Thirdly, it had become clear that the descriptions of East Germans and their lives in the GDR, especially those common in the media and politics, were true only at certain points of the experiences of the greatest part of the East German 160 population.”

Added to this social-psychological (dis)position was the clash of historical discourses dealing with the period between 1961 and 1989. While Western historiography highlighted the injustices and political persecution underlying public obedience in East Germany, the vast majority of GDR citizens apparently did not consider themselves to have been victims of state terror.161 The gap in the discourse about East Germany’s past was filled in part by a selective commemoration of everyday events and sights mainly associated with GDR consumer culture. In the context of this revival, it was not the impotent 317

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and dependent GDR citizen being remembered and branded with attributes such as “autoritär” [authoritarian], “unselbständig” [lacking in independence], “obrigkeitsfixiert” [fixated on authority], and “demokratieunfähig” [incapable of acting democratically], but instead a self-assured, proud individual who managed against all the odds through a mixture of creativity, resilience, inner migration, and evasion of interference by authorities.162 The collective experience of “Abwertung und Abwicklung, Deklassierung und Deindustrialisierung” [devaluation and winding up, downgrading and deindustrialization],163 which was shared by many East Germans and applied to the state’s products, was compensated for in such acts of playful resistance. Segments of German industry soon realized that the memory games were big business, and publications of Ost-West dictionaries and encyclopaedias of vanishing East German products became bestsellers.164 Shying away from the overtly capitalistic image of money-making on the back of the demise of East Germany, others tried a different approach: under the banner of “Save the Ampelmännchen” [referring to the cute East German traffic-light symbol of a man with a hat standing (red) or walking (green)],165 sectors of the nostalgia industry could masquerade as altruistic saviours, while actually relying on customers not only to sympathize with this approach but also to support it with their money. “Ost-Produkte” were declared “hip”, “cool”, “cult”,166 and their consumers wanted to hold them up in a proud gesture of defiance towards the West: “Es war nicht alles schlecht.” [Not everything was bad.]167 Although the living room fountain sold by Lobek is not an authentic “Ost-Produkt” but a piece of newly invented merchandise, the respective owners, mostly displaced and disenfranchized former citizens of the GDR invest it with similar emotions and treat the fountain as something sacred; “es waren regelrechte Altarecken” [they were proper little shrines].168 Thus the table-top GDR becomes a “material manifestation of identities located outside the ‘acceptable’ norms of Western consumer capitalism”.169 Lobek sees in them the expression of a phantom pain, his customers indulge in it as a “Kuriosum” [curiosity], “Partygag”, or “Kultgegenstand” [cult object].170 Both film and book present Ostalgie in a self-reflexive manner as an ironic gesture of manipulation of history and memory, with the appropriation of a product for the purpose of distraction. Making the GDR model-sized helps in the process of dealing with it, endowing it with comforting feelings which arise from the knowledge that it is utterly manageable. In this Ostalgic practice, with the view turned back on the past, a reinvention takes place: a reinterpretation of the past for the future, whereby this German-German Heimat film, just like its 1950s’ counterparts, promotes a positive attitude towards one’s homeland and the opportunities it provides. Ironically, however, this affirmation of love for and confidence in Heimat is broken in book and film, with Lobek’s reverence for his homeland confusing the old and the new Germany. Sitting in the Black Forest hotel Föhringer Hof, his company’s training camp for capitalism, amidst cheap wood panels and black-and-white photographs of better times, he inadvertently blurts out his love for the old East Germany.171 His nostalgic longing for the old days of security, control and guidance is shared by many others who enthusiastically re-embrace aspects of their old life. Lobek comments tongue-in-cheek that he achieved his biggest sales figures “amongst the members of a semi-legal GDR-expellee association”, competing with “mustard gherkins from the Spree forest and 318

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Free German Youth shirts”.172 Interestingly, both film and book foretold the wave of commercialization that was to hit East German souvenirs long before the real wave peaked. With regard to consumer choices, The Living Room Fountain “pokes fun at idiosyncrasies shared by Germans in new and old states”.173 This semipolitical item came to symbolize the transformation of peasants and farmers into petit bourgeois, with all their typically Western peculiarities. “One’s pride in one’s living room, the adoration of tame nature, the middle class’s weakness for buying what is ‘in’: all the ways of the German middle classes come together”.174 Thereby, the film thematizes Ostalgie as just another variety of a pan-German consumer behaviour. The political dimension is clearly much less important than the human message. As with most shoppers, the political aspect of Ostalgie—customarily highlighted by its critics—plays a marginal role. The “little man” acts unconsciously and apolitically, more out of instinct related to memory discourse, trauma, repression, and forgetting, leaving it up to politicians and academics to analyse and instrumentalize these feelings. The preferred reading of Ostalgie films as giving voice to those on the margins underestimates the “inside” from which their positive reception by the majority audience was derived. The plight of the “little man” rang true for many people from the East and West alike, and what was described as a form of sub-culture was actually quite mainstream. It is less indicative of a socialist conviction than of a social inclination: “The identification with the social system of the GDR is rooted […] predominantly in the positive material and social conditions and circumstances which were experienced in everyday life”, though it needs to be emphasized that “it has less to do with its political and ideological structures”.175 More than being simply selective with regard to the GDR past, Ostalgie seems to refer to a parallel universe, one that existed outside of the political and ideological framework, a world that could stand up to the West. Thus Ostalgie also became a source of emancipation, a basis for the elevation of one’s own past, which seemed to correspond with the perception of being morally superior to the citizens of the West. This feeling was grounded less in the anti-Fascist foundation myth of the state176 than in a primordial drive to survive by forgetting selectively and remembering more flatteringly.

Leander Haußmann’s Sonnenallee (1999) Two years prior to the film adaptation of The Living Room Fountain, another literary adaptation on the topic of Ostalgie had hit the screens: the comedy Sonnenallee, one of the few German films “breaking the symbolic barrier of one million admissions, the average German market share”.177 The film by Leander Haußmann (1999), based on the novel by Thomas Brussig,178 takes the audience back to the 1970s to Sonnenallee, a real street which runs through Berlin and which used to be divided by the Wall, with a longer section in the West and a shorter one in the East. Literally living with his back to the Wall, the protagonist of the film introduces himself: “I am 17 years old and live in the German Democratic Republic. Otherwise, I am doing fine.” Following Micha’s opening statement is the coming-of-age story of a group 319

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of East Berlin teenagers. Micha, Mario, and their friends are obsessed with music, girls, and rebelling against authority. With great bravado, they talk about starting a resistance group and are distracted by the prospect of acquiring more “forbidden” Rolling Stones albums, all the while coming to terms with the reality that they will have to conform to get on in life. Nothing, however, can compete with Miriam, the girl next door, who literally stops traffic when she appears. Miriam’s portrayal is deliberately exaggerated, as is the representation of the absurdities and oddities of daily life in East Germany, including bizarrely designed and malfunctioning tables, Communist youth groups, and the presence of all kinds of state police. Attempts at Marxist indoctrination and the pressures of the socialist party system, as well as the lure of the West with its forbidden wares, music, and TV programmes, feature prominently, albeit comically. The pervasive state apparatus—its border guards, police, and suspected Stasi informers—is clearly present, although the film deliberately portrays them as laughably incompetent and impotent rather than intimidating. Therefore, Micha, his family, and his friends are able to survive quite nicely in the system, especially with the help of West German entertainment (radio and television), visits from the West, smuggled LP records, and a close-knit private network. It is these bonds with friends and relatives which prevent Micha’s mother from fleeing after she finds a West German passport lost by an old woman and experiments with disguises in preparation for an escape. The happy family also includes a regular visitor from the West, Uncle Heinz, who supplies them with “smuggled” goods such as sturdy pantyhose and underwear, which turn out to be legal and superfluous, rather than really exclusive items or, as Micha hopes, forbidden goods: “hot stuff” such as rock music or pornography. This embellished and affectionate depiction of life in East German society shows the audience a place where personal bonds are strong, and where first love is just as sweet as it would have been in the West. The only sour note is when Micha realizes that his best friend has kowtowed to system pressures and become a Stasi agent. However, rather than picking up on this debate of fractured biographies, parallel worlds, and double lives, the film ridicules the workings of the state agencies. In general, all representatives of state authority in the film—the suspected Stasi agent, the border guard, the local policeman—are portrayed as harmless, ineffectual characters, more like caricatures. The fact that the behaviour of East German officials at check-points, in the border zones, and in the surveillance of its citizens was in reality cruel and unjust, has offered ammunition to critics who saw a dangerous euphemism and misrepresentation taking place in Sonnenallee.179 In an interview with the tabloid Super-Illu, Hubertus Knabe, director of the Stasi-Gedenkstätte [Stasi memorial] in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen [a notorious Stasi prison], condemned both Sonnenallee and its sequel (of sorts) NVA [Nationale Volksarmee—the National People’s Army, the East German Army, 2005, also by Haußmann] as “bedenklich” [dubious], because they misrepresent the former East as a “Spaßgesellschaft” [society only concerned with having fun].180 Other elements of Sonnenallee are similarly imprecise, such as the platform on top of the Wall, where West Germans tourists interact with East German citizens in a zoo-like setting. Irrespective of these inaccuracies, the intention of the film was not to document a historical reality but rather a personal experience. The narrator 320

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and protagonist Micha reminisces: “Ich war jung. Ich war verliebt—und es war die schönste Zeit meines Lebens” [I was young, I was in love—and it was the best time of my life]. Reflecting on one’s youth is, by its very nature, nostalgic and, as the process of Micha’s diary reconstruction self-referentially proves, is likely to be full of fictitious elements—more lies than facts. The construction of an imagined past in order to bestow meaning on the present is the basis of Ostalgie, as much as of any myth-making. In the same way that Micha wants to elevate and ennoble himself in the eyes of Miriam, for whom he is recording his “life” in the diaries, the act of recording history is based on selection, interpretation, and covering up. Brussig uses his narrator to state programmatically at the end of his book: Memory achieves “the miracle of making peace with the past, in which every resentment evaporates and the soft veil of nostalgia settles over everything which was once felt as sharp or cutting”.181 To emphasize the point, he concludes that “Happy people have a bad memory and rich recollections.”182 Sonnenallee is definitely not a historical document that sheds light on the living conditions of 16 million people in a country that ceased to exist on 3 October 1990. What makes Micha’s attempt to reinvent his real life in his diaries so human is the desire to better himself, at least in the record books of history. Acknowledging his shortcomings and exaggerating positive traits, his selection of memorable moments reveals his wish to be exemplary. Micha knows his moral failings, but would like to make his personal history an example of Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law.”183 Micha’s past thus becomes future-oriented, saved from the shredder of official memory. Nina Hagen’s song “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen” [You Forgot the Colour Film] comments on this process of memorizing, beautifying, and sanitizing, with her metaphor comparable to the rose-tinted glasses of retrospection: “You forgot the colour film, my Michael, / Now no-one will believe us about how beautiful it was here. / You forgot the colour film, oh dear, / Everything blue and white and green and later on no longer true.”184 Through the act of fabricating and falsifying his diary, Micha preserves his personal memories in rich and positive images: “There was once a country and I lived there. Whenever people ask me what it was like, I say it was the best time of my life because I was young and in love.”185 Sonnenallee thus “offered an image of the former East Germany preserved in a stage of perpetual adolescence” with the eastern end of the Sonnenallee functioning “as the most condensed space of this nostalgic fantasy production”.186 In an attempt to foreground the appropriation of GDR memory and cultural history, Haußmann plays with inter-textual references to classics of the DEFA cinema, such as Heiner Carow’s youth film The Legend of Paul and Paula (1973). As Paul Cooke explains: “In this film’s climax, Paul takes an axe to his lover Paula’s door to break it down and to be with her. Although made three decades later, Sonnenallee is set in the same period as Paul and Paula. In the climatic moment on the Micha/Miriam romance plot line, Micha runs to his would-be lover’s house [where he] bumps into Paul from the DEFA film (played by Winfried Glatzeder), who is even wearing the same frilly shirt he had on in Paul and Paula. Yet at the very moment when the evocation of the GDR past is complete, it is also undermined. Glatzeder might

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This recontextualisation of the past has its parallel in many other moments of imperfect quoting, recalling, and deliberate re-musing, be this badly covered hits from yesteryear or hyper-real simulations, such as the Mufuti and other GDR decor.188 These, as well as Micha’s tales, exemplify a process which forms the basis of all remembering: the phenomenon of selective recollection, forgetting, and distortion which helps everyone to cope and to survive. A past that can be embraced, called upon at leisure, celebrated, and happily communicated aids progress into the future. Through the recollections of Micha and his friends, Sonnenallee reminds viewers of something about which human rights activist Bärbel Bohley felt strongly—“that life in the East was a lot of fun. We were sad, cheerful, despairing and we lived intensively. A life in the East was also a whole life.”189 It is not the political reality, irrespective of whether it was a dictatorship or a democracy which dominates everything, but rather personal memories such as a first kiss, weddings, and funerals. What Günter Gaus described as a “Nischengesellschaft” [niche society],190 comes to life in personal memories as communicated in diaries, letters, or at gatherings in private settings, such as the Heimat spheres of Gartenlaube [garden shed] or Dacha [country house], “the Russian name for the refuge in the countryside, which manifested most clearly the withdrawal of citizens from the controlled public life”.191 Instead of judging this process of misrepresentation, the human motivations behind it deserve attention. Such acts of enlarging, deleting, or suppressing point towards an anthropological constant, the phenomenon of “Selbstvergewisserung” [selfreassurance] and “Selbsttherapie” [self-therapy]192—in the case of Ostalgie, a retentive lay discourse coming “from below” and being undirected193 or a “Partial-Nostalgie” [partial nostalgia ]194 and form of selective amnesia,195 which is not so much typically East German as typically human. The film’s success in the former East and West alike196 hinted at this universal tendency, which was further highlighted by the global hit Good Bye, Lenin!

Wolfgang Becker’s Good Bye, Lenin! (2003) The extremely successful Good Bye, Lenin! received a resoundingly positive response in Germany as well as internationally, and seemed to encourage, as had Sonnenallee, a subjective and nostalgic discourse about the end of East Germany. Good Bye, Lenin! did indeed invite viewers to remember the past nostalgically. It is the melodramatic story of a fatherless family whose negotiation of socialism has led to alienation from the state for the children and staunch support and internalization on the part of their mother. She dies at the end of the film without having to make the difficult transition from GDR society to unification. The younger generation is shown as much more ready to embrace the radical transformation and find niches in which to preserve very creatively whatever they feel worthy. Fittingly, the promotional tagline for the film, “The GDR lives on—in 79 square metres”, points to the impor322

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tance of physical and mental space in memory: the mother’s bedroom as well as the imaginary concepts preserve “the past as an imaginary space in the apartment that Alex furnishes for his mother—an interior in which he desperately hopes to prolong the existence of the GDR after its demise”.197 Although radio, television, and newspapers remain banned from the sickbed, the view out of her window provides disturbing sights: a gigantic Coca-Cola banner covering an adjacent building and the presence of cars from West Germany on East Berlin’s streets. Alex and his friend Dennis, a hobby video artist, construct a narrative around these changes in the form of their very own news bulletins which copy the style of the GDR party propaganda news programme Aktuelle Kamera. In it they report East Germany’s victory over Coca-Cola in a patent dispute, proclaiming that Coca-Cola has been brewed according to a Soviet formula and is therefore a “Socialist drink”. The presence of West Germans and their cars is explained as a mass exodus of FRG citizens to the socialist paradise, provoked by the large-scale unemployment, lack of prospects, and fear of neo-Nazi tendencies in the West. The arbitrariness of images, the ease with which they can be bestowed with a different meaning, aids but also unsettles Alex. He recognizes how easy it is to construct a new reality: “[T]ruth [is] only a dubious affair, which I could easily adapt to mother’s accustomed experience.” For the well-being of his mother, yet increasingly also for the benefit of her friends, neighbours, and former work colleagues, Alex constructs a parallel world: a reformed GDR and an alternative history. His utopian construct, a socialist state based on solidarity and empathy, plays with the possibilities of a different reality, and Becker’s film thus raises questions about popular memory, personal as well as public historical discourses, and constructed realities. Alex’s lies serve as existential aids, and unwittingly repeat the way his mother had constructed her own lies about the disappearance of her husband. His flight to the West was not, as she claimed for many years, the result of an affair with a West German woman, but part of a plan for the entire family to escape from the East, which did not take place as intended because of her own last-minute hesitation. She was unable to face up to her failure, chose to keep the truth to herself, and hid the letters arriving from the West in which her husband asks for explanations and urges them to try to flee. Instead, she began to play along with the system, becoming an exemplary socialist and devoted supporter of the system. In the end, Alex sees the workings of his re-interpretation of history mirrored in his mother’s life. These workings of their private memories, intended to aid their survival and well-being, are morally questionable—yet existentially crucial. During the last few weeks before her death, the apartment becomes a very real space of imaginary homeland for Alex’s mother. “The film derives both its comedy and its melancholic tone from this mise-en-scène of the past, which spilled over into the space of the cinema.”198 At many screenings in Berlin and elsewhere, “audience members began donning pioneer paraphernalia and singing along to the old GDR tunes”.199 Although director Wolfgang Becker tried to distance himself from the “grottenhaften Ostalgiescheiß” [incredibly bad Ostalgie crap],200 his film nevertheless profited from the audience’s general predisposition towards nostalgia. It demonstrates the successful process of the privatization of memory, reinterpretation of history, and foregrounding of everyday culture. When it is claimed that Coca Cola is 323

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actually a Communist product, based on a secret formula that had been stolen by the West, or the presence of West Germans in East Berlin is explained with reference to their dissatisfaction with growing unemployment and neoNazism in the West, humour is intended. Few could fail to see this, and there are hints in the film’s narrative that even the intended recipient, Alex’s mother, awake after nine months in a coma, suspects the changes are too good to be true. After Alex’s new girlfriend breaks the news to her, she still continues to play along, to uphold Alex’s illusion and not wanting to destroy the positive spirits demonstrated by her family and friends as they carry out the charade. By selectively denying, reinterpreting, and staging change, Alex and his accomplices display a healthy confidence that ensures they will not lose those elements and memories of East Germany most worthy of preservation in the tumult of monumental change: the sense of community spirit and the feeling of being part of a greater group. Therefore, Alex revitalizes a sense of community and solidarity with and for his friends, family, and neighbours in the best tradition of the GDR. He calls upon his mother’s former boss, who has taken to drinking alcohol since losing his position as part of the reorganization and rationalization of the work force since 1990, and manages to stage a sensitive send-off for his mother, as well as a proud resurrection of others from her generation, the main Wendeopfer [victims of the change], with their hurt souls and shattered biographies. Alex finds support for his project of inventing a reformed GDR among friends and neighbours—as they discover it helps them as well as his mother—providing them with an outlet to express their desire for a different reality. For many former East Germans, their initial reaction to the near colonial attitudes of many Westerners led them not so much to a remembering of the past, but to a reinvention of it—to a counter construction of the GDR. Ironically, this meant the creation of an image of the GDR that was equally as reductive as that held by many from the West, even if it was different in character. For Western historiography, East Germany between 1949 and 1989 called up images of a Stasistaat [Stasi state],201 while GDR history for many East German citizens was remembered not as the history of a dictatorship but rather as much more mundane personal histories, which were dominated for many by their ingenuity in adjusting and adapting to a hostile system. Thus “Ostalgie” seems to be the wrong term to apply to the creative process evident in films such as The Living Room Fountain, Sonnenallee, and Good Bye, Lenin! Nostalgia for the old GDR has been rightly diagnosed by some as “Partial-Nostalgie”202 and a “form of selective amnesia”,203 and has infuriated many human-rights activists.204 The fact that Ostalgie has largely been produced and embraced by lay persons has been said to diminish the quality and reliability of its output.205 Critics have problematized this discourse as politically incorrect, insensitive, and dangerous: “They play down the dangers which threaten democracy by means of totalitarian ideologies and mock the victims.”206 Declared an insult to the suffering of victims of the GDR regime207 and compared to propaganda films made under the National Socialists,208 critics have successfully occupied the moral high ground in their attempts to discredit anything remotely associated with what they labelled broadly as the “Ostalgie trend”. Such blanket statements, however, have at 324

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times been unwarranted. Paul Cooke proves this point for the film Sonnenallee by pointing out the self-reflexive and self-critical aspects in the film’s representation of the GDR that cleverly draw “the spectator’s attention to its artificiality”.209 The film “refuses to be simply GDR escapism and becomes, rather, a self-conscious revisitation of the past through the prism of the present”.210 The same is also true for The Living Room Fountain and Good Bye, Lenin! as both films foreground the creative aspect of constructing or inventing realities. In this context, Ostalgic films should not be referred to as dangerous and missionary, but seen instead to be a means of remembering and recollecting, thus influencing historiography and aiding the process of revisionism. The misunderstandings and inaccuracies foregrounded in these films self-critically attest to this.211 While the three films discussed are self-critical and self-referential, this cannot be said for the Ostalgie wave on German television. Good Bye, Lenin! at the very latest heralded the arrival of a curious media phenomenon in mid2003: a wave of East or GDR-shows celebrating East German products, symbols, histories, and memories associated with the forty-year existence of East Germany. In quick succession, German TV stations screened their own hastily packaged versions of Ostalgie remembrance. These included the “Ostalgie Show” (ZDF, 17 August 2003), “Ein Kessel DDR” (MDR, 22 August 2003), the series “Meyer und Schulz—Die ultimative DDR-Show” (which premiered on RTL on 23 August 2003), the weekly “DDR-Show” (from 3 September 2003 onwards on SAT 1), and finally two “DDR-Specials” on Pro 7 (6 and 13 October 2003). Most of these shows were hosted by GDR sports stars or other East German public figures, and featured Trabis [the small, basic East German “Trabant” car], fashion items, quiz games, and popular songs, all of which particularly appealed to large audiences in the East. Many of the items revered and welcomed back in these shows had lined the streets in East Germany awaiting rubbish collection just thirteen years earlier, when many GDR citizens were keen to rid their homes and garages of inferior GDR goods, preparing to embrace Western consumer products, cars, and food in the months following the introduction of the D-mark in the East. In 1990, each GDR citizen produced 1.2 tons of rubbish, three times as much as their Western counterparts,212 as a result of a comprehensive process of Westernization. The cause of “the appearance of GDR theme parks and the re-launching of certain GDR consumer brands”213 was sparked by a desire— especially among young people, whose earliest childhood memories were of the 1970s and 80s—to remember elements of their innocent and carefree years which had became passé in a very real material sense in 1990. New collectors and former hardliners who saw in this nostalgic trend a means to reinstate an order which they knew, and in which they had seemed to cope better, were also among the audience of Ostalgie shows. In this trend, media experts and marketing strategists identified a market which they were keen to exploit in their attempts to promote afternoon and evening TV shows and other products—cigarettes, beer, and sausages as well as games, CDs and books all seemed to sell better with reference to the good old days. Irrespective of the many causes, the manifestation of the Ostalgie trend brought people from disparate backgrounds and political affiliations together. Dramatic changes in their lives, a new ideology, entirely different products, changing expectations, building frustrations, and job changes or unemployment led to 325

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widespread insecurity which left individuals seeking reconciliation in old certainties. Despite the fact that many East Germans had not moved from their homes, the experiences they faced were comparable to those of migrants needing to adjust to a new culture. A creative variation of the Ostalgie shows, the quiz show “delikat” (MDR, 2004), played with this notion by confronting contestants from the West with questions relating to the history, society, and culture of their neighbours in the East, thus cleverly reversing the perspective of the ignorant and helpless person confronted with a new system. However, this attempt to have West Germans experience the sense of dislocation felt by Easterners remained a rare one; those made to feel ill-equipped, lagging behind, and deficient came mostly from the East. Varying degrees of integration and assimilation led to some former GDR citizens developing a diasporic identity that utilized certain spaces—imaginary and physical ones—for a nostalgic commemoration of seemingly better times.214 It is in this context that Alex in Good Bye, Lenin! tries hard to prevent his mother—who like many of her generation had lost her old Heimat—from feeling the sense of dislocation described above. Indeed, the end of the GDR meant that many East Germans became “homeless […], and this Heimatlessness shapes the way they deal with the present and the past”. 215 The existence in limbo, the feeling of having lost the past without having found one’s place in the present, has led to people taking refuge in a utopia, a mental construct that exists outside of “Fakten” [facts] and seems immune to historical responsibility.216 When Good Bye, Lenin! was released in 2003, it unleashed a spate of Ostalgie parties, conceived as a mixture of revival events, performance, and travesty not too dissimilar to the West German carnival tradition— a manifestation of the desire for a GDR-esque space just like the mother’s bedroom in Good Bye, Lenin!217 The film set could be hired for the occasion, and many a Young Pioneer uniform received an airing. Parallel to this, the internet saw an explosion in the number of sites allowing for a GDR Heimat to be experienced temporarily in cyberspace. These web pages have provided a place to experience “a sense of an East German community based strongly on the official rhetoric of the SED […] an imagined past and an idealized socialist community”.218 The media-driven promotion of the films Sonnenallee and Good Bye, Lenin!—as well as of GDR merchandise such as T-shirts, toy Trabi cars, and FDJ [Free German Youth uniforms] outfits—has been carefully orchestrated, mainly by Western companies, and Ostalgie has therefore been interpreted as “a West German transference”.219 If the common stereotype has been that the West is more materialistic and brand-driven, while the East placed greater importance on solidarity and human interaction, both Sonnenallee and Good Bye, Lenin! as well as the popular magazine Super-Illu—demonstrate the arrival of East Germans into capitalism, long before it became their accepted official doctrine. The teenagers in the Sonnenallee know about the jeans, the Rolling Stones, and Western brands, and desire certain brands and labels just like their Western counterparts. Likewise, Alex in Good Bye, Lenin! becomes obsessed with brands, albeit East German ones, in the hunt for consumer products which exemplify the East. By foregrounding the importance of goods and appearances, East German society seems just as image-focused as its Western counterpart.

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Ostalgie has manifested itself in a variety of forms, ranging from the reclamation of one’s own biography to the playful reappropriation of everyday objects of East German consumer culture, recycled and reinvented in a postmodern fashion as style and cult objects that can potentially be enjoyed by Western and Eastern consumers alike,220 to—most memorably and problematically—political instrumentalization through politics. Christian v. Ditfurth diagnosed Ostalgie in the misrepresentations of the communist successor party PDS (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialimus [Party of Democratic Socialism—successor to the SED, the GDR’s Socialist Unity Party].221 However, politicians of very different convictions have criticized or called upon Ostalgie for their own political ends. Not surprisingly, in particular, Ostalgic practices have been evident in left-wing rhetoric in attempts to honour a state that had been (dis-)credited as ineffective, “dysfunctional”, “corrupt”, and shorter-lived than its Western counterpart.222 Such logic naturally appealed more to the East German voter, while many West Germans criticized such arguments for “undermining both the objective historical appraisal of the GDR period and the project of inner-German unification”.223 In 2003, as a response to the crudest commercial aspects of the Ostalgie wave in German television, the daily broadsheet newspaper Die Welt featured an article heralding the return of West German history as farce: “After the Party of German Socialist (successor party to the former ruling party of the GDR, the SED) […] clogged up the main broadcasting time for us with Ostalgia, now it is to be feared that a wave of Westalgia is rolling towards us thanks to the SPD [Social-Democratic Party of Germany]. The archives of the old West German television will be plundered and we will be assailed with revivals of Peter Frankenfeld, Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff, Heintje and Peter Alexander as well as with funny family shows, in which kidney tables, Never-Rust Sinks, attractive blow-dried hair-dos, Lufthansa Cocktails and merry Beetle races play a leading 224 role.”

What was meant as an ironic gibe had long since become reality. Westalgie was upon Germany, but did it really follow Ostalgie? Or was the process of melancholic remembering directed at the old FRG already in progress, not least due to talk-show hosts and entertainers such as Harald Schmidt and Stefan Raab, whose “Selbstgefälligkeit” [smugness and arrogance] stimulated a mentality that could marvel at differences manifest in the pre-Wende Federal Republic rather than arrive at a common vision for the future in unified Germany? Irrespective of the details of the timing, Ostalgic and Westalgic practices coexisted for some time in the 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century, and are a tribute to the highly complex interrelationship between personal histories and public memories, all of which reveal “the politics, ambiguities, and paradoxes of memory, nostalgia, and resistance”.225

WESTALGIE FILMS In contrast to the fundamental social and psychological changes affecting former East Germans in 1989 and 1990, many of their Western counterparts were initially able to look on without a sense of deep personal involvement. 327

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Their perspective has been likened to that of an impartial observer following the events of a “historical performance featuring thousands of extras waving placards and dancing on the Wall. […] only a minority felt the need to get to know the East German actors better after the premiere”.226 German unification was commonly seen as an enlargement of the West through “Kohlonisation” of the East [referring to Helmut Kohl, then Chancellor of the FRG]. As soon as the West had exported its currency, democracy, capitalism, and freedom to the East, everything was sure to blossom. Most of the former West Germans noticed few changes to their lives at first, except for the fact that they had to pay more tax. It soon became evident, however, that the transformation process gripping all of Germany—not just the Eastern half—had been greatly underestimated, with few able to predict the extensive changes for, and their impact on, the West. “The thought that the upheavals in the East could possibly be a prelude to far-reaching social change in the West as well was considered peculiar.”227 In accordance with its migration policies, the dominant host society expected a large degree of assimilation and integration from its new citizens, and with the accession of the GDR to the FRG, this prospect seemed appropriate. However, this view of the process of unification and the demotion of East Germans to mere “Beitrittsdeutsche” [newly joined up citizens of Germany]228 could not have been further from reality, and embodied the naive and somewhat insulting expression of a certain “idyllischen wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Bonnerismus” [idyllic welfare-state Bonn attitude]229 of many West Germans, who expected the new citizens to enter as Germans rather than as East Germans. Nevertheless, just as mass migration and new minorities change dominant societies, the lives of most Germans were in a state of flux. Not only had Germany increased in size and population, it also had to adjust to a new image and to new expectations placed on it from both inside and out. Indeed, as soon as united Germany’s financial commitments dawned on many West Germans, a certain unease started to creep into their otherwise self-assured mentality. Slower and less obvious than the transition phase experienced by most East Germans, the changes in West German society and consciousness were nevertheless similar in their psychological effect, consisting of subtle “Entankerungsmechanismen” [de-anchoring mechanisms], which led to “Transformationsdruck” [pressure to transform].230 It soon became evident that “the end of German division has given rise to a sense of crisis in the West, particularly within the sphere of West German culture, engendering a Western nostalgia for the old FRG.”231 This had already been expressed, albeit latently, in several unification comedies such as Vadim Glowna’s Der Brocken [Rising to the Bait, 1992]. Rising to the Bait seemed to honour a common German Heimat while acknowledging that the East was belatedly experiencing its own “economic miracle” as well as integration with the West—a process in which many Ossis saw their certain future embodied in the Wessis, and the Wessis in turn could sentimentally relive certain aspects of their past still alive in the apparently more rural and archaic East. Thus the former GDR, “as a fledgling version of the Federal Republic”, allowed for the recognition of one’s own genealogy, “not […] as a former ideological and political adversary, but in terms of the west’s mythical vision of its own past—simple, rustic, pristine”.232 West German unification films thus betray their self-referentiality in 328

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their portrayal of the East, depicting their newfound brothers and sisters as living reminders of their pre-Wirtschaftswunder selves and recognizing in the developing territories of the former GDR a “long-lost Heimat where community and harmony can be restored and secured”.233 The same applies to ecology, with the film Rising to the Bait making the most of its setting: the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea, which is famous for the chalk cliffs dominating its eastern coastline. Revered by artists (such as Caspar David Friedrich) and tourists, this natural asset helps to inspire an impression of “a harmonious eco-paradise complete with unspoiled natural beauty”,234 reminiscent of a pre-industrial version of West Germany. As with That Was the Wild East and its gnome factory, age-old traditions are revived in Rising to the Bait and are shown to be viable.235 Widow Ada Fenske is depicted as a resourceful housekeeper, living off the land, preserving fruit, producing organic juice, and weaving with wool hand-spun from local sheep. Under her self-confident influence, the local economy experiences a boom, villains—including West German businessmen, representatives of the army interested in Ada Fenske’s property for its strategic location, the scheming secret agent Zwirner from the West, as well as old party hard-liners from the East—are exposed and expelled, and true lovers are united, with Swetlana and Karl publicly announcing their imminent wedding. “As the embodiment of virtue and resilience, Ada is responsible for saving the idyllic island and its population from financial ruin and colonization by West Germans.”236 The film ends with Ada organizing an excursion to the Brocken in the German mountain range Harz, a place of great folkloric mystique and a site of drama in German culture (the events of the Walpurgisnacht [night when witches are out and about] in Goethe’s Faust take place at the Brocken). By choosing this quintessentially German place, Ada arrives at a culturally historical site that is also significant for German unification, since the eastern half of the Brocken was in the GDR, while the western half was FRG territory and was the location of an elaborate military installation during the Cold War. Now the Brocken embodies the metaphorical rise to the summit for Ada and her fellow workers, whose preserves, knitted jumpers, and art and craft have been the catalyst for a small “economic miracle” on Rügen. The film’s answer to Germany’s reallife economic recession in the first half of the 1990s is to be found in a wholesome cottage industry, in tourism, and solidarity. “Ultimately, Rising to the Bait identifies the east as Heimat, where family, community, and a sense of belonging can be consolidated.”237 However, rather than being a film that exhibits Ostalgie, the sentiment expressed is more akin to a homecoming for the people from the West. Those German citizens who had lived under capitalism appear to have lost these essential qualities and values, and it seems that they should reconsider their priorities in life, just as the citizens of the former East have had to recondition themselves and rise to the occasion by demonstrating resourcefulness, self-confidence, and drive in order to catapult their regional economies and personal well-being to a higher level. Rising to the Bait thematizes what Höfig identified as the “central theme” of the Heimat film genre—“inheritance”.238 Its characters embrace the ideals of Heimat: “they seek consolidation of the family and integration into a harmonious rural community. […] Closure entails a festival celebrating the establishment or augmentation of a community [and] the constitution of a surrogate family.”239 Fittingly, critics have labelled Rising to the Bait and related 329

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films as fairy-tales: both naive and out of touch.240 Just like their 1950s counterparts, they are in the business of inventing a nation, fostering integration, and promoting community at times of social unrest and uncertainty by “inviting audiences to imagine some form of collective unity or identity”.241 In responding to a set of challenges specific to Germans, these films deliberately forgo an international audience, just as the 1950s Heimat films primarily, if not exclusively, targeted domestic audiences. In the process, they elevate German heritage and promise a better German future. Following the unification comedies and the wave of Ostalgie films, which alienated some Western German viewers, a response to the shock recognition that they too had to adjust brought on a wave of retrospectives which have also been subsumed under the label “Westalgie”. The term was grounded academically in Heinz Bude’s study Die ironische Nation [The Ironic Nation, 1999],242 and was picked up by the student magazine Störtebeker243 in 1999 and popularized following the 2000 Shell study244 particularly in the PDS.245 Westalgie was seen as a response to the underlying assumption that all the existing changes and ground-breaking developments were taking place in the East, while nothing of comparable interest was occurring in the West. In his now famous review of Frank Goosen’s bestseller Liegen lernen [Learning to Lie Down, 2000], Thomas Brussig, author of Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee [On the Shorter End of Sonnenallee], refers to the myth that West Germans had no similarly gripping stories to tell.246 Brussig’s statement may have been a response to sentiments already voiced publicly by the director of the Schaubühne in Berlin, who confessed in a panel discussion in 1997 that “with his typically well-protected West German childhood [he] actually couldn’t know anything about border experiences, of pain and despair”.247 An eagerness to document West German achievements and idiosyncrasies soon became evident in publications reflecting on the forty-year history of West Germany, such as BRD Ade! Vierzig Jahre in Rück-Ansichten [Adieu FRG! Looking Back on Forty Years],248 and inspired documentary-style as well as fictitious retrospectives. A desire to uncover, conserve, and celebrate a special and specifically FRG past found expression in Florian Illies’s bestseller Generation Golf (2000) and the series “Das war die BRD” [That was the FRG, 2001], initially run by the daily broadsheet Süddeutsche Zeitung and later compiled and published as an anthology.249 As a pendant to the programmes celebrating East German memories, private TV stations tried to appeal to Western German audiences with their populist productions “Die achtziger Jahre” [The Eighties (RTL, 2002] or the repeated screenings of old “Formel-Eins” [Formula One] music shows from the 1980s. The decade before the Wende [changeover], in particular, was seen to have achieved stability, growth, and certainty, with Helmut Kohl’s seemingly eternal presence and Bonn’s politics of quiet European integration instilling in the “Generation Golf”—born between 1965 and 1975—the idea that they were living on an island of peace and prosperity.250 This state of mind was also expressed in the graffiti of the time. Rather than spraying political slogans on house and toilet walls, the children of the 68-generation sprayed their nonchalant attitude: “Was lacostet die Welt? Geld spielt keine Rolex!“ [What does the world Lacoste? Money plays no Rolex!].251 The unexpected events following the autumn of 1989 threw these certainties overboard. New borders, new geopolitical arrange330

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ments, and economic hardship meant the end of the world as most West Germans knew it. Although the changes were by no means comparable to those experienced by the people east of the Iron Curtain, they were still significant, and—because they did not result from general desires and concerns, but instead occurred as a side-show to the larger revolutions underway in Eastern Europe—the shock may have been just as heartfelt. Indeed, the turning-point indicated by the term “Wende” itself resulted in the relocation of the seat of parliament from the modest city of Bonn to buildings of old and new grandeur in Berlin, the demise of the Kohl era, and Gerhard Schröder’s SPD government reinterpreting Germany’s mission in Europe more selfconfidently by sending German troops to serve as UN peace-keepers in foreign countries (the Balkans from 1996, Afghanistan from 2001, the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 2003, Lebanon from 2006)— showing that the unified Germany underwent changes that no one from the West or the East could have foreseen in the preceding decades. The difficulties associated with the process of adjusting to the new Germany have been expressed by numerous West German intellectuals and artists, one of them Patrick Süskind, who lamented: “Our mid-life crisis thanks to German unification. We would have been ready for impotence, prostate problems, false teeth or menopause, for a second Chernobyl, cancer, death and the devil. But not for Germany, united fatherland!”252 As with any genre and stereotype, new currency is gained in times when cultural identity is threatened, for example, as a response to perceived instability in the world. Westalgie, according to the dominant reading, expresses “the grief of an ethnological burden of history that is cathected into the repetition of an unchangeable past in the name of a non-repeating future”.253 Therefore, compared to “the lightness, the kitschiness of Ostalgie, Westalgie is true sorrow, the true desire for return”.254 As the Bergfilm Sie haben Knut [They Have Knut, Stefan Krohmer, 2003] demonstrates, reflection on the past seems to say more about the present than the period being depicted. Westalgie clearly operates within the Heimat film genre, articulating, “albeit in clichés and stereotypical formulas, the crises of authority and legitimation so crucial to German history and Germany as a nation”.255 Alasdair King claims that the 1950s Heimat films should be considered “as a utopian fantasy, a cinematic space that projects the problems of the German present into an imaginary, harmonious future”,256 and it is arguable that the same is true for Ostalgie and Westalgie films, with the proviso that the problems they present are projected not into the future but instead into an imaginary past. This act of remembering and reconstructing, born out of the understanding of one’s own cultural peculiarities, stylizes the personal past as a unique initiation, and is comparable to Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s understanding of his childhood and youth as belonging to “a generation of young West Germans […] rooted in a specifically Western experience”, and from whose point of view “the GDR, where it appears at all […] is viewed very much from an outsider’s perspective”.257 This view of the GDR as foreign, essentially uninteresting, and irrelevant has been noted by many of Treichel’s West German contemporaries.258

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Similar to Edgar Reitz’s response to the epochal changes—a documentation of West Germany’s wild 1960s in Die Zweite Heimat (1992)—an obsession with stories about the old FRG became evident in German cinema. Like Ostalgie, the trend was seized upon by politicians attempting to exploit the issue as best they could: Lothar Bisky, in his last speech as leader of the PDS, refers to the sense of loss that is expressed as nostalgic sentiment on both sides of the political divide: “In Autumn 1989 I hoped for a better GDR, not a bigger FRG. But history turned out differently. Now there’s nostalgia in both German societies.”259 Bisky rejects the self-righteousness of both Ostalgie and Westalgie, and sees political and psychological reasons at play in them. In defining Westalgie, he explains: “It is a political principle […] but it is also a zone of mental protection into which people can withdraw, a handhold which should enable them to orient themselves in the radical changes and upheavals”.260 Not least because of their political instrumentalization, and just as they had with the Heimat discourse, many intellectuals shied away from consideration of the genre or applied to it stringent quality criteria, disregarding its anthropological, psychological, and mythological dimensions. This may explain why literary and cinematic attempts at Westalgie have generally been positively received by readers and viewers, yet have failed to enthuse most critics: “New ways of looking back at times that aren’t so far back? Wrong. Even taking a risk with form? Ditto. […] New films to aid comprehension for the largest possible audience […] Their motto: just don’t upset anyone.”261 Here the generation referred to by Florian Illies in his book of the same name as “Generation Golf” (those who experienced the 1980s as their seminal influence)—and its not-so-radical counter-culture the Dorfpunks [Punks in the Village] described in the novel of the same title262—document two examples which encompass most of the identity spectrum and thus ensure the broadest appeal. Nevertheless, Illies and other “Erinnerungsfabrikanten” [fabricators of memory] of Westalgieware have been blamed for their inflatory rhetoric (they say “we” when they should say “I”).263 Other examples of Westalgie literature include Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid [Lenin Only Made It to Lüdenscheid]264 and Das Dosenmilch-Trauma [The Canned Milk Trauma].265 However the most popular examples restrict themselves to “strictly delimited, utopian spaces in [the] West Berlin […] of the 1980s and to the tribal rituals of its Kreuzberg subculture in particular”,266 and are not unlike the ostalgic representations of family life in East Berlin (Sonnenallee and Good Bye, Lenin!), with critics pointing out the structural and aesthetic similarities between Jana Hensel’s Zonenkinder [Children of the Zone, 2002] and Claudia Rusch’s Meine freie deutsche Jugend [My Free German Youth, 2003] when compared with Frank Goosen’s Liegen lernen [Learning To Lie Down, 2003] and Sven Regener’s Herr Lehmann [Mr Lehmann, 2001]. Memories of adolescence in the 1980s are the connecting theme. The screen adaptations by Hendrik Handloegten (Liegen lernen, 2003) and Leander Haußmann (Herr Lehmann, 2003) “suggest that this brand of Westalgie has reached critical mass in recent years”.267 Jürgen Teipel’s Verschwende Deine Jugend [Waste Your Youth],268 which had been on the bestseller list for months, was also eagerly adapted for the screen by Benjamin Quabeck. The release of these film adaptations in 2003 was responsible for a “summer of Westalgia […] this hazy feeling of longing”, a 332

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mood that had been building over the previous months as a result of retro shows, “Neue-Deutsche-Welle-Partys” [German-language pop music parties], and Trivial Pursuit‒type games testing popular knowledge of the 1980s.269 In an attempt to talk up the image of an exciting FRG—apart from the period dominated by the radical antics of the 1968 generation (especially the time between 1975 and 1989)—spin-doctors set to the task. Against the old FRG’s conservative and boring image of being a “Sparkassenstaat” [state of conservative, savings account investors],270 a mixture of efficiency and modesty,271 as well as memories of its challenges and victories were lauded. Curiously, Ostalgie is used far more commonly than Westalgie as a label for this trend of remembering and marketing; one explanation for this could be the fact that Westalgie is considered closer to the norm and therefore not worthy of a semantic differentiation or branding. The old FRG remains the reference point for the large majority of Germans today, while the biographical details of citizens from the GDR are still considered an exception to the norm. Nevertheless, both types of nostalgia are more closely related than one might think on first inspection, as both are in the business of “reinvention of Heimat for a ‘new’ Germany”.272 Ostalgie and Westalgie respond to the erosion of old patterns of understanding and the ideological restructuring of Central Europe through the use of narrative, which—beyond science and rationality—centres on the mythical to explain the new German order. The recent past is interpreted symbolically in cinematic constructs of Heimat and nation, such as in Sönke Wortmann’s Deutschland—Ein Sommermärchen [Germany—A Summer’s Tale]. Two examples of Westalgie with structural parallels to the Ostalgie films discussed in the previous section are Leander Haußmann’s Herr Lehmann (2003) and Hans Weingartner’s Die fetten Jahre sind vorbei [The Edukators, 2004].

Leander Haußmann’s Herr Lehmann (2003) Herr Lehmann is a film about the city of West Berlin, about growing up and coming of age in the 1980s, and is an adaptation of the novel with the same title by Sven Regener, which is variously referred to as “Berlin-Roman” [Berlin novel], “Großstadtroman” [big city novel],273 “Schelmenroman” [picaresque novel], and “Heimatroman” [Heimat novel].274 After establishing Berlin’s pub scene in the late 1980s as its environment, the film introduces its protagonist Frank Lehmann, who is drunk, tired, and on his way home after closing up the local pub Einfall [Inspiration]. In a confrontation reminiscent of a spaghetti Western, Lehmann encounters a barking dog whose presence on the footpath prevents him from passing by. Someone who is unable to overcome a stray dog makes an unlikely hero, and indeed his lack of courage, drive, and ambition confirms his anti-hero status. With heavy irony, the camera angle shows Lehmann in heroic pose—framing him like a Western star (shot from below, between Lehmann’s legs), despite the fact that he clearly lacks the qualities of a Wild West hero. These reminders of the Western genre—understood as a sister-genre of the Heimat film—highlight the films’ related purpose of myth-making. Likewise, the empty street which serves as a stage for the stand-off between man and dog is devoid of the pioneer spirit of its American counterpart, although this paralleled mise-en-scène highlights 333

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the contrast between the dawn of a new era and order as a foundation myth stylized in North America and the dying days of the old FRG. This reference to the period and the historical context are also established in the prelude, when a still image is shown of a 1989 edition of the Berlin newspaper taz with the title page reading “Zaghaft grummelt’s in der DDR” [Timid Rumblings in the GDR]. The pre-Wende period (the currency in the pub is the Deutschmark) and the location of West Berlin (indicated by the car number plates) confirm that the film is set within the sub-culture of Kreuzberg’s artistic circle. Here, Lehmann and his friends and fellow barkeepers have made their living, having turned their hobby—drinking and socializing—into their profession. Kathrin, Lehmann’s latest love interest, notes that this does not leave them with many career prospects, but Lehmann has no great ambitions: he is the archetypal anti-Wessi, nothing about him is loud, brash, overzealous, or pushy. Comfortable in the cloistered little world of Kreuzberg’s pubs and streets, even a trip to the nearby suburb of Charlottenburg (where his friend and part-time sculptor Karl has been invited to exhibit his art) seems like an imposition. It is only in their fantasy world that Karl and Lehmann transgress borders, for example, when they dream of impersonating Star Wars characters or of dressing outlandishly like patrons of a gay bar. Only in these scenes do they display a flicker of emotion, while events in the real world are virtually of no interest; accordingly, Lehmann stares blankly at the TV screen in Kathrin’s bedroom when monumental, historic changes are reported. The peaceful protests taking place in the GDR and the demands being made for a united Germany with the chant “Wir sind ein Volk” [We are one people] have huge implications for his country and his future. It is not just the residents of Kreuzberg who are depicted as ignorant and blasé, Lehmann’s parents too seem to have a distorted understanding of many issues, including life in West Berlin. During one of their rare visits to the enclosed city state, his mother wonders; “Wie kann man denn hier leben. Mit der Mauer drum rum. Eingesperrt.” [How on earth can one live here? With the Wall all the way around. Locked in.] Lehmann sees no disadvantages in this situation, and responds that he prefers to understand the Wall as a barrier excluding and barring others. In effect this is ideal for the preservation of his walled paradise. Neither does he share his parents’ professed interest in a visit to East Berlin, although they conveniently fail to fulfil this part of their journey themselves. When they ask Lehmann to visit the GDR on their behalf to deliver 500 Deutschmark from his grandmother to an aunt who lives there, he does not succeed in this plan either. He fails to meet Kathrin at the “Weltzeituhr” [landmark world clock showing international time] in East Berlin, having commented wryly beforehand, that the GDR surely has no need for world time considering they are so far behind the times and cut off from the world. Ironically it turns out that the only one removed from world time and reality in general, and events in the GDR in particular, is Frank Lehmann himself. In a clever cut, the images of the Alexanderplatz, where Kathrin is waiting for him, are juxtaposed with a poster of the East Berlin’s TV Tower, which a GDR border guard walks past in the process of interrogating Lehmann. He cannot deal appropriately with the challenges presented to him in the border zone, nor those building on either side of the Wall. His ignorance

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and naivety about the “other” mirrors that of many West Germans unprepared for the Wende. In one of his delirious moments, Karl says: “Wir müssen uns mehr mit dem Osten beschäftigen.” [We have to take more notice of the East.] But Lehmann feels the East can wait. His ignorance of world politics, border protocols, and courtship also extends to his friend’s life and worries: he is unaware that Karl has a girlfriend, a drug problem, and an acute inability to cope with life. A doctor in a local hospital recognizes the friend’s problems within a few minutes of meeting them. He diagnoses a depression born in part from the fear of change. He sees that Karl and his friends have lived within the comfort zone of “easy living, little work, cheap accommodation and lots of fun”, but have reached a crisis point when their lives seem to lack legitimacy. Karl’s deterioration functions for Lehmann as a cathartic moment. On the date of Karl’s admission to hospital, which is also Lehmann’s thirtieth birthday, he decides to change his life. He resolves that he should try to do something totally different, although he has no idea yet what that could be. Historical news seeps gradually into Lehmann’s mind: “Die Mauer ist offen.” [The Wall is open.] A friend remarks, “Sollte man sich ansehen.” [We should go and have a look.] But Lehmann’s response, “Erst mal austrinken” [Let’s drink up first], indicates that he still has a long way to go if he is to match the enthusiasm and drive of those from the other side of the Wall, whom he encounters shortly afterwards. Both on the extra-diegetical and narrative levels, references between Herr Lehmann and Sonnenallee abound: Thomas Brussig, who plays a border guard in Herr Lehmann and also wrote Sonnenallee, Jürgen from Eberswalde, who at the end of the film steps through the Wall and in Sonnenallee is one of the lodgers from Dresden, and Detlev Buck, the real-life producer who plays Karl and also starred in Sonnenallee as an East German policeman, accentuate structural and historical parallels between the two films. Indeed, in many respects, these films cross-reference each other as they cleverly undermine stereotypes of the “other”. The Golden West is really just a run-down place for hedonists, the bar programmatically named Abfall [Trash] in Herr Lehmann also provides a reference to the state of human interaction, and uncle Hans, the visitor from the West in Sonnenallee, displays a naivety about the East very similar to that of Lehmann and his friends. At least Lehmann is shown to mature slightly by the end of the film; he is no longer petrified of the dog and has also accepted his identity when he introduces himself at the Wall to the man from the East as “Herr Lehmann, Du kannst mich aber trotzdem duzen.” [Mr Lehmann, but you can still say “du”(the familiar singular form of “you”) to me.] Nevertheless, Lehmann’s development is not idealized, as he still has not found his place in society and seems to prefer evasion to confrontation, contemplating emigration to Bali rather than embracing the new times and dealing with unprecedented realities. Early on in his doomed relationship, raindrops on his face which look like tears anticipate the end of Kathrin and Lehmann’s love affair, a premonition that is also hinted at during their first love-making, when Kathrin confesses that she is not in love. However, Lehmann is as oblivious to these signs of doom as to the suffering of his friend Karl, who drifts further into a state of depression and angst. His general disinterest prevents him from en335

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gaging meaningfully with others. Frank Lehmann nevertheless remains a likeable character; he is not malicious and embodies a certain “average bloke” quality with which many can identify. His attitude is a reflection of the times: uneventful, sheltered, and not yet globalized—based entirely in the local environment. In this respect, Lehmann’s home (the legendary left-wing area SO 36 in Kreuzberg) represents a world which many of us—living in times significantly marked by the events of 1989 and especially of 11 September 2001—revere for its innocence. It elicits from the audience a certain nostalgia for times gone by, with the end of the film implying that Lehmann’s coming of age coincides with the transformation of Heimat. His life provides the audience with the idea that their nostalgia arises from a “new love of region, city, neighbourhood, a reaction to the rise of mobility and flexibility”.275 This sentiment was shared by many contemporaries. In his meta-poetical reflections on his writing, Hans-Ulrich Treichel describes West Berlin as an alternative to the provinces of his early childhood, as an escape opportunity that he cherishes, not as a Heimat but as “for the time being the best homelessness I could imagine”.276 His departure to the city of West Berlin, with its special status, was an expression of his self-imposed exile, and his new home provided a refuge from the deadening mentality of the over-zealous and hyper-conservative Wirtschaftswunder-world of rural Westphalia, whereby the Wall—which encircled West Berlin and cut it off from the East as well as from the rest of West Germany—served as an “antiwestfälischer Schutzwall” [anti-Westphalian protection wall], in a tongue-in-cheek reference to the Soviet propaganda about the anti-Fascist protection wall.277 Falling out of this protected bubble into normality proves just as life-changing for the character of Lehmann in Sven Regener’s novel278 as it did for Treichel: “The opening of the Wall brought about the collapse, in a certain way, of my system of perception and non-perception.”279 Treichel continues: “I had until that point been aware of too little in the world and awoke from this deficit of reality, from this negative drunken reality with a migraine-like bad mood and melancholy.”280 Many recognized only in hindsight that the loss of this place meant a loss of Heimat, of an integral part of their identity, and Requiem auf WestBerlin—Bilder aus einer verlorenen Zeit [Requiem for West Berlin—Images from a Lost Time]281 is one of several publications attesting to this Heimatverlust [loss of Heimat].282 In his dealings before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Lehmann is the personification of the Wall in people’s minds: “the ‘Wall in the head’ as a city experience; Westalgia and Ostalgia as a neighbourhood experience”.283 The fall of the Wall and unification were to spell the end of this neighbourhood of complacency in the shadow of the Wall. Kreuzberg, the enclave of drop-outs, alternatives, self-styled artists, and drifters, and Lehmann’s circle of friends, who appear to be largely complacent and exisiting in a parallel world to West Germany, will be transformed by the influx of people from East Germany, whose ecstatic hunger for life and outpourings of emotion are set to spell the end of a place outside of history. Lehmann is thus portrayed as a victim of history and a character inviting our sympathy as much as an aura of nostalgia. While this film documents the status quo of 1989, other Westalgie films take aim at a more distant past, namely, 1968. 336

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Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators, 2004 Weingartner’s second feature film—and the first German film to be selected for entry in the Cannes Film Festival’s official competition in eleven years— tells the engaging story of three twenty-somethings driven by a desire to change the world in the early years of the twenty-first century. Jan and Peter regularly break into Berlin luxury villas, not to steal but instead to deliver unsettling messages: either “Your days of plenty are numbered” or “You have too much money”, both signed by “The Guardians” [Die Erziehungsberechtigten; in the English translation this legal term became “The Edukators”]. For special effect, they rearrange the furniture, place stereo systems in the fridge and precious porcelain figures in toilet bowls, pile up seats into pyramids, and move valuable artwork and family photos to unusual spots. Despite their common extra-curricular activities, the two students turn out to be very different in nature. Jan is moody and jealous of Peter’s girlfriend, and rejects drugs—as if he were Habermas’s ideal student protester284 —claiming that they dull the revolutionary spirit; he prefers instead to take time out attached to his oxygen machine. Peter has a happier disposition and sees nothing wrong with stealing a Rolex watch during one of their anticonsumer excess breaking-and-entering sessions, or with jetting off to Barcelona for a few days of partying. Jule, Peter’s girlfriend, is unaware of the nature of their nightly outings, believing that he and Jan are putting up posters. She has been in financial strife since being involved in a car accident in which her uninsured vehicle wrote off a Mercedes-Benz. Left with debts of 100,000 euros, she works as a waitress in a high-class restaurant frequented by caricatures of the nouveaux riches, occasionally venting her anger at her guests’ pretentiousness by scratching their cars with her keys. After being evicted from her flat by an unsympathetic landlord, Jule moves in with Jan and Peter. During Peter’s short trip to Barcelona, Jan and Jule get to know one another while doing some renovation work, and Jan lets her in on their secret. Driving through Berlin’s most expensive neighbourhoods at night, Jule recognizes the address of the Mercedes driver to whom she must send monthly repayments and begs Jan to allow her to vent her anger by breaking into his house. She loses her mobile phone during the break-in, which slowly becomes a lot more destructive than previous sessions with Peter. Jule does not stick to the rules: she destroys bottles of wine, soils furniture, vandalizes the property, and remains there longer than is wise. When they return to retrieve her phone, they are discovered by the homeowner, the industrialist “Hardi” Hardenberg, who recognizes Jule and is determined to call the police. Jan and Jule feel compelled to beat up Hardi, then confess to Peter, before the trio decide to hold him hostage until they come up with a better plan. The four drive south to a remote mountain hut owned by Jule’s uncle on the German-Austrian border and try to sort out their situation—not just the Hardenberg case, but their personal relationships too, as Peter senses that Jan’s breach of confidence has also been of a sexual nature. While the three friends experience tension, Hardenberg relaxes more and more during his week of captivity, opening up to his captors and allowing them glimpses into the mindset of an ageing man. Hardi turns out to be not quite the ruthless 337

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capitalist they had thought him to be, but a rebel from the 68-generation, who knew iconic figures of the student movement, including Rudi Dutschke, leader of the SDS [Socialist Students’ Union of Germany], and was himself high up in the ranks of political activism. The apparent personification of bourgeois self-satisfaction, who boasts a garage full of luxury cars and a house full of designer furniture, reveals himself to be an ally in mind, having held the same ambitions as Jan, Peter, and Jule some forty years earlier. Although he has since crossed the line from rebel to establishment figure, he still has fond memories of the good old days in 1968, when he and his friends were anti-establishment, rebellious, and experimented with sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. In a fatherly mood, he tries to prepare his captors for disappointment or to plant the seed of suspected betrayal in their minds: “Experience has demonstrated that in every group there is a leader, and with this oppression begins. The reality is that everyone lives under capitalism and is corrupted by it. It all begins when at some point you start to crave for a car that runs reliably.” Hardenberg presents his path from student activist to manager with an annual salary of 5.4 million euros as a gradual slipping of standards from left to right, guided less by his insight that attempting to overthrow the system only leads to the dead end of terrorism than by a simple desire for comfort—and more and more of it. He explains this transition as a natural process that his own father had commented on by claiming: “If you are not left-wing before you are thirty you lack a heart, if you are still left-wing after thirty you lack a brain.” Thus the clash between ideologies is revealed as a normal part of growing up, hinting that the students’ future is certain to lie in a gradual shift from the political left to centre-right. These and other convictions are voiced during their magical week high up in the Alps, removed from the rest of society, allowing for the free development of a dialogue between generations, across ideological divides, and irrespective of right or wrong. Both sides gain insight into the other’s mindset and genesis, and together come to the conclusion that there are things more important than work and money, as inter-generational conflicts and cultural schizophrenia are temporarily overcome. Beyond a confrontational stand-off, the two sides find common ground and treat the week as a reflective time-out. However, the utopian idyll cannot continue: all of them must re-enter society, albeit with a marked difference in consequences—while Hardenberg could easily cover up what has happened, the trio have the unsettling certainty that they cannot simply return to their old lives. The magic of the Alps seems to last until the three drop Hardenberg off at his lakeside residence in BerlinZehlendorf. He presents a handwritten note to Jule, in which he waives her debt to him, and the farewell has all the overtones of newfound friends certain to meet up again. The moment of their parting could have been one of potential reconciliation, during which one would not have been surprised to hear throw-away lines such as “We should catch up again. Let’s meet for a coffee soon.” However, this sense of a happy ending is a deliberate decoy. Despite moments of mutual understanding, both parties revert to their old roles as class enemies. Hardenberg reports them to the police, who send an anti-terror squad to Jule’s old apartment. Meanwhile, the three perform one last break-and-enter, this time to steal cash. But instead of waking up to a knock on the door by police in riot gear, the three lovebirds wake up in a double bed to room service by a Spanish-speaking hotel maid in a faraway 338

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hideout. This final twist is acoustically accompanied by Jeff Buckley’s rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, with its themes of desire, love, the corruption of power, and betrayal. The shot of the three sleeping seemingly innocently on white sheets is reminiscent of the ménage a trois in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003), and of European youthful political activism, as if the “edukators” are dreamers with consciousness and will. Jan had mentioned earlier in the action that a coup on a Mediterranean island off Spain, which is home to technology that controls thirteen of the most important European TV satellites, would provide maximum exposure for their political cause. A total blackout is thus foreshadowed as their next illegal protest, and it is with such a “Bildstörung” [image interference] that the film ends. Considering Germany’s troubled history of political protest, one would tend to think of Ulrike Meinhof and the Red Army Faction, the extreme leftwing West German terrorist group. Their desperate act of kidnapping Hardenberg had pushed the three “edukators” past the point of no return, and they are set to continue on this self-destructive journey as if it is a one-way road, true to their motto “Some never change”. According to this film, idealism and the practicalities of Western democratic and capitalist society seem to have been on a collision course since the 1960s. The unease with which Fassbinder and Schlöndorff observed their contemporary societies is also present in Weingartner’s film, and he, like his predecessors, does not supply a resolution to the dilemmas of society. Idylls are destroyed as temporary facades, irrespective of whether they are high-security private residences or mountain huts set amidst majestic peaks and blue Alpine lakes. The underdog —in Fassbinder’s film the foreigner, in Schlöndorff’s the woman who sympathizes with suspected criminals—is now revealed as “the poor”. From the homeless man on public transport (who is picked on by the conductors for not having a ticket as well as for his body odour and lack of dress sense) to the exploits of landlords and restaurant diners (who fail to connect in a sympathetic fashion with those who have less than they do), the class divide is shown to be a daily source of injustice, discrimination, and denial of Heimat. With the figure of Hardenberg, however, the film allows for differentiation: he displays confusion and ultimately a fusion of the personal and the political, the ideological and the hormonal. Moreover, the film invites a conflation of friend and foe, with Jan and Hardenberg fusing into two versions of the one man, a younger and an older, thus swaying sympathies and not allowing for blame to be placed on either character. Although the film polarizes the concerns of the young and poor against those of the rich and established, the audience is invited to look beyond the stereotypes pitting the young as aggressively idealistic, humanistic anti-capitalists against the older generation as uniformly conservative consumers who are fearful of losing the status quo. The depiction of this clash of youthful leftist ideals with late-capitalist conservatism explores the nature of twenty-first‒century political activism and the confusion of medium and message. In recent years, the 68-generation has revealed its turncoat mentality, with the legendary revolutionary spirit cynically exploited by clever marketing experts: not in the spirit of BaaderMeinhof but rather in that of “Prada-Meinhof”. Jan moans: “How can you seriously try to change the world when Che Guevara shirts are sold in chain stores? […] What was considered subversive [in the 60s and 70s], you can 339

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buy in shops today.” Weingartner echoes this melancholy in his commentary on the film: “The Edukators is a movie about the last 10 years of my life— wanting to be part of a political movement and never really finding one that worked.”285 He continues: “I believe that we live in a time when young people crave political change but truly don’t know where to begin. Perhaps our societies have grown so individualistic that a collective dynamic is no longer possible.”286 Weingartner not only sheds light on the outlook of contemporary antiglobalization activists, anti-corporation campaigners, and anarchist groups, who like the 68-ers are fuelled by anger at global injustices—Peter, Jan, and Jule protest against the retailers of sporting goods who sell shoes made by children in the Third World—he also explains some of the reasons behind the seeming transformation of the Joschka Fischers, Otto Schilys, and Gerhard Schröders of German society—all former 68-activists-turned-politicians who came to be safeguarding against rebellious trends in Germany at the turn of the last millennium. In his deconstruction of the 68-generation Weingartner is not alone, with novels such as Rosenfest by Leander Scholz (born 1969) and Verloren, mein Vater [Lost, My Father] by Fridolin Schley (born 1976) fusing socio-historical analysis with biographical accounts.287 In The Edukators, the notion of a potential reconciliation between generations, which is well known from the Heimat film tableau, is consequently denied, as the idea of Heimat in “state of mind” and “idealism” is upheld, requiring in this case a generational or class enemy to direct one’s energy against.288 The film’s exposition deliberately draws the audience’s attention to parallels with reality television. Grainy images displayed on small surveillance monitors, captured by security cameras in hidden locations, indicate a breach of privacy not too dissimilar to the Orwellian Big Brother or Candid Camera productions. The sense of observing intimate encounters is upheld as the entire film is shot with a hand-held digital camera, resulting in the final product retaining a sense of immediacy and realism that is honest rather than dogmatic. Weingartner has produced a political film that problematizes the nature of contemporary society: a society which denies the poor and underprivileged a right to Heimat. A critique of the effectiveness of mass protests quite similar to Habermas’s rejection of the annual Easter march against nuclear armament in the 1960s and 70s—“celebrated in the consciousness of its own fruitlessness”289 —is expressed through the actions of the three students in Weingartner’s film. Ironically, while the means of protest has evolved, the source of frustration seems to have remained the same: it is “shaped by the impression that social institutions have coalesced into a relatively closed, conflict-free and self-regulated, yet violent, apparatus”.290 The film is symptomatic of this desire to rehabilitate one’s own left-wing tradition and to lift its figureheads out of the mist of obscurity for future generations.291 At the same time, however, the film is also critical of its protagonists. While the mindsets and predispositions of the three youngsters are honoured even by their adversary, for example, when Hardenberg applauds their idealism, both the political impetus and the logic they employ are devalued. They are fighting against a system of which they are inescapably a part, and their protests, break-ins, and debates have an air of futility. While they can make someone pause and think, they cannot really effect change, and are them340

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selves corrupted by the system: Peter steals a Rolex watch; Jan declares he gets a kick out of their actions, comparable to drug taking, as feelings of angst and excitement set off a wonderful hormonal reaction within him; and Jule confesses openly that, actually, she would just like to live wild and free, with no obligations or boundaries. A certain hedonism is expressed in their motivations and actions. The characters, with whom one is inclined to identify to some extent, all reveal faults and fault lines that complicate any unconditional sympathy. Likewise, Hardenberg is portrayed with a large degree of ambivalence. This obscenely rich manager, who has a garage containing at least four luxury cars, a sailing yacht in Berlin, and a motor yacht moored in the Mediterranean Sea, laments that money does not bring freedom and that more problems arise when one is a pillar of the community. He has retreated from reality into a high-security parallel world in Zehlendorf, and feels entirely selfcontent. His first line is: “I have just arrived [...] at home”, expressing his strong sense of Heimat, while Jule has, ironically, lost hers, thanks to him. Hardenberg’s wealth affords him several residences and places of refuge. Nevertheless, while he may have lost touch with the common people, the ending of the film alludes to the possibility of him having helped his captors. By revealing where his yacht is moored and how to sail it to the island in the Mediterranean which is home to the TV satellites, he is possibly in collusion with them. Whether knowingly or inadvertently, he is betraying either society or himself, and is not presented as a truthful or trustworthy type. The film’s ending is deliberately open, but points towards a playful continuation of the revolutionary spirit of 1968, although it is clear that the rebels of times past have lost their way, and that their modern counterparts are bound to lose it too. At the same time, the film is nostalgic about lost certainties, the simplicity of the Cold War days when everything was either black or white, good or bad, and could be easily judged. The song which Jan and Peter sing exuberantly at the beginning, Freddy Quinn’s “Heimweh” [Longing for Home], may be read as a clue. Their deeds have made them homeless, and the benefits of their actions remain doubtful.292 In their nostalgic presentation of the good old days, Ostalgie and Westalgie films alike express a longing to return to familiar and trusted values. In both post-hoc constructions of a heimatesque cosmos, one can see a very real reinvention of Heimat taking place. Their deliberate reconstruction and reinterpretation of history, as well as the references to and glorification of personal memory and identity, shed light on the possibility of promoting mutual understanding and, as a consequence, unity. “History, which is condensed into neat images and stories, can be taken along into the future as a mythological weight.”293 Ostalgic and Westalgic films fulfil this task: the creation of myths as narratives capable of explaining the world, with “grand narratives which generate meaning and can be directed towards both the past and the future”, thus aiding the individual.294 Irrespective of their content, whether they are cosmogonic (about the beginning of time), eschatological (about the end of time), or etiological (about the origins of peoples and societal order), all serve as a “narrative overcoming of a reality […] that in its immediacy and incommunicability is terrible and unbearable for people”.295 These films and their depiction of the possibility of overcoming crises reveal much about the workings of myths in general, such as the one surrounding the Red Army 341

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Faction. Myths express “a lot about the discomfort about ourselves, about latent collective wishes, reservations and reprimands”.296 According to HansChristoph Blumenberg, myth-making may be seen as an attempt to counter the “Absolutismus der Wirklichkeit” [absolutism of reality],297 as a response to a seemingly predominant arbitrariness, and as a means of endowing life with meaning through art and interpreting it with telos. Ostalgic and Westalgic myths alike thus become orientation aids, promises of guarantees, and standardizations of perspective, with the aid of which historical events can be explained away, thereby reducing the complexity of socio-economic processes.298 Ultimately, myths aim at positive self-assurance and constructive interpretations of the past for the present and the future. Judging from the popular success of these films in both the West and the East, it is to be hoped that communication across the perceived ethnic divide of Eastern versus Western identity is taking place. At the very least, people from different backgrounds have access to one another’s constructions and fictions relating to their pasts. By allowing the other “side” insight into the most intimate spheres of one’s psychological make-up, understanding can be fostered. Through the process of re-activating one’s own memory, thus preventing it from forgetting, as well as by acknowledging differences, these diverging narratives can form the basis for a common future. Westalgic and Ostalgic films fulfil both individual and societal functions, as a core for cohesion and as an aid for mutual understanding. At the same time, they revive the past, not as a liveable but rather as a readable alternative to the present. The use of myths should not be rejected as “ideologischer Missbrauch” [ideological misuse],299 nor as the cementation of pseudo-ethnic differences dating back to the Cold War: myths should instead be used as a foundation for a common future narrative, a basis for the self-confident embrace of one’s history to prepare for a future in harmony. As with all myths, this is not an attempt at revision, or to present truths and factual matters. By foregrounding the element of construction and fictitious invention, it is evident that only a spiritual, psychological, and symbolic truth can be achieved. Nevertheless, it is a truth that is essential for a positive experience of Heimat and an unproblematic coexistence. This confident and creative dealing with the past of the two Germanys, as well as the sharing of memories, myths, and misgivings, has coincided with, or prepared the ground for, a new relationship with storytelling and film/cinema. In many respects, 2003, with its surge of Ostalgie and Westaglie narratives, can be identified as a turning-point in mass Heimat appreciation. Wolfgang Becker noted at the time: “There is a new confidence in German films here [in Germany] and audiences are coming to see them again.”300 While he and many others bemoaned the “nostalgic reflex”301—and the obsession with the past, its values, fads, and fashions—it was seen as a detour towards a new appreciation of the present. “There was a time when we only seemed to have these Munich-based […] romantic comedies where everybody was thirtysomething and had decadent problems […] little to do with real people and a lot to do with television”,302 whereas the past decade has seen films which showcase concerns that resonate with people who are tackling challenges in their lives and entering into new relationships in pursuit of happiness and Heimat.

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NOTES 1

2

3 4 5 6 7

8

9 10 11

12

13

14 15

Cf. “the protection and the realization of Heimat is the central political value of the ecological movement”. In the original: “… die Bewahrung und das Wahrmachen von Heimat [ist] der zentrale politische Gedanke der ÖkologieBewegung”. Hajo Kracht, “Mit den Grünen: Heimat bewahren und verwirklichen”, Kommune, 3 (1984), pp. 31‒41, here p. 31. Cf. Christopher J. Wickham, Constructing Heimat in Postwar Germany: Longing and Belonging (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999). In the original: “Hier sich wehren, heißt die Heimat ehren.” Cf. Leonie Naughton, That Was the Wild East: Film Culture, Unification, and the “New” Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. 135‒36. Ibid. Anon., “Geh über die Dörfer!”, Der Spiegel, 40 (1984), pp. 252‒61, here p. 255. Cf. Johannes von Moltke, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 211. Cf. Jürgen Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre: Motive, Symbole und Handlungsmuster (Cologne: Teiresias, 1998), p. 156. In the original: “Die Schwarzwaldklinik ist der hemmungslose Rückfall in die Gemütslage der fünfziger Jahre—dorthin, wo Kitsch und Sentimentalität, falsche Innerlichkeit und ein sich gegen alles Neue verzweifelt anstemmender Konservatismus lebten und webten.” Anon., “Fernsehen: Der Schwarzwälder Schinken”, Der Spiegel, 44 (1985), pp. 290‒304, here p. 296. Marlene Wöste, “Öffentlich-rechtliches Fernsehen: Aufträge an die Filmwirtschaft für 10,6 Mrd. DM [von 1960‒1986]”, Media-Perspektiven, 1987, pp. 753‒79, here p. 755, quoted in Friedrich P. Kahlenberg, “Film”, in Wolfgang Benz (ed.), Die Geschichte der Bundesrepublik, Band 4: Kultur (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1989), pp. 464‒512, here p. 502. In the original: “[D]ie kitschigen Schnulzen der fünfziger Jahre [kamen] aus der Gruft.” Anon., “Fernsehen”, p. 296. Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre, p. 158. In the original: “weder eine Kompensation für die vorgebliche Farblosigkeit des alltäglichen Lebens, noch eine Flucht vor diesem Leben, sondern eine Dimension dieser alltäglichen Existenz”. Ien Ang, Das Gefühl Dallas: Zur Produktion des Trivialen (Bielefeld: Daedalus, 1986), p. 100. In the original: “ganz bewußt gewählten und gewünschten Ausstieg aus der Komplexität und Unüberschaubarkeit der realen, tagtäglichen Welt”. Trimborn, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre, p. 160. In the original: “Für mich ist jeder Film ein ‘Heimat-Film’, der dazu beiträgt, daß wir besser auf dieser Erde zuhause sind—egal, ob er auf dem Land oder in der Stadt gedreht worden ist.” Director Ingrid Fischer quoted in Dieter Bahlinger, Thomas Hellmuth, and Tobias Reister, “Die achtziger Jahre. Nostalgie oder Neuanfang?”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm: Bildwelten und Weltbilder: Bilder, Texte und Analysen zu 70 Jahren deutscher Filmgeschichte (Tubingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1989), pp. 131‒48, here p. 131. Oliver Rahayel, “German Heimat Rediscovered”, Kultur: Magazine of the Goethe Institute in Australia, 14 (2007), pp. 4‒5, here p. 4. Ibid.

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16 17

18

19

20 21

22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29

30 31

32 33 34

35

“Grün ist die Heimat. Ein szenisches Filmmusik-Konzert” premiered on 31 Mar. 2007. The programme also included several productions from unified Germany, produced for cinemas as well as television, such as Das Wunder von Bern (2003) and Die Flucht (2007). Kirsten Burghardt, “Moralische Wiederaufrüstung im frühen deutschen Nachkriegsfilm”, in Michael Schaudig (ed.), Positionen deutscher Filmgeschichte: 100 Jahre Kinematographie: Strukturen, Diskurse, Kontexte (Munich: Diskurs Film, 1996), pp. 241‒76. In the original: “Kollektivgeist der ‘neuen Ordnung’ in der SBZ”. Detlef Kannapin, Dialektik der Bilder. Der Nationalsozialismus im deutschen Film, Ein Ost-West Vergleich (Berlin: Karl Dietz, 2005), p. 11. Ibid. Seán Allan, “DEFA: An Historical Overview”, Seán Allan and John Sandford (eds.), DEFA: East German Cinema, 1946-1992 (New York: Berghahn, 1999), pp. 1‒21, here p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Cf. Albert Wilkening, “Geschichte der DEFA von 1945‒1950”, in Albert Wilkening, Betriebsgeschichte des VEB DEFA Studio für Spielfilme (Potsdam-Babelsberg, 1981‒84), vol. 1‒3, here vol.1, pp. 32‒33. Cf. Christiane Mückenberger, “The Anti-Fascist Past in DEFA-Films”, in Allan and Sandford (eds.), DEFA, p. 66. Stefan Soldovieri, “Finding Navigable Waters: Inter-German Film Relations and Modernisation in Two DEFA Barge Films of the 1950s”, Film History, vol. 18, iss. 1 (Sydney, 2006), pp. 59‒72, here p. 59. Ibid. Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 27. Wolfgang Kohlhaase, “DEFA: A Personal View”, in Allan and Sandford (eds.), DEFA, p. 120. Allan, “DEFA: An Historical Overview”, p. 1. The call for a New Film History is grounded in the belief that the scholarship thus far, with its fixed ideological positions and the importance it placed on political interests, has failed to account for the diverse production in East and West. Cf. Thomas Elsaesser, “The New Film History”, Sight & Sound, 35/4 (1986), pp. 246‒52, as well as Paul Kusters, “New Film History: Grundzüge einer neuen Filmgeschichtswissenschaft”, Montage/AV, 5.1 (1996), pp. 39‒60. Naughton, That Was the Wild East, pp. 24‒25. This number is cited by Kannapin, who counted 3,329 feature films for the same period in West Germany. Kannapin, Dialektik der Bilder, p. 159. The entire film stock of the DEFA is archived in the Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv Berlin. Allan, “DEFA: An Historical Overview”, pp. 1‒2. Barton Byg, “DEFA and the Traditions of International Cinema”, in Allan and Sandford (eds.), DEFA, p. 38. Cf. Critics pointed towards the broken relationship with the greats of DEFA cinema, such as Wolfgang Staudte: “The protest against the ‘fathers’ makes one blind towards one’s friends.” Christian Ziewer, “Last Words for Wolfgang Staudte (1984)”, in Eric Rentschler (ed.), West-German Filmmakers on Film: Visions and Voices (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), pp. 118‒20, here p. 118. Anette Battenberg and Jürgen Herdin, “Heimatfilm in der DDR: Annäherung an eine Fragestellung”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der deutsche Heimatfilm, p. 149. 344

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36

37

38

39

40 41

42 43 44

45 46

47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54

55 56

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Johannes von Moltke, “Location Heimat: Tracking Refugee Images, from DEFA to the Heimatfilm”, in John Davidson and Sabine Hake (eds.), Framing the Fifties: Cinema in Divided Germany (Oxford: Berghahn, 2007), pp. 74‒90. Jan Palmowski, “Building an East German Nation: The Construction of a Socialist Heimat, 1945‒1961”, Central European History, vol. 37, no. 3 (2004), pp. 365‒99, here p. 371. “In the Saxon county of Zittau, talks on themes like ‘Heimat, our joy and fortune’ persistently attracted village audiences of between two and three hundred listeners.” Palmowski, “Building an East German Nation”, p. 373. Several other examples are mentioned here too. Jan Palmowski, “Learning the Rules. Local Activists and the Heimat”, in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), Power and Society in the GDR, 1961‒1979: The “Normalisation of Rule”? (New York and London: Berghahn, 2009), pp. 151‒79, here p. 151. Palmowski, “Building an East German Nation”, p. 377. Ibid., p. 369. See also Jan Palmowski, Inventing a Socialist Nation: Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR, 1849‒1990 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Battenberg and Herdin, “Heimatfilm in der DDR”, p. 149. Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 136. Cf. Willi Oberkrome, “Durchherrschte Heimat? Zentralismus und Regionalismus im organisierten Heimatschutz der früheren DDR: Das Beispiel Thüringens”, in Habbo Knoch (ed.), Das Erbe der Provinz. Heimatkultur und Geschichtspolitik nach 1945 (Gottingen: Wallstein, 2001), pp. 252‒74. Thomas Schaarschmidt, Regionalkultur und Diktatur: Sächsische Heimatbewegung und HeimatPropaganda im Dritten Reich und in der SBZ/DDR (Cologne: Böhlau, 2004). Harry Blunk, “The Concept of ‘Heimat-GDR’ in DEFA Feature Films”, in Allan and Sandford (eds.), DEFA, pp. 204‒21. “Unsere Heimat”, text by Herbert Keller, music by Hans Naumikat, quoted from the CD recording by the Rundfunk-Kinderchor Berlin, Blaue Wimpel im Sommerwind: Lieder der Jungen Pioniere (Berlin: Barbarossa, 1997). From Vom Sinn unseres Lebens, quoted in Blunk, “The Concept of ‘HeimatGDR’ in DEFA Feature Films”, p. 204. Ibid. Ibid., p. 377. Ibid., p. 378. Ibid., p. 397. Bärbel Dalichow, “Nachdenken über Heimat”, in Rainer Waterkamp (ed.), Heimat in DDR-Medien: Arbeitsheft zum Medienpaket 8 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1998), pp. 14‒25, here p. 15. Bärbel Dalichow, “Heimat-Filme der DEFA?”, Film und Fernsehen, 20, no. 6 (1992), pp. 55‒61, here p. 57. Gebhard Moldenhauer, “Filme der DEFA als ‘Heimatfilme’?”, in Klaus Finke (ed.), DEFA-Film als nationales Kulturerbe?Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft, 58 (Berlin: Vistas, 2001), pp. 43‒48, here p. 43. Cf. Dalichow, “Nachdenken über Heimat”, p. 15. Thomas Lindenberger, “Home Sweet Home: Desperately Seeking Heimat in the Early DEFA Films”, Film History, vol. 18, iss. 1 (Sydney, 2006), pp. 46‒53, here p. 47. Cf. Inge Bennewitz, “Das verurteilte Dorf (DEFA, 1952): Ein Eigentor für die SED-Propaganda”, Deutschland-Archiv, 36 (2003), pp. 772‒89, and Inge Benne345

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58 59

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witz, “Die mißbrauchte Erde. Das verurteilte Dorf. Film und Wirklichkeit”, in Ralf Schenk, Erika Richter, and Claus Löser (eds.), Apropos: Film 2004. Das Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung (Berlin: Beltz & Fischer, 2004), pp. 204‒21. Lindenberger, “Home Sweet Home”, p. 47. Marc Silberman, “Remembering History: The Filmmaker Konrad Wolf”, New German Critique, no. 49, Special Issue on Alexander Kluge (1990), pp. 163‒91, here p. 168. Elsaesser and Wedel, “Defining DEFA’s Historical Imaginary”, p. 323. Lindenberger, “Home Sweet Home”, Film History, vol. 18, iss. 1 (Sydney, 2006), pp. 46‒58, here p. 56. Thomas Elsaesser and Michael Wedel, “Defining DEFA’s Historical Imaginary: The Films of Konrad Wolf”, New German Critique, no. 82, East German Film (2001), pp. 3‒24, here p. 10. Lindenberger, “Home Sweet Home”, p. 57. Martin Brady, “Discussion with Kurt Maetzig”, in Allan and Sandford (eds.), DEFA, p. 80. In a discussion with West German students in 1988, Maetzig responded to the question as to whether there were any GDR Heimat films that it should be well known “that there was no such thing in the GDR”. In the original: “dass es so was in der DDR nie gegeben habe”. Maetzig quoted in Dalichow, “Nachdenken über Heimat”, p. 15. Maetzig quoted in Brady, “Discussion with Kurt Maetzig”, p. 90. Andrea Rinke, “Eastside Stories: Singing and Dancing for Socialism”, Film History, vol. 18, iss. 1 (Sydney, 2006), pp. 73‒87, here p. 73. Erika Richter, “Zwischen Mauerbau und Kahlschlag 1961 bis 1965”, in Ralf Schenk (ed.), Das Zweite Leben der Filmstadt Babelsberg: DEFA-Spielfime, 1946‒92 (Berlin: Henschel, 1994), pp. 157‒264, here p. 159. Rinke, “Eastside Stories”, p. 77. John Griffith Urang, “Realism and Romance in the East German Cinema, 1952‒1962”, Film History, vol. 18, iss. 1 (Sydney, 2006), pp. 88‒103, here p. 91. Cf. Günter Schulz, Filmographie—Ausländische Spiel- und abendfüllende Dokumentarfilme in den Kinos der SBZ/DDR. 1945-1966 (Berlin: BundesarchivFilmarchiv & DEFA-Stiftung, 2001). “In the years between 1950 and 1961 around seventy West German productions—in their majority popular genre films, but also documentaries and children’s films—were released with only a little delay in GDR cinemas […] followed by their virtual absence in the decades to follow.” Elsaesser and Wedel, “Defining DEFA’s Historical Imaginary”, pp. 8‒9. Justification sourced from DEFA materials quoted in Soldovieri, “Finding Navigable Waters”, p. 70. Ibid., p. 69. Ibid. Ibid. Palmowski, “Building an East German Nation”, pp. 397‒98. Karlheinz Blaschke, “Die marxistische Regionalgeschichte: Ideologischer Zwang und Wirklichkeitsferne”, in Georg G. Iggers et al. (eds.), Die DDR-Geschichtswissenschaft als Forschungsproblem (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1998), pp. 341‒68, here pp. 354‒55.

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John Raundalen, “A Communist Takeover in the Dream Factory: Appropriation of Popular Genres by the East German Film Industry”, Slavonica, vol. 11, no. 1 (2005), pp. 69‒86, here p. 70. Jo Hasler’s Reise ins Ehebett [Journey to the Marriage Bed, 1967], Horst Seeman’s Hochzeitsnacht im Regen [Wedding Night in the Rain, 1967], and Jo Hasler’s Heißer Sommer [Hot Summer, 1968] were the musicals commissioned by DEFA. The “Indianerfilme”—the East German Westerns paralleling the plight of the Native Americans against the capitalist imperialists—were Josef Mach’s Die Söhne der großen Bärin [The Sons of the Great She-Bear, 1966], Richard Groschopp’s Chingachgook, die große Schlange [Chingachgook the Great Snake, 1967], Gottfried Kolditz’s Spur des Falken [Trace of the Falcon, 1968], Konrad Petzold’s Weiße Wölfe [White Wolves, 1969], Tödlicher Irrtum [Deadly Error, 1970], and Osceola (1971), Hans Kratzert’s Tecumseh (1972), Gottfried Kolditz’s Apachen [Apaches, 1973] and Ulzana (1974), and Werner W. Wallroth’s Blutsbrüder [Blood Brothers, 1975]. From a speech by Walter Ulbricht at the VII. Parteitag der SED, 17‒22 Apr. 1967, reprinted in Elimar Schubbe, “Über die formalistische Richtung in der deutschen Malerei”, in Gisela Russ (ed.), Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED (Stuttgart-Degerloch: Seewald, 1972), p. 1257. “‘Massenwirksamkeit’ was a [key] term in official GDR discourse on film. It meant ‘politically effective on the masses’, but because of its positive connotations at the time it was overused and was sometimes used synonymously with ‘popular’.” Raundalen, “A Communist Takeover in the Dream Factory”, p. 84. Gerd Gemünden, “Between Karl May and Karl Marx: The DEFA Indianerfilme (1965‒1983), New German Critique, 82 (2001), pp. 25‒38, here p. 26. Rinke, “Eastside Stories”, p. 84. Ibid., p. 85. Rudi Hannemann, “Entwurf: Antrag zur Verleihung des Prädikats wertvoll für den musikalischen Gegenwartsfilm Heißer Sommer”, 20 Dec. 1967, BArch, DR 117/663, unnumbered; quoted in Rinke, “Eastside Stories”, pp. 84‒85. Interview with Jo Hasler, included in the press release in connection with the XII. Filmtage 1973. Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv, Filmmappe 12206; quoted in Raundalen, “A Communist Takeover in the Dream Factory”, p. 76. Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 136. Ibid., pp. 136‒37. Cf. Peter Stettner, “Der deutsch-deutsche Filmaustausch in der Nachkriegszeit (1947‒1951)”, in Finke (ed.), DEFA-Film als nationales Kulturerbe?, pp. 149‒67. Lindenberger, “Home Sweet Home”, p. 47. Soldovieri, “Finding Navigable Waters”, p. 61. Blunk, “The Concept of ‘Heimat-GDR’ in DEFA Feature Films”, p. 210. From Vom Sinn unseres Lebens, quoted in Blunk, “The Concept of ‘HeimatGDR’ in DEFA Feature Films”, p. 212. In the original: “Wenn man von der festen Position des Sozialismus ausgeht, kann es meines Erachtens auf dem Gebiet von Kunst und Literatur keine Tabus geben.” Erich Honecker, Closing remarks at the 4. Tagung des ZK der SED, 16‒17 Dec. 1971, quoted in Neues Deutschland, 18 Dec. 1971. Cf. Manfred Jäger, Kultur und Politik in der DDR 1945‒1990 (Cologne: Ed. Deutschland Archiv, 1995), p. 140.

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Byg, “DEFA and the Traditions of International Cinema”, p. 33. See also the reference to Wolf’s dialogue “with West German, European, and Hollywood cinematic practices and generic codes” in Solo Sunny. Elsaesser and Wedel, “Defining DEFA’s Historical Imaginary”, p. 22. In the original: “Die DEFA produzierte planmäßig ihre bis zu fünfzehn Spielfilme im Jahr. Die Abteilung Filmproduktion der ‘Hauptverwaltung Film’ verfasste weiterhin zu jedem Film die entsprechende Filmeinschätzung. Die Kritik reagierte eher müde auf die neuen Filmangebote der DEFA. Und die Zuschauer blieben mehrheitlich den eigenen Produktionen fern und besahen sich lieber die Unterhaltungsfilme aus dem Westen, die in die Kinos der DDR gelangten.” Kannapin, Dialektik der Bilder, p. 44. Press release issued in the Norddeutsche Zeitung, quoted in Wolfgang Jäger and Ingeborg Villinger, Die Intellektuellen und die deutsche Einheit (Freiburg: Rombach Litterae, 1997), p. 46. In the original: “Als die DDR im Laufe des Jahres 1989 begann, in Beobachtung sich anbahnender Veränderungen zeitnahe Filme im ‘Glasnost’-Stil zu konzipieren, kamen die fertigen Filme aufgrund der Vorlaufzeit in der Herstellung und wegen der Dynamik der DDR-Wende zu spät in die Kinos, um noch am Selbstklärungsprozeß der DDR teilnehmen zu können.” Kannapin, Dialektik der Bilder, pp. 44‒45. DEFA was administered by Progress Film-Verleih in the form of a “GmbH” [limited company] from 1990. In 1992, it was sold by the administering state agency, Treuhand—the organization which took over the state-owned companies of the former East Germany after reunification (1990‒94) and tried to bring them into the private sector, though many were actually closed down. The year 1998 saw the formation of a DEFA-Stiftung [trust]. Its East German film stock is preserved by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in Berlin. Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 10. Eric Rentschler, “From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus”, in Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds.), Cinema and Nation (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 260‒77, here p. 263. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 232. Johannes von Moltke, “Home again: Revisiting the New German Cinema in Edgar Reitz’s Die Zweite Heimat (1993)”, Cinema Journal, vol. 42, iss. 3 (2003), pp. 114‒43, here p. 114. Cf. Tom Heneghan, Unchained Eagle: Germany after the Wall (London: Reuters, 2000), p. 148. Jürgen Habermas, “Der DM-Nationalismus”, Die Zeit, 30 Mar. 1990. Andreas Staab, National Identity in Eastern Germany: Inner Unification or Continued Separation (London: Praeger, 1998), p. 101. Cf. Detlef Landau, “The Social Aspects of German Reunification”, in Ghanie Ghaussy and Wolf Schäfer (eds.), The Economics of German Unification (London: Routledge, 1993), pp. 92‒109. Cf. Toralf Staud, “Millionen schauen auf Sie! Mit einer Tour quer durch die neuen Bundesländer möchten die ‘Tagesthemen’ im Osten mehr Zuschauer gewinnen und im Westen Verständnis wecken.” Die Zeit, 19 July 1996. Dominic C. Boyer, “On the Sedimentation and Accreditation of Social Knowledges of Difference: Mass Media, Journalism, and the Reproduction of East/West Alterities in Unified Germany”, Cultural Anthropology, 15, 4 (2000), pp. 459‒91, here p. 459. 348

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111 Cf. The phrase “die Mauer in den Köpfen”, derived from the student cabaret “Das Bügelbrett” [The Ironing Board] from 1963: “And if reunification should come about: the wall erected by the East will be torn down in a day. Yet the wall in our heads on which we are both working won’t be dismantled even after ten years.” In the original: “Und wenn die Wiedervereinigung kommen sollte: Die Mauer, die der Osten errichtet hat, ist in einem Tag niedergerissen. Doch die geistige Mauer, an der wir beide arbeiten, wird auch in zehn Jahren noch nicht abgetragen sein.” Hannelore Kaub, member of Bügelbrett, quoted in Christian Hörburger, Nihilisten—Pazifisten—Nestbeschmutzer. Gesichtete Zeit im Spiegel des Kabaretts (Tubingen: Verein für Friedenspädagogik, 1993), p. 152. 112 Cf. Dominic Boyer, Spirit and System: Media, Intellectuals, and the Dialectic in Modern German Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), p. 181. 113 Cf. Heinz Bude, Die ironische Nation: Soziologie als Zeitdiagnose (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1999), S. 61. 114 Boyer, Spirit and System, pp. 181‒82. 115 Ibid., p. 182. 116 Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 125. 117 Reference to Willy Brandt’s quote “Now that which belongs together can grow together.” In the original: “Jetzt kann zusammenwachsen, was zusammen gehört”, from his speech on 10 November 1989 in front of the Rathaus Schöneberg, transcript available from http://www.bwbs.de/Brandt/9.html, retrieved Dec. 2006. 118 Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 125. 119 Ibid. 120 Ibid., p. 126. 121 Ibid. 122 Ibid. 123 Ibid., p. 127. 124 Peter Timm’s Go, Trabi, Go (1991) was one of the many German films in the 1990s exceeding the one million visitor benchmark. Cf. Marc Silberman, “Popular Cinema, National Cinema, and European Integration”, in Agnes C. Mueller (ed.), German Pop Culture: How American Is It? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 151‒64, here p. 162. 125 Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 188. 126 Ibid., p. 194. 127 Daphne Berdahl, “‘(N)Ostalgie’ for the Present: Memory, Longing, and East German Things”, Ethnos, vol. 64/2 (1999), pp. 192‒207, here p. 197. 128 The Oxford English Dictionary [online] (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000). 129 The term has repeatedly and incorrectly been credited to Friedrich Schorlemmer. Cf. Christoph Dieckmann, “Der Schnee von gestern”, Die Zeit, 10 Dec. 1993. Other claims relate to the term having been coined by Saxonian stand-up comedian Bernd Lutz Lange. Cf. Martin Blum, “Remaking the East German Past: Ostalgie, Identity, and Material Culture”, Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 34, iss. 3 (2000), pp. 229‒53, here p. 230. 130 Karen Ruoff Kramer, “Representations of Work in the Forbidden DEFA Films of 1965”, in Allan and Sandford (eds.), DEFA, p. 136 131 Cf. Britta Freis and Marion Jopp, Spuren der deutschen Einheit: Wanderungen zwischen Theorien und Schauplätzen der Transformation (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2001), p. 239. 349

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132 Berdahl, “‘(N)Ostalgie’ for the Present”, pp. 192‒207, here p. 192. 133 Cf. the newly established “Dokumentationszentrum Alltagskultur der DDR” in Eisenhüttenstadt. 134 Cf. Thomas Zimmermann, “Der Wandel braucht eine Generation”, Psychologie heute, 26/12 (1999), pp. 28‒33, here p. 32. 135 Freis and Jopp, Spuren der deutschen Einheit, p. 243. 136 Paul Betts, “The Twilight of the Idols: East German Memory and Material Culture”, Journal of Modern History, 72 (2000), pp.731‒65, here p. 741. 137 This reference to Helmut Kohl, German Chancellor from 1982 to 1998, who dominated Germany’s Wende period, is widely used in France. 138 Betts, “The Twilight of the Idols”, p. 746. 139 A recovery operation seemed underway to preserve “die persönliche(n) Geschichte und Geschichten seiner Bewohner”. Freis and Jopp, Spuren der deutschen Einheit, p. 248. 140 Betts, “The Twilight of the Idols”, p. 744. 141 Paul Cooke, “Performing ‘Ostalgie’: Leander Haußmann’s Sonnenallee”, German Life and Letters, 56/2 (2003), pp. 156‒67, here p. 156. 142 For both quotes, see Frederick Studemann, Financial Times, London, 2 Aug. 2003, p. 30. 143 In the original: “Da, wo die DDR zur ungebrochenen Kindheitserfahrung gehört, wird sie sicher deutlicher verklärt als bei der jüngeren Generation, die ihr skeptisch gegenüberstand.” Lutz Rathenow quoted in Jäger and Villinger, Die Intellektuellen und die deutsche Einheit, p. 313. 144 Nora Fitzgerald, “Ossie Rules Back on Top American in Berlin”, Financial Times, London, 7 June 2003, p. 3. 145 Blum, “Remaking the East German Past”, p. 230. 146 Bernd Faulenbach, “Die Enquete-Kommission und die Geschichtsdebatte”, in Peter Barker (ed.), The GDR and Its History: Rückblick und Revision, Die DDR im Spiegel der Enquete-Kommissionen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 21‒33, here p. 32. 147 Hilary Ann Collier Sy-Quia, “The Body Politic in a Contested Present: Christa Wolf and the Making of History”, PhD diss. (University of California, Berkeley, 2000), p. 6. 148 Walter Jens at the Bertelsmann-Kolloquium in Potsdam (1990), quoted in Jäger and Villinger, Die Intellektuellen und die deutsche Einheit, p. 213. 149 Michael Rutschky, “Wie erst jetzt die DDR entsteht”, Merkur, 49.9‒10 (1995), pp. 851‒64. 150 Julia Hell and Johannes von Moltke, “Unification Effects: Imaginary Landscapes of the Berlin Republic”, Germanic Review, vol. 80, no. 1 (2005), pp. 74‒95, here p. 86. 151 Jens Sparschuh, Der Zimmerspringbrunnen: Ein Heimatroman (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1995). 152 Blum, “Remaking the East German Past”, p. 243. 153 Cf. reviews in Der Stern and Hamburger Morgenpost quoted on the production company’s website, http://www.senator.de/Archiv/Alle-Archivfilme/DerZimmerspring-brunnen.php?pressestimmen=1, retrieved Dec. 2006. 154 Hinrich Lobeck’s wife, who struggles with her husband’s new identity as a businessman and eventually leaves him, analyses his post-Wende blues as follows: “If you put yourself on the losing side from the very beginning, of course you always have the advantage of being the moral victor!” In the original: “Wenn 350

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155 156 157 158 159 160

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162 163 164

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man sich von vorne herein auf die Seite der Verlierer stellt, ist man natürlich immer im Vorteil, als moralischer Sieger!” Sparschuh, Der Zimmerspringbrunnen, p. 103. In the original: “Stichwort ‘Sinnkrise’, Stichwort ‘Zukunftsangst’; ZSB als ein ‘Ort spiritueller Ich-Erfahrung’.” Ibid., p. 29. Alexander Osang, “Das Ostgefühl: Heimweh nach der alten Ordnung”, Der Spiegel, 27 (1995), pp. 40‒64, here p. 46. Ibid. Ibid., p. 49. In the original: “Erstens hatten die Ostdeutschen bei der Neuanpassung an die von den Altländern übernommenen Strukturen und Regeln große Anstrengungen geleistet und in diesem Zusammenhang einen enormen Erfahrungsbruch erlebt. Zweitens realisierten sie allmählich deutliche Ost-West-Unterschiede bei Eigentum und Vermögen, also den Chancen, als selbständige Akteure am wirtschaftlichen Aufbau der neuen Bundesländer zu partizipieren. Drittens war deutlich geworden, dass die in der Öffentlichkeit, vor allem in den Medien und in der Politik kursierenden Beschreibungen von den Ostdeutschen und ihrem Leben in der DDR nur punktuell mit den Erfahrungen des größten Teils der ostdeutschen Bevölkerung zusammengingen.” Thomas Ahbe, Ostalgie: Zum Umgang mit der DDR-Vergangenheit in den 1990er Jahren (Erfurt: Landeszentrale für politische Bildung Thüringen, 2005), p. 42. Cf. Thomas Lindenberger, “In den Grenzen der Diktatur: Die DDR als Gegenstand von Gesellschaftsgeschichte”, in Rainer Eppelmann, Bernd Faulenbach, and Ulrich Mählert (eds.), Bilanzen und Persepktiven der DDRForschung (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2003), pp. 239‒45. Ibid., p. 240. Ahbe, Ostalgie, p. 45. Cf. many blogs and on-line discussion forums featured East-West translations, such as the list available from http://www.ostprodukte.de/woerterbuch.php, retrieved Dec. 2006. See also Reinhard Ulbrich, Kleines Lexikon großer Ostprodukte (Kothen: Mocado, 1996). The Ampelmännchen campaign started in the mid-1990s. These and other interest groups lobbied for “Linksabbiegerpfeile” and “Ampelmännchen”, Kinderkrippen, OstRock, and OstKost (OstKost has become the collective term for culinary products from the former East Germany). Cf. Reinhard Ulbrich and Andreas Kämper, Sandmännchen im Trabi-Land: Das Ostalgie-Kultbuch (Dusseldorf: Econ & List, 1997). Ahbe, Ostalgie, p. 36 Sparschuh, Der Zimmerspringbrunnen, p. 104. Blum, “Remaking the East German Past”, p. 248. Sparschuh, Der Zimmerspringbrunnen, p. 104. “Under the imitation wooden ceiling beams, framed by black-and-white photos of the Black Forest, in front of me an out-of-date train timetable, from which all trains have long since departed, Lobek lets slip: ‘I love my Heimat, the German Democratic Republic’.” In the original: “[U]nter dem imitierten Holzbalken der Decke, eingerahmt von Schwarzweißfotographien des Schwarzwald, vor mir auf dem Tisch einen verjährten Fahrplan, dem längst alle Züge davongefahren waren [entfährt es Lobek:] Ich liebe meine Heimat, die Deutsche Demokratische Republik.” Ibid., p. 53.

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172 In the original: “unter den Mitgliedern eines [...] halblegalen ‘DDR-Heimatvertriebenen-Verbandes’ […] Spreewälder Senfgurken und FDJ-Hemden”. Ibid., p. 105. 173 Ibid. 174 Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (New York: Camden House, 2002), p. 151. 175 In the original: “Die Identifikation mit dem Gesellschaftssystem DDR wurzelt [...] überwiegend in den als positiv erlebten materiellen und sozialen Lebensbedingungen und -zusammenhängen im Alltag; sie wird jedoch kaum an seinen politischen und ideologischen Strukturen festgemacht.” Lutz Niethammer, Alexander Plato, and Dorothee Wierling, Die volkseigene Erfahrung: Eine Archäologie des Lebens in der Industrieprovinz der DDR, 30 biographische Eröffnungen (Berlin: Rowohlt, 1991), p. 68. 176 Cf. Rüdiger Thomas, “Lebensspuren: Zur Mentalitätsgeschichte der Deutschen in der DDR”, in Gisela Helwig (ed.), Rückblicke auf die DDR: Festschrift für Ilse Spittmann-Rühle (Cologne: Wissenschaft & Politik, 1995), pp. 183‒96, here p. 184. 177 Silberman, “Popular Cinema, National Cinema, and European Integration”, p. 153. 178 Thomas Brussig, Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee (Berlin: Volk & Welt, 1999). 179 Cf. Ostalgie as expressed in Sonnenallee is “dangerous, as it presents the GDR […] as a great place […]. It sees a dictatorship through rose-tinted spectacles.” Angelika Barbe quoted in Hugh Williamson, “Realists fight back against tide of nostalgia for old East Germany”, Financial Times (London), 3 Oct. 2003. 180 Hubertus Knabe quoted in “Personalien”, Der Spiegel, 1 (2006), p. 145. 181 In the original: “Erinnerung […] vollbringt […] das Wunder, einen Frieden mit der Vergangenheit zu schließen, in dem sich jeder Groll verflüchtigt und der weiche Schleier der Nostalgie über alles legt, was mal scharf und schneidend empfunden wurde. Glückliche Menschen haben ein schlechtes Gedächtnis und reiche Erinnerungen.” Brussig, Am kürzeren Ende der Sonnenallee, p. 157 182 Ibid. 183 Cf. Immanuel Kant, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, edited by Karl Vorländer (Hamburg: Meiner, 1994), p. 42. See also Kant on the Foundation of Morality: A Modern Version of the Grundlegung, translated with commentary by Brendan E. A. Liddell (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1970). 184 In the original: “Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen, mein Michael, / Nun glaubst uns kein Mensch wie schön’s hier war. / Du hast den Farbfilm vergessen, bei meiner Seel’, / Alles blau und weiß und grün und später nicht mehr wahr.” 185 In the original: “Es war einmal ein Land und ich habe da gewohnt. Wenn Leute mich fragen, wie war es, sage ich, dass es die beste Zeit meines Lebens war, weil ich jung und verliebt war.” 186 Hell and von Moltke, “Unification Effects”, p. 81. 187 Paul Cooke, Representing East Germany: From Colonization to Nostalgia (Oxford: Berg, 2005), p. 117. 188 Ibid., p. 116. 189 In the original: “daß das Leben im Osten sehr viel Spaß gemacht hat. Wir waren traurig, heiter, verzweifelt und haben intensiv gelebt. Auch ein Leben im Osten

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war ein ganzes Leben.” Bärbel Bohley, “Der fatale Opportunismus des Westens”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 Mar. 1992, p. 27. 190 Günter Gaus, Wo Deuschland liegt: Eine Ortsbestimmung (Hamburg: Hoffmann & Campe, 1983), pp. 115‒69. 191 In the original: “der nach russischem Sprachgebrauch benannten Fluchtburg im Grünen, die den Rückzug der Bürger aus der kontrollierten Öffentlichkeit am deutlichsten manifestierte.” Thomas, “Lebensspuren”, p. 188. 192 Ahbe, Ostalgie, p. 44. 193 In the original: “‘von unten’ erfolgender und ungesteuerter Laien-Diskurs”. Ibid., p. 65. 194 Faulenbach, “Die Enquete-Kommission und die Geschichtsdebatte”, p. 33. 195 Faulenbach quoted in translation in Cooke, “Performing ‘Ostalgie’”, p. 157. Cf. Cooke, “Surfing for Eastern Difference”, p. 208. 196 “In the first six months of its release Sonnenallee became the biggest East German box-office hit of the decade. With more than two million viewers, by January 2000, it was the nineteenth top-grossing film screened in Germany over a five-year period.” Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 19. 197 Hell and von Moltke, “Unification Effects”, p. 81. 198 Ibid. 199 Ibid. 200 Wolfgang Becker quoted in “Ost-Boom: Zu Gast im Party-Staat”, Der Spiegelonline, 37 (2003), www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,264762,00.html, retrieved Jan. 2004. 201 Cf. Cooke, “Surfing for Eastern Difference”, p. 217. 202 Faulenbach, “Die Enquete-Kommission und die Geschichtsdebatte”, p. 33. 203 Faulenbach quoted in translation in Cooke, “Performing ‘Ostalgie’”, p. 157. Cf. Cooke, “Surfing for Eastern Difference”, p. 208. 204 Hubertus Knabe, director of the Stasi-Gedenkstätte in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen. Infuriated by the marketing efforts of a soap manufacturer—‘Erichs Duschbad’ referred to Erich Honecker and was adorned with the GDR-state coats of arms [Staatswappen]—he started legal action, which ruled in his favour in January 2006. 205 This is also the main difference between the remembrance of the Nazi period and GDR times. The latter is fed by living memories and is still present in people’s anecdotal repositories, whereas the Nazi period has already experienced the transformation from personal to national memory. 206 In the original: “Sie verharmlosen die Gefahren, die der Demokratie durch totalitäre Ideologien droht und sind eine Verhöhnung der Opfer.” Tobias Hollitzer, “Leserbrief”, Leipziger Volkszeitung, 18 Aug. 2003. 207 Cf. Thorsten Stecher, “Sexy DDR”, Die Weltwoche, 18 Nov. 1999. 208 Cf. Jens Bisky, “Beleidigend”, Berliner Zeitung, 29 Jan. 2000. 209 Cooke, “Performing ‘Ostalgie’”, p. 164. 210 Ibid. 211 Kapczynksi points out: “Alex claims that his mother died without ever knowing the truth about her beloved country. He speaks of her as a true believer, even as the film suggests that her reasons for state loyalty were largely personal […]. Alex’s errors suggest a disconnect between history and memory: neither his mother nor his mother’s country existed quite as he remembers them [thus calling] into question the validity of that nostalgia, based as it is on faulty recollections.” Jennifer M. Kapczynksi, “Negotiating Nostalgia: The GDR Past in Berlin 353

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Is in Germany and Good Bye, Lenin!”, Germanic Review, vol. 82, iss. 1 (2007), pp. 78‒100, here p. 85. Ahbe, Ostalgie, p. 6. Cooke, “Performing ‘Ostalgie’”, p. 157. Another variation of the format of quiz shows which recall long-lost times was introduced on German television in 2009 with the Quiz der Deutschen [Quiz about Germans/Germany, ARD, 2009 and 2010], which has seen numerous episodes since then. In October 2010, twenty years after German unification, team “East” (former ice-skating princess Kati Witt, newsreader Jens Riewa, and gentleman boxer Henry Maske) competed against team “West” (newsreader Ulrich Wickert, actor Ingo Naujoks, and the blonde-bombshell wife of a bakery chain millionaire, Gülcan Kamps). As in previous shows, quiz master Frank Plasberg delivered questions about the sixteen German states and set up challenges such as launching the Oktoberfest by tapping a beer keg or matching pairs of shoes to prominent individuals. Crypto-ethnic differences between “Wessis” and “Ossis” thus continue to be identified and confirmed in a light-hearted manner. In the original: “heimatlos […], und diese Heimatlosigkeit prägt ihren Umgang mit der Gegenwart und Vergangenheit.” Thomas Goll, “Einführung— Erinnerungskultur und Ostalgie”, in Thomas Goll and Thomas Leuerer (eds.), Ostalgie als Erinnerungskultur? Symposium zu Lied und Politik in der DDR, (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2004), pp. 9‒15, here p. 12. Joachim Gauck quoted in Barbara Spinelli, Der Gebrauch der Erinnerung: Europa und das Erbe des Totalitarismus (Munich: Antje Kunstmann, 2002), p. 171. Cf. Ahbe, Ostalgie, p. 44. Cooke, “Surfing for Eastern Difference”, p. 214. Dominic Boyer, “Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany”, Public Culture, 18/2 (2006), pp. 361‒81, here pp. 374‒75. Boyer points out that “two of the best known Ostalgie hits over the past ten years—the magazine Super-Illu and the film Goodbye, Lenin!—were conceptualized and engineered by West Germans.” Cf. Patricia Hogwood, “‘Red is for Love….’ Citizens as Consumers in East Germany”, in Jonathan Grix and Paul Cooke (eds.), East German Distinctiveness in a Unified Germany (Birmingham: Birmingham University Press, 2002), pp. 45‒60, here p. 54. Christian V. Ditfurth, Ostalgie oder linke Alternative (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1998), p. 273. Boyer, Spirit and System, p. 7. Cooke, “Performing ‘Ostalgie’”, p. 157. In the original: “Nachdem uns die PDS […] Ostalgie zur Hauptsendezeit eingebrockt hat, steht jetzt [...] zu befürchten, dass dank der SPD eine Welle von Westalgie auf uns zurollt. Beim Westfernsehen wird man die Archive plündern und uns mit Reanimationen von Peter Frankenfeld, Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff, Heintje und Peter Alexander traktieren sowie mit lustigen Familienshows, in denen Nierentische, Nirosta-Spülen, fesche Fönfrisuren, Lufthansa-Cocktails und fröhliche Käferrennen eine tragende Rolle spielen.” Anon., “Ein Kessel BRD: Aus dem Reichstag”, Die Welt, 22 Aug. 2003. Berdahl, “‘(N)Ostalgie’ for the Present”, p. 207. In the original: “Historienspektakel mit tausenden von Statisten, die Transparente schwenkten und auf der Mauer tanzten [...]; nur eine Minderheit spürte das 354

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Bedürfnis, die Ost-Darsteller nach der Premiere näher kennen zu lernen.” Susanne Gaschke, “Neues Deutschland: Sind wir eine Wirtschaftsgesellschaft?”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B1-2 (2000), pp. 22‒27, here p. 22. In the original: “Die Vorstellung, die östlichen Umbrüche könnten womöglich nur ein Vorspiel weitreichenden sozialen Wandels auch im Westen sein, galt […] als absonderlich.” Dieter Klein, “Zwischen ostdeutschen Umbrüchen und westdeutschem Wandlungsdruck”, in Raj Kollmorgen, Rolf Reißig, and Johannes Weiß (eds.), Sozialer Wandel und Akteure in Ostdeutschland: Empirische Befunde und theoretische Ansätze (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1996), pp. 17‒39, here p. 17. Cf. Roland Gross, Das Bundesarbeitsgericht und der Beitrittsdeutsche (Dresden: GMS Schriftenreihe, 1996). Alemann quoted in Rudolf Woderich, “Peripherienbildung und kulturelle Identität”, in Kollmorgen, Reißig, and Weiß (eds.), Sozialer Wandel und Akteure in Ostdeutschland: Empirische Befunde und theoretische Ansätze (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1996), pp. 81‒99, here p. 87. Freis and Jopp, Spuren der deutschen Einheit, p. 265. Paul Cooke, “Whatever Happened to Veronika Voss? Rehabilitating the ‘68ers’ and the Problem of Westalgie in Oskar Roehler’s Die Unberührbare (2000)”, German Studies Review, 27/1 (2004), pp. 33‒44, here p. 35. Naughton, That Was the Wild East, pp. 126. Ibid. Ibid., p. 143. The same is true of No More Mr Nice Guy, one of many Heimat films picking up on the stereotypical iconography of the American Western in an attempt to invert values and viewpoints. It features landscapes reminiscent of the desert and the prairie, mise- en-scènes complete with campfires and horses, and quotes from various spaghetti Westerns, with regard to stand-off scenes, hold-ups and the way characters enter a bar. The German protagonists find a new Heimat further to the East, in their comrade Viktor’s homeland Russia. “Viktor’s village is presented as lively and associated with fecundity. Viktor and a few neighbours examine home-grown vegetables collected in a wicker basket […]. As distinct from Germany, where families are dying out, in the Russian village we see hordes of children and relatives of various ages delighting in one another’s company outdoors.” Ibid., pp. 163‒64. The film’s portrayal of Russia as a pre-industrial idyll evokes in turn memories of Germany in the nineteenth century—celebrated and eternalized in the Heimat literature of Ganghofer and Thoma, at the height of the Heimat literature boom. Ibid., pp. 146‒47. Ibid., p. 155. Willi Höfig, Der deutsche Heimatfilm, 1947‒1960 (Stuttgart: Enke, 1973), p. 347. Naughton, That Was the Wild East, p. 139. East Berlin’s Junge Welt featured the article “‘Dein Lebens-Budget voll ausschöpfen’: Regisseur Vadim Glowna mit Der Brocken im Berlinale-Wettbewerb”, 21 Feb. 1992. Michael Walsh, “National Cinema, National Imaginary”, Film History, 8 (1996), pp. 5‒17, here p. 6. “Each reaches back to a past which is inaccessible to the other, from which images are drawn which are completely and utterly his or her own and peculiar to 355

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him or her. And that half of the partnership that feels him- or herself to be in a position of disadvantage will tend to belatedly retouch and transfigure particular periods and experiences from his or her past life and in doing so sideline any unpleasant and shameful aspects.” In the original: “Jeder greift auf eine dem anderen unzugängliche Vergangenheit zurück, aus der Vorstellungen des ganz und gar Eigenen und Geheimen geschöpft werden. Besonders derjenige Partner, der sich in der unterlegenen Position fühlt, wird zu nachträglichen Verschönerungen und Verklärungen bestimmter Perioden und Erlebnisse seines Vorlebens neigen und dabei unangenehme, mißliche und beschämende Aspekte beiseite schieben.” Bude, Die ironische Nation, p. 61. 243 “Westalgia? Is there such a thing? Of course there is. […] The comparison of living standards pre and post the collapse and dissolution of the GDR state is pursued in the West almost as obsessively as in the East. […] In left-wing circles the good old FRG with its fat chancellor, its Easter marches and protests against militarism, nuclear armament and environmental destruction is missed dreadfully. […] There may not have been a Pioneer Youth movement, but the population was integrated into the state at least as well by means of other mechanisms. […] For the first generation after the war the national myths of the FRG involved reconstruction, integration into the Western alliance, and the economic miracle; the following generation has long since styled the sixties and the break with traditions into a myth.” In the original: “Westalgie? Gibt es das überhaupt? Natürlich gibt es sie […] Der Vergleich der Lebensituation vor der Wende und nach der Wende wird im Westen mindestens so exzessiv betrieben, wie im Osten. [...] [I]n linken Kreisen wird die gute alte BRD schmerzlich vermisst, mit ihrem dicken Bundeskanzler, [...] mit Ostermärschen und Protesten gegen Militarismus, Kernkraft und Umweltzerstörung. [...] Eine Pionierjugend gab es zwar nicht, die Bevölkerung wurde mittels anderer Mechanismen mindestens genauso gut in das Staatswesen integriert [...]. Die ‘nationalen Mythen’ der BRD bestanden für die erste Nachkriegsgeneration in Wiederaufbau, Westintegration und Wirtschaftswunder, die nachfolgende Generation hat die sechziger Jahre und den versuchten Bruch mit dieser Tradition längst zu einem Mythos stilisiert.” Jan Birkhahn, “Es war nicht alles schlecht in der BRD: Die Westalgie der Sieger”, Störtebeker: Zeitschrift am Fachbereich Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften der Freien Universität Berlin, no. 41 (1999), p. 10. 244 “Local and outside verifications suggest that there continue to exist great differences between East and West Germans. The presumption that, as opposed to the early period after reunification, these differences have grown even greater has become a topic of public discussion, as much as the reciprocal reproaches, that each side is unable to summon up any understanding for the specific problems faced by those in the other part of the country. Undisputed differences were speedily interpreted as consequences of different character studies, an (open) Ostalgia and a (somewhat hidden) Westalgia affected the way many people saw things.” In the original: “Eigene und fremde Untersuchungen legen den Schluss nahe, dass zwischen Ost- und Westdeutschen weiterhin große Unterschiede bestehen. Die Vermutung, dass gegenüber früheren Zeiten diese Unterschiede sogar größer geworden seien, wurde zum Bestandteil der öffentlichen Diskussion, ebenso wie die gegenseitigen Vorwürfe, für die spezifischen Probleme des jeweils anderen Landesteiles kein Verständnis aufzubringen. Objektiv bestehende Unterschiede wurden flugs als Konsequenzen unterschiedlicher Charakterstudien aufgefasst, eine (offene) Ostalgie und eine (eher 356

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versteckte) Westalgie prägten die Sichtweise vieler Menschen.” Arthur Fischer et al., Jugend 2000‒13: Shell Jugendstudie (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 2000), p. 284. Widespread usage of the term was first demonstrated by the PDS. Cf. Cornelia Schmitz, “Die PDS auf Kurs: Mit Energie und Leidenschaft für eine sozialistische Zukunft”, Das Parlament, 21 Oct. 2000, p. 43. Thomas Brussig, “Liebe zu Zeiten der Kohl-Ära”, Der Spiegel, 5 (2001), pp. 168‒70, here p. 169. In the original: “mit seiner typischen behüteten Westkindheit […] ja eigentlich gar nichts über Grenzerfahrungen von Schmerz und Verzweiflung wissen [zu können].” Matthias Heine, “Es war nicht alles schlecht—Sommer der Westalgie: Die alte Bundesrepublik war nie so langweilig, wie man uns einreden will”, Die Welt, 1 July 2003. Otthein Rammstedt and Gert Schmidt (eds.), BRD ade! Vierzig Jahre in RückAnsichten von Sozial- und Kulturwissenschaftlern (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1992). In their introduction the editors explain: “Bye-bye GDR! That’s a risk-free announcement. […] But the FRG-model in the sense of ‘our’ basic law has also been discontinued.” In the original: “DDR ade!, das ist risikofrei als Aussage. […] Aber auch das Modell Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Sinne ‘unseres’ Grundgesetzes ist ausgelaufen.” Ibid., p. 13. Georg Diez (ed.), Das war die BRD: Fast vergessene Geschichten, Mit Beiträgen von Sibylle Berg, Maxim Biller, Doris Dörrie, Günter Gaus, Roger Willemsen und vielen anderen (Munich: Goldmann, 2001). Cf. Florian Illies, Generation Golf: Eine Inspektion (Berlin: Argon, 2000). Seen in Cologne in the 1980s. Patrick Süskind quoted in Heneghan, Unchained Eagle, p. 143. Boyer, “Ostalgie and the Politics of the Future in Eastern Germany”, p. 380. Ibid. Thomas Elsaesser, “The Heimat-Film”, Deutscher Heimatfilm, II/1‒II/14, Goethe Institute (1988), pp. 1‒14, here p. 5. Alasdair King, “Placing Green Is the Heath (1951): Spatial Politics and Emergent West German Identity”, in Randall Halle and Margaret McCarthy (eds.), Light Motives: German Popular Film in Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2003), pp. 130‒47, here p. 145. Rhys W. Williams, “‘Mein Unbewusstes kannte … den Fall der Mauer und die deutsche Wiedervereinigung nicht’: The Writer Hans-Ulrich Treichel”, German Life and Letters, 55/2 (2002), pp. 208‒18, here p. 208. Cf. Ironically this predominantly hostile, at times misinformed but always highly opinionated perspective is reflected in Rita Kuczynski’s anthology Ostdeutschland war nie etwas Natürliches: Deutschlandkenner aus Mittel- und Osteuropa, Frank-reich, Großbritannien und den USA über das vereinte Deutschland (Berlin: Parthas, 2005). In the original: “Im Herbst 1989 habe ich mir eine bessere DDR, nicht eine größere Bundesrepublik erhofft. Doch die Geschichte ist anders verlaufen. Nostalgie gibt es nun in beiden deutschen Teilgesellschaften. Beide Arten von Nostalgie sind mir fremd. […] Wohin wir gucken sehen wir Westalgie—bis in die letzte Verteidigung von Fehlern. Sie ist ein politisches Prinzip […], aber sie ist auch ein mentaler Schutzraum, in den Menschen sich zurückziehen, ein Haltepunkt, der es ihnen ermöglichen soll, sich in den Umbrüchen und Umwälzungen zu orientieren, denen sie sich ausgesetzt sehen.” Lothar Bisky, 357

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“10 Jahre deutsche Einheit—10 Jahre PDS”, speech in Cottbus, 14‒15 Oct. 2000, on the occasion of the Parteitag der PDS, partly reprinted in Disput, 10 (2000), pp. 8‒10, here p. 9. Ibid. In the original: “Neue Sichtweisen auf gar nicht so lang zurückliegende Zeiten? Fehlanzeige. Gar ein formales Risiko? Dito. […] nostalgische Verständigungsfilme für ein möglichst großes Publikum […] Ihre Devise: Bloß nicht wehtun, bloß nichts wagen, aber viele kollektive ‘Ahas’ evoziieren.” Gerrit Bartels, “Wie die Westalgie das Laufen lernte. Nostalgische Verständigungsfilme: Mit der Verfilmung erfolgreicher Pop- und Erinnerungsbücher wie etwa Liegen lernen und Herr Lehmann vergewissert sich das deutsche Kino flächendeckend der westdeutschen Achtziger- und Neunzigerjahre.” die tageszeitung, 9 Apr. 2005. Rocko Schamoni, Dorfpunks: Roman (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 2004). A film adaptation of Dorfpunks was released in 2009 and hailed as a “wonderfully absurd Heimat film”. “Regisseur Lars Jessen […] verwandelt den autobiographischen Roman [...] in einen herrlich absurden Heimatfilm.” Anon., “Kino in Kürze”, Der Spiegel, 17 (2009), p. 145. Heine, “Es war nicht alles schlecht”. Richard D. Precht, Lenin kam nur bis Lüdenscheid: Meine kleine deutsche Revolution (Berlin: Claassen, 2005). Jess Joachimsen, Das Dosenmilch-Trauma: Bekenntnisse eines 68er-Kindes (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch, 2000). Hell and von Moltke, “Unification Effects”, p. 86. Ibid. Jürgen Teipel, Verschwende Deine Jugend: Ein Doku-Roman über den deutschen Punk und New Wave (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2001). In the original: “Sommer der Westalgie […], dieses schwammige Sehnsuchtsgefühl”. Heine, “Es war nicht alles schlecht”. Ibid. Bude, Die ironische Nation, p. 7. Hell and von Moltke, “Unification Effects”, p. 91. Leander Haußmann, “Simplicissimus in Berlin: Der als Popsänger bekannt gewordene Sven Regener hat einen amüsanten Großstadtroman geschrieben”, Der Spiegel, 33 (2001), pp.172‒73. Roger Fornoff, “Jede Fusion hat ihre Verlierer: Über Popliteratur, Mauerfall und politische Lethargie der Generation Golf”, Glossen, 24 (2006), available at http:// www.dickinson.edu/glossen/, retrieved Dec. 2006. In the original: “neue Liebe zu Region, Stadt, Kiez, eine Reaktion auf die Zunahme von Mobilität und Flexibilität”. Bernhard Schlink, Heimat als Utopie, Sonderdruck, (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000), p. 22. The full quote runs as follows: “The new love of region, city, neighbourhood was and is a reaction to a new, in no way exclusively German experience of alienation. In earlier times our way of life was so multiform and differentiated by differences in cities and landscapes, profession and status, or cultural, religious and political milieus, that feelings of alienation, of uniformity and anonymity, of being lost or unsafe, of exposure and homelessness came about and were explained not through something concrete, but rather in something abstract, in conditions relating to production and property, in the attitude of a person towards God or when faced by questions of existence or nothingness. Today life threatens to become so uniform and faceless, that alienation can be experienced in and explained by life itself.” In the original: 358

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“Die neue Liebe zu Region, Stadt und Kiez war und ist auch eine Reaktion auf eine neue, keineswegs ausschließlich deutsche Entfremdungserfahrung. Früher war die konkrete Lebenswelt durch die Verschiedenheit der Städte und Landschaften, Berufe und Stände, kulturellen, religiösen und politischen Milieus so vielgestaltig und verschiedenartig, daß das Gefühl der Entfremdung, der Uniformität und Anonymität, der Verlorenheit, Ungeborgenheit oder Unbehaustheit seinen Anhalt und seine Erklärung nicht in Konkretem, sondern in Abstraktem fand, in den Produktions- und Eigentumsverhältnissen, der Stellung des Menschen vor Gott oder der gegenüber dem Sein und dem Nichts. Heute droht die Lebenswelt so gleichförmig und gesichtslos zu werden, daß die Entfremdung in ihr selbst erfahrbar und aus ihr selbst erklärbar wird.” Ibid., pp. 21‒22. In the original: “die vorerst beste Heimatlosigkeit, die ich mir vorstellen konnte.” Hans-Ulrich Treichel, Der Entwurf des Autors: Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000), p. 32. Ibid., p. 36. Sven Regener, Herr Lehmann: Ein Roman (Frankfurt: Eichborn, 2001). In the original: “Die Öffnung der Mauer hat in gewisser Weise mein System von Wahrnehmung und Nichtwahrnehmung zum Einsturz gebracht. [...] Ich hatte bisher zuwenig von der Welt wahrgenommen und erwachte aus diesem Wirklichkeitsdefizit, aus dieser negativen Wirklichkeitsbetrunkenheit mit einer migränenhaften Verstimmung und Melancholie.” Treichel, Der Entwurf des Autors, pp. 44‒45. Ibid. Werner Eckelt, Requiem auf West-Berlin—Bilder aus einer verlorenen Zeit (Berlin: Henschel, 2000). Ironically, the nostalgia extends to the old East Berlin; 2005 saw a new edition of the “Ost-Berlin” Buch, originally published in 1987 in the FRG and indexed in the GDR. Cf. Harald Hauswald and Lutz Rathenow, Ost-Berlin: Leben vor dem Mauerfall [Life before the Wall Fell] (Berlin: Jaron, 2005). Other recent examples of these expressions of Westalgia are Gabriel Wachter, War jewesen: West-Berlin 1961‒1989 (Berlin: Parthas, 2009) and Annett Groschner, Heimatkunde Berlin (Hamburg: Hoffman & Campe, 2010). In the original: “die ‘Mauer im Kopf’ als City-Erlebnis; Westalgie und Ostalgie als Kiezerfahrung”. Klaus Hartung, “Aufbruch ins Zentrum: Berlin ist nicht das Symbol der Vereinigungsmisere, sondern der Ort eines neuen Anfangs”, Die Zeit, no. 38 (1998). Habermas condemned the “hippie scene […], drugs [and] other sedatives […] such as yoga and Zen Buddhism”, claiming that they channelled “outwardly directed protests into apolitical paths”. Jürgen Habermas, “Student Protest in the Federal Republic of Germany”, in Jürgen Habermas, Toward a Rational Society, translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro (London: Heinemann, 1971), pp. 13‒30, here p. 27. Hans Weingartner quoted in Kerry Lengel, “The Edukators”, Arizona Republic, 16 Sep. 2005. Ibid. Leander Scholz, Rosenfest: Roman (Munich: Carl Hanser, 2001), and Fridolin Schley, Verloren, mein Vater. Roman (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2001). Cf. Rachel Palfreyman, “Holding on and Letting Go: Trauma between the Generations in the Heimat Mode”, in Paul Cooke and Marc Silberman (eds.), Screen359

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ing War: Perspectives on German Suffering (Rochester: Camden House, 2010), pp. 145‒64, here p. 163. Habermas, “Student Protest in the Federal Republic of Germany”, p. 24. Ibid., p. 25. One such real-life initiative can be seen in the act of naming and renaming certain locations. In August 2005, a section of Kochstraße—the street housing Springer Corporation’s provocative high-rise in the vicinity of the former Berlin Wall, and the site of student protests against the conservative media landscape— was renamed Rudi-Dutschke-Straße. In this context, it is important to note that the “68” myth is not a collectively shared narrative; it still polarizes society. Despite its implications, the 68-er label does not refer to a homogeneous generation; nor is the period unanimously celebrated. Moreover, it remains an aspect of a Western discourse as there is no evidence of a simultaneous societal rupture in the former East. One could go as far to say that while West Germans overcame the mentality of the “Untertan” [underling] through the impulses generated from 1967 onwards, this became possible for most East Germans only after 1989. In the original: “Brennend heiβer Wüstensand / so schӧn, schӧn war die Zeit / Fern so fern das Heimatland / [...] Dort wo die Blumen blühn / dort wo die Tӓlern grün / da war ich einmal zu Hause / Wo ich die Liebste fand / da liegt mein Heimatland / [...] Viele Jahre, schwere Fron / Harte Arbeit, karger Lohn / Tagaus, tagein, kein Glück, kein Heim.” Freddy Quinn, “Heimweh”, 1956. In the original: “Geschichte, die in eingängigen Bildern und Erzählungen verdichtet wird, kann als mythologische Last in die Zukunft mitgenommen werden.” Dierk Spreen, “Mythos RAF”, Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 129/130 (2005), pp. 199‒204, here p. 199. In the original: “sinngenerierende[n] Großerzählungen, die sowohl auf die Vergangenheit als auch in die Zukunft gerichtet sein können”. Herfried Münckler, “Die Logik des Mythos: Eine kleine politische Mythengeschichte der Bundesrepublik”, Ästhetik und Kommunikation, 129/130 (2005), pp. 61‒71, here p. 61. In the original: “narrative Bewältigung einer Wirklichkeit [...], die in ihrer Unmittelbarkeit und Unvermittelbarkeit für die Menschen schrecklich und unerträglich ist”. Ibid., p. 65. In the original: “viel über das Unbehagen am Eigenen, über latente kollektive Wünsche, Vorbehalte und Verweise.” Spreen, “Mythos RAF”, p. 199. Hans-Christoph Blumenberg, Arbeit am Mythos (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1979), p. 9. Cf. Münckler, “Die Logik des Mythos”, pp. 65‒66. Roland Barthes, Mythen des Alltags (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1964), p. 7. Wolfgang Becker quoted in Martin Blaney, “Good Bye, Lenin! Hello Success!”, Kino, 2 (2003), pp. 16‒17, here p. 16. Ibid., p. 17. Ibid.

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Concurrently with the rediscovery of East Germany in Ostalgie films and of the pre-unification Federal Republic in Westalgie films, other trends emerged in film production. One trend was towards the medium of television at the expense of cinema; another was towards home-grown productions. “Polls have indicated that at the end of the century German television audiences increasingly preferred domestic products to imports” and subsequently “the number of new, made-for-television films increased, to the point where about two hundred are being produced per year in Germany and shown primarily during prime-time.”1 Some of these productions have only limited artistic value and are often formulaic genre films, many of them “regionally inflected, set in particular cities or geographical locales that reflect the regional broadcasting company of the federal broadcasting system”.2 However, audience appreciation has grown. While in the late 1980s and early 90s the domestic market share of German films hovered around five per cent, the proportion has steadily increased since then, reaching twenty-five per cent in 2010. Critics have bemoaned the production of mostly uninspiring, light-weight comedies in the 1990s—one of the many manifestations of the “Spaßgesellschaft” [society driven by and seeking fun and entertainment]. The perceived staleness of German film production during the 1990s provoked one academic to speak of a post-Wall German cinema of consensus.3 This often disputed blanket statement was partly borne out of the undiminished reverence for West German cinema of the 1970s, but seemed also to be a crude response to the apparent lack of a new school of critical film-making. Despite a period of rapid and radical social change from 1989, German film-makers on the whole seemed to shy away from controversial and divisive representations of harsh realities in favour of “feel-good” entertainment. Indeed, instead of revolutionary fervour, many German production companies pursued comedies and other amusement formats not too dissimilar to the artistic responses which dominated during the 1950s. However, with regard to the Heimat genre—despite the ever-present formulaic productions—a new sensibility and a novel development became apparent in the late 1990s. Amidst the mostly light-hearted entertainment films on German screens, including Ostalgic and Westalgic films, nostalgia for Heimat values became evident in many aspects of the country’s consumer culture; now the deeper meaning of Heimat and its values, rather than the superficial, was sought by many. According to research conducted by Germany’s pre-eminent weekly news magazine Der Spiegel in 1999, the relevance and importance of the concept of Heimat had increased, in particular with the arrival of the age of globalization.4 Joseph Vilsmaier’s Herbstmilch [Autumn Milk, 1989] and 361

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Schlafes Bruder [Sleep’s Brother, 1995] proved to popular and critical audiences that the Heimat film genre was far from dead. Vilsmaier’s ambition to renew the genre—albeit outcompeted by Ostalgic and Westalgic fare throughout most of the 1990s—seems to have been re-ignited in the early twenty-first century. Recent years have seen a number of celebrated films overcoming tired clichés and worn-out storylines. As a result, the Heimat genre has been resurrected as the best medium for a home-grown film industry trying to distance itself from the Spaßgesellschaft image of the 1990s and its many comedies by increasing the production of more serious entertainment and problem films with academic as well as popular appeal. The stultifying Heimat film staple produced by television for the masses was rejuvenated by cinema productions which departed radically from the 1950s formula towards a revival of the critical Heimat films of the 1970s. Since the 1990s, production companies have backed films that present Heimat as problematic, Heimat as hurtful, as well as love-hate relationships with Heimat. These films all reflect the ambivalence between the longing and contempt or hatred for one’s place of birth apparently felt by a large and increasing section of the population—an ironic contrast to the rather unpopular New German Cinema from which they took some of their cues. The anti-Heimat films of the late 1960s and 70s which catapulted German film into international stardom had worked largely on the principle of alienation. Nevertheless, despite the glowing critical and international reviews which most of Fassbinder’s and Schlöndorff’s works had received at the time, their films had lacked a national audience. The relative unpopularity of the New (West) German Cinema in its country of origin was attributed in part to its perceived refusal to take seriously the audience’s need for entertainment. Likewise, its non-commercial bent and its penchant for intellectually challenging narratives left many viewers feeling “intellectually inferior”.5 The productions of the 1990s were more successful at playing to critics and the masses alike, and their strategies can therefore be likened to those used by Edgar Reitz since the 1980s. Reitz’s first series of Heimat, which coincided with a widely received reappraisal of the notion of Heimat in West Germany, registered positively with critics, as he and other film-makers “increasingly tried to reconcile social criticism, local colour and aspects of light movies” throughout the 1980s.6 Marianne Rosenbaum’s Peppermint Frieden [Peppermint Peace, 1982], Klaus Gietinger and Leo Hiemer’s Daheim sterben die Leut’ [The People Are Dying at Home, 1984], and Christian Wagner’s Wallers letzter Gang [Waller’s Last Journey, 1988] are early examples of this trend, which married humour and social criticism. Fittingly, as part of the general reform of the Heimat topos and its associated genre, the international film festival circus has responded positively to the presence of local fare by establishing corresponding outlets, such as an annual festival exclusively featuring the “neue Heimatfilm” [new Heimat film], which was established in 1988. Over the years, this festival has gained an international reputation, having successfully brought together directors, films, and audiences under a broad interpretation of the term “Heimat”. The festival programme deliberately includes low-budget films which “solely as a result of their theme (country life/life in the country) and style are unable to draw large audiences in day-to-day cinema operations”.7 By showcasing local talent and helping to expose noncommercial productions featuring Heimat issues to a larger audience, the 362

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organizers also intended to free the term “Heimat film” from the clichés that surround it.8 Over the past two decades, the festival organizers have invited submissions from all over the world, thus aiding in the reconceptualization of the Heimat genre away from the iconography of Alpine or other panGermanic settings, and also extending a genre thus far defined solely by feature film formats to include short film and documentary as well. Given the broadened concept of Heimat, the festival has provided a rich tapestry of styles to its international audience and has aided in the reclamation of a genre from the tired stereotypes of the 1950s Heimat film melodramas and comedies. In Germany alone, the Heimat film production has continued with a broad range of films throughout the 1990s and into the early twenty-first century. The short films—Siegfried Fruhauf’s Höhenrausch [High-Altitude Euphoria, 1999] and David Kleinl’s Festung Heimat [Fortress Heimat, 2003]—were entered into festival programmes under the label “Heimatfilm” in 2004, as were feature films such as Erwin Keusch and Karl Saurer’s Der Hunger, der Koch und das Paradies [Hunger, Cook, and Paradise, 1981] and documentaries such as Benjamin Geissler’s Bilder finden [Finding Images, 2002], as well as Korean-German director Sung-Hyung Cho’s homage to the northern German village of Wacken and its annual Heavy Metal Festival in Full Metal Village—Ein Heimatfilm (2007). Other examples from around the turn of the millenium include Jo Baier’s Wildfeuer [Wild Fire, 1991], Dagmar Wagner’s Das Ei ist eine geschissene Gottesgabe [The Egg Is a Sh**** Gift of God, 1992], Stefan Ruzowitzky’s tragedy Die Siebtelbauern [The Inheritors, 1998], Ian Dilthey’s Das Verlangen [Longing, 2002], Andreas Dresen’s Herr Wichmann von der CDU [Mr Wichmann of the CDU, 2003], Dagmar Knöpfel’s Durch diese Nacht sehe ich keinen einzigen Stern [During This Night I See Not One Star, 2004], Wolfram Paulus’s Augenleuchten [Sparkling Eyes, 2004], and Hans Steinbichler’s Winterreise [Winter Journey, 2006]. Each is testimony to the richness of contemporary Heimat films, combining humour, social criticism, and a critical and self-reflective use of the genre. Responding to the receptiveness of new audiences to Heimat tales, TV stations too have invested in the genre and have backed stories about German history and its provinces. “ZDF’s epic three-part film version of the novel The Shop [Der Laden, 1998] by Jo Baier, who specializes in historical heimat film materials, successfully used authentic settings and characters.”9 This was followed by Xaver Schwarzenberger’s 1809—Die Freiheit des Adlers [The Freedom of the Eagle, 2002], Jo Baier’s Schwabenkinder [Swabian Children, 2003], and Bavarian state television‒commissioned Gipfelsturm [Summit Storm, 2006] by Bernd Fischerauer. Then in 2005, “Xaver Schwarzenberger illustrated very effectively the life story of the doll manufacturer Margarete Steiff for the German TV station ARD.”10 In 2007, this trend continued with Kai Wessel’s two-part series Die Flucht [The Flight, 2007], also broadcast on ARD, and once again moved into controversial territory. The re-enactment of suffering and loss experienced by millions of refugees and expellees at the end of the Second World War sparked a media frenzy before and after the screening, debating the rightful place of German victims in public discourse. “Germans as victims—previously a taboo theme. For some years the forgotten refugees from the east of the Reich (who fled the eastern regions of 363

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the Reich when the USSR invaded in 1945) have made it into documentary programs and have found a home in the collective consciousness of a nation.”11 Reviewers were keen to call upon the Heimat context by referring to the lost Heimat, the burnt Heimat,12 and the late recognition of the victims in the German psyche, thus finally affording them a mental Heimat. Reaching a mass audience of 11 million (Part 1) and 10 million (Part 2) with its first screening in the winter of 2007,13 the orchestrated advertisement campaign and the reviews blithely citing the theory of the supposed taboo on the subject sparked an explosion of critical voices keen to ensure that the Heimat topic was not once again tainted by revanchist rhetoric.14 An identical response from intellectuals came to the fore after the similarly popular screenings of Roland Suso Richter’s TV drama Dresden in 2006 and HansChristoph Blumenberg’s three-part docu-drama Die Kinder der Flucht [The Refugee Children, 2006]. Irrespective of an individual’s moral position, the discussion added to the increasingly complex critical discourse on Heimat. In contrast to previous decades, since the 1990s the Heimat genre—with its diverse narratives, styles, and production formats—has defied easy labelling. Comedies and tragedies coexist, as do realism and fantasy, positive and negative depictions of society, or even fairytale-type stories. Critics have correctly identified this multifaceted reality by claiming that the “genre is once again adapting to the zeitgeist”, affording film-makers and writers the freedom to understand Heimat not simply as a place of origin, and utilizing “the heimat film as a balanced reflection on this. Landscapes, local costumes and dialects [...] now served neither to create a showy effect nor its opposite, a symbol of backwardness, but to illustrate living environments.”15 In particular, it is Heimat as a “real, self-enclosed cosmos”16 that draws film-makers to the microcosmic site of negotiations and clashes between self and society, a fact reflected in such diverse films as Alexandra Sell’s documentary Durchfahrtsland [Transit Country, 2005], about two villages on the river Rhine, and Sven Taddicken’s Emmas Glück [Emma’s Bliss, 2006], which was celebrated as a Heimat film at the 2006 Munich Film Festival, as well as at the 2007 Goethe Institute’s Film Festival in Australia—a festival which explicitly featured “Heimat” as “one of the leitmotifs” with feature films such as Grave Decisions, Heavyweights, and Emma’s Bliss.17 Partly because of the increasing popularity of internet video-sharing facilities such as YouTube and other providers which aid the distribution of film files, as well as the more traditional and established mass communication channels in the form of festivals, television, and mainstream cinemas, the most recent generation of Heimat films have been able to reach considerably larger audiences and to emerge from the intellectual domain.18 Playing to local and international audiences, these new Heimat films present universal tales and marry them with markers that invite recognition from a German audience by making it easy, for example, to identify regions in Germany by way of real-life village names, dialects, and dress—but also through timeless stories of problems and quests, which are recognizably relevant to the human condition as a whole rather than to a particular nation or region. Directors such as Thomas Kronthaler from Bavaria (Die Scheinheiligen [The Hypocrites], 2001), Thomas Imbach from Switzerland (Lenz, 2006), the northern German Valeska Grisebach (Sehnsucht [Longing], 2006), and the southern German Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s (Der Rӓuber Kneiβl [Robber Kneissl], 364

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2008) can be credited with the renaissance of the new Heimat film in German-language cinema, which manifested itself in a flood of new releases in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Three recent examples of critically acclaimed Heimat problem films that have succeeded not only in Germany but also further afield are Hans Sebastian Steinbichler’s Hierankl (2003), Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem (2005), and Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s Wer früher stirbt, ist länger tot [Grave Decisions, 2006].

Hans Sebastian Steinbichler’s Hierankl (2003) The film’s title Hierankl refers to an isolated farmstead, an Einödhof [croft], close to the Bavarian Alps. Long ago, it had been Heimat to Lene, together with her parents and her brother Paul. She left her family’s sanctuary at barely eighteen years of age, after a disagreement with her mother Rosemarie, and chose not to go back for five years. When Lene impulsively decides to return, she is now twenty-three years old and living in Berlin. Her reentry into the world of her childhood coincides with her father’s sixtieth birthday and anticipates, if it does not exactly provoke, a clash with her mother. Steinbichler’s highly acclaimed debut feature19 uses this constellation as the starting-point for a Heimat film that incorporates ingredients from ancient tragedies (Oedipus, Elektra), the Old Testament, and fairy-tales (including symbolic animals and magic forests) when introducing the members of a Bavarian family and their deepest, darkest secrets. After years of absolutely no contact, Lene’s return is orchestrated around the element of surprise and a newfound strength to stand up to an overbearing mother who lacks warmth and joie de vivre. Indeed, both her parents seem to have egoistically pursued their individual lives, growing further and further apart as they seek self-fulfilment. As intellectuals, Lene’s parents, following the completion of their studies more than two decades ago, moved to the countryside to escape the rat-race of city life. Nevertheless, Hierankl became little more than an extension of their bourgeois lifestyle as they continue with their cultivation of the arts on their farm. Lene’s mother, trained as an architect and from a well-to-do Munich family, loves classical music, especially the Goldberg variations of Bach, which she liked the young Lene to play on the piano in an apparent attempt to recreate a Munich salon in Hierankl. Lene’s father, Lukas, who had inherited the Alpine domicile, loves literature and appears more an intellectual than a farmer. In keeping with their liberal attitudes, her parents also have a very open relationship, both engaging in extra-marital liaisons. As a young woman now sensitized to the tensions in the adult world, Lene witnesses these infidelities, which are new to her, but is more prepared to forgive her father than her estranged mother. Despite these obvious changes in the dynamics of her former home, her homecoming is rewarding; her room has been left unchanged and Lene explores her childhood world with all her senses—especially the smell and feel of the place. She finds a familiar dent in the wooden staircase with her fingers and rediscovers long-forgotten ornaments and treasures. Everything is still there: her piano, the accompanying chair, and her bike, albeit covered in dust. She also visits her childhood hideout, a tree-house, where she finds her old diary, 365

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an angel with a broken wing, and other memorabilia. Lene seems to slide back into her old haunts with ease, dives into the Alpine lake, walks in the fields, and cycles on the well-known paths. Nevertheless, the soundtrack by Danish composer Raz Ohara which accompanies these scenes implies at this early stage of the film that the stillness of the surface should not distract the audience from underlying ripples. The broken or fallen angel likewise alludes to a tragic ending. It is from the elevated position of her tree-house that Lene first encounters another visitor to Hierankl, a man in a white suit wearing city shoes and sunglasses, who looks rather out of place in the rural setting. The mysterious man turns out to be Goetz, who studied at university with her father. Lene has never met him, and neither of her parents has seen him for decades. Unable to connect emotionally with her mother, Lene feels all the more drawn to her parents’ old friend, to whom she develops an instant and profound attachment. During a hike up a nearby mountain, Goetz allows Lene insight into certain geographical and emotional landmarks that he shared with Lene’s mother, with whom Goetz had been terribly in love until his disappearance.20 Lene returns his show of confidence by taking Goetz into her mystical childhood forest, where their relationship turns sexual. Lene seems to have been rewarded for her courage in having returned— her homecoming providing her with a new understanding of her parents’ lives and the opportunity to forge a relationship across the generations with a family friend. The warmth and intensity of these new experiences contrast starkly with the cold and impersonal starting-point of Lene’s journey, Munich’s central train station. There she had asked herself not only whether she should go “nach Hause” (home to her chosen place of residence in Berlin), or to Hierankl (with all its Heimat and childhood connotations), but also three other questions important to her—whether she is sexually fulfilled, has a family, and is moving on in life.21 Having closed the door on her family for many years, she was able to answer only two of these questions in the affirmative. Yet now that she can answer all three questions in the affirmative, she is about to lose it all. Her decision to forgo the journey home in favour of visiting Hierankl reinforces her initial feeling that her childhood world is no longer her Heimat. At the same time, the landscape, images of family and feasts, and the warmth of the colours as she rediscovers the places of her childhood seem to contradict this sense of detachment. From the starkness and loneliness of the train station, Lene enters an increasingly welcoming environment, the Chiemgau, where personal ties and nature create a sense of community that is as beautiful as the Alpine location. Nevertheless, the small family living against a grand backdrop has big problems, and Lene’s search for a lost Heimat yields fragments of a hurtful past, when she discovers that her lover Goetz is actually her biological father. One by one, director Steinbichler introduces the characters and highlights how each harbours dark secrets and the ability to offer as well as to deny Heimat. In Lene’s case, Heimat meant one’s childhood as much as family, but in order to develop her own personality and identity, she had to break free. The film seems to highlight the need for emancipation from family and familiar surroundings, but problematizes the radical nature of a complete divorce from one’s past, demonstrating the likelihood of severing ties that are 366

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essential for one’s understanding of self and world. Finding the right balance between connection and freedom, and between ties to origin and the need for emancipation, ensures the development of personal identity. When the demarcation is unclear, as it is during Lene’s visit, the equilibrium of everyone involved is disturbed and scratches mar the surface of the seemingly perfect facades put up by the parent generation, whose members are shown to be incapable of dealing with the issues at hand. On her first walk with Goetz, Lene comes across an injured rabbit, lying in a pool of blood in the fields. As an act of mercy, Lene wants the rabbit to be killed and passes Goetz a big stone to deal the final blow. The older man refuses, however, and it appears that the old 68-generation is unable to deal with existential realities. Likewise, Goetz proves incapable of confronting the truth about his fatherhood and Lukas’s feelings of hurt and distrust. The final image of the film is of Lene broken down in the meadows, collapsed between Goetz and Lukas, like the wounded rabbit or—as the director himself remarks—a “waldwundes Reh” [wounded deer].22 Neither her biological father nor Lukas is able to deal with her pain. The animal and Lene alike require someone to make the decision to put them out of their misery or to try to ease their agony. Hierankl thus becomes a social parable about choices in life and the confronting aspects inherent in anyone’s Heimat. Despite the hurt, this rite of passage has confirmed for Lene her identity and her genealogy. Thus her childhood Heimat has proved essential in her self-discovery, a place to which she needed to return to finally understand herself. This journey has yielded insights about family and landscape, for Lene and Lukas. The end may even signal hope, with newly gained insights perhaps leading to a better life: Lukas comes to the realization that his son Paul—whom he has thus far openly despised for his suspected homosexuality, his inability to enter into relationships, or even to change23—is a product of himself, while the daughter he has always adored is not genetically his. Lene must likewise realize that she is more inclined to understand Lukas, who turns out to be unrelated to her, when she should feel so much more connected to her mother, with whom she has a very trying relationship. Rosemarie—who during the period of her courtship with Lukas was very much attracted to his “Kuhwärme” [animal warmth], as she recalls—now realizes that she has not allowed herself to become warm and loving in turn. Facing up to these disillusionments, in front of the deceptively beautiful backdrop of the Alps, the protagonists experience personal dramas of the type and scale that are thematized in major works of world literature, and they may perhaps be saved by turning to them once more. The quotations from Goethe’s Elective Affinities and Rilke’s poems recited by Lukas and Rosemary may, even in the face of utter despair, provide opportunities for all to find Heimat, solace, and comfort in the cosmos of language and culture. Fittingly, it is not the rural tradition that has made Hierankl the family home, as its latest inhabitants are no farmers and do not rely on working the land to live comfortably in the foothills of the Alps; rather, Lukas’s and Rosemarie’s respective inheritance seems to have allowed the family to live a bourgeois dream in their rural retreat, enjoying classical music and literature. Thus the film problematizes the shortcomings of a generation that has resolutely lived its own life at all costs; self-centred and pleasure-seeking, they are absorbed in high culture while neglecting their own children emotionally, with the re367

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sult that the latter exhibit no other purpose than self-gratification. The lack of direction and identity apparent in Lene and her brother Paul may be partly blamed on their parents, who have failed them either through ignorance or lack of effort. Nevertheless the film does not deny the possibility of finding one’s Heimat in the rural sphere, with the setting of the film recalling a cultural inheritance divorced from the traditional Heimat genre: the avant-garde Heimat that artists such as Wasily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter found in southern Bavaria. Indeed, not unlike the anti-realist tradition of those painters, Steinbichler’s setting is a “spiritual landscape: an old tree is Lene’s refuge, a mountain lake a reservoir of profound conflicts, a peak for the scene of a sexual as well as a dramatic climax”.24 Steinbichler’s debut feature film is shot in a landscape close to his own heart, a landscape that gives him a sense of security and provides him with an emotional map (he identifies closely with his childhood world of the Chiemgau, where every stone symbolizes a milestone for him—his first kiss, his first love).25 In this environment, the choice of the Heimat film genre is deliberate and not surprising. The director elaborates on his choice: “The term Heimat film meant for many years that happy people with cute little problems experience a happy ending, surrounded by green meadows. But for me Heimat film means the beginning of a new development.”26 To illustrate this point, he alludes to the inherent ambivalence of Heimat: “For Heimat always has at least two sides—a good one and a bad one. […] One sentence from Chris Krause’s film Dance of Shards says it all: ‘Heimat is right there where it hurts.’”27 Rather than supplying clichés, Steinbichler wants to show that Heimat film is more than “heile Welt” [intact world].28 Self-referentially, the characters in the film engage with the clichés one might expect from the iconography and character constellation. Thus both father and son Paul comment ironically, “Das klingt wie in einem Heimatfilm” [That sounds like it’s out of a Heimat film], to which Lukas replies, “Das ist ein Heimatfilm, Pauli!” [It is a Heimat film, Pauli!] Steinbichler plays with the hallmarks of the genre while deliberately breaking open the conventions and revoking the invitation to identify with the familiar. Dogma-like,29 with peaceful panoramic shots contrasted by stark details, the audience is alternately held at a distance and then drawn into the action. The landscape, familiar from traditional Heimat films—fields and hills bathed in sunlight, lush nature, and pleasant Bavarian countryside— loses its shine and confronts the audience with familiar conflicts: the secrets and lies of a small family unit, which inadvertently lead to incest. The inability of the protagonists to communicate with one another propels the catastrophe past the point of no return. Steinbichler saw several reasons for this lack of communication. On the one hand, conventions and traditions seem to imply that communication is unnecessary as everyone seems to agree how certain things are done or thought about, with the source of the problem to be found in the conservative approach to life. Moreover, Steinbichler identifies Bavaria as predestined for this inability to communicate and repression, as he diagnoses a tendency to delegate decisions upwards to God, the state, or institutions.30 Remorse and repentance acted out only in dialogue with God, but not with one’s family members, have led to a mute(d) society. In addition, this system has bred people who prefer silence to discussion; “in particular the people in the country […] prefer to remain silent than to speak. In the 368

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country conventions and rituals still function in a way that people can be destroyed by them.”31 These tensions—which Steinbichler, just like the Danish director Thomas Vinterberg in Festen [The Celebration, 1998], allows to rise to the surface on the occasion of a banquet for Lukas’s sixtieth birthday— reveal existential but ultimately hurtful truths. Rosemarie’s speech for her husband and her hypocritical attempt to bring some warmth and order into the closed world of Hierankl by inviting her husband’s mistress, precede and prepare for the showdown between mother and daughter in the bathroom. Responding to a provocation, Lene forces her mother to confront her own secrets by exposing not only Rosemarie’s extra-marital affair with Vincenz, but also her own affair with Goetz, of which Lukas had been unaware. It is this last confession that paves the way for the release of news that Lene does not want to hear—the truth about her own origins. Steinbichler’s debut can be compared to Francois Ozon’s Swimming Pool (2003)—a film whose audience he would have liked to reach with his own work32—as its protagonists are also forced to come to terms with reality and lost dreams. In Hierankl, the betrayal of the childhood dreams of every main character becomes apparent, including that of childhood friends Vincenz and Paul, Lene’s brother, who had wanted to live in a house in an open relationship together with several women with whom they wanted to have numerous children.33 Facing up to their shortcomings, lies, and secrets, each character could look towards making a new start, just as Steinbichler has shown a way out of the cage of the traditional Heimat film genre.34 By creatively assembling his film from images with a high recognition factor, while addressing problems less of regional than of existential proportions, Hierankl oscillates between the wider world and the small world within. This interplay was of interest to the director also with regard to the choice of actors. Steinbichler comments on the personal connections as well as audience preconceptions and expectations that led him to choose as main actors those who have touched him deeply in their roles. To Steinbichler, Lene’s father, played by Sepp Bierbichler, is a father figure and archetype, and he also greatly admires Fassbinder’s icon, Barbara Sukowa, who plays Lene’s mother. Steinbichler admits that it also had “something to do with Heimat”: “I’m thinking here of the Germany with Bonn as the capital city and Genscher as the foreign minister. I think it was a success what came into being here after 1945. We were more modest then. Germany was light and transparent then—the exact opposite of the new chancellery in Berlin. For me Barbara Sukowa is the 35 face of this Germany and in fact the German face per se.”

The combination of the greatness of the actors and the ordinary is also a wilfully constructed tension which Steinbichler employs to great psychological effect. With his choice of actors, Steinbichler attempts to steer the film’s reception in a certain direction, something he also pursues with his camera work. In the way he frames his shots and focuses on his subjects, Steinbichler at times tries to cage in the audience, by confronting it with the plight of the protagonists graphically and in full-screen portrait shots that do not allow the eye to rest on any background detail: “I didn’t want to offer any opportunities to choose […] I often deliberately chose the framing for the faces very narrowly so that you can’t get away from them.”36 He is aware of his power as 369

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creator (screenwriter and director). Just as Rilke alludes to the divine powers in his poem “Herbst” [Autumn]—to which both Lukas and Rosemarie refer—Steinbichler seems to see himself as the film’s artistic director when he quotes parts of the same poem: “We all fall […] / and yet there is one / who holds this descent / with infinite gentleness / in his hands.”37 The characters in Hierankl, as well as their respective successes and failures, are shown with tenderness and care, with the aesthetic marriage of the best visual tradition of the Heimat genre and elements from classical tragedy, thus making for one of the best films that reform the genre in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Hans
Christian Schmid’s Requiem (2005) As in the plot of Steinbichler’s Hierankl, Hans-Christian Schmid’s Requiem tracks the process by which a familiar place is transformed into a nightmare; thereby highlighting the dialectical quality of Heimat as much as its utopian side. If the traditional Heimat film profits from the idealized portrayal of German landscapes, people, and their traditions, Schmid arouses a sense of uneasiness about these assumptions in his fifth feature, the ambivalent Heimat film Requiem. Set in the early 1970s, Requiem tells the story of twenty-one-year-old Michaela Klingler, who finds the closed world of her rural Catholic village too small, despite the strong sense of security and belonging it affords its citizens. Michaela suffers from epilepsy, but dreams of becoming a teacher and yearns to venture beyond the confines of home to attend university in Tubingen. By doing so, she hopes to overcome the illness which she perceives to be a punishment, a stigma, and increasingly a sign of being possessed by the devil. Reluctantly, her parents release her into the world—her father Karl in a loving, caring albeit weak manner, and her mother, Marianna, who deals with Michaela’s condition in a cold and distant fashion, anticipating the worst from this move. Their failure to be fully supportive of Michaela’s plans further damages her self-confidence, which has been undermined over a long period. The Klingler family dynamics have proved to be too closed and limiting for Michaela; her parents are incapable of dealing with her condition other than by attempting to suppress it with a regime of anti-epileptic drugs. Her relocation to the student city removes Michaela from the protective environment of her parents’ home and their restricted and restrictive world view, but also from emotional certainty. Michaela meets new people and makes friends with moody Hanna and, tentatively, with her first love interest, Stefan. Both bring emotional upheaval and frenzy into her life, setting her on a downward spiral in the first months of her study at Tubingen’s Eberhard Karls University. Stress, the lack of appropriate medication, and a sense of unrest take their toll, and Michaela ultimately suffers a mental breakdown unrelated to her epilepsy, during which she hears voices and sees grotesque faces. Afraid of being sent back to her parochial village and parents, and dreaming of venturing into the wider world as part of living a normal life, deeply religious Michaela turns to her elderly village priest, Father Landauer, who is unable to help her. He in turn seeks guidance from a much younger 370

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colleague who reinforces Michaela’s conviction that she is possessed and experiencing suffering not unlike that undergone by her favourite saint, Die Heilige Katharina [St Catherine].38 Rather than making the connection between her mental breakdown and necessary adjustments to a new life, Michaela is more inclined to believe the self-assured priest Borchert’s opinion that her condition should be understood in religious rather than pathological terms. Exacerbated by her fear of medical and psychiatric stigmatization, she willingly takes refuge in the notion that the devil is using her as a conduit. Acting as a counter-influence, her friend Hanna, realizing that Michaela’s condition requires medical rather than spiritual guidance, urges her to seek psychiatric help. However, the young priest Borchert has long since replaced Stefan as Michaela’s mentor and romantic interest. Realizing that the pressure of her studies is proving too much for her, Michaela’s friends decide to take matters into their own hands. Hanna instructs Stefan to take their hysterical, deranged friend, who is hallucinating and showing signs of exhaustion, to hospital. Ironically, however, Stefan thinks she may be better off in the custody of her parents and decides instead to return to her native village. In the care of her parents, Michaela initially rebels verbally and physically, but ultimately reverts to a child-like state and gives in to them. In a final act of total submission to the rule of her Heimat, her parents, and religious practitioners, Michaela surrenders to the rites of exorcism, and dies after undergoing a series of brutally performed cleansing rituals. Although based on an actual incident that took place in 1976 in the Franconian village of Klingenberg, the film works as a parable, as a showcase of misguided belief, the power of religious authorities, and the self-destructive desire to belong and to conform. It is a careful investigation of the psychological powers at play in a Heimat setting that favours submission and control, self-sacrifice and conformity. Schmid depicts a psychogram of a young woman as well as a portrait of the German province in a symbolic rather than time-specific manner. This kind of representation has its roots in the antiHeimat films of the Young (later New) German Cinema; like Michaela, the characters of Anita G. in Alexander Kluge’s Abschied von Gestern [Yesterday Girl, 1966] and Kaspar Hauser in Werner Herzog’s Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle [Everyone for Himself and God against All, 1974] personify martyr figures whose “life stories serve as didactic parables in the form of station plays”.39 Requiem, however, also picks up on an old Heimat film dichotomy, the opposition between country and city. In the Black Forest village setting of Requiem, the community calmly goes about its business of farming, manufacturing, and domestic chores, and socializes in the vicinity of the church. In contrast to this highly structured environment, the large university town of Tubingen has provided Michaela with a more liberal, pleasure-driven, and necessarily less predictable setting. Unable to fully embrace the opportunities at hand, Michaela feels that she has lost her footing and is unable to appreciate her newfound liberation. She buys herself a new outfit, complete with an elegant pair of red boots, in which she proudly struts around, symbolically standing on her own two feet for the first time in her life. However, during her trip home to her family at Christmas, her mother—cold, distant, and dominant as ever—throws these red boots and the rest of Michaela’s new, stylish attire into the rubbish bin and criticizes her new hair-cut, thereby undermining her daughter’s independence and confi371

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dence. Her mother ends up slapping Michaela after this disagreement, provoking Michaela to flee back to Tubingen much earlier than intended. Yet, even there she is unable to unwind and find peace of mind, let alone to concentrate on her studies. The stress from the broken mother-daughter relationship becomes too much for her. She feels abandoned, exposed, and challenged, with the ties to her old Heimat shattered. In Tubingen, where she has not yet formed deep and lasting new relationships, she must fend for herself and be responsible for the creation of her own Heimat. This proves difficult, especially in the hours of her greatest need; she is left largely to her own devices with the university town sleepy during the holiday season, her student hostel deserted, and her studies failing to act as a substitute for Heimat. Instead, Michaela looks for familiar points of reference. In trying to find a way out of her seemingly alien surroundings, she chooses the known over the unknown, religious guidance over medical reasoning—thereby putting herself in the hands of people who prove utterly incompetent in view of her condition and needs. Nevertheless, the self-assured aura of the closed world of the church, where everything seems to run harmoniously and according to a divine plan, instils her with confidence. Blindly trusting, she seems certain that she is on the right path, back under the watchful eye of the church, and in such a child-like state that her mother is moved to show emotions and warmth towards her for the first time in the film. Michaela’s salvation, however, results directly in her death, hence representing her as a secularized Christ figure who is sacrificed for the common good. The questions about the congregation’s intent thus cloud their portrayal as a virtuous group. Indeed, a hypocritical facade of godliness is exposed, held in place by the members of the close-knit rural society, who are seen to misuse Catholicism to engineer conformity in their community. The criticism of the way the group forms and carries out its inhumane acts is reminiscent of the criticism expressed by Peter Fleischmann in the quintessential anti-Heimat film Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern [Hunting Scenes from Lower Bavaria]. The exposure of this exclusive group behaviour has a long tradition in the critical Heimat genre, with Hermann Löns’ novel Wehrwolf [Werewolf] one of its earliest examples, presenting “the immorality of the protagonists in the clash with strangers and the building of community in brutal ‘Beiroden’, or the killing of everyone who is not one of their own”.40 The stereotypical hierarchical constellation of the traditional Heimat genre has the priest, the mayor, and village businessmen at the top—all exposed as incompetent and without the values they proclaim; their demand for the protection of respectability is merely a “pseudomoral covering up of a bestiality in practice. The reference to traditions is evident as the expression of a conviction that is frozen in self-righteousness, that out of fear of the ‘alien’, out of disregard for the ‘other’ demands their annihilation.”41 Thus Michaela’s death cannot be mourned, but is to be seen by the pillars of society as the successful reinstatement of order. The audience witnesses Michaela’s worsening medical condition and the differing reactions to this decline by those around her: Michaela’s parents, the parish priests, her first boyfriend, and her new friend Hanna. Each has a different view of the situation, and the plurality of their discourses further undermines Michaela’s self-confidence, forcing her to succumb to the greatest pressure put on her. Caught between the arguments of her dominant mother and the overzealous priest Borchert, the pro-medical voices of her 372

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friends, and the moderate religious opinions of her father and the village priest Father Landauer, Michaela chooses to believe in the most fatalistic theory—that her experiences are the work of the devil. By accepting this explanation, Michaela sees that she will finally be able to fit in, at least in a divine master plan, as this choice does not run counter to her religious upbringing or the dominant ideology of the village and assures her of the undivided attention of her parents and the church. However, as the tragic result of her exorcism proves, religion has supplied the wrong answer. The community that should have provided her with the greatest care and protection turns out to be hostile and alien to her condition. In trying to rid themselves of her disease, the society behaves as if it is ashamed of it. Thus the village Heimat is represented in its transition from protector to persecutor, with the landscape’s markers of peace and tranquillity, the lush green hills of the Black Forest countryside, serving as a stark counterpoint to the alienation felt by an onlooker like Hanna. In a starkly realistic telling, the audience is witness to Hanna’s attempts to free her friend from the overpowering environment of superstition and parental love, upon finding Michaela exhausted in her bed in a haze. Mindful of the hell of Heimat—after all, Hanna and her brutal, alcoholic father come from the same village—she wants to help her, but Michaela has found peace, happily fitting into the limitations of her parents’ small world, totally surrendering to being washed, fed, cared for, and thus no longer in need of controlling her own life. Ironically, this dependency affords her peace of mind, as she does not have to make any decisions or take action. She is back in her Heimat like a child once more, and accordingly her face registers bliss rather than suffering. Demanding an active viewer, Schmid allows music other than source music in only two scenes, so as not to influence the audience or bring about emotions that could hinder the critical observation of his film. His portrayal of Michaela demonstrates a return to a tradition of “framing the unheimlich” [uncanny] that has been evident in anti-Heimat films in the past.42 In his study of the new Heimat films of the 1960s and 70s, Daniel Schacht highlights the passionate defence of the regional against the national, rural against urban, and tradition against modernization. He maintains that such counternarratives are relevant not only for the period of the Oberhausen Manifesto but also for the 1970s and 80s.43 The existence of films such as Viehjud Levi [Jew Boy Levi] and Siebtelbauern [The Inheritors] demonstrates that Schacht’s theory holds true for the 1990s, as does Requiem for the first decade of the twenty-first century. This topicality continues seemingly undiminished, as narratives revolving around the eternally important desire to belong versus the urge for independence prove central to most individuals’ engagement with their surroundings. “[U]ncanny, absurd, and humorous scenarios” in German films have informed the critical re-evaluation of Heimat since the 1970s, for example, by bringing “an outsider’s sensibility to familiar landscapes such as the Lüneburg Heath and the Rhine Valley”.44 Other such instances have been identifiable since the 1970s, with Swiss-born director Niklaus Schilling’s trilogy Nachtschatten [Night Shades, 1971], Rheingold [Rhine Gold, 1978], and Der Willi Busch Report [The Willi Busch Report, 1979] turning “the cold idylls and beautiful still-lives […] into morbid allegories of the Federal Republic”.45 Similar sentiments have been expressed in Herbert Achternbusch’s 373

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Servus Bayern [Good Bye Bavaria, 1977] and Das Gespenst [The Ghost, 1982] in which the director exposes “his love-hate relationship with a city and a region ruled by the Catholic Church, haunted by the legacies of the Third Reich, and defined by the beer-drinking rituals of the infamous Hofbräuhaus”.46 Schmid’s film is therefore as much in the tradition of the antiHeimat film of the 1970s as it is of the workings of the New German Cinema in general. When Eric Rentschler condemns Germany’s contemporary “Cinema of Consensus” as lacking the zest for new challenges and radical innovations, and for only looking to corroboration for the affirmative nature of its productions, he upholds German cinema of the 1960s and 1970s as exemplary in the way it militated against “collective forgetting, taking leave of a problematic national past by constantly problematizing that past’s presence, turning against mindless escapism and crude commercialism, ‘operating’ as time machines and critical vehicles”.47 While Rentschler acknowledges that German cinema since unification “cultivates familiar genre and caters to popular tastes”,48 he sees no renewal at work in united Germany’s post-Wall cinema. Admittedly, his condemnation precedes the release of Requiem, which judging by his own criteria Rentschler must accept as a film in the tradition of the New German Cinema when he proclaims: “New German Cinema was renowned abroad for its demonstrations of stunted identities and reduced personalities, of outsiders, underdogs and overreachers. Its narratives typically featured vulnerable protagonists, captives of situations that 49 they do not comprehend or control.”

Indeed, the protagonists in anti-Heimat films are usually shown to be defeated characters who do not succeed, despite their attempts at resistance, often in the form of violent confrontations. “Coming to grief is the lot of the hero […] They don’t just come to grief by failing to achieve their goals. For them there is no place to stay in the world depicted on screen: Abram in Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern is arrested, the hero of the title of Jaider, the Lonely Hunter disappears out of the mountain valley after the campaign of revenge, Schlöndorff’s farmers from Upper Hesse barely get to enjoy their booty, gendarmes arrest Kneissl and even the teacher from the Brandtner 50 film is caught by his pursuers.”

The representation of defiance is futile in view of the overpowering and overbearing society, a collective antagonist, and the seemingly homogeneous village community. This consensus reflected the mood of many intellectuals in the 1970s, as well as in more recent times. In the way Heimat was represented for contemporary viewers in 1971, Wolfram Schütte saw a reminder of their own defeat and sense of resignation: “The blind rage, the flagging protest, that nothing changes or has changed, that everything has stayed the way it always was”, reflects the sentiment of the majority of the audience at the time.51 It is fair to say that none of the 1960s and 70s anti-Heimat films experienced wider public success, as the films were seen to have political agendas and therefore appealed only to a limited section of the public.52 These films never lived up to their initial promise to bring about social 374

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change and renew German film culture. In contrast to the failure of such serious efforts to effect societal change, the continuing popular appeal of 1950s Heimat films as well as the 1960s and 70s Heimat sex films must be galling to the producers of the New German Cinema. It was not until the 1980s, when the first series of Heimat appeared, that the genre married traditional elements with critical subversion and achieved mass appeal. Edgar Reitz remains the most prominent auteur to follow this method, but younger directors such as Steinbichler and Schmid have followed suit and shown themselves capable of combining popular and critical success. Schmid is a relatively late convert to the genre, having started his feature film career with teenage dramas, including Nach fünf im Urwald [It’s a Jungle Out There], Crazy, and “23”, before making the transition to depicting Heimat issues and using significantly older protagonists in his Lichter tales, which are set in the German-Polish border territory. His requiem for Michaela—just as the title promises not a celebration of life but rather a bleak look at provincial Heimat in the 1970s and a sombre assessment of female agency—may have gone unnoticed if it had not come on top of Schmid’s previous critical and commercial success. It is certainly a quieter and much more contemplative film compared to the other Heimat film success stories of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Aesthetically, the film is much more in the tradition of 1970s anti-Heimat films, and could have shared their fate: well-made, but virtually without a national audience. For its craftsmanship and the sensitivity with which the story of Michaela Klingler is told, the film received many prizes and alerted audiences to the dangers of fundamentalism present even in Western democracies. Prior to Schmid’s interpretation of Michaela’s fate in Requiem, this true story from 1970s West Germany had already inspired an American production, The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005), a film that focused on the murder trial of the priest and his interactions with the prosecution. Less sensationalist and commercial in its treatment of the topic, Schmid’s film has a different approach to the situation, not guilt but an investigation of the psychology behind such submission to religious rituals and the might of Heimat are foregrounded. He has repeatedly stressed in interviews that Requiem is about the unsuccessful “Ablösung” [detachment] of a daughter from her mother and her provincial, piously Catholic world.53 Schmid details the socio-religious pressures that lead to Michaela’s decision to submit to the performance of such extreme rituals born out of a desperate desire to belong and to conform, pressures which confirm the film’s classification as a critical or even an antiHeimat film. Indeed, Schmid’s film, just like Steinbichler’s, stresses the contemporaneous nature of the Heimat complex. Whether coronial inquests are revisited as in Requiem, or classical incest stories as in Hierankl, both the timeliness and timelessness of the topics are stressed in a creative manner.

Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s Grave Decisions (2006) While the harsh criticism directed at Catholicism in the drama Requiem is based on its fundamentalist interpretation, religion is viewed in a different light in Marcus Hausham Rosenmüller’s comedy Wer früher stirbt, ist länger 375

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tot [literally The Earlier You Die, The Longer You Are Dead; commercial title: Grave Decisions, 2006]. Although Rosenmüller also has Catholicism presenting opportunities for misinterpretation, he does this in a far more playful manner. The questions about life and death preoccupying the protagonist are resolved positively when love and fame are encountered instead of death. The film depicts eleven-year-old Sebastian Schneider as he is about to cross the threshold into adolescence, the period in his life in which he negotiates his transformation from a mischievous young boy (Lausbub [scallywag]) to a wanna-be rock star. Set in the foothills of the Alps, the film revisits Heimat iconography while addressing the assumption that such beauty cannot harbour problems. Genre stereotypes are examined and the Bavarians themselves are demystified, when this region associated with rural life, village mentality, religion, and touristy images is exposed in all its diversity. The dialect film engages with these stereotypes while staying clear of lederhosen and dirndl, and thus constantly undermines audience expectations. Instead, Rosenmüller focuses on a Bavarian version of Catholicism, which is, however, interwoven with quite contradictory belief systems and various forms of superstition in a critique of myth fabrication. Setting the scene for satire, the film’s opening sequence suggests transcendental ideas, using transfers, transmissions, and transgressions in a selfreferential style. The way the camera captures hazy skies seems to invoke the opening of Leni Riefenstahl’s classic Triumph of the Will. From a bird’s-eye view, an astronomical observatory and a massive communications station on top of a mountain come into sight. Shrouded by clouds and in a position more appropriate for the gods to occupy, the peak of the mountain Wendelstein is home to a transmission tower, the observatory, a massive cross,54 as well as a radio station and its solo entertainer Alfred. As his colourful and extensive wardrobe indicates, Alfred performs all sorts of roles to satisfy the largest possible clientele. This impression is confirmed by the poster wall in his studio—on which are displayed icons of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s from the American pop and rock industry, including Elvis Presley, Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, and Kurt Cobain. Among the medley of styles and tastes in the studio, the remnants of hippie culture, intermingled with trinkets from Buddhist shrines and a native American feather headdress, complete the image of a cultural hotchpotch. Here Alfred reigns as radio presenter, with his everchanging costumes—ranging from Uncle Sam and cowboy outfits to hippie gear, tribal jewellery, and spiritual paraphernalia—as he plays to the different tastes of the local listeners in the rural township of Germringen. His broadcasts know no boundaries and acoustically unite a diverse range of people, including truck drivers, workers and shoppers at the local supermarket, pub patrons, and the film’s eleven-year-old protagonist, who has a small radio strapped to his bicycle, which also sports several Bavarian flags and a fox tail on the radio antenna. Within the first few minutes of the film, Sebastian, a grade five pupil, is accidentally run over by a beer delivery truck while the entire cast listens to the same song on the radio: “Something’s Rising” (music and text by Gerd Baumann). As if alluding to the soul of a dead person, the song seems to be a premonition of the death and mishaps that follow immediately.55 The truck driver is distracted by the song and his glowing cigarette nearly causes a fire in the cab of the lorry. He is oblivious to the accident he has caused and parks his truck with the bike wedged be376

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neath it before entering the local Kandlerwirt for his well-deserved drink. The audience has a bird’s-eye view of the child lying motionless on the asphalt and—with the film’s title superimposed on the image—is led to believe that the boy is dead. However, Sebastian has miraculously survived, with “Glück g’habt” [that was lucky] his only unsentimental reaction as he gets up, ironically only to cause another accident while trying to free his bike with its playful number plate “RO-SE 007” from underneath the truck. This results in the death of three caged hare owned by his older brother, Franz, which are housed adjacent to his father’s pub. As punishment, his enraged brother forces him through a rite that involves Sebastian saying “Lieber Karl [referring to one of the dead hare], es duat ma leid, dass Du wega mia nimma auf dera scheena Weid bist” [Dear Karl, I’m sorry that you aren’t enjoying the beautiful world any more because of me”], to show penitence and potentially attain absolution. During this ritual, Franz accuses Sebastian of bringing death and destruction to the world, and also—quite insensitively and unfairly—blames him for the death of their mother, who died just after giving birth to Sebastian in August 1995.56 Up to this point, Sebastian had been told that she had died in a car accident. This was not so, according to Franz, who adds that Sebastian’s many sins will result in divine punishment: “Do you know what happens when people wreak havoc their whole lives and aren’t made to atone for their sins? They come before the Last Judgment. Then when they die, on Judgment Day they face the final judgment and are condemned and thrown into purgatory.”57 To impress his brother with the severity of this prospect, Franz provides him with a taste of hell by scorching his skin with a flame. Sebastian is convinced that he has actually committed murder—as well as of the fate that awaits him in hell. Doubly guilt-stricken, as he has committed quite a number of pranks in his short life, he is sure now that he will have to pay dearly for them when his time comes. His dreams are now full of nightmares, medieval fantasies of the hereafter into which he subconsciously integrates many of the lines spoken by actors from the local amateur theatre group, which is rehearsing their all-male play Das Hexengericht oder Die gestohlene Glückssau [The Witch Trials or The Stolen Lucky Sow] in his father’s pub, just metres away from his bedroom. A judge ranting, a woman (played by a man) screaming, and her ultimate condemnation all add to Sebastian’s mental construct of a Last Judgement and his own punishment. Baroque architecture, flames licking from a hole in the ground, and a bewigged judge, a galley drummer, Roman soldiers in mail shirts, and a huge stuffed sow occupy this nightmare. Intermingled in this medley of incubi, which is mainly derived from church pomp and Bauerntheater props, are also cinematic horror genre references (ravens, a rainy night, a thunderstorm in a cemetery, muddy hands reaching out of a grave). In ironic distortion, these grotesque images are set, not to genre-typical film music worthy of a horror scenario but, instead, to the atonal sounds of clarinets and a Bavarian brass band. The director cleverly fuses these seemingly disparate fragments into a montage that evokes a surreal fantasy.58 While Sebastian’s visions of heaven and hell are childlike, they nevertheless form part of the belief system shared by the other locals, albeit more graphically. In contrast to the dark and hostile world in his nightmares, where purgatory awaits him or monsters chase him through a dark forest, heaven is 377

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an underwater world where his mother, Sophie Schneider, swims nymph-like through the cold blue. Harmonic music, images in slow motion, and blue colour filters stress the overall impression that this world is just as much removed from reality as his divine interpretations. On the whole, Sebastian’s literal translation of ecclesiastical matters, Catholic doctrine, and the village tale cosmos into images and deeds shows his childish preparedness to fall for mysticism. Thus he sees divine cues and his mother’s hints in seemingly random objects and events, including pigeon droppings, three doves on a grave, ravens on his mother’s cross, a phone that rings three times, and a glowing Madonna statue. He is quick to build these and other occurrences and sights into his own master plan. At the same time, the film shows that many around him allow themselves similar irrational thoughts when they respond to Buddhist prayer wheels and incense burning, the elaborate spectacle of a Catholic mass, and burial rituals or sacrifices. The community’s general overpreparedness to believe is also satirized in the radio show “Wunsch ans Universum” [request to the universe], which again manages to unite people of different generations and intent in one communal act of superstition. The place for worship is no longer provided by the church, but instead by consumer culture: in Germringen people meet in the new large-scale supermarket where they receive the gospel via radio, or in the village’s seismic centre, the pub. The Kandlerwirt is Sebastian’s Heimat, a place he associates with family, friends, and seminal experiences—happy as well as nightmarish ones. It is here too that a variety of congregations meet: local musicians and actors, tired workers, and funeral parties. The pub has thus replaced church or marketplace as the social centre of the community. When he earnestly enquires about death and purgatory at the regulars’ table, Sebastian is told about the logic behind death (if no one died, there would be overcrowding at this table) and alternatives to suffering (eternal life or performing good deeds to clear himself of his sins). The three wise men at the pub table have difficulty explaining how Sebastian can do good, just as they struggle to outline ways in which one can attain immortality; all they can think of is procreation, which they explain to the boy in a rather crude fashion. These and other empty phrases, proverbs, and old wives’ tales are put to the test by Sebastian, who is led to believe that cats really do have seven lives,59 that Frankensteinian experiments with electric shocks—with instructions taken from the book Monster Mania—can restart a heart beat, and that a bite from Dracula confers immortality. The preaching and advice found in traditional religion, legends, fairy-tales, new-age spirituality, and tips from other well-meaning adults are taken literally—only to fail dismally when Sebastian translates them into action. In his pursuit of eternal life or redemption through good deeds, the boy is shown to debunk religion and the way it is practised in the Bavarian village as mere theatrical performance, superstition, and fatalism. In the end, Sebastian goes from being told tall tales to telling them himself, for example, at his friend Evi’s birthday party when he entertains everyone present—as an alternative to playing monster computer games—with his eyewitness account of witch-burning rituals at the local forest pond, the Deininger Weiher, or on the occasion of the funeral for Evi’s great-grandmother when Sebastian tells them about his pact with the deceased: upon meeting Sebastian’s mother in heaven, the former is to relay greetings to him via the phone. In doing so, the film makes Catholicism the 378

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object of satire, as well as provincialism and conservatism—and the Bavarian Heimat cliché. At the same time, the film does not dispute the need for belief systems and the role that these signifiers of Heimat play in providing a sense of community. Religion and related sub-sets of mysticism hold together the generations of Germringen and make for a cohesive social fabric, despite the town’s diverse make-up. This Bavarian community, where life and death are part and parcel of everyday life—where no one blinks an eye at slaughtered rabbits and pigs, buckets full of animal blood, or even exploding pets—has constructed its own tales around seemingly inhumane acts. It all fits neatly into the divine plan and has been duly incorporated into each individual’s belief in a wholesome community that cannot fall apart despite cardinal sins being committed: loving members of the community are prepared to forgive one another their misdemeanours, even if the sin is adultery, as in the case of Sebastian’s father and the local school teacher. When the three wise men make Sebastian believe that absolution can be reached if one does good, he seeks redemption for his felonies by finding a seemingly suitable widow for his father, in the hope that they might become a couple. However, it is precisely this forceful and desperate housewife who drives Sebastian’s father into the arms of the married school teacher, Veronika Dorstreiter. Ironically it is DJ Alfred, the betrayed husband of his father’s new love interest—an affair for which Sebastian can take credit—who introduces the boy to the concept of immortality in music. As a die-hard fan of Jimi Hendrix and the mythical entertainer John Ferdinand Woodstock, the radio host provides Sebastian with a chance to feel invincible and to follow in the footsteps of his mother by means of his newly acquired guitar-playing skill. As the concluding scenes confirm, Alfred practises forgiveness and Sebastian attains legendary status, at least in his own eyes, thereby obtaining his salvation. His coming of age also results in him overcoming superstitions and developing his critical faculties. As a result, he can distance himself, for example, from the myth that one of the Alpine waterholes is filled with piranhas: “So einen Schmarrn glaub auch nur ihr.” [Surely only you could believe such nonsense.] He is the first to courageously jump into the water, an element that he has come to associate with his mother since his near-death experience. The film ends with this act of self-liberation, as Sebastian is emancipated from one set of superstitions and fairy-tales and prepares to enter the world of music veneration with its creation of alternative gods. One case in point is the enigmatic figure of John Ferdinand Woodstock, whose image is first glimpsed on the poster wall in the radio station among other rock legends. Sebastian comes across Woodstock’s record in the cellar cupboard among his late mother’s prized possessions. Just as Sebastian’s mother was a fan of the charismatic musician, whose country attire included a white vest and white straw hat, and who wore a Jesus-like beard and hairstyle, Woodstock is also revered by Alfred, who plays and re-plays Woodstock’s records, especially his hit “Slipping Down the Universe”, and even has a plectrum that belonged to Woodstock among the images pinned on the wall. Sebastian, who has stolen this piece of memorabilia on a visit to the radio station, copies Alfred’s worship of Woodstock. In his quest for divine signs and symbols, Sebastian is positively inclined to consider any chance encounter to be divine intervention. When he—whether in day-dreams or 379

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reality—believes he sees Woodstock, his mindset is comparable to that of someone experiencing an epiphany. The vision of Woodstock, still wearing his signature hat, sitting on a tractor seems to confirm Sebastian’s decision to become a rock star himself, and this appears to sanction the acquisition of a guitar by whatever means. As part of this transformation, Sebastian envisions himself as the guitarist of a rock band following in the tradition of Woodstock playing “Slipping Down the Universe”. Another example of this veneration is Alfred himself. When Sebastian consults the local priest very early on, in an attempt to find a solution for his problems within Catholicism and its institutional representations in Germringen, he is bitterly disappointed. The priest’s dry preaching, lack of charisma, and unhelpful advice cause Sebastian to turn his back on the house of God and look for alternative shamans. Here Alfred serves as a secularized and new-age embodiment of conceit (Selbstüberhebung). It is he who seems to know all (his scorn at the ignorance of today’s pupils and their lack of education results in a lecture on Jimi Hendrix), who can explain everything (from plectrums to immortality), and who becomes the medium through which Sebastian believes he can communicate with the hereafter (sending greetings to his mother). He also uses Alfred’s studio as a confessional, and thus confirms the DJ’s role as a Messiah in Germringen.60 Nevertheless, the closed world of the village seems to get the better of both of them for a short while. Typical of Heimat film dramaturgy, the pious village is a self-sufficient setting: a place where life and death, tradition, and authority provide for a limited, albeit sheltered, and somewhat too insular environment. Rosenmüller’s script makes references to the Heimat idyll of the 1950s films as much as to the Heimat nightmares of the 1960s and 70s when he shows Sebastian marvelling at and suffering from the company of the villagers. When fellow students accuse Sebastian of murder—Evi’s beloved great-grandmother dies after, but not necessarily because of, a meeting with him—his world seems to turn against him. In scenes reminiscent of the anti-Heimat films discussed in an earlier chapter, the majority of his peers reject him, driving him to retreat temporarily. However, Rosenmüller ensures that laughter and indemnification follow. After their harrowing emotional ordeal, both Alfred and Sebastian experience a coming of age, with Alfred having to cope with the end of his marriage and Sebastian with the end of his childhood. In music each finds solace and a vehicle for transformation. The reverence which Alfred shows for the greats of music is the lasting form of worship that appeals to the pre-teen Sebastian. Not too dissimilar to the Schlager of the 1950s Heimat film classics, Rosenmüller includes an original soundtrack—however, with songs sung in English and accompanied by electric guitars. The traditional brass band and Alp horn orchestra, performing more in the style of a south-eastern European gypsy band, now serve only as a backdrop to the travesty of a folk play being rehearsed in the pub. Combining surrealism in the tradition of Salvador Dali (the spaghetti in the bucket into which a pig’s blood has been drained) and magic realism with popular elements of Volkstheater and Komödienstadl (as well as being spiced up with an emotional roller-coaster ride based on heretic subversion, the fear of God, and the appeal of child actor Markus Krojer), the film achieved unexpected audience success and also won critical acclaim, which was con380

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firmed with three Lolas for best director, best screenplay, and best film music. Director and co-author Rosenmüller sees the film’s winning formula in its mix of genres: “The fantastic, the surreal mixed with traditional folkloric theater humour—I like good comedy … just like [Karl] Valentin or Luis Bunuel. In Grave Decisions filmic elements from fiction, surreal images and scenes and reality formulate to make a coherent story.”61 Rosenmüller’s original story is indeed a pastiche with many inter-textual references to other literary and cinematic rascals, including Astrid Lindgren’s Michel from Lönneberga in rural Sweden and the protagonists of Ludwig Thoma’s rogue stories set in Bavaria. Other elements are taken from the Danish tale Hodder rettet die Welt [Hodder Saves the World], which was adapted for cinema by Henrik Ruben Genz in 2003 (the two films share the concept of a half-orphan taking on questions of life and death), and from Stephen Daldry’s coming-ofage film Billy Elliot from 2000 (here the visit to the mother’s grave and the child continuing in the mother’s footsteps by playing her musical instrument serve as points of comparison). Likewise, Rosenmüller’s representation of the village folk quotes several negative types from literary and cinematic tradition. In response to the common prejudice towards grumpy old Bavarian men, some characters display a general inability to communicate meaningfully. Initially, Sebastian’s father is an example of such a character, as he is monosyllabic in the extreme, whether with pub patrons, fellow supermarket shoppers, or his own children. When under pressure, he resorts to silence or violence, both of which contribute to misunderstandings and become the basis for comedy as well as tragedy. Nevertheless, he is shown to allow himself to feel loving emotions and his bitterness seems to mellow. Another type, the lecherous lederhosen-wearing protagonist from the soft-porn Heimat film period, is replicated in the shorts-wearing beer truck driver. He makes lewdly and sexually explicit comments to pretty women and sports the telling number plate “RO-SI—06” which contrasts with Sebastian’s more innocent “RO-SE—007”. It is he who feeds Sebastian sexual ideas, pick-up lines, and techniques (“ins Ohrläppchen beißen und fragen, ob sie mit Dir vögeln wollen” [bite her earlobe and ask her if she wants to screw you]). In his desperation, Sebastian had become willing to heed any advice to redeem himself, even that provided by an obviously ill-equipped role model. In an apparent case of self-reference, this willingness to heed any advice also applies to the film itself, as it takes its cues and characters from similarly questionable role models: soft-porn Heimat films, folk theatre, village tales, and many other ridiculed elements of the Heimat film. Director Marcus H. Rosenmüller has engaged with these literary and cinematic Heimat subgenres and creatively reinvented them. Asked if he should be considered Germany’s new specialist for Heimat films, he responded candidly: “I think every movie is a heimat film in some way. In mine, it’s just more obvious because of the dialect. In Bavaria, the movie is seen as a Bavarian heimat film. Abroad, its global character is more highly valued and appreciated.”62 Just as much as fellow Bavarian film-maker Steinbichler, Rosenmüller admits to the personal nature of his films, and a need to be able to relate to the material.63 However, this is not necessarily inspired by a specifically Bavarian characteristic, but rather by a human plight with which he can identify— “my home is intellectual and spiritual, not regional”.64 Indeed, literary and cinematic references in his films are broadly European; in one interview 381

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Rosenmüller pointed especially to Joachim Ringelnatz and Robert Gernhardt as his lyrical role models, and to the cinema of François Truffaut and Helmut Käutner as other inspirational sources.65 This mix of Bavarian and European elements is also self-referentially backed up by the flags displayed in the truck driver’s cabin at the beginning and end of the film. Nevertheless, a strong regional flavour persists—that of the Bavarian type—which Rosenmüller sees recreated in the mentality of his figures in particular. He applauds their groundedness, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency as members of a community. “They are cheerful and practical people who believe that they can make a difference.”66 Just like films by his colleagues Thomas Kronthaler, Stefan Betz, and Hans Steinbichler, Rosenmüller sees the appeal of his Bavarian dialect films stemming from a resurgence of a longing for a recognizably German Heimat: “In this time of globalization people are identifying more again with regional problems.”67 Rather than alienating the audience or shocking them into action, Rosenmüller packages his social criticism in such a way as to engage the viewer without taking away the “feel-good” emotions. Reflecting on this strategy, he emphasizes: “I want to release the viewers with a certain feeling […] somehow more blissful—more human.”68 The comfortable ambience and obligatory happy ending of other Heimat films nevertheless seem less trite and tired in Grave Decisions, as Rosenmüller does not simply copy elements that constitute genre but develops them in a new context and sheds new light on them. He uses nature as a backdrop to reflect emotional states of mind and to dramatize the action, but also to ridicule this very nexus, for example, when a gust of wind is interpreted as a sign. Moreover, Rosenmüller transgresses into the territory of other genres, such as horror, in an attempt to exaggerate the Heimat tradition’s instrumentalization of nature. Not unlike the imagery of the Rauhnacht festival in Trenker’s Der verlorene Sohn [The Prodigal Son], young Sebastian has visions of mythical figures and monsters living in the forest, the lakes, and the dark in general. He also engages with other staples of the Heimat film, such as the country-city dichotomy. After an altercation with his father, who takes away the guitar that has become a visual manifestation of his mother’s legacy, Sebastian travels to Munich. As trust, expressed in the village by allowing someone to receive goods on credit (“anschreiben lassen”), is not extended to him as a stranger in the city, Sebastian commits a crime by stealing a guitar. The prodigal son is then returned to his village by police, who appear out of place and incapable of traversing the countryside appropriately—running over several chickens on his father’s property. Yet the community is shown to be able to deal with the transgressor. Sebastian’s father and pub patrons alike see that the remedy to the problem lies in acts of love and steadfast loyalty. In this way, order is reinstated in a more traditional way, thus affirming the longevity of the Heimat cosmos.

NOTES 1

Marc Silberman, “Popular Cinema, National Cinema, and European Integration”, in Agnes C. Mueller (ed.), German Pop Culture: How American Is It? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 151‒64, here p. 160.

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2 3

4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11

12

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Ibid. Cf. Eric Rentschler, “From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus”, in Mette Hjort and Scott MacKenzie (eds.), Cinema and Nation (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 260‒77. Spiegel-Spezial, June 1999, p. 11. Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), p. 26. Oliver Rahayel, “German Heimat Rediscovered”, Kultur: Magazine of the Goethe Institute in Australia, 14 (2007), pp. 4‒5, here p. 5. In the original: “... allein durch ihre Thematik (Landleben) und Machart kein großes Publikum im täglichen Kinobetrieb finden können.” Filmnews zum “20. Festival der Heimatfilme”, http://www.local-buehne.at/festival/news.asp?nr=31, retrieved Mar. 2007. Ibid. Rahayel, “German Heimat Rediscovered”, p. 5. Ibid. In the original: “Deutsche als Opfer—früher ein Tabuthema. Seit einigen Jahren erreichen die vergessenen Flüchtlinge aus dem Osten den dokumentarischen Bildschirm und finden ein Zuhause im kollektiven Bewusstsein einer Nation.” Anon., “Heimatlos zwischen den Fronten”, TV-Magazin, Feb./Mar. 2007, p. 4. “The historic two-parter rolls out the panorama of uprooted masses of people whose Heimat was erased from the map in 1945.” In the original: “Der historische Zweiteiler […] entfaltet das Panorama von entwurzelten Menschenmassen, deren Heimat 1945 von der Landkarte ausradiert wurde.” Ibid. Cf. Evelyn Finger, “Quotenopfer: Die Flucht und die Folgen”, Die Zeit, no. 10, 1 Mar. 2007, p. 45. “It seems all the more remarkable that, alongside the boom in mass-media remembrance of German victims of the Second World War, it is generally accepted that the experiences of these victims have been hushed up until now. The perpetrators were supposedly not permitted to complain aloud publicly, not even to mourn. Yet, this is in no way true. In fact, as early as the 1950s the first large research project into the ‘Third Reich’ was devoted to the expulsion of the Germans from territories belonging to pre-WWII Germany and countless numbers of contemporary witnesses were questioned. Parallel to this project, popular films such as Night Fell Over Gotenhafen or The Girl Called Marion appeared. Apart from this, so-called Ministers for Expellees were in office to act for this section of the population until the end of the 1960s. Nowadays every welfare and cultural association for Germans born in the Eastern areas of the former Reich has its own museum. The sponsorship of the expellee culture by the Federal Government is not only anchored in law, but is achieved with a budget in the millions. […] The only political verdict that ever effectively denied the crimes committed by Soviet soldiers was delivered by Walter Ulbricht in the GDR. What is the purpose then of the claim that a taboo lasting sixty years now needs to be broken? There is obviously a need to speak of the suffering of the victims in the form of an accusation. This raises the suspicion that it […] is not at all about the victims, but instead about instrumentalizing their suffering—whether it be for political reasons or for the sake of viewer ratings.” In the original: “Umso merkwürdiger erscheint es, dass sich mit der Konjunktur massenmedialen Erinnerns an deutsche Opfer des Zweiten Weltkriegs auch die Meinung durchsetzt, diese Opfer seien bisher totgeschwiegen worden. Man habe als 383

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15 16 17 18

19

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Vertriebener nicht öffentlich klagen, geschweige denn trauern dürfen. Das stimmt keineswegs. So widmete das erste große Forschungsprojekt der Bundesrepublik über das ‘Dritte Reich’ sich bereits in den fünfziger Jahren der Vertreibung der Deutschen, zahllose Zeitzeugen wurden befragt. Parallel dazu entstanden populäre Spielfielme wie Die Nacht fiel über Gotenhafen oder Das Mädchen Marion. Außerdem amtierten bis Ende der sechziger Jahre sogenannte Vertriebenenminister. Heute hat jede Landsmannschaft ihr eigenes Museum. Die Förderung der Vertriebenen-Kulturen durch den Bund ist nicht nur gesetzlich verankert, sondern wird mit jährlichen Millionenetats durchgesetzt. [...] Das einzige jemals wirkmächtige politische Verdikt, die Verbrechen sowjetischer Soldaten zu leugnen, verhängte Walter Ulbricht in der DDR. Wozu also die Behauptung, ein sechzig Jahre währendes Tabu müsse jetzt gebrochen werden? Offenbar gibt es ein Bedürfnis, vom Leid der Opfer im Duktus der Anklage zu sprechen. Das legt den Verdacht nahe, dass es [...] gar nicht um die Opfer geht, sondern darum, deren Leid zu instrumentalisieren—sei es aus politischen Gründen, sei es um der Einschaltquote willen.” Ibid. Rahayel, “German Heimat Rediscovered”, p. 4. Oliver Rahayel, “The Current Reorientation of the Heimat Film”, Goethe Institute, http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/dos/hei/en1758458.htm, retrieved Dec. 2006. Goethe Institute Festival Programme 2007, Perth, 26‒29 Apr. 2007, http://www. goethe.de/ins/au/lp/prj/ff07/flm/enindex.htm, retrieved Mar. 2007. See also the commercial and critical success of the TV series Die Elsässer by Michel Favart (1996), and feature films financed by German or Austrian television, including Xaver Schwarzenberger’s Krambambuli (1998), Jo Baier’s Der Laden (1998), Verlorenes Land (2002), and Schwabenkinder (2003), Joseph Vilsmaier’s Bergkristall (2004), Rainer Kaufmann’s Marias letzte Reise (2005), and Maurizio Zaccaro’s Die Jungen von der Paulstraße (2005). It won two Förderpreise Deutscher Film. Steinbichler was awarded Best Director at the Munich Filmfest in 2003, and lead actress Johanna Wokalek received the title of Best Female Actor for her role as Lene. Goetz Hildebrand confides in Lene: “I stood up here one night when I was sixteen. I was now madly in love and completely despairing. She was the saddest girl I’ve ever met. I was crazy with love and she was too. She believed we could only save our love if we died together. Have you ever felt like that?” In the original: “Mit sechzehn stand ich mal nachts hier oben. Ich war wahnsinnig verliebt und sehr verzweifelt. Sie war das traurigste Mädchen, das ich je kennen gelernt habe. Ich war irr’ vor Liebe, und sie auch. Sie hat geglaubt, wir könnten unsere Liebe nur retten, wenn wir gemeinsam sterben. Kennst Du sowas?” Lene’s internal monologue is relayed in the beginning of the film as follows: “The three most important questions to ask yourself are: Are you sexually fulfilled? Do you have family? Are you moving on in life? Three times ‘yes’ is paradise, twice ‘yes’ would be essential to be happy, and one ‘yes’ is for survival.” In the original: “Die drei wichtigsten Fragen: Hast Du Sex, hast Du Familie, bist Du in Bewegung? Dreimal ‘ja’ ist das Paradies, zweimal ‘ja’ brauchst Du für Dein Glück und einmal ‘ja’ zum Überleben.” Hans Sebastian Steinbichler in the DVD commentary under the rubric “Extras”. In a private moment, Lukas tries to get through to his son in a mixture of confession and plea: “Okay, listen, I love another woman besides your mother. Your mother is having a relationship with your best friend. Lene’s coming to visit and after thirty years Goetz has turned up. I wanted to talk to you about all of that. 384

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24

25

26

27 28 29

30 31

32 33

34

Somehow or other everything is changing. Even the dog. All except for you.” In the original: “Paß auf, ich liebe eine andere Frau neben deiner Mutter. Deine Mutter hat ein Verhältnis mit deinem besten Freund. Lene kommt zu Besuch und nach 30 Jahren taucht der Goetz auf. Darüber wollt’ ich mit dir sprechen. Irgendwie verändert sich alles. Sogar der Hund. Nur du net.” In the original: “Seelenlandschaft: Ein alter Baum ist Lenes luftiger Fluchtpunkt, ein Bergsee Reservoir tiefgründiger Konflikte, ein Gipfel Schauplatz eines sexuellen wie dramatischen Höhepunkts.” Anon., “Heimkehr ins Unbehauste: Hierankl”, Bayrischer Rundfunk, http://www.br-online.de/heimatfilm/antiheimat/hierankl.xml?theme=print, retrieved Dec. 2007. Steinbichler states in a press release at the Munich Film Festival: “I was looking for something for my first film where I really know what’s what: my Heimat, the Chiemgau district, which means nearly everything to me, and family structures, which I have been observing at length and almost obsessively since I was a child. Both of these together, landscape and family, is Heimat, the overcoming of it is Heimat film.” In the original: “Ich habe für meinen ersten Film etwas gesucht, wo ich mich auskenne: meine Heimat, den Chiemgau, die mir fast alles bedeutet, und Familienstrukturen, die ich, seit ich Kind war, ausdauernd und fast obsessiv beobachte. Beides zusammen, Landschaft und Familie, ist Heimat, die Verarbeitung davon ist Heimatfilm.” Steinbichler quoted in Presseinformation, Hierankl: Ein Film von Hans Steinbichler, movienet, 2003, p. 4. In the original: “Der Begriff Heimatfilm bedeutete lange Zeit, dass glückliche Leute mit niedlichen Problemen auf grünen Wiesen ein Happy End erleben. Für mich aber bedeutet Heimatfilm den Anfang einer neuen Entwicklung. Denn Heimat hat immer mindestens zwei Seiten, eine gute und eine schlechte. [...] Ein Satz aus Chris Kraus’ Film Scherbentanz bringt es auf den Punkt: ‘Heimat ist da, wo es wehtut’.” Hans Steinbichler quoted in an ARTE interview, 11 Apr. 2005, http://www.arte.tv/de/film/Fernsehfilme-auf-ARTE/828644.html, retrieved Dec. 2006. Ibid. Ibid. Dogma refers to the contemporary film school originating in Scandinavia that Steinbichler seems to have taken some of his cues from, for example, Danish director Thomas Vinterberg and his dogma film Festen [The Celebration, 1998]. Cf. Hans Steinbichler quoted in an ARTE-interview, 11 Apr. 2005, http://www.arte.tv/de/film/Fernsehfilme-auf-ARTE/828644.html, retrieved Dec. 2006. In the original: “insbesondere die Leute auf dem Land […] schweigen lieber anstatt zu sprechen. Auf dem Land funktionieren Konventionen und Rituale noch so, dass Menschen daran zerbrechen können.” Ibid. Cf. Steinbichler in an interview quoted in Presseinformation, Hierankl, p. 5. Vincenz confronts his friend: “Can’t you remember what we promised each other that time? We’ll build a house together and will live there with four or five beautiful women who’ll give us children. They’ll never be allowed to tell us who the father is. The rules were: No envy, no jealousy.” In the original: “Kannst Du Dich nicht erinnern, was wir uns mal versprochen haben? Wir bauen zusammen ein Haus und wohnen da mit vier oder fünf schönen Frauen, die uns Kinder schenken. Sie dürfen uns nie verraten, von wem sie sind. Die Gesetze waren: Kein Neid, keine Eifersucht.” Hierankl has been referred to as a reinvention of the genre (Berliner Zeitung), a modern Heimat drama (Bayrischer Rundfunk), a Heimat film of a different kind 385

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(Nürnberger Zeitung), a deconstruction of a Heimat film (Rhein Zeitung), and as “a long way away from sickly schmaltzy films […] no intact Heidi-world.” In the original: “… weit entfernt von süßlichen Schnulzen […] keine heile HeidiWelt”. Jörg Scheller, “Grausame Geborgenheit”, Stuttgarter Nachrichten, 24 Dec. 2003. In the original: “hat auch etwas mit Heimat zu tun. Ich denke da an das Deutschland mit Bonn als Hauptstadt und Genscher als Außenminister. Ich finde es eine gelungene Geschichte, was hier nach 1945 entstanden ist. Man hat sich lieber etwas kleiner gemacht. Da war Deutschland leicht und transparent—ganz im Gegensatz zum neuen Kanzleramt in Berlin. Barbara Sukowa ist für mich das Gesicht für dieses Deutschland und das deutsche Gesicht schlechthin.” Hans Steinbichler quoted in Bernd Haase, “Hans Steinbichler über Hierankl”, Schwäbisches Tagblatt, 30 Oct. 2003. In the original: “Ich wollte keine Wahlmöglichkeiten bieten. […] Die Einstellungen für die Gesichter habe ich oft bewusst sehr eng gewählt, damit man nicht raus kann.” Hans Steinbichler quoted in Ricarda Schrader, “Heimatfilm der besonderen Art”, Rhein Zeitung, 4 Nov. 2003. In the original: “Wir alle fallen […] / Und doch ist Einer, welcher dieses Fallen / unendlich sanft in seinen Händen hält.” Katharina von Siena or Catherine from Siena, a nun and mystic in the fourteenth century, is said to have entered the order of the Dominicans as a young girl, praying and fasting; but also scourging herself three times daily with an iron chain, sleeping on a board and wearing an iron-spiked girdle. Cf. Raymond of Capua, The Life of Catherine of Siena, translated by Conleth Kearns (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1980) and Mary Ann Fatula, Catherine of Siena’s Way (Wilmington: Michael Glazier, 1989). Rentschler, “From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus”, p. 271. In the original: “… die Amoralität der Protagonisten in der Auseinandersetzung mit Fremden und die Gemeinschaftsbildung im brutalen ‘Beiroden’, also Töten, eines Jeden, der nicht zu ihnen gehört”. Thomas Hoffmann and Ines Steiner, “Die Sechziger Jahre. Zwischen Jagdszenen und Jägerporno”, in Projektgruppe deutscher Heimatfilm, Der Deutsche Heimatfilm: Bildwelten und Weltbilder: Bilder, Texte und Analysen zu 70 Jahren deutscher Filmgeschichte (Tubingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde, 1989), pp. 97‒129, here p. 110. In the original: “… pseudomoralische Bemäntelung einer praktizierten Bestialität. Die Berufung auf Traditionen zeigt sich als Ausdruck eines in Selbstgerechtigkeit erstarrten Bewußtseins, das aus Furcht vor dem ‘Fremden’, aus Mißachtung des ‘Anderen’ dessen Vernichtung fordert.” Ibid. Cf. Majer O’Sickey refers to Michael Verhoeven’s Das schreckliche Mädchen [The Nasty Girl, 1989] and Percey Adlon’s Salmonberries (1990) as examples of this tradition. Ingeborg Majer O’Sickey, “Framing the Unheimlich: Heimatfilm and Bambi”, in Patricia Herminghouse and Magda Mueller (eds.), Gender and Germanness (Providence, RI: Berghahn, 1997), pp. 202‒16, here p. 213. Daniel Alexander Schacht, Fluchtpunkt Provinz: Der neue Heimatfilm zwischen 1968 und 1972 (Munster: MakS, 1991), p. 289. Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 171. Ibid. Ibid. 386

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Rentschler, “From New German Cinema to the Post-Wall Cinema of Consensus”, p. 263. Ibid., p. 264. Ibid., p. 271. In the original: “Scheitern ist das Los der Helden […]. Sie scheitern nicht allein, indem sie ihre individuellen Ziele verfehlen. Für sie ist in der gezeigten Welt keine Bleibe mehr: Der Abram der Jagdszenen aus Niederbayern wird verhaftet, der Titelheld von Jaider—der einsame Jäger verschwindet nach seinem Rachefeldzug aus dem Gebirgstal, Schlöndorffs oberhessische Bauern kommen kaum in den Genuß ihrer Beute, Gendarmen verhaften Kneissl und auch der Lehrer des Brandner-Films wird von seinen Verfolgern gestellt.” Schacht, Fluchtpunkt Provinz, p. 271. In the original: “Die blinde Wut, der erlahmte Protest, daß sich nichts ändert oder geändert hat, daß alles beim alten geblieben ist.” Wolfram Schütte, “Linke Flucht in rechte Vergangenheit”, Frankfurter Rundschau, 19 May 1971. “The films were also read politically by the press—and that didn’t exactly lure the people to the cinema. For the student movement was suspect to them, they were not able to comprehend it, that was their bad children who sat somewhere in these university towns and did really dreadful things. And now they were supposed to go and watch films about it. That just wasn’t on.” In the original: “Die Filme wurden auch in der Presse politisch gedeutet—und das holte die Leute eben nicht ins Kino. Denn die Studentenbewegung war ihnen suspekt, das haben sie nicht nachvollziehen können, das waren ihre schlimmen Kinder, die irgendwo in den Universitätsstädten saßen und ganz furchtbare Sachen taten. Und jetzt sollten sie sich die Filme dazu noch ansehen? Das war einfach nicht drin.” Director Volker Vogeler quoted in Schacht, Fluchtpunkt Provinz, pp. 277‒78. Hans-Christian Schmid quoted in wdr.de, “Hans-Christian Schmid und der Teufel. Interview mit dem Regisseur von Requiem”, wdr.de, 19 Feb. 2006, http://www.wdr.de./themen/kultur/film/berlinale_2006/requiem/interview.jhtml, retrieved 30 Oct. 2006. In Catholic areas, summits of mountains often mark the end point of a pilgrimage route, and many feature a cross or crucifix. The death of the protagonist set against a typical Heimat film setting is also the central concern of another film released in 2006: Andreas Prochaska’s Heimat horror film In drei Tagen bist du tot [In Three Days You’ll Be Dead]. In the tradition of horror or slasher films, the enchanting postcard images of Alpine lakes and charming mountain hotels become the hunting ground of a demented serial killer. In his blind rage, Franz says, albeit in dialect which is not reproduced here: “You’ve got Mama on your conscience too […] you killed her. Your birthday is the day Mama died. So she died because you were born. Therefore you killed her.” In the original: “Die Mama hast Du auch auf dem Gewissen […] Umgebracht hast du sie. Dein Geburtstag ist der Mama ihr Todestag. Also ist sie gestorben, weil du geboren bist. Also hast du sie umgebracht.” In the original: “Weißt du, was passiert, wenn Leute ihr Lebtag Unheil anrichten und nicht dafür büßen müssen? Dann kommen sie vors Jüngste Gericht. [...] Wenn sie sterben, dann kommen sie vors Jüngste Gericht und werden verurteilt und ins Fegefeuer geschmissen.” “The scene of Sebastian digging down into his mother’s grave and her hand suddenly emerging to draw him down into the earth recalls scenes at the end of Hans 387

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59 60

61

62 63

64

65 66 67 68

König’s Rosen blühen auf dem Heidegrab [Rape on the Moor, 1952] [...]. Wer früher stirbt also features a traditional tale of Moorleichen (bog bodies), which Sebastian tells at a friend’s birthday party. […] The tale is later re-enacted unwittingly by Veronika, the potential new wife, at a tryst with Sebastian’s father, Lorenz. When she falls into the water, her screams resemble the song of Sebastian’s mythical woman.” Rachel Palfreyman, “Holding on and Letting Go: Trauma Between the Generations in the Heimat Mode”, in Paul Cooke and Marc Silberman (eds.), Screening War: Perspectives on German Suffering (Rochester: Camden House, 2010), pp. 145‒64, here p. 156‒57. The film looks back to the Gothic Heimat tradition of Rosen blühen auf dem Heidegrab, as well as to Niklaus Schilling’s Nachtschatten [Night Shade, 1972], by connecting “its comic tale with a series of filmic representations of a haunted and undead past where generational sin, guilt, and the resulting suffering ripple through future generations”. Ibid. The author acknowledges that in the English-speaking world, cats are said to have nine lives. The director, in his tongue-in-cheek manner, goes one step further: Alfred, not unlike Rosenmüller himself, is emotionally involved but is able to elevate himself and to gain a panoramic perspective on the whole scene. He has the power to immortalize someone through public exposure, and claims to be able to fulfil wishes to help lovers and to be the master of others’ destiny. In the original: “Das Fantastische, Surrealistische gemischt mit einem traditionellen Volkstheaterhumor—ich mag guten Komödienstadl genauso wie [Karl] Valentin oder Luis Bunuel. In Wer früher stirbt, ist länger tot fügen sich filmische Elemente aus Fiktion, surreale Bilder und Szenen und Realität zu einer stimmigen Story.” Marcus H. Rosenmüller in an interview posted on http://www.wer-frueher-stirbt-ist-laenger-tot.de/hinter-den-kulissen/-interview_rosenmueller.html, retrieved May 2007. Ibid., p. 6. “I always have to do something that has to do with me: tell a story that I would like to tell.” In the original: “Ich muss immer etwas machen, das mit mir zu tun hat: eine Geschichte erzählen, die ich gerne erzählen möchte.” Marcus H. Rosenmüller in an interview with Jochen Temsch, “Das Wunder von Bern—auf Bayrisch”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 15 Jan. 2007. Rosenmüller quoted in Anon., “Marcus H. Rosenmüller: Director of Grave Decisions and Heavyweights”, Kultur: Magazine of the Goethe Institute in Australia, 14 (2007), p. 6. Rosenmüller in an interview with Temsch. In the original: “Es sind fröhliche, zupackende Menschen, die daran glauben, dass man etwas verändern kann.” Ibid. In the original: “Die Leute identifizieren sich in Zeiten der Globalisierung wieder mehr mit regionalen Problemen.” Ibid. In the original: “Ich will die Zuschauer mit einem bestimmten Gefühl entlassen […] irgendwie wohliger—menschlicher.” Ibid.

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Ostalgie and Westalgie films, as well as the ambivalent Heimat films of the post-unification period, are powerful reminders of a German longing for Heimat at times of social change. Likewise, Germany’s latest wave of Heimat films embracing new landscapes such as Brandenburg’s provinces1 or inner city locales indicates that globalization, world terrorism, and new technologies have encouraged the rediscovery of small spaces, local places, and familiar settings and dialects. Concerns associated with Heimat, even in Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s comedies, find expression in displays of ambivalence, for example, when the beauty of the Bavarian countryside being depicted reveals “its own radicality and brutality”,2 thus endorsing heimatesque values, yet not without a certain corrective. Nevertheless, irrespective of the drawbacks, the warmth and security of home and hearth continue to appeal, especially in times of massive change. This trend has been notable since the clear divide and stand-off between the world powers and ideologies responsible for the Cold War waned after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in 1985, and new threats and uncertainties started to register with people in Central Europe. Issues of homeland and identity (both ethnic and national) came to the fore in the years leading up to and following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the implosion of the Soviet Union, the Balkan wars, and the many new countries established throughout Europe. For most, Heimat was now seen as an acute political concern and one that was less German than broadly anthropological.3 Evidence of these new sentiments and the fresh Heimat awareness is the success of a film festival dedicated to “Der Neue Heimatfilm” [The New Heimat Film]. This festival, which has been held annually in Freistadt, Austria, since 1988, champions productions that have provided the genre with national and international Heimat narratives in a variety of contexts, genres, and styles. In the 2001 festival programme for “Der Neue Heimatfilm”, organizers highlighted the quest for identity as a major concern of the genre in the twenty-first century. The typical contemporary Heimat film, according to the festival organizers, has a clear regional focus, but is more likely to question what Heimat could be than to provide answers or to define it.4 The films shown as part of the programme ever since have conceptualized Heimat as a lifelong personal quest that unites people from all parts of the globe. It was this Austrian festival that returned what was to become known, even in film history, as the “New Heimatfilm” to the cinemas,5 by including foreign-language films,6 sport films,7 documentaries,8 short films,9 experimental films,10 and Kulturreportagen [cultural reports],11 as well as films that were unearthed from obscurity—those which had been released many years ago on a small scale or without making much of a splash and which were then relegated to archives and history.12 By deliberately showcasing films 389

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from “offstage”, as organizers labelled those productions that were not part of the mainstream13 (and whose countries of origin were not considered part of the international festival circuit), Heimat and Heimat film were understood to form part of a realm that needed (re-)discovery and revival. The focus of each of these films, despite their diversity, centres on the quest for a place where one can feel at home. In 2003, the Kurzfilmfestival [Short Film Festival] Oberhausen responded to this new cultural trend with a special programme entitled “reization”, which was dedicated to short films belonging to the Heimat genre. This idea was adopted rather belatedly—but with a higher public profile—by the mainstream, when Germany’s big business festivals borrowed their marketing terminology from the small-scale Freistadt and Oberhausen initiatives. In view of the multitude of German-language films set in the provinces, the media release for the 2007 Berlin Film festival “Berlinale” spoke in terms of a new Heimat film school, albeit with a clear national focus in the title: “Der Neue Deutsche Heimatfilm” [The New German Heimat Film].14 The trend was finally noticed by larger audiences, not just within Germany but internationally. Critics remarked with surprise and admiration that these films are no longer necessarily set in the Alps or even in Bavaria, nor—as one Spiegel commentator wryly remarked—is everyone there called Resi; nowadays the protagonists of the New German Heimat films are also called Jo,15 or even Fariba or Siamak, as in the case of the Iranian asylum seeker in Angelina Maccarone’s Heimat film Fremde Haut [Unveiled, 2005], which is partly set in an unattractive area of provincial Swabia. This yearning for grounding, refuge, and a place like home has most recently been strongly shared and expressed by those who feel insecure, ostracized, or rejected in German society on economic as well as ethnic and racial grounds—among them many people with a migrant background who grapple with their position in Germany’s socio-economic, political, and cultural domains. With unified Germany reflecting once again on its diverse, pluralistic, and multi-ethnic make-up—a realization that was perhaps reinforced by the increased awareness of the cultural differences that exist even between West and East Germans—cinema has followed suit. The 2001 “Starometer” exhibition at the Filmmuseum Berlin, which celebrated iconic faces in contemporary German film, included Turkish-born actor Erdal Yildiz, German-born actor Mehmet Kurtulus, and actress MinhKai Phan-Thi, who was born in Germany to Vietnamese parents. On screen and behind the scenes, Germans with a migrant background and German residents of many different nationalities gained currency because moviegoing audiences were happy to engage with “new” stories about and from Germany, rethinking Heimat as a transnational and transcultural space and place. This was a clear departure from previous times. Any ideas of ethnic diversity were alien to the conceptualization of German identity dominant throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. When the German Empire was united as a state in 1871, it saw itself as a nation based on ties of culture, language, and shared history. Rather than a destination for migrants, nineteenth-century Germany lost many citizens to emigration because of poverty and conflict. The situation changed somewhat at the start of the twentieth century, when large numbers of Polish workers were imported to work in the mines. They stayed, while the next wave of 390

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foreign workers, millions of forced labourers from Nazi Germany’s occupied territories, returned to their homeland after liberation. Since 1945, the Federal Republic has taken in around twenty million immigrants, becoming one of the most important destination countries for migrants in the second half of the century. This influx took place in several waves, the first associated with the Second World War, which brought refugees and, later, expellees to the West. During the subsequent Cold War, internal German migration (mainly from East to West) occurred in large numbers until the fortification of the Iron Curtain and the erection of the Berlin Wall in 1961. Concurrently, the “economic miracle” in West Germany initiated another wave of migration. In the 1950s, a labour shortage necessitated the importation of foreign workers who were invited as “guests” and therefore called Gastarbeiter [immigrant or guest workers].16 It was intended that these guest workers would return to their country of origin every few years (the Rotationsprinzip [rotation principle]). This practice is now regarded as one of many migration planning disasters in the country’s recent history. Large numbers of guest workers stayed and became permanent residents when the government issued an Anwerbestop [halt to recruitment] in 1973 in an attempt to curb further migration, which nevertheless allowed those currently working in West Germany to settle there. Although this move was supposed to encourage the return of foreigners to their home countries (Rückkehrförderungsgesetz/Rückkehrhilfegesetz), the legal right for workers to be reunited with their families in West Germany (Familienzusammenführung) ironically resulted in the arrival of larger numbers of foreigners. Yet not even this influx registered as “migration” to the officials concerned. In addition, West Germany’s liberal right to asylum (Grundrecht auf Asyl [fundamental right to asylum]), which granted asylum to everyone who professed to need it, effectively made the country the number one destination for political prisoners, religious refugees, war victims, and others who claimed to fit these categories. Despite all evidence to the contrary, West German politicians continued to proclaim throughout the decades of mass migration (the 1950s to the early 90s) that theirs was no country of immigration.17 The early 1990s, in particular, saw many heated debates among the public and in parliament on this and related issues, fuelled largely by a growing disenchantment among German citizens and a rise in xenophobia, which was well documented in the world media. Joining in the debate were those German residents who, as children of guest workers, had grown up in Germany, yet were denied citizenship based on the legal understanding that “Germanness” was based on ius sanguinis, or the law of blood ties. This group demanded representation, rights, and, above all, German citizenship, to transform their status from “tolerated” (geduldet) to “accepted and legally integrated”. As a result, an overall review of those German laws relating to definitions of ethnicity and national identity was undertaken. At no time, though, was one basic assumption questioned, an assumption that was still being upheld well into the 1990s by then Chancellor Helmut Kohl: “We are in agreement that the Federal Republic of Germany is not an immigrant country and will not become one either.”18 It was not until the late 1990s that the newly elected government under Gerhard Schröder realized that the legacies of the past needed to be dealt with before problems escalated out of control. Several public initiatives were founded and established laws were changed. In addi391

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tion, more and more ethnic Germans (the group entering Germany as Aussiedler) were given incentives to stay in their Eastern European and Russian homes, rather than to migrate on ethnic grounds to their desired homeland, which was finding it increasingly difficult to integrate them, considering that many had long since lost the connection to German language and culture. In contrast to the unexpected long-term presence of guest workers-cummigrants and the influx of asylum seekers, it was difficult for the country to attract skilled labourers and migrants with tertiary education. Similar to recent Australian practices, economic migration began to be favoured by politicians. Would-be settlers could qualify by using a points system, with bonuses awarded for skills, qualifications, and language ability. Numbers were kept at a modest level initially, with just forty to fifty thousand people allowed entry each year. In 2000, responding to increased pressure from German industry, another avenue was introduced: temporary “Green Cards” were offered to information technology specialists.19 Again the results were less than what had been hoped for, probably because of the conditions attached to the offer. Unlike the American Green Card which allows permanent residency, the German variety limited residency to a maximum of five years, with no possibility of permanent residency or citizenship. Barely seventeen thousand computer experts took up the offer over the next five years. Their renewed guest worker status, and the fact that the advertisement campaign targeted India, prompted severe criticism from conservative quarters, with some groups agitating against this programme of controlled temporary migration for highly specialized white-collar workers with slogans such as “Kinder statt Inder” [Children instead of Indians]. When CDU candidate Jürgen Rüttgers used this catch-cry in the 2000 election campaign, he claimed that he wanted to entice Germans to produce offspring instead of importing Indian IT specialists. His comments sparked outrage and a heated debate with no clear winner, and most parties seemed relieved when the focus shifted onto the European level. Looking towards the European Union for solutions was one welcome way out of the national debate. Disassociating these discussions (which affected many more countries than Germany) from the nation that had brought about the Third Reich was welcomed, not least since it relieved a society still haunted by the Nazi period of a difficult discourse, thus allowing for the discussion of policies that were at times highly inequitable and discriminatory to take place in a wider forum. A common approach and EU-wide targets meant the shift towards an active migration promotion and selection process which favoured skilled migrants from developing countries. At the same time, the country tried to tackle the neo-Nazi threat by way of deconstructing slogans used by the latter; in 2000 the government launched an education campaign which showcased young Germans of visibly African, Middle Eastern, and Asian descent wearing T-shirts with the slogan “I am proud to be German”. This was perceived as a clear indication that the government of the Federal Republic was finally acknowledging the existence of its multicultural make-up, yet ironically this campaign was launched at a time when Germany’s popularity as a migrant destination had decreased significantly.20 Indeed, emigration was increasing: from 2004, nearly as many people emigrated as immigrated (in 2005, 628,399 left, while 707,352 came to Germany; in 2004, 697,632 left, while 780,175 came).21 The provocative motto “I am proud to be German”, borrowed from neo-Nazi/skinhead lan392

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guage, set out to raise awareness in unified Germany that the state had become home to many different peoples whose backgrounds were pluralistic and contributed to their hyphenated, multiple, or different—yet, nevertheless, essentially German—identities. Against this belated and all too idealistic understanding of German multiculturalism, the realities for “people with a migrant background”22 have in fact changed very little. Many continue to live a marginalized existence, occupying centrestage only with regard to statistics, when, as “troubled communities”, they are singled out in studies relating to failures in education23 or their lack of prospects in the job market. In addition, the mainstream German public has been alerted to increases in segregation (Ghettobildung [formation of ghettos]), violence, crime,24 and fundamentalism in migrant communities.25 All these issues have loomed large since the terrorist attacks in the United States on 11 September 2001, and the subsequent “war on terror” is responsible for the stand-off between Eastern and Western concepts of civilization currently apparent in the media. The socialist SPD party in power in the early years of the decade tried hard to continue with its integration of outsiders in all aspects of culture and society, prompting Germany’s Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer to call for a “culture of tolerance” in a February 2002 speech in Istanbul. In his speech, Fischer acknowledged that immigration and integration pose difficult challenges for EU nations, and he admitted to raising but not answering questions such as: “Should the Koran be taught in German schools—and by whom? Should Muslim teachers in a German school be allowed to wear veils? Can Muslim ritual slaughtering practices find a place in our conception of animal rights?”26 These were only three of the many practical problems arising in Germany at the time, as a result of people of differing faiths having to find ways to negotiate their preferences. Often these dilemmas ended up in the courts, and despite Fischer claiming that “[t]he result has been a steady advancement in our understanding of tolerant cohabitation”,27 in reality the situation had become no less complex. Not least because of a certain distrust of the growing sphere of Islamic presence in Germany, it became increasingly difficult even for hardliners to ignore the fact that a declining birth rate among German women28 (in contrast to that among women with a migrant background residing permanently in Germany, resulting in a significant increase in hyphenated identities) and an ageing population meant that the percentage of offspring with a migrant background was growing quickly, and a more organized immigration policy was needed to correct this trend.29 Despite this growing insight, even the 2005 Zuwanderungsgesetz turned out to be everything but an Immigration Act, making immigration even more difficult30 and prolonging the perception that immigration was a problem rather than an opportunity. Discussions about Germany’s immigration policies are at times still farcical, such as during the April 2007 debate on a new Ausländer- und Asylrecht [Alien Rights and the Right to Asylum] in the German parliament, when members of the Grand Coalition under the Chancellery of Angela Merkel faced off against one another. Michael Mürsch (SPD) stated: “Deutschland ist ein Einwanderungsland” [Germany is a country of immigration], only to be corrected minutes later by his colleague Stephan Mayer (CSU): “Deutschland ist kein Einwanderungsland” [Germany is not a country of immigration],31 thus perpetuating the myth that Germany remains a country of ethnically homo393

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geneous people. Accordingly, foreign-looking Germans are to this day routinely asked where they come from or where they learnt such good German. Tensions, prejudices, and failed communication, as well as the increasingly multicultural make-up of Germany as a result of its immigration policies and demographic developments, have prompted successive governments to act, for example, when the conservative Minister of the Interior, Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU), part of the Grand Coalition led by Chancellor Angela Merkel since 2005, organized a biennial Islam Conference, the first of which was held in September 2006. The conference was designed to be a forum for dialogue with Muslims from all sections of that community, including the Zentralrat der Muslime [Central Council of Muslims], as well as radical groups such as Milli-Görüs, whose anti-Semitism has been well documented. Recognition of the need to ensure that Germany’s three million Muslims are subject to and protected by the German Basic Law, rather than the Islamic Sharia Law, has been instrumental in the decision to invite all Muslims to this conference. The need to act was shared by all, as their overall verdict with regard to the integration of Germans with a migrant background was sobering. They acknowledged that: “Die dritte Generation ist in Teilen schlechter integriert als die erste.” [The third generation is to some degree more poorly integrated than the first.]32 New initiatives were introduced to signal that Germany’s education system did not threaten Islamic identity. These include interfaith activities and the teaching (at selected schools) of Islamic education in the German language, and are seen as constructive steps towards improving cross-cultural relations. The extent to which the general German population had underestimated the sense of connection with, and emotional ties to, their chosen homeland felt by Germans with a migrant background could be seen during the 2006 Football World Cup. Most Germans were surprised to see members of Germany’s Muslim community, including many young men and women of Middle Eastern descent, demonstrating their national pride, decked out in the official merchandise of the German team, waving German flags, cheering for the German team—the women wearing headscarves in the German colours. This was observed again during the 2010 World Cup. With an eye on demographic statistics, it is worth noting that these marginalized elements of German society will soon become the majority. According to population studies, Germany faces the prospect that by 2015, fifty per cent of its population aged below forty will have a migrant background. The largest migrant group in Germany stems from Turkey (2.8 million), with the majority being the offspring of guest workers. Over-represented in unemployment statistics (unemployment among Deutschtürken [Germans of Turkish descent] is around twenty-five per cent, in contrast to the national average of eight to ten per cent) and under-represented in universities and other higher education institutions,33 their integration, or lack thereof, has repeatedly been blamed on the failure of their schooling. Not too dissimilar to the situation of the Maghrebis and their offspring in France, the Beurs and Beurettes, many children of guest workers in Germany seem to ricochet between two worlds, one close and familiar to them and the other forced upon them through prejudice and the expectations of others. The majority of children of guest workers were born on German soil, educated in the German school system, and speak, for the most part, German as their first (and dominant) language. However, just as much as their parents wish to raise them to 394

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be mindful of their ancestral religion, language, and customs, they are often made to feel that German society as a whole sees their presence as a threat. Especially since the 1990s, debates about “parallel societies” and the politics of integration and recognition should be seen to be as much about the expression of anxieties to do with the presence of too many “foreigners”, as about too many uncertainties in general. In an attempt to forge a new, unified German identity, perceptions about what seems “foreign” have served primarily to stabilize and persistently (re)construct the self. With reference to the post-colonial and orientalist scholarship that has followed in the wake of Edward Said, who analysed concepts of an oriental “other” as constructions of colonial hegemony, discussions about what is identified as “foreign” or perceived as “not belonging” may be identified as “neo-orientalist” discourse and also as a manifestation of Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism, which occurs in conjunction with what some post-colonial theorists have termed “occidentalism”.34 These new concepts have slowly penetrated the arts and found reflection in German Heimat films since the 1980s. However, the level of understanding, comprehension, and empathy has varied considerably. It is possible to highlight the paradigmatic shift that has taken place when comparing contemporary films about race relations in Germany with those made in the 1970s. Deniz Göktürk saw in the old films about migrants and guest workers—very much related to the British context—a “cinema of duty”,35 which only slowly gave way to a set of films expressing “the pleasures of hybridity”.36 In her analysis of the past forty years of German film history, she identifies some directors of New German Cinema who “had shown some interest in immigrants”, among them “Fassbinder who staged himself in Katzelmacher (1969) as ‘ein Griech’ aus Griechenland’” [a Greek from Greece].37 However, Göktürk points out that these films were themselves the product of well-meaning but ultimately ill-informed individuals, who often misunderstood one another and perpetuated misrepresentations. One example Göktürk cites is Fassbinder’s Angst Essen Seele Auf [Fear Eats Soul, 1973] which he shot “under the working title of ‘Alle Türken heißen Ali’ [All Turks Are Called Ali]—all North Africans as well, one might add, because the film did not feature any Turks, but a black man (Ben Hedi ElSaalem) as an object of desire and erotic projection”.38 Despite taking issue with the perspective of many of the productions of the New German Cinema, Göktürk acknowledges Fassbinder’s engagement as multi-layered and multifaceted, and contrasts it sharply with the discourse that followed in the 1980s, when pictures of victimization dominated films. These were also “replicated in the work of Turkish directors living in Germany. Tevfik Baser’s 40qm Deutschland [40m2 of Germany, 1986], is a Kammerspiel [play for a studio theatre] about a young Turkish woman who is brought to Hamburg by her husband and locked up in a flat.”39 In this film, the Turkish protagonists are cast in framed-in shots, depicted as victims, and shown as incapable of communicating and interacting with Germans. “The spatial closure is conveyed through the mise-en-scène and framing. Characters are depicted in open spaces only in their subjective visions, mostly nostalgic memories of their home villages.”40 While this may have been true, particularly for the wives of Muslim guest workers, their children faced problems of another kind. By the end of the 1980s, a growing proportion of the foreign population had been born in Germany, the so-called second generation. These children 395

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were not granted German citizenship at birth, but instead were treated as foreigners in a legal sense. They were growing up in two societies: their private world was dominated by their parents’ culture, while they were confronted with conflicting impressions and different values at school and in their social lives. The challenge of depicting life from their perspective was first taken on by German productions of the 1980s, such as Yasemin (1988), directed by Hark Bohm, a German director living in Hamburg. In Yasemin, the intergenerational problems within Turkish families living in Germany became the focus. “The film has been referred to as ‘Romeo and Juliet in Hamburg’. The love-story […] falls into the pattern of being lost ‘between the cultures’.”41 Regardless whether one sees the exposure to different cultures as divisive or confusing, the film has been interpreted as describing a schizophrenic situation: “Yasemin embodies the total split between German and Turkish culture, which was summed up in an exhibition title of those years: ‘Morgens Deutschland—Abends Türkei’ [Germany in the morning—Turkey at night].”42 This description accurately depicts the schism and sense of a double identity that the film presents as a realistic depiction of teenage and young adult second-generation migrants, which is evident from the linguistic mix and the seemingly irreconcilable differences in the cultural values to which the protagonist is exposed. This film repeats the mistakes of the old colonial attitude, depicting the situation from a voyeuristic, ethnographic perspective, that “reproduced and generated common stereotypes” and confirmed the view that, on the whole, “German society is more civilized and enlightened than the archaic Turkish community.”43 Social integration of the second generation could only be achieved by the rejection of the first-generation immigrants and everything they stood for. Göktürk is adamant in her rejection of the film, as it advocates a generational as well as a cultural divide that cannot be bridged, thus constructing the German and Turkish ways of life as diametrically opposed and incompatible, and defying the promoters’ claims “to foster cross-cultural understanding”.44 In this as well as other films thematizing Turks in Germany, Muslim women are either represented as victims of racism, oppression, subordination, and prostitution, or as the epitome of cultural purity, authenticity, and attachment to the home,45 implying that they should conform to a larger than life ideal. Either fate presents a dilemma, as is evident in the representation of female agency in Helma Sander-Brahms’ Shirins Hochzeit [Shirin’s Wedding, 1975], Tevfik Baser’s 40m2 of Germany (1986) and Abschied vom falschen Paradies [Farewell to the False Paradise, 1988], and Hark Bohm’s Yasemin (1988). The women in these films are always imprisoned, either by their fathers or husbands, or by the German state. In several of these films, German men are the liberators of the women, with Yasemin’s flight on the back seat of her new German suitor’s motorbike symbolic of her desire to break out.46 Yasemin was one of the first protagonists to belong to the second generation of migrants, and since the release of Bohm’s film in 1988, the focus has shifted even more in their direction. Some of the second generation have themselves found expression as filmmakers, slowly establishing a “Turkish” cinema in Germany, as well as liberating films about their own fate from the perspective of the social worker. Göktürk has pointed out that, in order to get funding for many films during the 1980s and early 90s, film-makers, screenwriters, and migrant artists had to frame their stories in ways that were consistent with the “critical”, “seri396

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ous” social realism approach favoured by Germany’s cultural institutions and funding schemes, which in turn often reinforced a patronizing and marginalizing attitude towards migrants.47 As Deniz Göktürk has stressed, until the 1990s, migrants in German cinema appeared only “as prisoners of a patronizing culture of compassion”.48 The main accusation levelled against such a representation of guest workers and other foreigners in the New German Cinema, or in films such as Jan Schütte’s Drachenfutter [Dragon Fodder, 1987] and Tevfik Baser’s Farewell to the False Paradise has been that they “address a hegemonic viewership by evoking the viewer’s pity and sympathy”.49 The focus has changed with the emergence of a generation of filmmakers with a migrant background who make films from “within”, by thematizing the interaction of members of the second- and third-generation migrant communities with the dominant society. The protagonists demonstrate their feelings of belonging in a variety of ways, displaying a certain fluidity between cultures—as well as a spiritual homelessness that challenges Homi Bhabba’s recasting of the wandering and the homeless into a positive model. Bhabba’s interpretation of the difficulties experienced by “people of the pagus—colonials, post-colonials, migrants, minorities—wandering peoples”50 (here referred to as hyphenated identities) in finding contentment and containment in a Heim [home] is shown to clash with realities in contemporary Germany. Both Fatih Akin’s Kurz und Schmerzlos [Short Sharp Shock, 1998] and Gegen die Wand [Head On, 2004] arrive at considerably more sobering conclusions about success in, and integration of, two disparate cultures. Deniz Göktürk finds ample reason to celebrate films by and about the second generation of migrants, highlighting subversive narratives and the possibilities of playful interaction with European cinema. She identifies in this development a move away from a sub-national discourse of pity to a national discourse of cinematic exchange or role-play,51 in which the picture remains multifaceted. Film-makers such as Fatih Akin do not follow a blackand-white logic and refuse to portray a simple reversal of values. Thus the image of the migrant is not glorified in their films; instead many sides of the cross-cultural and inter-cultural discourse are represented which defy easy labelling. Not surprisingly, Akin and his colleagues do not shy away from self-reflection or self-flagellation when they admit that it is not only the dominant society that must face up to its shortcomings; the migrants and their offspring must also differentiate between fact and fiction. In their contribution to the Heimat discourse, these film-makers revisit long-held convictions of their parents’ generation and put them to the test. This might involve, for example, the voiced desire to return to the country of origin, which (according to many family patriarchs) necessitates that family members should not interact with German society.52 Indeed, the national and international success of their films is proof in itself that many of the second and third generations of migrants have arrived, not just in Germany, but also in the mainstream, the middle class, and even the establishment. It is from these circles of people— integrated and successful Germans with a migrant background, who are engaged in such discussions on a personal and professional level—that some of Germany’s most noted cultural impulses are emerging.

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The formerly marginalized voices of long-term residents initially came to the fore in literary form during the 1980s,53 and then in film in the 1990s,54 a format in which they challenged personal, social, and legal questions of belonging and Heimat, linguistically, geographically, emotionally, and spiritually. Indicative of the success of a new generation of film-makers are the productions appearing on German television, inspired by New Turkish Cinema55 and Third Cinema.56 One of these productions is the ARD series Türkisch für Anfänger [Turkish for Beginners, 2006/7), which was awarded many prizes, as it was seen to contribute to the dialogue between Germans and new Germans of Turkish descent, although viewer numbers remained fairly low. Coupled with the negotiation of ethnicity played out on television and cinema screens is also that of gender, especially in the Turkish-German context, where Islamic and Western values tend to collide, above all in relation to traditional and modern male and female role models. The gender issue makes for the exciting and creative phase of re-negotiation of place and space which is currently being played out in Germany’s contemporary cultural scene. One method of expressing their search for a place they can call home may be found in Heimat films made by Germans with a specific ethnic background, or by foreigners who have been long-term residents in Germany. Probing feelings of alienation and belonging, homecoming and dislocation, identity and alterity, a hyphenated Heimat is continuously constructed and deconstructed in their films, thus proving to be both a construction and a construction site of diverse aspects of multiple identities, which are contested and rejected or embraced and cherished. In these films, an increasingly comprehensive conception of place as something globalized and pluralistic expresses itself in hyphenated Heimats which include more and more aspects and traces of the “other”. In contrast to its mostly conservative political climate, German culture has been exposed to a new discourse on migration and multiculturalism for some time, aided by a lively public debate on the integration of migrants into the nation and the “Germanness” of Germans and Germany. Since the 1990s, “[b]ooks and articles in German newspapers and magazine, talk shows on TV and radio suddenly focus[sed] on the multicultural make up of Germany [and] German-Turkish pop groups like Rödelsheimer Rap, Sabrina Setlur or Aziza-A attract[ed] an increasing German and Turkish audience.”57 Berlin was home to the first German “Turkish-only” radio station (Radyo Metropol, launched in 1999), and Germany experienced a “boom of exhibitions, conferences, workshops, initiatives and seminars dealing with stereotypes, multiculturalism, intercultural communication, tolerance education, integration of foreigners, cultural diversity etc.”58 Although many of these activities had been conceived, or had been taking place, for quite some time, they had gradually become more visible and vocal and were closing the gap between multicultural and mainstream culture. This development was highlighted when popular German actor Moritz Bleibtreu delivered part of his speech honouring the director Fatih Akin in Turkish: “Er weiß, was das heißt” [He knows what that means]59 was Bleibtreu’s cheeky aside to the stunned crowd of dignitaries present at the Munich Film Festival early in 2008. In response, Akin praised his friend’s efforts in the foreign language as childish and cute: “Das Türkisch war wie bei der Sendung mit der Maus.” [The Turkish was on the same level as in the children’s programme The Show with the Mouse.]60 398

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Akin, like many of his colleagues, is frequently referred to as “TurkishGerman”, a term which he and others reject for themselves. Although hyphenated concepts of Heimat are constructed in many of their films, directors and critics strongly reject hyphenated labels to describe the film-makers. Well-known critic Hamid Nacify sees in the hyphen the suggestion of “a divided mind, an irrevocably split identity, or a type of paralysis between two cultures or nations”.61 However, he accepts comparisons with Third Cinema,62 and sees films associated with “Black British Cinema”, or the “beur cinema” and “banlieue films” (films set in the suburbs or films of the “hood”, but primarily referring to second-generation immigrants of Maghrebi descent) of France as examples of accented/artisanal cinema in Europe.63 To describe this new phenomenon in film-making, he has suggested the term “accented cinema”, which he applies to exilic, diasporic, and ethnic types of film-making, a body of work that he does not see as an “established or cohesive cinema”, nor as purely emanating “from the accented speech of the diegetic characters [but] from the displacement of the filmmakers and their artisanal production modes”.64 In “accented” films, Nacify sees a dialogue “with the home and host societies and their respective national cinemas, as well as with audiences, many of whom are similarly transnational, whose desires, aspirations, and fears they express”.65 As such, accented cinema is a global phenomenon, although it certainly reacts to very local interactions when raising universal issues of identity. Other film critics, calling for new genre categories in dealing with the emerging transnational voices, have resorted to labels such as an “engagé cinema”,66 “minority cinema”,67 “substate cinema”,68 “postcolonial hybrid cinema”,69 or “cinema of migration”.70 What unites hyphenated German cinema with Third Cinema and Black Cinema is its “desire to speak not for the diaspora but from within them and to reveal the heterogeneity of [its] communities—to undo the myth of sameness”.71 In view of the diversity of productions issuing from Germany, representations of Heimat and the multitude of paths trodden in the quest for Heimat, “sameness” is the least appropriate term to describe the creative explosion of styles, expressions, and points of view. As Germany’s second migrant generation has come of age, it accounts for some of the country’s best cultural productions, borne out of the tension these cultural hybrids have experienced. Autobiographical references abound; most of the second-generation migrant film-makers grew up during a period of intensification of xenophobia, which resulted in sometimes lethal violence against foreigners and asylum seekers. From within this group, a vital number of multicultural directors and actors emerged “as another facet of regionalization in Germany, enriching and contributing to a local-bound sense of cultural distinctiveness and difference”.72 While not “looking” German, many of the accented directors feel a strong bond with their birthplace or residence in Germany and sympathize strongly with their protagonists, who demand recognition and representation in the land of their birth and where they reside. In many cases, the directors’ personal plea and quest for a place in life, their personal points of view, and their confusion have informed their creative works as much as critical debate in Germany. Such films include Thomas Arslan’s Der Schöne Tag [A Fine Day, 2001], which followed Geschwister [Siblings, 1997], and Dealer (1999), as the third part in a trilogy about the living conditions of

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Turkish youth growing up in Germany, as well as Fatih Akin’s films Kurz und Schmerzlos [Short Sharp Shock, 1998] and Im Juli [In July, 2000]. The claim that “the new ‘German’ cinema is Turkish” was catchy.73 However, such a statement glosses over the fact that the Turkish-German film-makers are demographically a very diverse group. Not only do their levels of socialization in one or the other country vary, so too does their ethnicity: nearly a quarter of the two million “Turks” living in Germany are actually Kurds, who come from areas within the borders of Turkey as well as from neighbouring Iran, Iraq, and Syria.74 They include many well-known female and male directors raised in two cultures and moving freely between them.75 As will be seen in the following analysis of three films, many of these film-makers take their cues and references not from German cinematic heritage such as the New German Cinema of the 1970s—or the contemporary German cinema of consensus represented by “Detlev Buck, Doris Dörrie, Sönke Wortmann, and others”76—but instead from broader European and North American traditions of film-making. Fatih Akin, the most prominent film-maker from Germany to belong to this new wave of Heimat films, demonstratively made a point of being at home in world cinema with the title of his own production company, Corazón International. He founded this label (which is behind Gegen die Wand [Head On, 2004] as well as all of his subsequent films)77 in 2004, seeming to imply that he and his films are at home in the world and have their heart in international and generally human affairs. The following analysis of his modern classic Head On confirms this.

Fatih Akin’s Head On (2004) Fatih Akin’s fourth feature film provides an insight into the lives of two German residents of Turkish descent and their search for a place they can call home. Cahit is a forty-two-year-old widower whose inexpressible sense of loss following the death of his German wife, Katharina, overshadows his existence. When the camera first focuses on him, he is working as a glass collector in an industrial concert venue and abuses his own body as much as the people around him as a release for the pain he feels. On this particular evening, back at the local pub, he rejects attempts made by colleagues and Marlen, a woman with whom he has a casual sexual relationship, to engage in conversation, and reacts with extreme aggression to verbal abuse from another patron. When a barkeeper throws him out of the pub and recommends that he should “go home”, the ultimate irony is that Cahit looks and feels like a homeless person. That night, speeding in a drunken stupor, he tries to kill himself by driving into a wall. However, even this attempt to find a new place or to end his sense of hurt fails. During his recovery in hospital, he meets Sibel, a twenty-year-old daughter of Turkish migrants, who has also survived a suicide attempt. Sibel had cut her wrists to escape conflict at home. Modern Turkish women like her have difficulty living their lives within the boundaries of their traditional families. She has failed to negotiate the gulf between her desire for free love, sex, and rock’n’roll and the expectations placed on her by her father and brother. Sibel’s hunger for life clashes with their concepts of Turkish tradition and patriarchy.78 Initially, her behaviour also repels Cahit when (after 400

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learning that he is Turkish) she asks him to marry her to provide a pro forma exit clause from her family’s control. Cahit, who is barely more than a walking corpse, fails to bond with Sibel at this first attempt. Nevertheless, when both prove unable to re-enter their lives without setbacks, they fall back on each other in their despair and rage. Behaving like needy siblings, they make an unlikely couple, and continue down diametrically opposed paths. After their wedding, Sibel thrives on the freedom she finds in casual sex, has her belly button pierced, and generally moves around as she pleases. Cahit, however, continues his downward slide, abusing drugs and committing acts of vandalism; he is in free fall, lacking emotional bonds. Born in the southern Turkish coastal town of Mersin, Cahit left his homeland, settled in Germany, married a German, and “threw away” his native tongue. Even after the death of his first wife, he chose not to re-establish contact with his sister in Frankfurt, and denies the existence of his parents and other relatives. Although he associates with another Turkish man at his workplace, this relationship seems to be fuelled more by convenience than by a connection between compatriots. Ironically, it is only after killing one of Sibel’s lovers, when the German media brand his act of manslaughter an “honour killing”, that Cahit is pushed into an ethnic identity he had never associated with himself. Sibel was born in Germany to an older father and a much younger and less traditional Turkish woman who dyes her hair, does not wear a headscarf, dresses in a Western fashion, and smokes in public, thus foregrounding the gender-related conflicts in the family. Only Sibel’s brother Yilmaz seems to uphold his father’s dream of a Turkish life in Germany—at the expense of Sibel’s right to self-determination. Upon finding Sibel holding hands with her first teenage love, Yilmaz broke her nose to punish her for damaging the family’s honour and repeatedly threatens to kill her should their father suffer because of her actions. Her brother’s highly moral stance is questionable: he fails to see anything wrong with male infidelity or frequenting brothels. When Cahit agrees to wed Sibel, both understand that the marriage will be a sham that will free Sibel from her family: they will share a house and all costs, though not the bed. They live this lie and try to keep up pretences whenever family and friends attempt to probe beyond the facade. In reality, they move in apparently separate orbits through grey, leafless streetscapes, where graffiti provides the only bright colour. Both remain unable to reconcile their identities in the urban environment of Hamburg-Altona, an inner city district with a high proportion of foreigners. Neither can identify with fellow Turkish-Germans; nor do they connect on a deeper level with people of other nationalities. Neither can call this place “home”. The film’s message is symbolically inscribed in its musical score, with clashes dominating the entire composition. The soundscape introduces the central theme as harshly as the visuals. The film opens to reveal a Turkish orchestra performing a tragic love song, with the musicians arranged on a myriad of Persian carpets before a backdrop of the Bosporus and the oriental skyline of Istanbul. This seductive image of the Orient is abruptly shattered, however, by the glare of industrial lights switched on following the conclusion of a concert in a large, functional venue in Germany. The clinking of beer bottles shakes the audience out of the lull created by the Turkish music with its “One Thousand and One Nights”-like mood. Cahit, the glass collector, also jars with the music and the mood, as he is not at all composed. In 401

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contrast to the composition of the band and its music, he meanders drunkenly through the rubbish, not only collecting the bottles but also drinking the dregs. In contrast to the proud performers on the shores of Istanbul, Cahit epitomizes the washed-out by-product of Western society. Thus the deliberately stilted arrangement and the stereotypical Turkishness of the band on the Golden Horn are contrasted with the no less clichéd film noir‒style nihilism of the Western world. At first glance, Turkish culture seems more desirable than the urban jungle of Hamburg, with its graffiti, grime, and the selfdestructive tendencies of its residents. However, glimpses of other possibilities are shown for both settings. The unlikely couple, Cahit and Sibel, seem to be sharing a life of domestic bliss in a sequence of magic realism, when Sibel cooks a traditional Turkish dish for Cahit following her mother’s recipe. Turkish music by Sezen Aksu, symbolically titled “Yine Mi Cicek” [The Invisible Man] accompanies the scenes of Sibel shopping in a Turkish supermarket, preparing the meal, laying the table together with Cahit, and the start of the meal. The images are saturated with colour and reminiscent of 1950s aesthetics, in stark contrast to the earlier images of Hamburg, set to dark and depressing punk-pop music. However, the light and happy aura of the dinner scene is abruptly cut off when Sibel suggests that her mother’s nagging about prospective grandchildren should be fobbed off by pretending that Cahit is impotent. In response to this insult to his manhood, Cahit storms out to get drunk in the local pub, the dark industrial music starts again, and Sibel flushes the meal down the toilet. The synthesis of Turkish and German life is denied in plot and soundtrack, and this message is emphasized repeatedly. When Sibel and Cahit realise their feelings for each other, a happy ending appears possible, an outcome which the hybrid music seems to support. A song that sounds like “Temple of Love”, by the 1980s Gothic band from Leeds The Sisters of Mercy, soon reveals itself to be a live concert version from 1992, which incorporates oriental vocals sung by the Israeli pop star Ofra Haza. As the Western and Eastern fusion of plot and music is played out, the hope of a happy resolution proves to be short-lived. In line with the lyrics that foreshadow conflict—“Life is short and love is always over in the morning”— Sibel also interrupts the illusion by breaking off the act of consummation for fear of losing her freedom. Here the film undermines the prejudice that limited or even denied sexual freedom is primarily experienced in communities living according to traditional Muslim values. In her refusal to consummate the relationship and marriage, Sibel acknowledges that a Western understanding of marriage and monogamy is just as limiting and counter-productive to her search for freedom. The coitus interruptus leaves Sibel liberated but Cahit unsatisfied and on edge, a fact which helps to explain his subsequent fiercely brutal reaction to insult: it is not so much a defence of his or her honour as a release for unconsummated love. Reacting to the abuse directed at him and his wife with such force that the assailant is left dead removes any possibility of a happy resolution that their marriage seemed about to provide. As news breaks in the tabloid newspapers that an enraged Turkish man has killed his wife’s lover in an honour killing, Cahit is charged with manslaughter, Sibel is rejected by her immediate family who consider her a whore, and both must once again start anew. These events unfold to a melodic Turkish song of la-

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ment, as if the melodrama has been predetermined in this beautifully poignant rendition of “Agla Sevdam” [Cry My Love] by Attila Özdemiroglu. Sibel flees to Turkey and, though she initially fails to find her place in Istanbul, she eventually gravitates towards its most western quarter, Taksim. Here she roams the streets, looking very much the tomboy, with short hair, wearing male clothing, and acting as if she has turned into Cahit. She has become even more self-destructive and abuses drugs and other people, only to be abused by them in return. Eventually she is raped and left for dead after a brutal altercation with Turkish men in Taksim’s backstreets. A taxi-driver rescues her from her opium-induced spiral out of control and shows her a way back into society, delivering her into the company of other, more grounded characters. One of them is Sibel’s cousin Selma, who lives in Istanbul and works as a hotel manager. Wearing suits, telling men what to do, and drinking alcohol in public, she serves as a role model to Sibel, even though she initially has some reservations about Selma’s workaholic lifestyle. As a self-confident divorcee, Selma is financially independent and free to work and play as she pleases, expressing the assured opinion that she will be able to reach her goal of becoming the General Manager of the hotel in which she works, thus demonstrating a great show of faith in the possibility of female social mobility in contemporary Turkey. Seref, colleague and father-like friend to Cahit, is another well-adjusted character at home within the German context. He is also divorced, but nevertheless expresses a similar belief in himself and the opportunities available in his chosen country of residence. He has maintained his native tongue while acquiring an admirable grasp of German, and sings Turkish lullabies while otherwise accepting the German way of life, confidently traversing traditional Turkish environments (with regard to the marriage proposal and wedding festivities) as well as Western ones, thus offering insight into how to achieve a balanced existence: to be at home and at ease in both Western and Eastern cultures. It is Seref who, back in Hamburg, points out to Sibel that contemporary society in Turkey may be more forgiving of her infidelity than the Turkish migrant community in Germany. Thus borders have shifted and certainties seem less solid. Accordingly, and against all expectations, it is in her adopted Heimat of Istanbul that Sibel finds the freedom she has been unable to attain in Germany. Divorced from her family, she has taken on board Selma’s version of emancipation and comes to work and associate with friends rather than relatives. Akin refuses to present German and Turkish identity as a dichotomy; although he includes examples of stereotypes relating to the Islamic culture as traditionalist, authoritarian, and anti-Western, he also demonstrates that secular German society does not necessarily allow for a progressive and liberal lifestyle. Gender inequality and violence against women have entered German society with the influx of orthodox Muslims who, although a minority among migrants, nevertheless draw the attention of the media. Using reverse logic, Akin also challenges the assumption that simply by joining the EU, Eastern and Western traditions may be fused harmoniously. Instead, the film argues that any change to traditional patriarchal society will need to come from within the community as a response to the offspring of diasporic Turks seeking sexual freedom and gender equality. On the whole, Akin is keen to correct the national and ethnic stereotypes that he had helped to reinforce in his road movie Im Juli [In July]. One of the 403

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main characters in that film, the exotic Turkish-German Melek, explains to the naive German teacher that her name means “Angel”. In Head On, the doctor in the rehabilitation clinic remarks upon recognizing that Cahit’s name is Turkish: “You [Turks] have such beautiful names.” Likewise, Akin engages with the statistical reality of the over-representation of foreigners in the German criminal justice system. Nevertheless, he manages to undermine the black-and-white image of criminal foreigners, adding shades of grey to his rich and multilayered canvas to provoke the audience out of its complacency and self-assured attitudes. Indeed, many of the existential questions and dilemmas facing his protagonists could resonate just as deeply with anyone; even if the circumstances differ, the underlying quests—for love and a place to call home—remain equally relevant, and this is evident when Cahit regains his freedom. Upon release from prison after years of incarceration,79 Cahit follows the advice he did not heed at the beginning of the film: “If you can’t change the world, change your world.” The doctor’s musing during Cahit’s time in rehabilitation has provided an answer for his longings, and he returns to his native Turkey, his birthplace, in an attempt to reconnect with what he has lost, his childhood Heimat.80 While Cahit’s return to his origins and roots stands for a more traditional understanding of Heimat, Sibel’s journey represents a very modern concept of attaining a new Heimat—through the conscious creation of her own new nuclear family. Sibel’s Heimat is people, while Cahit’s Heimat is a place that he has invested with emotions. Akin does not provide an answer as to whose search is likely to be more successful. His film’s ending is open: Cahit leaves for Mersin, while Sibel stays in Istanbul with her partner and their daughter. The film poignantly communicates the irony that people may live as they wish in the comparative freedom of contemporary Turkey, whereas the Turkish community in Germany is presented as more anachronistic and intolerant. As if to stress that diasporic communities cultivate a more fundamentalist approach to ethnic identity, Hamburg’s Turkish society is shown to be less tolerant and humane. It is a Turkish-born bus driver who evicts Sibel and Cahit from Hamburg’s public transport as he feels they are “gottlose Hunde” [faithless dogs]. Similarly cold and unforgiving, Sibel’s parents break off all contact with their daughter after finding out about her infidelity. They burn her photos to erase her from their memory, and in scenes set to melodramatic Turkish music, her brother Yilmaz chases her through Hamburg’s streets trying to expel her from their city. Sibel’s brother, who would have killed her had she stayed in Hamburg, justifies their reaction with reference to Turkish values: “We had to save our family’s honour.” For Yilmaz and his father, honour (namus), respect (saygi), and reputation (seref) are more important than love and forgiveness. Neither Sibel nor Cahit can relate to this. Upon his release from prison, Cahit asks Sibel’s brother: “And did you save it, your honour?” Whatever they may save, they stand to lose more than they can protect: Sibel turns her back on her family, just as Cahit had done some years earlier. Both of them choose associations rather than blood ties as a source of comfort and protection. It seems that family, gender, tradition, or ethnicity are unable to provide the means to a sense of belonging, whereas a community of like-minded people from all walks of life can. Cahit’s and Sibel’s turning to Turkey is more by default than true choice. In a world where the movement of people is regu404

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lated by passports and visas, the safest and quickest long-term alternative to Germany is—at least for them in these circumstances—Turkey. Their refuge or self-imposed exile to the land of their forefathers may therefore signify less a desire to return to their roots than a deliberate new start. They do not seek reconnection to their ethnie, but instead a place where they may live unjudged and free. The film paints a grim prospect of the sense of belonging felt by secondand third-generation migrants, as was the case in Akin’s previous film Short Sharp Shock.81 Gabriel, the Turkish-German in this gangster film, is unable to re-enter German society after a prison sentence and renewed involvement in crime and murder. He flees to Turkey, where he hopes to run a beach bar. While the images of Turkey conjured up by Gabriel in Akin’s first feature film are deliberately naive—his native village is presented as a place where the sun always shines and where physical labour is a breeze, and he is surrounded by friends and bikini-clad girls—the scenes set in Turkey in Head On convey a far more differentiated impression. Sibel’s encounter with Istanbul’s sub-culture of sex and drugs, her assault at the hands of three Turkish men whose honour she has tarnished, and her clashes with Selma indicate that it is not easy for her to find her niche in a society that incorporates elements of both Western and Muslim culture. While for Gabriel in Short Sharp Shock, the return to Turkey occupies a central place in his dreams, Sibel’s exile to Turkey is born of necessity and is less a homecoming than a homeseeking journey inspired by her homelessness and the rejection by her Turkish family in Germany. Again, the film is at pains not to present blatant stereotypes. Sibel’s father, following her suicide attempt, is initially guided by love and concern as any father would be. Her over-protective brother, raised with Turkish norms, feels that he is acting out of a sense of responsibility towards his family and, in his last conversation with Cahit, shows that he is able to make adjustments. Sibel’s mother is moderately emancipated, and Seref is a considerate friend who realizes that Turkish society in Turkey may be more forgiving of Sibel’s transgression than her fellow countrymen in Germany. It seems that Akin is problematizing less a clash of cultures than confusion between generations, sexes, and temperaments. This issue stems from the director’s own experiences, and Akin’s film once again provides insight into his personal realm. On numerous occasions, he has chosen to work with family members, relatives, and friends, shot his films on location in neighbourhoods that he knows and frequents, and told stories which he can relate to very easily—just like many other accented film-makers. Neither Akin nor directors such as Angelina Maccarone or Thomas Arslan are afraid of revealing aspects that are close to their hearts and their own quests for identity. Akin explains: “[m]y films are Heimat films”,82 and he likens his relationship to Germany and Turkey with reference to promiscuity: “Hamburg is wife, Istanbul affair.”83 In this oscillation between his two great loves, Akin finds his identity best expressed, as identity for him is fluid and always in motion. “It’s funny to identify yourself with a city,” Akin muses, “but Istanbul is half in Europe and half in Asia, connected by a bridge, and I am this mixed kid too, half Germany, half Turkey.”84 As the son of Turkish guest workers who decided to stay on in Hamburg to provide their children with a chance to prosper in their German birthplace, Akin has seen family and friends move from the margins of 405

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West German society to a comfortable middle-class existence in unified Germany. However, while his parents’ generation held on to the customs, language, and religion of their native countries by associating mainly with fellow migrants; their children grew up grappling with two cultures and created their own, mixed identity. At the same time, Akin admits to having two homes. “I never had the feeling I was a foreigner in this world.”85 Born in 1973, the year of the oil crisis that brought on a worldwide recession and resulted in West Germany terminating the recruitment of foreign workers (the Anwerbestop), his parents, like so many other guest workers, faced the decision of whether to make use of a generous repatriation package (Rückförderungsmaßnahme) or to settle permanently in Germany. Seeing the advantages of West Germany’s high standard of living, they had a vision for their own as well as their children’s future there, sharing a belief in the importance of education and knowledge. Akin’s mother became one of the first Turkish women to be hired as a teacher in the German educational system and, like many other residents of foreign descent, the family made arrangements to remain long term in their adopted Heimat—despite the fact that this Heimat was prepared to adopt them only partially. After all, German citizenship laws—which provided for dual citizenship only in exceptional cases and which routinely prevented non-ethnic Germans from obtaining a German passport—were not changed until 2000.86 When talking about his contribution to the cinema pastiche Deutschland ’09 [Germany ’09, 2009], Akin explicitly refers to himself as “me, the German-Turk from Hamburg” who has been brought up in a “mildly religious family” with “roots in Turkey” and a socialization featuring the stereotypical ingredients of urban migrant ghettos “gangs, bouncers and night life”, someone who did not have a German passport for a long time and who could have become a terror suspect just as easily as Murat Kurnaz, one German-Turkish inmate at Guantanamo.87 Although it is not possible to draw generalizations relating to migrant identities from Akin’s film, the success of Gegen die Wand/Duvara karsi (its German and Turkish titles translated literally as Against the Wall) in both Germany and Turkey speaks volumes about the acceptability of critical discourse relating to Germany’s status as a migrant country, as well as to Turkish identity at the crossroads between Western aspirations and valued Muslim traditions. Turkey’s potential accession to the EU despite its economic and human rights problems (such as its treatment of the displaced Kurdish community), the fact that it would be the first Muslim country in the European alliance, and its geographical location place it at the crossroads between East and West, as well as somehow in-between. Cahit’s and Sibel’s fate is symptomatic of the difficulty faced by hyphenated identities in finding their place. A journey was started westwards, but seems ultimately to have gone the other way, with both characters choosing to settle in Turkey. However, whatever they might “call their home and place of belonging never simply exists in the singular, but meets the eye of the viewer as a space of unruly multiplicity, fragmentation, and dislocation, as a space of competing and often incompatible temporalities”.88 With its forcefulness and relentless brutality, the film cannot fail to affect its viewers. It draws sympathy for all its characters, and it is impossible to dismiss any one figure as being beyond help or utterly unlikeable. This may be the particular quality of the film that made it appealing to audiences in 406

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Germany and Turkey—both places of Heimat for Akin. The reception of the film thus provides a far more hopeful message than the film itself with regard to reconciliation, although the symbolic title Against the Wall reveals the possibility of a rebound, not merely a dead end. Akin shows his protagonists resisting the idea of frontiers as barriers. Cahit’s initial crash into the wall is “echoed a hundred times in the course of the film by images of fragmentation and, perhaps even more emphatically, by the sound of objects—most commonly glass—being smashed”.89 In Cahit’s dream in the hotel in Istanbul, where he awaits Sibel’s phone call, he experiences his car-crash backwards, as a rebound or a reversal from the wall. Indicative of his turnaround is the fact that he was not stopped by the wall, but instead catapulted to a new life, with the crash becoming a rebirth. Years later, in Istanbul, he realizes the second chance he has been given, and cooling his thirst with water rather than alcohol, he seems to display a different and healthier mindset. When Cahit and Sibel are catapulted out of their old lives, based on events taking place in the symbolically named Zoë-Bar [bar of life], they become visual manifestations of Homi Bhabba’s “wandering peoples who will not be contained within the Heim [home] of the national culture and its unisonant discourse”, but of those who “are themselves the marks of a shifting boundary that alienates the frontiers of the modern nation. […] They articulate the death-in-life of the idea of the ‘imagined community’ of the nation.”90 The doctor in the rehabilitation clinic refers to these death-in-life feelings by trying to instil in Cahit a desire to look for a new community, maybe in Africa, where he could help people and do something constructive with his gift of life. However, Cahit and Sibel see life itself as the prison rather than the potential cure. Through repeated acts of self-destruction, both force themselves symbolically through a cycle of multiple rebirths. Nevertheless, in contrast to Homi Bhabba’s reinterpretation of the wandering and homeless as a positive model, Akin’s presentation of practical realities is much more critical. While migrant cinema since the 1990s has been celebrated as showing a variety of ways out of an “in-betweenness” towards “diasporic experiences [that] are not limited to victimhood and struggle”,91 Akin reminds viewers of the illusory reading of migrant cinema as a “cinema of freedom”.92 Cahit’s return to Turkey does not feel like a homecoming: he stays in a hotel and meets others, not in their homes but once again in places of transit such as bars, restaurants, and hotel beds. No lasting personal bonds are established, and when Sibel abandons him, his journey seems to have hit yet another obstacle. Symbolically, the bus in which he travels to Mersin must first reverse and manoeuvre before it finds its way onto the road. Indeed, Turkey’s road to the West may have to be taken via the detour of expatriates and ethnic Turks with a Western socialization returning and reforming the society from within. Istanbul, however, has afforded Sibel the greatest freedom of all. After eventually consummating her marriage to Cahit, aptly at Akin’s real-life favourite hotel in Istanbul, Sibel chooses autonomy from her husband, instead staying with her daughter and an “invisible” man, who remains in the background and does not take over or rule her life. Despite many of Akin’s protagonists being more likely to find their place in contemporary Turkey, he has repeatedly emphasized the very Germanness 407

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of his oeuvre. For example, at the press screening of his second feature, In July (2000), at the 2001 Berlin Film Festival, Akin introduced the film with the following words (in English): “Im Juli is a German film. It was made in Germany. [Pause] It was shown here in German theatres.”93 This introduction to the film screening gave rise to speculation among many critics. Was Akin trying to disavow being typecast as an advocate of minority cultures, a Turkish director, an ethnic or even a hyphenated film-maker? Did he want to position himself and his oeuvre within a German national cinema? Whatever he said, it would have been impossible to escape the labels, of which there were already a variety, including “transnational cinema” and “postcolonial hybrid films”.94 Resisting typecasting is at the heart of Akin’s films, in which the protagonists are habitually engaged in “the crossing of extant cultural borders, the traversal of physical landscapes as much as of psychological mindscapes [and] the reconstitution of one’s identity between old and new”.95 Thus Akin’s film Head On offers new complexity and fewer answers, but ample questions. Fatih Akin’s affinity with issues of Heimat was highlighted most explicitly when he described his 2009 film Soul Kitchen as a Heimatfilm. The film’s producer Klaus Maeck recalls: “We [Akin and Maeck] prefer to call the film a Heimatfilm rather than a comedy. […] With Heimatfilm, it makes you sit up because there haven’t been many films in that genre for a long time […], but Wilhelmsburg [the gentrified Hamburg suburb in which the film is set] is still like a village where the important things are 96 family, friendship, and solidarity within a small group.”

Nevertheless, also applying the logic of exclusivity inherent in any Heimat concept, Soul Kitchen turns out to be the Heimat of a chosen few, a place where misfits are ostracized and order is reinstated by removing disturbing individuals, such as the crude capitalist developer and real estate agent. Ultimately it shows, however, that Heimat is a place in which one invests one’s emotions.

Angelina Maccarone’s Unveiled (2005) Another film tackling contemporary issues head on, Angelina Maccarone’s Fremde Haut [Unveiled, literally Foreign Skin] also looks at life choices made by people with a migrant or refugee background. Until 1993, the German constitution was one of the few in the world to guarantee a basic individual right to political asylum—a legacy of Germany’s guilt complex following the end of Nazism in 1945. While there had always been a steady stream of asylum seekers from trouble-spots throughout the world, the situation became largely unmanageable in the last two decades of the twentieth century. Between 1987 and 1992, the number of asylum seekers increased dramatically, while the number of genuine cases of political asylum fell equally dramatically, forcing the first amendment of Germany’s generous Asylum Law on 1 July 1993. The amendment permitted the repatriation of asylum seekers whose claims could not be substantiated. As a result, in 2001 408

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there were only 88,000 applications for asylum received, compared with nearly 440,000 in 1992.97 Taking issue with the human fallout of legislation, the fate of asylum seekers travelling the world in search of a new home is at the heart of many recent films from Germany, among them Unveiled. Maccarone’s film was an international success, receiving the Locarno Award and released in Englishspeaking countries under the title Unveiled. The film’s title takes its cue from the opening scenes; passengers on an aircraft react with relief and appear transformed upon the announcement that their plane has left Iranian air space. One of them, Fariba Tabrizi, enters the toilet and removes her headscarf, sunglasses, and her long dark coat, thus beginning a process of radical reinvention. From beneath the chador, an attractive young woman appears, who seeks asylum as soon as the plane touches down in Frankfurt. Intimidated by the presence of a fellow countryman who acts as a translator, Fariba fails to reveal the true reason for her flight from Tehran: her homosexuality, which had been uncovered by her lover’s husband and resulted in her persecution, arrest, and torture. Instead, she cites political reasons, a claim which she is unable to substantiate convincingly. Apparently, to be on the safe side, she would have had to produce a “certified copy of her death sentence” [beglaubigte Kopie ihres Todesurteils] as the German officer explains. Thus begins her life on borrowed time in Germany and her awareness—thematized in many films that may be subsumed under the label “accented”—that borders are places not only of transition but also of translation and transgression.98 Fariba is actually a translator herself, but plays along with the necessary charade to make her plea for asylum seem less calculated. The German officials think she needs linguistic assistance and provide her with an interpreter. Thus her first cross-over into the other language is a lie, constituting a transgression on her part and making the border zone the place where she crosses from legal to illegal status. Maccarone continues to problematize this liminal zone, toying with borders and border spaces as sites of human imagination, “for they represent and allegorize wanderlust, flight, and freedom”.99 However, despite the planes passing freely above her, Fariba learns the hard way that borders also mean barriers and blockades. She is stuck in no-man’s-land, facing obstacles in the societies within the borders of Germany and Iran. The uncertainty about asylum being granted or rejected takes its toll on many internees in the overcrowded detention facility in the no-man’s-land adjacent to the airport. Another Iranian, the young student Siamak Mustafai, who has also cited political persecution in his asylum application, though for legitimate reasons, is unable to cope with the situation. Guilt-ridden, as his actions have resulted in the death of his brother, he pleads with Fariba to write to his parents in Iran pretending to be him, to try to reassure them that they have not lost both their sons. As his despair mounts, he poisons himself and dies before Fariba finds him. Ironically, the authorities grant him a temporary entry visa as a permit of sojourn just before his death, thus providing Fariba with a chance to enter Germany. Assuming his identity, Fariba complies with Siamak’s wish by going one step further, seizing the opportunity to impersonate him by cross-dressing to buy herself time in Germany. In her disguise as Siamak, she escapes repatriation, while, as Fariba, her application for asylum is turned down, ensuring certain deportation from the refugee de-

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tention centre at Frankfurt Airport. Instead, as Siamak Mustafai, she is relocated to the province of Swabia, to Sielmingen, in southern Germany. Fariba, an academic from Tehran, Iran’s capital city of ten million people, has studied German and is well versed in the language and its classical literature, but now finds herself in a far from romantic place. Her familiarity with the writings of nineteenth-century poets such as Novalis could not have prepared her for what awaits her in Sielmingen, where, as Siamak, she must await the outcome of his application. Living in a hostel full of other asylum seekers becomes a strain, as she must uphold her male disguise in the cramped refugee quarters. She has to share a room with a Russian man, like her still in limbo between native and host culture. He spends most of his spare time watching a family video of his native village over and over again and drowns his sorrows in vodka. To avoid confrontation, Fariba breaks with tradition and drinks alcohol with the melancholic Russian. As a long-term refugee, he has learnt to live within the confines of the hostel and the German system and is able to circumvent many restrictions, having befriended the local black market labour boss and other shady characters. In return for shared meals, he helps Siamak, unaware of Fariba’s disguise, to find employment. Although it is illegal for asylum seekers to work, the two end up employed in the same factory, a situation which only adds to Siamak’s (Fariba’s) complicated existence. She has to hide on many fronts: her false identity in general, her false gender at the hostel and, finally, at the sauerkraut factory, where she must hide from inspectors as she has no work permit. She must also avoid emotional and sexual involvements, given her “reverse” sexuality. This charade becomes increasingly difficult when she attracts the attention of a popular local woman, a fellow factory worker with a young son and a jealous boyfriend. All this only adds to her precarious existence as an outsider. Fariba is discriminated against as a foreigner in Germany: as Siamak she is regarded with suspicion as an untypical male by the other men she encounters, while the local women are attracted to “his” exotic appearance and gentle manners. All the while, she is living on borrowed time with an assumed identity—a situation that does not bode well for a happy ending. Her liberty is compromised in every respect: her freedom of expression and sexuality has been taken from her as a result of her false identity, and she is unable to move around freely as the temporary entry visa prevents her from leaving the regional district of Esslingen in rural Swabia. Her external state of exile is compounded by an inner state of exile. By assuming a male identity, Fariba experiences not just the culture shock of German provincialism but the further shock of an encounter with the Western culture of male chauvinism. In a desperate attempt to reclaim her own identity and to return to a life as a female, she tries to obtain forged documents and commits further serious offences to get the money she needs. However, time runs out for Fariba and police uncover her illegal status by chance when they respond to a domestic dispute and find her in possession of a falsified passport. During this last confrontation with Anna’s friends, Fariba—having “outed” herself as a woman—experiences the doubled discrimination against foreigners and lesbians, making her realize that even in the liberal democracy of contemporary Germany, she is equally unwelcome as her true self as she is impersonating Siamak. The small-minded Germans with whom she associates in the factory 410

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are sharply contrasted with this highly educated woman who is isolated from her gender and culture. In such an environment, her efforts to attain happiness prove futile, and the universal nature of Fariba’s quest for a free life touches the viewers; it is, after all, relevant to anyone. Fariba in fact becomes homeless as herself and precariously soulless as Siamak. Homelessness and alienation are fundamental experiences of our time. In Fariba’s case, she is also condemned to silence following her identity fraud. Afraid of being exposed, betrayed by her own voice, behaviour, gestures, and opinions, she lacks reciprocal communication and consolation. In her new skin, she keeps her dead friend Siamak alive in the eyes of his parents by writing to them. She puts her thoughts to paper as if they are filtered through his eyes and consciousness, with the consequence that even in the act of letter writing she is unable to speak as herself. She can verbalize her feelings to some degree, tell them about her work and her love interest Anne, but she cannot overcome the barrier she has erected for herself. As a result, she is a sad and lonely figure, condemned to silence to protect, if not her identity, then her existence, as her role-play in Germany is what is saving her from the possibility of capital punishment in Iran. The term “in orbit” is officially used by the United Nations to refer to asylum seekers who find themselves orbiting around the planet because they cannot find legal domicile anywhere. This fate has previously been depicted on screen, for example, in Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal, which is based on a true story that had already been the topic of another film, Tombés du ciel [Lost in Transit, 1993], set in a Paris airport. The fate of “illegal aliens”, who are unable to achieve asylum or return to their homeland, beggars belief and demands the viewer’s understanding, as it is less the asylum seeker’s unsuitability to be accepted than the cruelty of systems that is exposed in these cases. Fittingly, Maccarone’s fourth feature film also highlights the inability of a refugee to find a Heimat. The cosmopolitan translator Fariba is doubly unwelcome in Iran, given her emancipated ways and her homosexuality, which is outlawed there and, according to Sharia law, punishable by death by stoning. She leaves behind everything she has—her lover, her profession, and the bustling metropolis of Tehran which afforded her a middle-class life— and exchanges it for a stateless, homeless, and friendless existence. She awaits the outcome of her application among other outcasts, unable to plan, relax, or move on with her life. The German saying, “I would not like to be stuck in your skin” [Ich möchte nicht in deiner Haut stecken, loosely translated as “I would not like to be in your shoes”] rings true for her in her impersonation of Siamak as well as for the real Fariba. Even in someone else’s skin, she cannot find peace and happiness. She is equally heimatlos [without a Heimat] in Germany as well as in her native Iran. Identity is the central theme throughout the film, and the director examines elements of personal, sexual, and national identity.100 The film deals with a twofold exile, both the exodus from Iran and life in the guise of another person. Maccarone considers the questions: “Who am I, once all the coordinates onto which I anchor my own self suddenly fall by the wayside? What remains of me when I leave the place where I live? When I lose the people who are near to me? When I have to leave my work, my home, and most of my possessions behind?”101 In doing so, the director attempts to get to the essence of identity. Wanting to shake the audiences out of their com411

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placency, she underscores the fact that she is not trying to depict “us” and “them”, the “haves” and “have-nots”, developed countries versus developing countries; rather, she shows that people from the establishment, the educated middle class, can also find themselves in a situation of homelessness. The actress playing Fariba, Jasmin Tabatabai, has herself been an asylum seeker, and director Maccarone involved her closely when scripting the film. Hailing from Iran, Tabatabai brought an insider’s perspective to the tale, but the director and her camera woman, Judith Kaufmann, did not stop there. Their research for the film brought them into contact with people in the euphemistically named “departure centres” and in refugee hostels in Swabia. Maccarone recalls: “To read about refugee accommodation and to actually stand in a small room ten square metres in size which has to be shared by two persons, because according to the law they are only entitled to 4.5 square metres each, made a decisive and 102 lasting impression on me.”

The depiction of the asylum seeker’s situation is very realistic, without drifting into a naturalistic moral tale, as it relies on “hard contrasts (without any flattering overtones) and a low depth of focus which leads the eye to the crux of the matter.”103 Carefully constructed mise-en-scènes “with foregrounded objects which narrow down the image […] push the protagonist to the edge of the frame, making her look out of place. Glimpses of Fariba from the outside through windows reveal her vulnerability and the loneliness of her (necessarily self-inflicted) imprisonment.”104 The camera work emphasizes the rawness and bleakness of her predicament, for example, when the director makes use of a hand-held camera to stress strongly subjective point-of-view shots, giving “the feeling of a person’s own sight, with all its discontinuous, wandering qualities”.105 Furthermore, the hand-held camera technique is employed in emotionally loaded situations to “get very close to the person; as in the confrontation with Anne, where Fariba can no longer sustain the internal limits imposed upon herself and dares to risk a genuine encounter”.106 The tension and suspense built by the plot are enhanced by the film music, “which is so reduced as to create, by means of a few heavily-contrasted elements, a kind of tension which hovers between restraint and explosion, and which provides a scope counterpoint to the rustic Swabian hick town of Sielmingen”.107 The film works with several juxtapositions: Iran versus Germany, Tehran versus Sielmingen, cosmopolitan versus provincial; however, care is taken not to present stereotypes by undercutting expectations at every turn. Among the “Krauts” [Germans], she finds work in a factory far removed from the glitz and technological advances of the car industry. As a smallish manufacturer, this family business still employs manual labourers to harvest cabbage by hand from the fields for the production of sauerkraut. Fariba’s old world in Tehran seems in some ways much more progressive compared to the primitive labour and closed horizon of the rural sphere in the not so golden Germany. However, the director is not interested in stereotyping. Iran could be substituted with any other conservative and less tolerant country or region, even with southern Italy or southern Spain.108 Several visual motifs are used in the film, including aeroplanes, phones, and letters. Aeroplanes serve as a symbol of freedom as well as a means of 412

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deportation. They are the setting of the first and last scenes, facilitating Fariba’s and Siamak’s entry into Germany as easily as Fariba’s extradition as Siamak back to Iran. Throughout the film, planes and runways form the backdrop to the confines of the detention centre, as they rise seemingly effortlessly above the barbed-wire enclosure at Frankfurt Airport. Even the grey skies above Sielmingen, with its cabbage fields, factory, densely packed apartment buildings, and hostel provide a backdrop to flight paths, reminding Fariba that she is neither here nor there, that she has not yet arrived but is precariously stuck in this limbo, bypassed by others who are mobile and free. The telephone is used repeatedly to contact loved ones, although this mode of bridging the spatial gap in a moment of shared time serves as a painful reminder to Fariba that her feelings are no longer reciprocated; her lover in Tehran is not prepared to invest any more emotional energy in Fariba. As a non-direct and asynchronous means of communication, the written word serves Fariba better, even if she is writing in the guise of Siamak. The first few letters she writes to complete strangers—the parents of Siamak, who had become her brother in need—in the assumed persona of their son, ironically provide rare moments when she can be true to herself, expressing her feelings, verbalizing her love for Anne, and entertaining thoughts of leading a carefree, acceptable existence. In real life she keeps up her self-denial until the moment when she dares to confide in Anne. “However, the system manifests itself to be stronger still—albeit in its inhumanity. Only the tiniest of inadvertencies is enough to make its machinery grind into action and to gun down that which is human.”109 When she is deported back to Iran, Fariba’s only hope is to remain unveiled. Instead of entering her estranged homeland as a woman, covered and largely marginalized—at least when it comes to sexuality—she reverts to impersonating Siamak. In both societies, German and Iranian, she is prevented from unveiling and revealing herself. Her body becomes a pawn in an international as much as a national conflict, and is just as representative of the topics in accented film-making in general, as “the site-specific, physical borders are both real and formidable barriers, and crossing them fraught with much risk and high anxiety”.110 Unveiled, like other films which thematize place and space, utilizes “metaphorized borders and border crossings”, while also dealing “with the empirical borders, and the emotions and wounds they inflict. Judged by the aforementioned criteria, some of the accented films are border films. They are grouped by the cathected border and means of border crossing.”111 When director Hermine Huntgeburth comments on her own work, she could just as well be talking about Unveiled, especially in the way she describes her films as Heimat films, “studies of milieu, Heimatfilme if you like. They have nothing in common with folklore, but relate universal longings which one may encounter in the German provinces—feelings which certainly warrant the wide-screen format.”112 The treatment of perceived minorities (homosexuals and people from diverse ethnic backgrounds) has stimulated Maccarone’s oeuvre from its beginning. Born in Cologne in 1965, the daughter of an Italian migrant gardener and a German public servant, she has thematized Germanness and the expectations relating to national identity in her previous films, such as her directorial debut, the lesbian coming-out comedy Kommt Mausi raus? [Is Mausi 413

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Coming Out? 2004]. Another film, Alles wird gut [Everything Will Be Fine, 1997], was inspired by a book by the Afro-German Fatima El-Tayeb, with whom she worked on the screenplay; this film about “Black Germans” has long since reached cult status in the international gay community.113 The labels “Afro-German” or “Black German” were coined by black German women in the mid-1980s as positive forms of self-identification. Before that, people like Kim or Erika, the protagonists in Everything Will Be Fine, had been assigned pejorative labels such as Besatzungskind [illegitimate child of a member of the occupying forces], Farbige [coloured girl], Neger [Nigger], or Mischling [half-caste].114 Fatima El-Tayeb has called the film a “mainstream black lesbian comedy”115 in an attempt to push the boundaries and redress the fact that Afro-Germans or Black Germans continue to form a little-recognized part of the German community. The film’s coloured protagonists, Kim and Nabou, ultimately succeed in cultivating “an island existence within a society that clearly has difficulties accepting difference, as symbolized by their holding on to the buoy amidst the Hamburg harbour in the final frame”.116 Their resolution clearly affords them a happy ending, thereby emulating 1930s screwball comedy “relying on the upbeat nature of a Hollywood-style narrative that delivers what its title promises […] everything will be fine [for the] gender-bending Afro-German heroines’ pursuit of love and fulfilment in the face of everyday racism.”117 The hostile reception of their “looks” is clearly based on the idea of Germanness being related to ancestry or ius sanguinis. While German citizenship laws were amended in 2000 to allow for long-term residents to acquire German citizenship and thus also accept the notion of ius soli, many Germans still imagine their country to be an “ethnically defined nation devoid of a distinctive black German history or memory”.118 However, the film carries a positive message, and is sustained by a “strange mixture of liberal, progressive, and conservative attitudes, [whereby] even unconventional living arrangements and romantic constellations end up affirming the importance of love, friendship, and family as a refuge from the pressures of the workplace and public life”.119 While both the film and the book version of Everything Will Be Fine celebrate “love, or the pursuit of love, as the penultimate expression of social harmony and crosscultural understanding” in a conciliatory vision of German Heimat,120 this fate is denied to the protagonist in Unveiled. Maccarone reiterates in promotional material for Unveiled that she wanted to provide a “critical examination of rigid borders and polarities”, and that “such dualisms as good/evil, male/female, legal/illegal, civilized/primitive are too restricting to accommodate reality in all its contradictions”.121 She explores the “political in the private sphere, and that which is private in the political sphere, the inalterable and the alteration of one’s own identity, the transgression of the borders”,122 and in doing so, also plays with the notions of genres and tradition. In Everything Will Be Fine, just as in Short Sharp Shock, American popular culture is used as a reference point in a search for answers to discrimination. In contrast to the fierce anti-Americanism that lead to Edgar Reitz’s Heimat project, Akin and Maccarone see the potential for American popular culture in articulating “ethnic and racial differences that do not (yet) exist in Germany”.123 Their films thematize journeys, something quite common in accented cinema, and often “cross many borders—not only physical and geographic but also psychological, metaphorical, social, and cultural borders”.124 414

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Both Maccarone’s and Akin’s films focus critical and popular attention on the conflicts of identity experienced by individuals on the margins of German society. Using realist aesthetics, they provide a non-glamourized and unsanitized glance into the realities of (to use Bhabba’s terms) “people of the pagus—colonials, postcolonials, migrants, minorities—wandering peoples”.125 Head on and Unveiled thus stand as examples of accented films, as “neither the home-seeking journey nor the homecoming journey is fully meliorating. The wandering quests, too, are often tempered by their failure to produce self-discovery or salvation.”126 Both films, however, explore the tapestry of wandering by “invoking other places and other times by means of their journey structures, epistolarity, liminal subjectivity, border aesthetics, and memory- and nostalgia-driven narratives”, thereby celebrating as much as problematizing the “human desire for travelling and homing”.127 While Cahit’s homecoming is the result of a long reflection, though not without anticipated problems, Fariba’s homecoming is involuntary and complex, as many problems can be anticipated. The protagonists from Akin’s and Maccarone’s films are nevertheless resigned to trying to make it work, against all odds. In both films, Heimat must be created and found; it has proven elusive for their protagonists thus far, and its attainment may be a futile dream, but the dream itself keeps them hopeful and in motion.

Züli Aladag’s Rage (2006) The focus in Züli Aladag’s film Wut [Rage, 2006] shifts away from Hamburg and the provinces around Stuttgart to Berlin, the capital of unified Germany. Given that contemporary Germany has been referred to as the Berlin Republic, the director’s attention is no longer focused on the sub-cultures of Altona or the fate of asylum seekers (who, for the most part, do not register on the consciousness of middle-class society) but moves instead into the heart of the current democracy and into the circles of the educated elite. The made-for-TV film128 contrasts the comfortable existence of a German upper-middle-class family with the increasingly invasive activities of a street gang. This gang of disenchanted youths from different ethnic backgrounds is dominated by the German-Turk Can, to whom Felix, the son of the German couple (a professor of literature and his real-estate agent wife) feels drawn. Can and Felix are from two very different ends of the socioeconomic spectrum, though they are mirror images of each other in terms of age and environment. They share the same public spaces in Berlin—parks and squares adjoining their neighbourhoods; and it is here—where Felix scores his drugs from Can—that their different ethnic origins and socioeconomic backgrounds are presented in a way that provokes a horrified reaction from Felix’s parents when they discover the type of company their son is keeping. Felix appears a lot more tolerant of Can’s misdemeanours, despite losing his new sports shoes to him and his gang, and being forced to endure all sorts of pranks and taunts before he is allowed to leave with the prized marijuana. In terms of their delinquency, both boys appear very similar: pubescent, hormonal, rebelling against societal norms, and unable to communicate meaningfully with their parents. Although both share similar problems and feelings, and are somehow attracted to each other, the expectations of 415

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peers and parents alike prevent them from ever forming a lasting bond. However, the battle lines that emerge appear to be motivated less by racial tensions than by social constraints. Thus the ensuing conflict is portrayed less as an ethnic struggle than as a class issue, fuelled by the envy of someone from an underprivileged background when confronted with the world of plenty, as in Can’s case, and the envy of a strong, group-backed youth identity, as in Felix’s case. Felix’s parents own a designer house with a pool and landscaped garden in an attractive part of the capital, while Can’s family lives in an old apartment in a run-down house in an inner-city district predominantly inhabited by immigrant communities. Although Can’s father presents as a proud Muslim who has maintained his original identity, cultivating his native language, customs, and religion, he has been unable to instil those values in Can and his younger brother. Both are clearly the product of the tensions between a traditional Turkish upbringing and the secular German education system, and know no other life than that on the streets of Berlin, sheltered by a gang that affords them safety and a sense of belonging. Can uses chauvinism and brutality to impress his peers, as well as the shy and quiet Felix, who comes past regularly, not bearing a pocket knife like the others, but instead carrying his big cello case—a stark juxtaposition of Felix’s cultured upbringing in a middle-class family with the dog-eat-dog world of Can’s circle. Both boys are clearly drawn to that which they do not possess: Can’s seemingly “cool” behaviour and his exuberant self-confidence impress Felix, while Can envies Felix his comfortable lifestyle. In Rage, the theme of their tentative friendship across the ethnic divide, which has also been “a major preoccupation of the ensuing Beur films”,129 is not that of a confluence of equals, but instead is deconstructed as a power-play with ever-changing roles. Thus the tensions between the conflicting cultural identities available to Can and Felix are negotiated mainly by acts of overt machismo in Can’s case, which finds violent expression in fights and knife-games and, in Felix’s case, a more feminized masculinity, epitomized by his love for classical music and the arts in general. Nevertheless, their mutually beneficial drug deals and joint go-kart races indicate that they share some interests, despite their different lives. The programmatic title of Aladag’s film foreshadows the escalation of feelings as the action steadily builds, with Felix’s father, Simon Laub, becoming involved in sorting out the problems he believes his son is experiencing with Can. Like a parable, the film outlines the implosion of civil society when Simon is provoked into reacting outside legal norms. Aladag structures the film in such a way that one illegal action leads to another until a catastrophe seems unavoidable. The audience of this TV production is made to feel the raising of stakes as if they too are under threat; they are encouraged to sympathize with the German family, who would seem to be pillars of Germany’s liberal democratic society (not unlike the way a large majority of the audience would perceive themselves), even as they are shown to respond to provocation and violence with undue force. Much to the discomfort of the viewers, the comfort zone of the Berlin family, representative of a civilized world of classical music and literature, is invaded by the thuggish Can, who does not respect personal property, let alone art—he smashes a vase and steals a nude photographic study, which he views as pornography. 416

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Confronted with the carnage of the first invasion of their private sphere, Felix’s parents want to safeguard their home and sense of Heimat against the “other”, but quickly realize that any attempt to “talk […] seriously with Can” is futile. Simon, assuming the traditional role of protector of his family, intervenes by approaching Can’s father. However, both men are no longer role models for their sons, and are evidently impotent when it comes to stopping what Simon perceives to be the victimization of Felix. In an attempt to cover up his own ineffectiveness, and seemingly unable to respond to increasingly serious provocation within reason, Simon comes up with a scheme involving violence and deceit. The film shows Simon Laub and his best friend Michael going against the law to take revenge, and thematizes violence and abuse in graphic detail. Not surprisingly, even before its first screening on German television in September 2006, critics were making scandalized comments about the content and visual language of Rage. Accusations were levelled that the film was xenophobic and that it glorified violence. There was also speculation that, given its provocative nature, the film would incite Islamist violence and terror.130 However, Aladag, himself born to Kurdish Turks who settled in Germany decades ago, vehemently defended his depiction of the conflict. Demanding an open and frank exchange of ideas, Aladag cautioned against the banning of difficult topics and warned of the dangers of a blanket taboo: “Discussion about foreignness and the difficulties associated with it should not just be left up to the right-wing.”131 But with reference to the Jugendmedienschutz-Staatsvertrag [International Treaty on Child Media Protection]— at least that was the official reason put forward by the ARD (Arbeitsgemeinschaft der Rundfunkanstalten Deutschlands [German national TV channel])—the film was pulled from its original spot at prime time and relegated to a late-night slot. This decision was even more surprising given that the production had been co-financed by the WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk [West German Broadcasting Corporation]) with an unusually large budget and was a flagship project for the production company Colonia Media. The controversy which ensued in response to this perceived act of censorship (a syrupy Heimat film was screened instead at 8:15 pm on Wednesday, 27 September 2006) may have resulted in extra large viewing numbers when the film was finally released on Friday, 29 September, at 10 pm.132 Some 2.67 million viewers tuned in (12.5 per cent of the German television audience), and even the subsequent live discussion, which was broadcast in response to the criticism in the lead-up, was watched by 1.72 million viewers (the discussion was entitled Tatort Schulweg—Hilflos gegen Jugendgewalt? [Crime Scene: On the Way to School—Helpless against Juvenile Violence?].133 The dominant theme that emerged in the live discussion as well as in the newspapers related to Can’s portrayal as a bad and unrepentant juvenile offender. Although critics and members of the discussion forum responded exclusively to the negative casting of a youth with a migrant background that is very far removed from political correctness, the film actually presents a range of problematic issues, of which the main conflict between the ethnic gangster figure and the reputable professor Simon Laub is but one. Other conflicts develop, less between illegal underdog and upright citizen, than within each ethnic group and class. Felix’s parents, his academic father Simon and his professional wife Christa, are pitted against each other, not just when it 417

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comes to their son. The sensitive Felix in turn feels misunderstood by both his parents, who do not recognize his sexual frustration at being unable to approach a beloved fellow music student. Felix’s unfulfilled longing is further aggravated by his father’s sexual indiscretions with young female students. Etymologically, Felix’s name means “the lucky one”, but he feels anything but lucky. Likewise, Can has taken to the streets as he has not found a way to communicate meaningfully with his elderly father, who has failed to be a successful role model for his sons. Nevertheless, Can feels at home in his father’s flat, and holds on to it as if it will provide him with a last life-line in his struggle for direction. Can and his brother thus become representative of the offspring of guest workers and second-generation migrants, who experience the conflict of identity arising from tensions between their parental culture, to which they feel a strong allegiance, and the secular norms of German society which surround them outside the sanctuary of the parental home. When he is expelled from this paradise following his father’s fury about his son’s lost honour, Can loses his last inhibitions. After his father demonstratively disowns him and evicts him from his home, Can loses his final connection to a place that he could have called Heimat and that would have been worth living for. He spirals into self-destruction. While Can’s mother does not feature even in the brief glimpses the audience is given of the male-dominated structure of Can’s family, in Felix’s life his mother Christa is very present and very physical, conducting an extramarital affair with her husband’s best friend, the mechanic Michael. Western values such as freedom (including sexual freedom and freedom of association), as much as liberty and tolerance, are exposed as hollow and destructive, at least in the way that Felix’s middle-class family chooses to interpret them. They pride themselves on being open-minded and moderate and, as if to prove these qualities of their choosing, maintain an open and tolerant relationship. Nevertheless, the freedoms that they afford one another have resulted in disconnection and superficiality. The very attitudes that should form the basis of a liberal democracy are shown to allow the collapse of the family unit, a collapse which is representative of the damage wrought on broader societal systems as liberalism, openness, and self-absorption have bred egoism, recklessness, and ultimately disdain for other people. The laissez-faire attitude of the professor, who is a member of the Bildungsbürgertum [educated classes] and the ageing 68-generation, definitely has its practical limits. His many affairs embarrass his wife, alienate his son, and provide his opponent Can with ample ammunition when he confronts the academic during his Antrittsvorlesung [inaugural lecture as a full-fledged academic] in front of students and colleagues and accuses him of abusing his power. The assault on Professor Laub’s reputation provokes a petit bourgeois reaction from him, as he is concerned about keeping up appearances. Rationality and reasonable conduct are also shown to be futile in Simon’s attempt to communicate with Can, making the older man look arrogant and insensitive, as their linguistic registers fail to overlap—even though, ironically, their concepts of life and happiness match. Simon and Can both like young women, use drugs, and enjoy clubbing and go-karting, and it is because of these very points of contact that Can may be unable to see why—despite their similarities—life should have dealt them such different fortunes, financially and in terms of

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status. While Can struggles with this injustice, Simon Laub seems oblivious to his own hypocrisy and his blatant indiscretions. Simon Laub’s incompetence and insensitivity seem representative of everything wrong with Germany’s elite and their approach to migration; for example, Simon tries to explain away the real issues by referring to Can’s theft of Felix’s shoes in terms that would have been suitable in the old guest worker context: “Let’s say you had those shoes for cleaning purposes.” Political correctness and tolerance are not the most suitable strategies for meaningful engagement, and serve partly to relegate problems to the margins and to perpetuate colour blindness. The latter is particularly obvious when the professor reports Can’s drug dealing to the police but fails to consider his son’s role as a willing customer of Can’s wares or his own recreational use of cannabis. Simon is presented as dishonest and deceitful in his readiness to instrumentalize the law against a personal enemy. When this action does not yield the intended outcome, the so far liberal and sensitive father resorts to engaging his friend to do his dirty work for him: Michael is supposed to give Can a beating. However, resorting to violence only results in more violence, with Felix becoming the victim of a similarly cowardly attack. While the behaviour of the professor becomes more and more unjust on the narrative level of the plot development, the extra-diegetic discourse has focused on the usual suspect, Can. Critics and TV representatives alike have continued to be blind to Simon Laub’s fall from grace and have, quite inappropriately, highlighted the depiction of Can. A leading programming official from the WDR, Professor Gebhard Henke, even claimed that the controversy only ensued because the film dared to represent a foreigner as being evil.134 This interpretation conveniently ignores the fact that Professor Laub has fallen from the moral high ground, undergoing an irreversible transformation from respectable citizen to avenging angel and, ultimately, even to murderer. The literary equivalent of the downfall of a noble man may be found in the figure of Michael Kohlhaas. Heinrich von Kleist’s narrative of the same name has been quite deliberately chosen as the topic of Simon Laub’s lecture. Clear parallels between Michael Kohlhaas—Aus einer alten Chronik [Michael Kohlhaas—From an Old Chronicle] and Rage can be found in the irreversible process of action, reaction, counter-action, and ensuing counterreaction. In Kleist’s fictional world, the protagonist, “son of a schoolmaster, one of the most honourable, and at the same time one of the most dreadful humans of his time”,135 loses his grip on reality and “Verhältnismäßigkeit” [sense of proportion], and thus his reputation for “Wohltätigkeit” [charitableness] and “Gerechtigkeit” [justice]. Kohlhaas’s extreme “Rechtsgefühl” [sense of justice] resulted in his illegal dealings and “machte ihn zum Räuber und Mörder” [made him a robber and murderer].136 He takes his case from court to court in his attempts to justify himself, but fails dismally. However, while Simon is shown to commit murder or manslaughter, the ensuing legal complications are not thematized. Aladag leaves the film’s ending open, despite documenting every step leading to the calamity by showing the escalation of the confrontation, which sees Can progressing from pranks and petty crime to serious offences including burglary, breaking and entering, deprivation of liberty, hostage taking, torture, and ultimately attempted murder. When Simon finally puts an end to the spiral of violence, the viewer is left with a false sense of relief, a relief that evil has seemingly been eliminated 419

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following Laub’s murder of Can in his swimming pool. This resolution to the torturous standoff in the professor’s house, which makes for horrific viewing, cannot be condoned, as it constitutes a severe crime. Relief is thus mixed with shock and helplessness. This type of emotional upheaval is one of the strengths of the film, as it stirs up competing feelings, throws open a variety of questions, and refuses to provide answers or cast judgement. Therefore, it should not surprise anyone that the film made an impression both nationally and internationally, winning Aladag numerous awards: among them highly prestigious German prizes (Adolf-Grimme Preis 2007 and the Goldene Kamera 2007 for Best Film), as well as international ones (including the New Yorker Gold World Medal 2007 and the Golden Gate Award, San Francisco, 2007). The success of Rage is indicative of the universal nature of its topic, the academic discourse it refers to, and the combination of suspenseful storytelling with commercially viable aesthetics.137 Most convincingly, though, the film responds to several interconnected debates in contemporary Germany that take their cues from popular philosopher Peter Sloterdijk as much as they do from rap songs. Following Peter Sloterdijk’s accusation that apathy reigns in most of Western Europe—and that since the Enlightenment thymotic feelings such as anger and rage have been suppressed at the expense of a healthy passion that advances public discourse—Aladag seems to incite as much as problematize emotions in the conflict between underprivileged people and the establishment. His TV drama Rage highlights the ill-guided rage of both parties in a confrontation between two opponents who have failed to accept each other as equal. Guest workers-cum-migrants have been either ignored, dealt with from the social worker perspective, tolerated, or relegated to the ethnic margins for much too long, while any open and frank discourse with and about them has ultimately been silenced and muffled by political correctness. At no time have they been considered worthy debating partners. Aladag’s provocative casting of good and evil and their respective shades of grey has been very successful at informing and inciting the debate, as well as the emotive responses that mobilize head and heart in the long overdue debate about different cultures trying to carve out their respective Heimats in Germany. While the dominant society officially demands a certain degree of assimilation to ease integration, as indicated by Simon Laub’s discussions with friends and authorities, the migrant population is stunned by the lack of boundaries and principles within their host society. The humanistic-pacifist attitudes of Germany’s educated elite, particularly with regard to their Betroffenheitsrhetorik [elaborately communicated obsession with guilt], is revealed in Aladag’s film to be a thin veil hiding prejudices and aggressions. In response to personal provocation, barely suppressed feelings boil to the surface and result in an unequal match. The proponents of a liberal-democratic European Leitkultur [guiding cultural principle(s)]138 resort to methods rejected since the Old Testament when they start to fight violence with violence. In Rage, Aladag illustrates what Sloterdijk diagnoses as symptomatic for the Western world: “how hatred penetrates into everyday civilian life”,139 and shows how this can turn a “routine conversion into actual violence”.140 Aladag cleverly leads the audience to sympathize with the increasingly racial and aggressive response of Felix’s parents, even going so far as to apparently

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condone the violence enacted against Can in the end. After all, the conflict is resolved and the villain seems to have got what he deserved. Nevertheless, through the various characters, the film provides points of recognition and identification for both German and migrant audiences, while providing a twist to the thema con variazione in the Heimat film’s protagonist and antagonist schema. It is not a case of the majority upholding Heimat values, but rather the fact that a minority can deny Heimat to Germans and new Germans, or to foreigners residing in Germany. Turning the perspective away from the classic victims of society—who usually belong to minority groups, often have a migrant background, and are considered deserving of sympathy—Aladag’s film decides to break with the dominant view of Ausländerfeindlichkeit [hostility towards foreigners] being to blame for many of contemporary society’s woes. Instead Rage illustrates a societal phenomenon that has been labelled Inländerfeindlichkeit [hostility towards native citizens]. This trend finds expression in violent acts directed at Germans in Germany by those who do not identify with the dominant society and ethnicity. Aladag picks up on a recent development in German society which is slowly penetrating the surface of popular consciousness. In January 2008, the conservative daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung examined the experiences of German victims in a provocative article that explained the latest developments as follows: “‘Sh**** German’ has become a very popular insult amongst young migrants.”141 Not too dissimilar to Aladag’s presentation of rage and hatred in Rage, FAZ considered the rise of Germanophobia: “Slagging off Germans is a seriously ‘in’ trend. At least amongst young people with ‘MH’. In bureaucratic German ‘MH’ stands for migrant background.”142 The journalist, mimicking the syntax and semantics of rap songs, makes the controversial point that there is evidence of “Deutschenfeindlichkeit” [hostility towards Germans] in the very heart of Germany.143 This claim is backed up by senior police and law and order experts who work with the understanding that “inländerfeindliche Kriminalität” [crimes involving hostility towards native citizens] exist144 alongside crimes based on extreme right-wing and xenophobic beliefs. Within the Arabic-Turkish community in Germany, Germans are often perceived as the enemy, even by the young people who have been socialized in Germany. In a bold move, Lehnartz blames the selftorment and lack of national pride exhibited by most Germans for their inability to respond in a constructive fashion against the defamatory rhetoric of Germans as victims: “Germans react helplessly […] to the resentment. At the same time, however, they seem to accept the role of victim that has been assigned to them.”145 Lehnartz continues: “In a country whose inhabitants are already deeply affected as soon as it is said of them that something about them is ‘typically German’, it comes as no surprise that hardly anyone is able to calmly allow the invective ‘Sh**** German’ to bounce off them.”146 To illustrate this point further, Lehnartz adds poignantly: “For many Germans, just being called ‘German’ is insulting, even before the relevant adjective has been added on.”147 This lack of self-confidence and the absence (if not distrust) of national pride register with migrants who are unable to ascertain a strong sense of identity in many Germans, but perceive instead their fear and loathing of their own Heimat. In 2005, the weekly Berlin left-wing youth magazine Jungle World picked up on this phenomenon and commemorated the anniversary of the end of the Second World War by printing T-shirts dis421

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playing the slogan “Deutschland, du Opfer!” [Germany, you victim!]. Long before Germans could become victims of hatred from foreigners, they seemed to have defeated themselves with self-hatred. In Can’s case, feelings of alienation and frustration are expressed in acts of crime and violence against a society that denies him “Zugang, Aufstiegschance und Respekt” [access, the prospect of advancing in life, and respect]—and ultimately a Heimat.148 In doing so, however, the dominant society has undermined itself and thereby endangered a stable Heimat. As if in reaction to this self-defeating trend in German society, a rediscovery of Heimat, national identity, pride, and a healthy patriotism may be required to withstand internal and external threats to a civil society. The wave of recent Heimat films—just like the multitude of German-speaking films in general that find an audience in the country and abroad—may help in the long overdue “normalization” of German Heimat understanding.149

NOTES 1

2

3

4 5

6

Films subsumed under these labels and not mentioned in the previous chapter include Hans Steinbichler’s Autistic Disco (2007), the ZDF TV series Doktor Martin (from 2007), the daily soap opera Dahoam is dahoam [There’s No Place Like Home, from 2007], directed among others by Tanja Roitzheim and Markus Schmidt-Märkl], as well as the following films set in Brandenburg: Christian Petzold’s Yella (2007), Ann-Kristin Reyels’ Jagdhunde [Hunting Dogs, 2007], Valeska Grisebach’s Sehnsucht [Longing, 2007], and Chris Kraus’s Vier Minuten [Four Minutes, 2007]. Andreas Richter, production manager of Grave Decisions, about the film, quoted in Martin Blaney, “Wer früher stirbt, ist länger tot”, German Films Quarterly, 3 (2005), p. 36. Cf. documentaries such as Helga Reidemeister’s Rodina heißt Heimat [Rodina Means Home, 1992], about the Soviet soldiers leaving united Germany, Ullabritt Horn’s Heimat, das hat der Hitler ausgestrichen [Heimat, That’s What Hitler Extinguished, 1993], about the legacy of the Holocaust, and Alice Agneskirchner’s Wildenranna—Ein Heimatfilm (2003), about the picturesque village Wildenranna and the tensions evident in life in an environment that is scenic but also presents physical and mental hardship. Other examples include Peter Heller’s documentary Plattln in Umtata [Shoeslapping in Africa, 2007] and Janina Herhoffer, Es sind noch Berge draussen [There Are Still Mountains Outside, 2009]. Cf. Festival Programme, “Der neue Heimatfilm”, festival #14, 22‒26 Aug. 2001, p. 3. Other than in Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Siebtelbauern [The Inheritors], Robert von Dassanowsky sees proof to support this claim in the Austrian TV production: “with director Dieter Berner’s six-part series Alpensaga [Alpine Saga, 1976‒80], written by iconoclastic Austrian folk playwright Peter Turrini and Wilhelm Pevny”. Robert von Dassanowsky, “Going Home Again? Ruzowitzky’s Die Siebtelbauern and the New Austrian Heimatfilm”, Germanic Review, vol. 78, no. 2 (2003), pp. 133‒47, here p. 134. Paolo Benvenuti, Il bacio di Guida [Der Judaskuss/The Judas Kiss, Italy, 1988]; Hirokazu Kore-eda, Maboroshi no hikari [Maboroshi—Licht der Illusion/Light of Illusion, Japan, 1995]; Lynne Ramsay, Ratcatcher (UK, 1999); Valerij Ogo-

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7 8

9

10

11

12

13

14 15 16

17

rodnikov, Barak (Russia, 1999); Martin Šulík, Krajinka [Landschaft/Landscape, Slovakia, 2000]; John Tatoulis, Favou tous Ellines.... [Vorsicht vor den Griechen/Watch Out for the Greeks, Greece/Australia, 2000]; Markku Lehmuskallio and Anastasia Lapsui, Seitsemän Laulua Tundralta [Sieben Lieder aus der Tundra/Seven Songs from the Tundra, Finland, 2000]; Rasmus Videbaek, Nói Albinói [Nói, the Albino, Iceland, 2002]; Niki Caro, Whale Rider (New Zealand, 2002); Ivan Cerkelov, Obarnata Elcha [The Upside-Down Christmas Tree, Bulgaria, 2006]; Rolf de Heer, Ten Canoes (Australia, 2007). Tomy Wigand, Fussball ist unser Leben [Football Is Our Life, Germany, 1999]. Helga Reidemeister, Rodina heiβt Heimat [Rodina Means Home, 1992]; Raymond Depardon, Profils paysans: l'approche [Landarbeiterprofile: Die Annäherung/Profiles of Agricultural Workers: The Approach, France, 2000]; Martina Theininger, Gegen den Strom: Eine Bürgerinitiative [Against the Tide: A Citizen’s Initiative, Austria, 2001]; Andreas Dresen, Herr Wichmann von der CDU [Mr Wichmann from the CDU, Germany, 2003]. Siegfried A. Fruhauf, Höhenrausch [High Altitude Euphoria, Austria, 1994]; David Kleinl, Festung Heimat [Fortress Heimat, Austria, 2003]; Gabriele Neudecker, Freaky (Austria, 2001). One of the most interesting is Bady Minck’s Im Anfang war der Blick [In the Beginning Was the Glance, Austria/Luxembourg, 2002]. In this 45-minute film, the protagonist Bodo Hell, a writer and poet, enters the world of postcards; by stepping through the two-dimensional representation into a three-dimensional model, he wanders through the world of clichés and moves at a top speed of 160 postcards per minute through mountains and valleys. However, his Heimat dream becomes a Heimat nightmare when he loses himself—his physicality and soul— in the soulless images. Gerburg Rosa Schwägerl and Erwin Rehling, Ludi: Dokument eines Hirtenlebens [Ludi: Documentation of the Life of a Herdsman, Austria, 1999]; Mahamat-Saleh Haroun, Bye Bye Africa (Chad, 1999); Elisabeth Schimana, Ein Dorf tut nichts [One Village Is Doing Nothing, Austria, 2001]; Stefan Haupt, Increschantüm [Heimweh/Homesickness, Switzerland, 2000]; C. B. Schneider, Tanzlust [Desire To Dance, Austria, 2001]. Gabi Geist and Herbert Achternbusch, Heilt Hitler [Cure Hitler, Germany, 1985]; Dimos Avdeliodis, To Dendro pou Pligoname [Der Baum, den wir verwundeten/ The Tree We Wounded, Greece, 1986]. “Die Schwerpunkte des Festivals liegen wieder allesamt im Off der Kinolandschaften des Mainstreams.” [The festival’s main priorities are once again all to be found offstage, away from the mainstream cinematic landscapes.] Markus Zeitlinger, “Zum Programm”, Festival Programme, “Der neue Heimatfilm”, p. 3. Petra M. Müller and Kirsten Niehaus, “Welcome to the Berlinale 2007”, Medienboard News, 1 (2007), p. 3. Nikolaus von Festenberg, “Die neue Alm”, Der Spiegel, 31 (2007), pp. 136‒37, here p. 136. In response to a labour shortage prompted by economic recovery, Germany signed a series of bilateral recruitment agreements: first with Italy in 1955, then with Spain (1960), Greece (1960), Turkey (1961), Portugal (1964), and Yugoslavia (1968). During Helmut Kohl’s chancellery this credo prevailed and was recently reaffirmed by Germany’s Minister for Interior Affairs, Wolfgang Schäuble. Cf. Andrea Dernbach, “Wir sind kein Einwanderungsland: Schäuble wiederholt auf 423

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18

19

20

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23 24

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Integrationskongress ein altes Unionsbekenntnis”, Der Tagesspiegel, 7 Dec. 2006. In the original: “Es besteht Einigkeit, daß die Bundesrepublik Deutschland kein Einwandererland ist und auch nicht werden soll.” Bundesministerium des Innern (Hrsg.), Aufzeichnungen zur Ausländerpolitik und zum Ausländerrecht in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Stand: Januar 1991 (Bonn: BMI, 1991), pp. 3‒4. The “Green Card”’ was issued between 2000 and 2004 for a maximum of five years. With the assistance of this new immigration programme, about 9,200 highly skilled workers had entered Germany by August 2001, with 1,935 Indians accounting for the largest group. Another 1,293 people who had completed their university studies in Germany were allowed to stay and work for five years under the provisions of the Green Card programme. Without the Green Card, they would have had to leave. The Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble pointed out: “Wir haben in Deutschland mehr eine gefühlte Einwanderung.” [“In Germany we have more a sense of immigration.”] Schäuble quoted in Annette Rollmann, “Editorial”, Das Parlament, 3 (2007), p. 1. Figures of the Statistisches Bundesamt, http://www.destatis.de/indicators/d/lrbev07ad.htm, retrieved Feb. 2007. People “mit Migrationshintergrund” [“with a migrant background”] may be migrants themselves or have a migrant parent; 15.3 million people, or 19 per cent of Germany’s overall population of nearly 83 million, fall into this category. Cf. Leonie Loreck, “Chefsache Migration”, Letter, no. 2 (2006), pp. 24‒28, here p. 25. Only half of these people hold German citizenship. Cf. the discussions following Germany’s poor ranking in an international comparative education study (PISA, 2000 and 2003). “Die ‘Tatverdächtigenbelastungszahl’ (Tatverdächtige je 100.000 der jeweiligen Bevölkerungsgruppe) war bei jugendlichen und heranwachsenden Ausländern mehr als doppelt so hoch wie bei der vergleichbaren deutschen Gruppe.” [“The ‘peak number of suspects’ (suspects per 100,000 of a particular section of the population) from among young and adolescent foreigners was more than double that of the comparable German group.”] Stefan Luft, “Ausländerkriminalität: Wegdiskutieren hilft nicht”, Das Parlament, 3 (2007), p. 7. On the whole, Muslims living in Germany have become increasingly less liberal. “Diese Form der Fundamentalisierung hat ihre Ursachen auch in der Weltpolitik, in den Kriegen in Afghanistan, im Irak und in der Lage im Iran.” [“The motives behind this form of fundamentalization are also to be found in world politics, in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and in the situation in Iran.”] Seyran Ates, “Medien machen mich zum Opfer”, Das Parlament, 3 (2007), p. 8. Joschka Fischer, “Towards A Culture of Tolerance”. Address by Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer at the OIC-EU Forum, Istanbul, 12 Feb. 2002, http://germany.info/relaunch/politics/speeches/021202.html, retrieved Jan. 2008. Ibid. “Germany has had the lowest birth rate in Europe for some time and this trend has been confirmed [when the number of births fell by a further 2.8% in 2005/6]. In 2005, Germany had 8.5 births per 1,000 inhabitants, compared to 12 in Britain, 12.7 in France, and 15.2 in Ireland.” BBC News, 15 Aug. 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4793997.stm, retrieved Feb. 2007. This statistic does not distinguish between German women with or without a migrant background.

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Despite Germany’s long history of recruiting foreign workers, the turn towards a more organized and focused recruitment of highly skilled labour marks a watershed. This change, coupled with a demographic shift towards a more elderly population and a continuing low total fertility rate (now at 1.3 per couple), led to a broader discussion about a formal immigration policy that would take these factors into account. Opponents also questioned the capacity of German society to integrate more foreigners. Nevertheless, both groups agreed on the need to improve the integration of foreigners, especially those from former recruitment countries. Adapted from Veysel Oezcan, “Germany: Immigration in Transition”, Humboldt University Berlin, 2004, http://www.migrationinformation.org/ Profiles/display.cfm?ID=235, retrieved Oct. 2010. “[D]as ‘Zuwanderungsgesetz’ von 2005 entpuppte sich—ausweislich der letzten statistischen Erhebungen—als Zuwanderungsverhinderungsgesetz. Denn seit seinem Inkrafttreten ist die Einwanderung nach Deutschland nahezu zum Erliegen gekommen.” [“The ‘Immigration Act’ of 2005 turned out to be— according to the most recent statistical surveys—an Immigration Prevention Act, because since it came into effect, immigration to Germany has almost come to a standstill.”] Jörg Lau, “Abschied von den Lebenslügen: Was für eine gelungene Integration wichtig ist”, Das Parlament, 3 (2007), p. 1. Both quoted in Susanne Kailitz, “Deutschland ist (k)ein Einwanderungsland: Zuwanderungsrecht”, Das Parlament, 18 (2007), p. 5. Wolfgang Schäuble quoted in Jan Fleischhauer and Holger Stark, “SpiegelGespräch: ‘Hier gibt es ein Problem’. Bundesinnenminister Wolfgang Schäuble, 64, über die Islamkritik des Papstes, die Grenzen der Toleranz im Umgang mit Muslimen und die Terrorgefahr durch neue Bundeswehreinsätze”, Der Spiegel, 38 (2006), pp. 85‒88, here p. 86. “Über die Hälfte aller ausländischen Schulabsolventen verlassen deutsche Schulen höchstens mit einem Hauptschulabschluss. 17,5 Prozent aller ausländischen Schüler schaffen nicht mal diesen.” [“More than half of all foreign school graduates leave German schools with, at best, a Hauptschulabschluss (the lowest graduation certificate in the German school system). 17.5 per cent of all foreign pupils do not even achieve this level.”] Janina Söhn, “Migrantenkinder werden unterfordert”, Kulturaustausch, vol. 67, no. 1 (2007), p. 74. Söhn is quick to point out, though, that many teachers are to blame for this poor performance, as they subconsciously “expect less” of children with a migrant background and thus perpetuate the difference in their achievements from German students. This point of view has been contested by Seving Yada, born to Turkish guest workers in Germany. She reports of her encounters with “‘Gutdeutschmenschen’, die das Gefühl haben, sie müssten Angehörige der Minderheiten beschützen und fördern. […] So gab es immer wieder Lehrer, die meinten, mich bevorzugt behandeln zu müssen, weil ich—als Ausländerkind—nicht optimale Lebensbedingungen hätte.” [“‘Well-intentioned Germans’ who feel they should protect and encourage members of minority groups…. So I came across teachers again and again who thought they should give me preferential treatment, because I—as a child of foreigners—would not be enjoying optimal living conditions.”] At the same time, she bemoans the stigmatization and reinforced difference that comes with this special treatment. Cf. Fernando Coronil, Beyond Occidentalism: Towards Post-Imperial Geohistorical Categories (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1992).

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41 42 43 44 45 46 47

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Cf. Sarita Malik, “Beyond ‘The Cinema of Duty’? The Pleasures of Hybridity: Black British Films of the 1980s and 1990s”, in Andrew Higson (ed.), Dissolving Views: New Writings on British Cinema (London: Cassell, 1996), pp. 202‒15. Deniz Göktürk, “Turkish Delight—German Fright: Migrant Identities in Transnational Cinema”, in Deniz Derman, Karen Ros, and Nevena Dakovic (eds.), Mediated Identities (Istanbul: Bilgi University Press, 2001), pp. 131‒49, here p. 131. Ibid. Deniz Göktürk, “Turkish Women on German Streets: Closure and Exposure in Transnational Cinema”, in Myrto Konstantarakos (ed.), Spaces in European Cinema (Exeter/Portland: Intellect, 2000), pp. 64‒76, here p. 67. Cf. Annette Brauerhoch, “Die Heimat des Geschlechts—oder mit der fremden Geschichte die eigene erzählen: Zu Shirins Hochzeit von Helma Sanders-Brahms”, in E. Karpf et al. (ed.), “Getürkte Bilder”: Zur Inszenierung von Fremden im Film (Marburg: Schüren, 1995), pp. 109‒115. Göktürk, “Turkish Delight—German Fright”, pp. 138‒39. Nezith Erdogan and Deniz Göktürk, “Turkish Cinema”, in Oliver Leaman (ed.), Companion Encyclopedia of Middle Eastern and North African Film (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 533‒73, here p. 544. Göktürk, “Turkish Delight—German Fright”, p. 141‒42 Ibid. Göktürk, “Turkish Women on German Streets”, p. 69. Ibid. Göktürk, “Turkish Delight—German Fright”, p. 132‒33. Göktürk, “Turkish Women on German Streets”, p. 69. Joana Breidenbach, “Migrants in Germany: Between Assimilation and Transnationalization”, Politeia, Berlin, 2001; http://www.politeia.net/seminar/migration/Breidenbach%20paper.htm, retrieved Oct. 2002. Deniz Göktürk, “Beyond Paternalism: Turkish German Traffic in Cinema”, in Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, and Deniz Göktürk (eds.), The German Cinema Book (London: British Film Institute, 2002), pp. 248‒56, here p. 249. Angelica Fenner, “Turkish Cinema in the New Europe: Visualizing Ethnic Conflict in Sinan Çetin’s Berlin in Berlin”, Camera Obscura, 44 (2000), pp. 105‒48, here p. 116. Homi Bhabba, “DissemiNation: Time, Narrative and the Margins of the Modern Nation”, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 139‒70, here p. 164. Cf. Deniz Göktürk, “Verstöße gegen das Reinheitsgebot: Migrantenkino zwischen wehleidiger Pflichtübung und wechselseitigem Grenzverkehr”, in Ruth Mayer and Mark Terkissidis (eds.), Globalkolorit: Multikulturalismus und Populärkultur (St Andra/Wordern: Hannibal, 1998), pp. 99‒114. “Migrants too have to tackle the lies in their lives, which are partly responsible for their integration problems. Those who stay long term and want a good future for their children must declare their support for this country, break through the barriers they have erected around themselves, stop just seeing themselves as victims of unsuccessful political legislation, and take their lives into their own hands.” In the original: “Auch die Migranten müssen an ihre Lebenslügen heran, die an den Integrationsproblemen mitschuldig sind. Wer auf Dauer bleibt und eine gute Zukunft für seine Kinder wünscht, muss sich zu diesem Land bekennen, muss Selbstabschottung durchbrechen, muss aufhören, sich immer 426

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57 58 59 60 61 62 63

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bloß als Opfer verfehlter Politik zu sehen und sein Leben in die eigenen Hände nehmen.” Lau, “Abschied von den Lebenslügen”, p. 1. Although the first literary works by guest workers were published much earlier [cf. Gianni Bertagnoli and Gudrun Scholand, Arrivederci, Deutschland (Stuttgart: Franck’sche Verlagshandlung, 1959) or the Frankfurt-based Italianlanguage magazine Il Corriere d’Italia, which published prose and lyrical submissions from the early 1970s], this strand of German literature only left the margins once the authors had adopted the German language, as is evident from the sales successes of Aras Ören, Zafer Senocak, Yüksel Pazarkaya, Rafik Schami, Libuse Monikova, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, and Feridun Zaimoglu. Cf. “deutsche sprache / die meine zweite Heimat ist”, Yüksel Pazarkaya, “deutsche sprache”, in Christian Schaffernicht (ed.), Zu Hause in der Fremde: Ein Ausländer-Lesebuch (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1984), p. 135. In France a comparable trend (referred to as cinema beur or Beur Cinema) had started about a decade earlier. Since the mid-1980s, “second generation” filmmakers in France have achieved popular success, thematizing the migrant experience, for example, in Mehdi Charef’s Le Thé au harem d’Archiméde [Tea in the Harem of Archimedes, 1985], Rachid Bouchareb’s Bâton Rouge (1986), Mehdi Charef’s Miss Mona (1987), and Rachid Bouchareb’s Cheb (1991). New Turkish Cinema was labelled as such by Petra Fachinger, with reference to directors such as Serif Gören, Zeki Ökten, and Atif Yilmaz. Petra Fachinger, “A New Kind of Creative Energy: Yadé Kara’s Selam Berlin and Fatih Akin’s Kurz und Schmerzlos and Gegen die Wand”, German Life and Letters, 60/2 (2007), pp. 243‒60, here p. 254. Third Cinema “is the expression of a new culture and of social changes. Generally speaking, Third Cinema gives an account of reality and history. It is also linked with national culture […]. It is the way the world is conceptualized and neither the genre nor the explicitly political character of a film which makes it belong to Third Cinema.” Jim Pines and Paul Willemen (eds.), “Introduction”, Questions of Third Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1989), p. 9. Breidenbach, “Migrants in Germany”. Ibid. Moritz Bleibtreu quoted in Beate Wild, “Prominenz im Filmfieber”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 19 Jan. 2008. Fatih Akin quoted in Wild, “Prominenz im Filmfieber”. Hamid Naficy, An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 16. The term refers to a Latin-American cinema of liberation that emerged during the 1960s. Cf. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, p. 42. Naficy’s description of the interstitial mode of accented film-makers with regard to “the multiplication or accumulation of labour, particularly on behalf of the director, instead of the division of labour that characterizes the post-industrial production mode”, can be applied to the directors who construct hyphenated or accented Heimats in contemporary German cinema, such as Fatih Akin and Daniel Levy. Both directors take on many other roles in their filmmaking, ranging from scriptwriting to acting, principally to control their projects but also to keep production costs lower. In Fatih Akin’s case, he also uses his brother and other family members and their friends as lay actors because of the lack of bilingual professional actors. Ibid., p. 4. 427

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69 70 71 72

73 74 75

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Ibid., p. 6. Ibid., pp. 30‒31. Christiane Peitz quoted in Göktürk, “Beyond Paternalism”, p. 249. Stephen Crofts, “Concepts of National Cinema”, in John Hill and Pamela Church Gobson (eds.), Oxford Guide to Film Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 385‒94. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), p. 42. Göktürk, “Beyond Paternalism”, p. 248. Susan Hayward, Cinema Studies: The Key Concepts (London: Routledge, 2000), p. 34. Marc Silberman, “Popular Cinema, National Cinema, and European Integration”, in Agnes C. Mueller (ed.), German Pop Culture: How American Is It? (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004), pp. 151‒64, here pp. 160‒61. Tuncay Kulaoglu, “Der neue ‘deutsche’ Film ist türkisch?: Eine neue Generation bringt Leben in die Filmlandschaft”, Filmforum, 16 (1999), pp. 8‒11. Cf. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, p. 192. Among them are the female directors Seyhan Derin (born in 1967 in Turkey, raised in West Germany) and Buket Alakus (born in 1971 in Turkey, studied in Berlin and Hamburg), the female film-makers Ayse Polat, director of the Heimat film En Garde from 2004 (born in 1970 in Turkish Kurdistan, living in Germany since 1978), and Aysun Bademsoy (born in 1960 in Turkey, lives in Germany with her spouse, the German director Christian Petzold). Their male colleagues include internationally recognized auteurs such as Fatih Akin (born in 1973 to Turkish parents in Hamburg, where he studied film), Züli Aladag (born in 1968 in Turkey to Kurdish parents, moved to West Germany as a child), Thomas Arslan (born in 1962 in Braunschweig to Turkish parents, lived in Ankara from 1967 to 1971 and attended primary school there, before returning to West Germany to complete secondary school and later study film in Berlin), Yilmaz Arslan (born in 1968 in Turkey, moved to Germany in 1975), Kutlug Ataman (born in Istanbul in 1961, studied in Paris and Los Angeles, now living in Istanbul and Berlin), and Yüksel Yavuz (born in 1964 in Turkey, emigrated to Germany in 1980, where he studied film in Hamburg). Slightly older and in some ways forerunners of this cinematic wave are veteran Turkish director Erden Kiral (born in 1942 in Turkey, working in Germany intermittently since the 1980s), Merlyn Solakhan (born in Istanbul in 1955, moved to Germany in 1979, studied film in Berlin from 1980 to 1985), as well as Tevfik Baser (born in 1951 in Turkey, settled in Hamburg in 1980). Cf. Silberman, “Popular Cinema, National Cinema, and European Integration”, p. 164. Barbara Mennel, “Bruce Lee in Kreuzberg and Scarface in Altona: Transnational Auteurism and Ghettocentrism in Thomas Arslan’s Brothers and Sisters and Fatih Akin’s Short Sharp Shock”, New German Critique, no. 87, Special Issue on Postwall Cinema (2002), pp.133‒56, here p. 134. The Hamburg-based company is officially called “corazón international” and is headed by Fatih Akin, Klaus Maeck, and Andreas Thiel. Most Turkish guest workers came from rural Anatolia and were suddenly confronted with a liberal Christian and highly industrialized culture that did not exactly welcome them. Interestingly, the time Cahit spent in prison is not shown or thematized. The same applies to Gabriel’s incarceration in Akin’s Short Sharp Shock. “Jails as 428

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such, unlike in the first-generation Turkish-German films, are not among the claustrophobic spaces shown in Akin’s. Gabriel’s tiny room in the small family apartment, which he has physically outgrown and to which he returns to seek refuge from the violent street life, and Cahit’s small filthy apartment, which he rarely leaves, are the truly claustrophobic spaces [which] Akin depicts his male characters as trapped in.” Fachinger, “A New Kind of Creative Energy”, p. 258. “Cahit’s return journey to his family’s roots” has also been referred to as “therapeutic”. Fachinger, “A New Kind of Creative Energy”, p. 257. Akin’s first full-length feature film, Short Sharp Shock, won the Bronze Leopard at Locarno Film Festival for the performances by its three stars, and was also nominated in the Best Film and Best Direction categories of the German Film Awards. Akin was also awarded the Bavarian Film Prize for best newcomer director (Best Young Director, 1998). Anja Koch, “Fatih Akin: Regisseur auf Erfolgskurs—‘Meine Filme sind Heimatfilme’”, 1 Dec. 2007, www.ard.de/kultur/film-kino/fatih-akin/-/id=8328/nid=8328/did= 686680/ycysqq/index.html, retrieved Dec. 2007. Ibid. Akin quoted in Alan Riding, “On Screen Tackling Europe’s New Reality”, New York Times, 18 Jan. 2005. Akin quoted in Nora Fitzgerald, “Turkish-German Artists Thrive in Their Adopted Land”, New York Times, 8 Jan. 2004. The new citizenship law ratified in 2000 states the following: Children born to foreigners in Germany automatically receive German citizenship, provided one parent has been a legal resident for at least eight years. Children can also hold the nationality of their parents, but must decide to be citizens of one country or the other before age 23. Accordingly, the German citizenship law was altered to enable better integration of second- and third-generation migrants in Germany (that is, the law no longer exclusively favoured ius sanguinis, which recognizes only blood ties, but also ius soli, which recognizes the place of birth and residence). Cf. Oezcan, “Germany: Immigration in Transition”. In the original: “ich, der Deutsch-Türke aus Hamburg. Wir [Kurnaz und Akin] kommen aus ähnlichen, wenig religiösen Familien, unsere Wurzeln in der Türkei liegen in einer ähnlichen Region. Wir hatten in unserer Jugend eine ähnliche Sozialisierung – Gangs, Türsteher, Nachtleben.” […] Und ich hatte übrigens auch lange keinen deutschen Pass, so wie Kurnaz.” Fatih Akin quoted in an interview with Christoph Görner, “Ich wäre zerbrochen. Der Regisseur Fatih Akin hat aus einem sueddeutsche.de-Interview mit Murat Kurnaz einen Berlinale-Kurzfilm gemacht. Ein Gespräch über politische Lügen und den Guantanamo-Häftling”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 16 Feb. 2009. Stephan K. Schindler and Lutz Koepnick, “Introduction—Against the Wall? The Global Imaginary of German Cinema”, in Stephan K. Schindler and Lutz Koepnick (eds.), The Cosmopolitan Screen: German Cinema and the Global Imaginary, 1945 to the Present (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2007), pp.1‒21, here p. 8. Trevor Hope, “Turkish-German Topographies: Crossing the Frontier Head On”, transcript of paper delivered at the conference “Films Without Frontiers”, organized by the European Cinema Research Forum at the University of Wales in Swansea, June‒July 2006, p. 1. Bhabba, “DissemiNation”, p. 164. Malik, “Beyond ‘The Cinema of Duty’?”, p. 212. 429

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Ibid., p. 215. Akin quoted in Gerd Gemünden, “Hollywood in Altona: Minority Cinema in the Transnational Imagination”, in Mueller (ed.), German Pop Culture, p. 180. These references are from Hamid Naficy and Shohat & Stam respectively. Hamid Naficy, “Phobic Spaces and Liminal Panics: Independent Transnational Film Genre”, in Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake (eds.), Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996), pp. 119‒44, here p. 119; Shohat and Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism, p. 42. Schindler and Koepnick, “Introduction: Against the Wall”, p. 6. Klaus Maeck quoted in Martin Blaney, “Soul Kitchen”, German Films Quarterly, 1 (2009), pp. 29‒30, here p. 30. Veyzel Oezcan, “Germany: Immigration in Transition”, Humboldt University Berlin, May 2002, http://www.migrationinformation.org/Profiles/display.cfm?ID=22, retrieved Oct. 2002. Cf. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, p. 240. Ibid., p. 243. This is a very personal concern for Angelina Maccarone, as she explains: “I like the theme of absurdity, the absurdity of norms, and of crossing borders, of overstepping the line. I cross them every day. Just to try things, learn new things, understand and confront the things I’m scared of. Even as a child I had to explain my name. Then I had to explain myself as a lesbian. Things always had to be explained. I think that is so absurd.” Angelina Maccarone quoted in Simon Kingsley, “Director’s Portrait: Pushing the Envelope”, German Films Quarterly, 3 (2005), pp. 10‒11, here p. 11. Angelina Maccarone, “Unveiled: Director’s Statement”, http://jasmin-tabatabai.com/english/film_fremde_haut.htm, retrieved Mar. 2007. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Cf. actor Jasmin Tabatabai in an interview, Dagmar Trüpschuch: “Weibliche Homosexualität? Darüber spricht man nicht. Interview mit Jasmin Tabatabai”, in Lespress, Oct. 2005, http://www.lespress.de/102005/texte102005/102005_tabatabai.html, retrieved Nov. 2006. Maccarone, “Unveiled: Director’s Statement”. Naficy, An Accented Cinema, p. 240. Ibid. Hermine Huntgeburth quoted in Christa Thelen, “Director’s Portrait: Hermine Huntgeburth”, Kino, 1 (2002), p. 16. Their joint screenplay has been published as Fatima El-Tayeb, Alles wird gut (Berlin: Orlanda Frauenverlag, 1999) and Fatima El-Tayeb’s dissertation from Hamburg University has been published as Schwarze Deutsche: ‘Rasse’ und nationale Identität 1890–1933 (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 2001). Cassandra Yvette Johnson, “Heimat Deutschland: An Examination of AfroGerman Marginalization”, PhD diss. (University of Georgia, 2001). El-Tayeb quoted in Gemünden, “Hollywood in Altona”, p. 186. Ibid., p. 188. 430

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117 Ibid., p. 186. 118 Johnson, “Heimat Deutschland”, p. 12. 119 Sabine Hake, German National Cinema (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 183. 120 Ibid. 121 Maccarone, “Unveiled: Director’s Statement”. 122 Ibid. 123 Gemünden, “Hollywood in Altona”, p. 188. 124 Naficy, An Accented Cinema, p. 222. 125 Bhabba, “DissemiNation”, p. 164. 126 Naficy, An Accented Cinema, p. 237. 127 Ibid. 128 The strength of the German TV industry is evident in the many high-quality made-for-TV productions that are subsequently shown internationally at film festivals (including Rage), and in the many film concepts that deliberately bridge the TV and cinema markets, as well as the domestic and international markets. 129 Carrie Tarr, “Questions of Identity in Beur Cinema: From Tea in the Harem to Cheb”, Screen, 34/4 (1993), pp. 321‒42, here p. 325. 130 Cf. Hajo Schumacher, “Fernsehen: Wut über die Verschiebung des Filmes Wut”, Die Welt, 27 Sep. 2006; Anon., “ARD verbannt Thriller über kriminelle Türken ins Nachtprogramm: Warum dürfen wir heute diesen Film nicht sehen?”, BildZeitung, 26 Sep. 2006. 131 In the original: “Man sollte die Diskussion über die Fremdheit und damit verbundene Schwierigkeiten nicht nur den Rechten überlassen.” Aladag quoted in Michael Aust, “Wie tolerant bist du? Interview mit dem Regisseur Züli Aladag”, Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 26 Sep. 2006, p. 19. 132 During the originally scheduled timeslot, Hartmut Griesmayr’s schmaltzy Heimat film Paradies in den Bergen [Mountain Paradise, 2004] was shown once again. 133 Cf. Anon., “Wut—ein Fernsehfilm mit Nebenwirkungen Publikumserfolg: 2,67 Millionen Zuschauer sahen den ARD-Film über Gewalt an Deutschen Schulen”, Hamburger Abendblatt, 2 Oct. 2006. 134 Henke referred to the fact “dass sich der Film traut, einen Ausländer als Bösen darzustellen” [“that the film dares to depict a foreigner as a villain”]. Henke quoted in Rainer Striewski, “WDR-Fernsehfilmchef Henke über den Spielfilm Wut: ‘Es ist unsere Aufgabe, mutig zu sein’”, wdr.de, 28 Sep. 2006, http://www.wdr.de/themen/politik/nrw02/integration/spielfilm/wut/index.jhtml, retrieved Jan. 2007. 135 In the original: “Sohn eines Schulmeisters, einer der rechtschaffensten zugleich und entsetzlichsten Menschen seiner Zeit”. Heinrich von Kleist, Michael Kohlhaas: Aus einer alten Chronik (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2003), p. 3. 136 Ibid. 137 Slow-motion passages are juxtaposed with alienating close-up shots and grainy images that are reminiscent of surveillance camera footage. The directness of the wobbly footage filmed using a hand-held camera often gives the viewer the impression that this is documentary material. This impression is reinforced by the authentic language used in the film: the slang used by the young members of the street gang, as well as the Turkish dialogues and expressions, which often remain untranslated and which have a similarly contradictory effect as the film’s back-

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143 144 145

146 147 148 149

ground music, which includes Turkish folk music and classical music by Schubert, as well as German-Turkish hip-hop. The term “Leitkultur” [guiding cultural principle(s)] was coined by the Syrianborn German professor Bassam Tibi in his book Europa ohne Identität: “Die Werte für die erwünschte Leitkultur müssen der kulturellen Moderne entspringen, und sie heißen: Demokratie, Laizismus, Aufklärung, Menschenrechte und Zivilgesellschaft.” [“The values for the guiding cultural principle(s) that we desire must arise from modernity, and they are: democracy, laicism, enlightenment, human rights, and civil society.”] Bassam Tibi, Europa ohne Identität? Die Krise der multikulturellen Gesellschaft (Munich: Bertelsmann, 1998), p. 154. He referred to Leitkultur as a set of humanistic values that, unlike an ethnic identity, could be acquired as part of an educational process. Cf. Bassam Tibi, “Leitkultur als Wertekonsens: Bilanz einer missglückten deutschen Debatte”, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, B 1‒2 (2001), pp. 23‒26. In the original: “… wie der Haß in die zivilen Standardsituationen eindringt”. Peter Sloterdijk, Zorn und Zeit: Politisch-psychologischer Versuch (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2006), p. 76. In the original: “routinemäßige[n] Umsetzung von Realgewalt”. Ibid. In the original: “‘Scheiß-Deutscher’ ist unter jungen Migranten zu einem sehr beliebten Schimpfwort avanciert.” Sascha Lehnartz, “Deutschland, du Opfer!”, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, 27 Jan. 2008, p. 53‒54, here p. 53. In the original: “Deutsche-Dissen ist ein übelst angesagter Trendsport. Jedenfalls unter Jugendlichen mit ‘MH’: ‘MH’ steht im Behördendeutsch für Migrationshintergrund.” Ibid. Ibid. Andreas Wolter, senior law enforcement agent [Leiter des InternsivtäterKommisariats], quoted in Lehnartz, “Deutschland, du Opfer!”, p. 53. In the original: “Auf das Ressentiment […] reagieren, Deutsche ratlos. Gleichzeitig scheint man die zugewiesene Rolle als Opfer jedoch anzunehmen […]. In einem Land, dessen Bewohner schon tief betroffen sind, sobald man ihnen nachsagt, irgendetwas an ihnen sei ‘typisch deutsch’, kann nicht erstaunen, dass es kaum jemand vermag, die Invektive ‘Scheiß-Deutscher’ gelassen an sich abprallen zu lassen. Für viele Deutsche ist bereits die Titulierung ‘Deutscher’ eine Kränkung, bevor irgendjemand das betreffende Adjektiv hinzufügt.” Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 54. Cf. “Heimat and heritage serve to rewrite German history in terms of consensus and nostalgia, serving a broader agenda of ‘normalization’ in the emerging cultural constellation of the Berlin Republic.” Johannes von Moltke, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 237.

432

Conclusion

Though a wide variety of recurring themes, tropes, and settings have been evident in German films over the past one hundred years, Heimat has been highly persistent and notable. It is not so much its generic form, intent on instructing and educating by transmitting dominant social ideologies, as the many variations on the theme that have been able to capture the viewers’ imagination throughout the history of German cinema. In recent times, in particular, questions of space, place, and identity have been examined with greater urgency by a range of disciplines in the arts and humanities. Some have argued that the experience of globalization has rendered questions of home and belonging particularly pressing,1 while others see in the renewed importance invested in homely [heimelich] spaces a response to the fear of a loss of identity. Irrespective of the underlying reason, a search for a place one can call Heimat is evident, and for many this quest is deeply problematic, despite being strongly desired. As a counter-concept for nation, Heimat may be favoured in a supranational sense that still provides context and connection, albeit in heart-warming, endearing, small-scale, and therefore non-threatening ways. It responds to the longing for a place of one’s own, perhaps the site of one’s origins, a situation that provides stability, orientation, perspective, and solace, and has perhaps been the dominant goal of the contemporary self-termed “global citizen”. The object of such yearning may again be found within the broad term “Heimat”. Proof of this resurgence of a longing for Heimat is clearly evident in the many examples of contemporary Heimat films analysed in the preceding chapters. There is no doubt that Heimat film is experiencing a renaissance of sorts in Germany and abroad—with regard to popular success as well as critical acclaim. The increasing popularity of those Heimat films from recent decades which borrow from as much as they transgress the bounds of the genre is undeniable, running parallel to the reappraisal of homeland, nation, and identity. A phenomenon that would have been unthinkable in previous decades, a new self-confidence with regard to oneself and one’s origins, has even led to a new love affair with all things “German”. It is perhaps not surprising then that the term “Heimat” recently received the second largest number of votes in a competition to find the most loved German word.2 It seems that the days are gone when Heimat was primarily viewed negatively or with suspicion. In the wake of the 2010 FIFA Football Championships, many Germans enthusiastically embraced a new name for their Heimat: Deutschland has become “Schland”. The term, derived from the German football fans’ chant 433

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“DeutSCH-LAAAND”, features in the refrain of the parody of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest winner “Satellite” by German band Uwu Lena. Both the song and the new term became immensely popular in a matter of weeks during the summer of 2010. Though it remains to be seen how long it will persist, Schland has become widely used as a loving reference to a national Heimat, perhaps because this abbreviation of “Deutschland” appeals to Germans, being reminiscent of “Schlaraffenland” [land of milk and honey] and “Schmand” [a rich sour cream or quark]. Schland also has the sound of a smallish entity that is neither threatening nor threatened, and has proved attractive to large sections of society apart from football fans. Entrepreneurs and academics alike have quickly picked up on the concept, which has become the subject of merchandise as well as of intellectual discourse, contributing to a rapprochement of sorts. The well-known German self-hatred and intellectual suspicion of anything national (such a dominant theme in Aladag’s film Rage) have slowly started to become a thing of the past, not least because many new Germans (with a migrant background) as well as international onlookers, have happily joined in a show of esteem for a German Heimat which is fun-loving and inclusive. The phenomenon of new Germans proving that they are proudly German has also become evident in the longer, western part of the Sonnenallee, the “Gaza strip of Berlin”. Along with oriental shops and migrants from Turkey, Lebanon, Eastern Europe, and further afield, the Arab tenants of one house displayed a huge German flag during the Football World Championships in July 2010 in support of their Heimat. While many Germans were initially baffled by, and uncomfortable with, this show of national pride, understanding has grown, especially in light of their own reappraisal of their “Schland”. The colourful Republic emphatically called for by the new German President Christian Wulff 3 seems to have come closer to reality with the events of the summer of 2010. The rediscovery of Heimat as a value that can help overcome both guilt complex and xenophobia has prepared the way for, as much as accompanied, a positive development in the appreciation of Heimat in the arts and in society as a whole. This goes to show that the relationship to one’s Heimat is constantly in flux, and periods of embracing the concept are likely to be followed by periods of alienation. The same may be said for the Heimat genre. Rejected as formulaic and stale for most of the second half of the twentieth century, the genre has survived in adaptations and transformations to express an innate human desire for grounding. A multitude of dialect films from Germany set in the provinces (such as Marcus H. Rosenmüller’s Grave Decisions and Hans Sebastian Steinbichler’s Hierankl) and at times in the “good old days” (such as Rosenmüller’s Heavyweights and Sӧnke Wortmann’s The Miracle of Bern) attest to the audience’s desire to engage with stories from quintessentially German regions and embrace what many international viewers regard as stereotypical German images and iconography. When Thomas Mann attributed an “unworldly, provincial, German cosmopolitanism” to his fellow countrymen,4 he may have described their attitude to Heimat as, at best, a peculiar contradiction in terms; nevertheless, it is a self-understanding that has proved to be long-lasting.

434

Conclusion

Despite having lost much of its cringe factor for Germans, not least thanks to edgy new Heimat films and concepts, it is difficult to arrive at a common definition for the ever popular and ever problematic word and idea of Heimat. Whether understood as “a nostalgic view of place”,5 as Johannes von Moltke defines it, likening Heimat to an anti-modern space, or to childhood, rural bliss, or indeed to an assured and calm state of mind, the concept remains notoriously difficult to define. In this socio-historical study, I have demonstrated that Heimat can be many things to many people. Its definition remains complex, fluid, subjective, temporal, and not necessarily plausible. Every generation to have rejected the implications of the term, such as the 68ers, has been followed in turn by a generation which has largely embraced the concept. During the 1970s, many believed they could renounce Heimat and what was meant by it at the time, as the concept evoked “just narrowmindedness and conformity, the petit bourgeois and the kitsch, and looking backwards”.6 Young people at the time preferred to dream of Europe and the wider world—and that decade was a period of rejection that eventually provoked a rediscovery of Heimat as a “substitute for thinking about problems to do with our identity, our personal life story”.7 Not least in the wake of the fundamental social and psychological changes affecting German citizens east and west of the disappearing Wall since 1989—which have given rise to a sense of crisis that has provoked a nostalgia of sorts for the disappearing GDR as well as for the old FRG—a longing for Heimat has found expression in German film production. Ostalgie films (such as Peter Timm’s The Living Room Fountain and Leander Haußmann’s Sonnenallee) and Westalgie films (such as Leander Haußmann’s Herr Lehmann and Hans Weingartner’s The Edukators) are among dozens of films that have responded to the erosion of old patterns of understanding and the ideological restructuring of Central Europe through the use of narratives, which—beyond science and rationality—centre on the mythical to explain the new German order. The Ostalgic and Westalgic expressions in these films express a longing for lost states, bygone times, and all the friends that once inhabited these vanished spaces. The recent past is interpreted symbolically in cinematic constructs of Heimat and nation (for example, in Germany—A Summer’s Tale). At the same time, German directors, many of them with migrant backgrounds, have received international recognition through ambivalent Heimat tales that express the difficulty of finding happiness and a place to call home in today’s world. The concepts of Heimat as expressed by Fatih Akin, Angelina Maccarone, and Züli Aladag may differ markedly from those of Hans-Christian Schmid and Tom Tykwer, but each of their films showcases aspects of the life-long journey of individuals trying to find a place to settle and company to settle with. Broadly speaking, despite its semantic opaqueness, Heimat expresses in most of the films hailing from Germany a “longing for a wholeness and unity”,8 which for many seems lost, especially following experiences of alienation, exile, diaspora, or “simply” migration. Yet it is in those circumstances, when Heimat becomes a thing of the past, that it seems to manifest itself most clearly, that is, a desire to return home—albeit a painful one: nostos algos. Despite mutually exclusive connotations (that at times have even coexisted), a definition of Heimat has been attempted by way of outlining continuities in the Heimat film genre. Whether judged favourably or ridiculed, 435

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Heimat seems to have maintained a core meaning that reveals much about an individual’s identity, standing for “Identität als Übereinstimmung des Menschen mit sich und seiner Umgebung, Identität als Gegenbegriff zur Entfremdung”—a sense of identity whereby a person feels in harmony with himself/herself and his/her surroundings, as opposed to alienation.9 Ironically, the idea of genre itself provides a sense of orientation and reassurance as the viewer knows in advance what to expect and finds this reassurance not too dissimilar to the concept of Heimat itself. While genre has been identified as a marker of Heimat and a generator of heimatesque feelings, the same has been demonstrated for propaganda films and ideology, which provide a clear framework and strong value judgements intended to assist people throughout their lives. As this analysis has shown, Heimat is primarily used to express a tie not to space but, instead, to community: as a place of belonging derived from ties to people rather than to land, and favouring not a primordial understanding of roots and origins but an elective affinity expressed by individuals “as suggested by the notion of a zweite Heimat”.10 Indeed, “Heimat, the place where one feels at home with oneself and the world”, is not only a spatial concept—“there exists no map of Heimat. Nevertheless, it is safe to assume that conceptualisations of Heimat play a central role”11 in “shaping the spatiality of social life” in Germanspeaking contexts,12 especially in feature film renditions that provide deeply emotive responses to concepts of nation, identity, and homeland by way of mythologizing country, language, religion, and shared history. In recent years, German film-makers have embarked on a journey to promote their ideas of a new world order affecting Central Europe in a post-nationalistic fashion. Their films respond to times of uncertainty—the downside of boundless mobility and globalization—by upholding sounds and images of German Heimat as experienced in different sub-cultures, regions, and urban neighbourhoods. Akin’s Altona, Rosenmüller’s Bavaria, and Haußmann’s Kreuzberg become instantly recognizable places inhabited by distinct communities that afford a sense of Heimat and identity to a variety of viewers. Whether celebrating identity or problematizing it, many recent Heimat films can be read as expressions of the utopian qualities of Heimat which are fed by melancholy as well as by a desire for self-assurance, especially in the German context.13 One such formula, the “walk down memory lane”, favours pleasing aspects of an imagined collective past, tempting audiences to revel in a sense of unity and homogeneous identity,14 thus using the Heimat genre as an emotional anchor and as a mythical link between past and present. Other Heimat films oscillate more deliberately between pride and shame and thematize the inclusive as well as the exclusive workings of Heimat. Films discussed in the previous chapters under the broad and complex topic of the history of German Heimat film—grouped together thematically under the headings “mountain films”, “Nazi Heimat films”, “post-war Heimat films”, and under the labels “critical”, “positive”, “ambivalent”, and “hyphenated” Heimat films—have been shown to display continuities, references, and at times repetitious elements. Within each historical category, at least one contemporary Heimat film has been included to illustrate the longevity of the genre, along with the techniques that have advanced and transformed components and that reflect on changes in society.

436

Conclusion

This examination of one hundred years of Heimat film demonstrates the changing ways in which family, community, and history have been conceived, and details the history of Heimat film by examining changing sociohistorical contexts as well as paying attention to fundamental continuities. A century of German-language films playing to and with the notion of Heimat testifies to the longevity of the concept. In the hearts and minds of young and old, as well as newcomers and long-established residents, the desire to make oneself at home in a social and/or spatial sense has proven timeless. This bodes well for another hundred years of creative and critical engagement with heimatesque themes. Indeed, long live Heimat! NOTES 1 2

3

4

5

6 7

Cf. Elizabeth H. Jones, Spaces of Belonging: Home, Culture and Identity in 20thCentury French Autobiography (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007). Jutta Limbach (ed.), Das schönste deutsche Wort: Eine Auswahl der schönsten Liebeserklärungen an die deutsche Sprache—zusammengestellt aus den Einsendungen zum internationalen Wettbewerb "Das schönste deutsche Wort" (Ismaning: Hueber, 2005), p. 14. In his inaugural speech as the newly elected President of the Federal Republic, Christian Wulff proclaimed: “We must also be open for cooperation with other parts of the world [...]. In order to achieve this, we need to get to know other cultures better and need to understand them [...], here [...] in our own country as well, in our colourful Republic of Germany. Our diversity is at times also strenuous, but always a source of strength, ideas, and a way of seeing the world with different eyes and from different perspectives. If many people follow this example enthusiastically, we can discover our country anew and the potential within it.” In the original: “[W]ir müssen auch offen sein für die Kooperation mit allen anderen Teilen der Welt [...]. Dazu müssen wir andere Kulturen besser kennen und verstehen lernen, mussen wir auch hier auf andere zugehen [...] in unserer Bundesrepublik, in unserer bunten Republik Deutschland. Unsere Vielfalt ist zwar manchmal auch anstrengend, aber sie ist immer Quelle der Kraft und der Ideen und eine Mӧglichkeit, die Welt aus unterschiedlichen Augen und Blickwinkeln kennenzulernen. [...] Wenn Viele sich dafür begeistern, dann werden wir unser Land und was in ihm steckt ganz neu entdecken.” Excerpts from the transcript of Christian Wulff’s speech reproduced in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2 July 2010. Thomas Mann, “Germany and the Germans” (1945), in Death in Venice: Tonio Kröger and Other Writings (New York: Continuum, 1999), pp. 303‒9, here p. 306. In the original: “nur das Enge und Spießige, das Kleinbürgerliche und Kitschige, das Rückwärtsgewandte.” Johannes von Moltke, No Place Like Home: Locations of Heimat in German Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 14. Jürgen Liebing (ed.), Heimat deine Heimat: Ein Lesebuch (Darmstadt/Neuwied: Sammlung Luchterhand, 1982), p. 9. In the original: “Chiffre, um über Probleme unserer eigenen Identität, unserer Lebensgeschichte nachzudenken.” Werner Heinz, Gisela Kayser, and Eberhard Knödler-Bunte, “Sehnsucht nach Identität: Schwierigkeiten, mit Heimat von

437

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8

9 10 11 12 13

14

links her umzugehen”, in Elisabeth Moosmann (ed.), Heimat: Sehnsucht nach Identität (Berlin: Ästhetik & Kommunikation, 1980), pp. 30‒75, here p. 30. Florentine Strzelczyk, “Far Away, So Close: Carl Froelich’s Heimat”, in Robert C. Reimer (ed.), Cultural History through the National Socialist Lens: Essays on the Cinema of the Third Reich (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000), pp. 109‒32, here p. 109. Hermann Bausinger, “Heimat und Identität”, in Moosmann (ed.), Heimat, p. 24. Von Moltke, No Place Like Home, p. 10. Peter Blickle, Heimat: A Critical Theory of the German Idea of Homeland (New York: Camden House, 2002), p. 19. Edward W. Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Theory (London: Verso, 1989), p. 121. Cf. Bernhard Schlink, “Heimat als Utopie”, his essay collection Vergewisserungen über Politik, Recht, Schreiben und Glauben (Zurich: Diogenes, 2005), pp. 11‒36; see also his allusions to Heimat as childhood (memories) in Bernhard Schlink, Die Heimkehr (Zurich: Diogenes, 2006), p. 5. Cf. Michael Walsh, “National Cinema, National Imaginary”, Film History, 8 (1996), pp. 5‒17, here p. 6.

438

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Thomas, Rüdiger, “Lebensspuren: Zur Mentalitätsgeschichte der Deutschen in der DDR”, in Gisela Helwig (ed.), Rückblicke auf die DDR: Festschrift für Ilse Spittmann-Rühle. Cologne: Wissenschaft & Politik, 1995. Thome, Ludwig, “Der deutsche Filmbesucher”, Internationale Film Revue, 1 (1951/52). Thomsen, Christian Braad, “Conversations with Rainer Werner Fassbinder”, in Laurence Kardish and Juliane Lorenz (eds.), Rainer Werner Fassbinder. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1997. Tibi, Bassam, Europa ohne Identität? Die Krise der multikulturellen Gesellschaft. Munich: Bertelsmann, 1998. ______ “Leitkultur als Wertekonsens: Bilanz einer missglückten deutschen Debatte”, Aus Politik & Zeitgeschichte, B1‒2 (2001). Toeplitz, Jerzy, Geschichte des Films: Zwei Bände, trans. Lilli Kaufmann. Munich: Rogner & Bernhard, 1987. Töteberg, Michael, “Introduction”, in Michael Töteberg and Leo A. Lensing (eds.) The Anarchy of the Imagination: Interviews, Essays, Notes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder, trans. Krishna Winston. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. ______ Treichel, Hans-Ulrich, Der Entwurf des Autors: Frankfurter Poetikvorlesungen. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2000. Trenker, Luis, Alles gut gegangen: Geschichten aus meinem Leben. Hamburg: Mosaik, 1965. Trimborn, Jürgen, Der deutsche Heimatfilm der fünfziger Jahre: Motive, Symbole und Handlungsmuster. Cologne: Teiresias, 1998. Trotsky, Leon, Vodka, the Church, and the Cinema, Pravda, 12 July 1923, reprinted in Problems of Everyday Life. New York: Monad Press, 1973, Trüpschuch, Dagmar, “Weibliche Homosexualität? Darüber spricht man nicht: Interview mit Jasmin Tabatabai”, Lespress, Oct. 2005, http://www.lespress.de/102005/texte102005/102005_tabatabai.html, retrieved Nov. 2006. Uexküll, Jakob von, Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen: Ein Bilderbuch unsichtbarer Welten: Bedeutungslehre. Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1958. Ulbrich, Reinhard, Kleines Lexikon großer Ostprodukte. Kothen: Mocado, 1996. ______ and Andreas Kämper, Sandmännchen im Trabi-Land: Das Ostalgie-Kultbuch. Dusseldorf: Econ & List, 1997. Urang, John Griffith, “Realism and Romance in the East German Cinema, 1952‒1962”, Film History, Sydney, vol. 18, iss. 1 (2006). Vahabzadeh, Susan, “Gruppenbild im Schnee”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6 Nov. 1997. Vaupel, Angela, Frauen im NS-Film: Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Spielfilms. Hamburg: Dr Kovac, 2005. Vogeler, Volker, “Die ungerechte, trostlose, grausame Heimat”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 9 July 1971. Vorländer, Herwart, “Heimat und Heimaterziehung im Nationalsozialismus”, in Peter Knoch (ed.), Heimat oder Region? Grundzüge der Didaktik der Regionalgeschichte. Frankfurt: Moritz Diesterweg, 1984. Waechter, Johannes, and Jan Weiler, “Interview mit ‘Heimat’-Regisseur Edgar Reitz. ‘Das Fernsehen ist kein narratives Medium mehr’: Der gebürtige Hunsrücker hat sein Lebenswerk vollendet: 54 Stunden ‘Heimat’, das größte Filmprojekt aller Zeiten: Ein Gespräch mit dem erschöpften Genie”, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 17 Sep. 2004.

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472

Index of Film Directors

Achternbusch, Herbert 288, 374, 423 Agneskirchner, Alice 422 Akin, Fatih 13, 15, 63, 64, 72, 397‒408, 414‒15, 427‒30, 435, 436 Aladag, Züli 13, 15, 415ff., 434, 435 Albin, Hans 238 Annaud, Jean-Jacques 105 Antel, Franz 239, 240, 306 Arslan, Thomas 399, 405, 428 Baier, Jo 260, 363, 384 Báky, Josef von 177 Baser, Tevfik 395, 396, 397, 428 Becker, Wolfgang 314, 322‒27, 342 Bertolucci, Bernardo 339 Beyer, Frank 300, 309 Blumenberg, Hans-Christoph 342, 364 Bohm, Hark 396 Bolváry, Géza von 151, 188, 230 Boos, Walter 151, 283 Borsody, Eduard von 237‒38 Brandis, Helmut 309 Brandner, Uwe 252‒53 Braun, Harald 299 Buck, Detlev 297, 335, 400 Bücking, Hans-Günther 73, 260 Büld, Wolfgang 312 Burger, Hans H. 176 Campbell, Martin 105 Carow, Heiner 309, 321 Cho, Sung-Hyung 363 Danquart, Didi 260 Danquart, Pepe 105 Deppe, Hans 135, 149, 171, 181, 183, 187‒206, 224, 230, 237, 306 Dietrich, Wolf 252 Dilthey, Ian 363 Dobberke, Claus 301

Dommenget, Oliver 64 Dresen, Andreas 13, 63, 423 Dudow, Slatan 298‒99 Engel, Erich 298 Fanck, Arnold 10, 57, 58, 77, 81‒86, 89‒94, 95, 103, 105, 111, 115‒24, 133, 148, 151, 154, 281, 285 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner 12, 62‒64, 216‒17, 241, 244‒53, 258, 260‒61, 285‒87, 290, 298, 339, 369, 395 Fischerauer, Bernd 363 Fleischmann, Peter 245, 249, 254, 372 Freydank, Jochen Alexander 163, 174 Froelich, Carl 136, 140‒49, 153, 265, 267 Fruhauf, Siegfried 363, 423 Geissler, Benjamin 363 Geist, Gabi 423 Gies, Hajo 216 Gietinger, Klaus 297, 362 Glowna, Vadim 328 Grisebach, Valeska 65, 364, 422 Gruber, Andreas 245 Handloegten, Hendrik 332 Harlan, Veit 135, 146, 181 Harnack, Falk 299 Hasler, Jo(achim) 308, 347 Hauff, Reinhard 252‒53 Haupt, Stefan 423 Haußmann, Leander 63, 314, 319‒22, 332‒36, 435, 436 Heinrich, Hans 306‒7 Hellberg, Martin 299, 303 Heller, Peter 422 Herhoffer, Janina 422 Herzog, Werner 12, 241, 244, 371 Hiemer, Leo 297, 362 Hirschbiegel, Oliver 10, 156ff.

473

Screening Nostalgia

Hoffman, Kurt 136, 149‒56, 182, 242, 306 Imbach, Thomas 105, 364 Imhoof, Markus 105 Judson, Stephen 105 Jugert, Rudolf 178, 179, 305 Kampers, Fritz 144 Karle, Stefan 105 Kases, Karl 216 Käutner, Helmut 144, 154, 178, 182, 187, 221, 298, 382 Keusch, Erwin 363 Kirsten, Ralph 300 Kleinl, David 363, 423 Klein, Gerhard 70, 303, 306 Kluge, Alexander 241‒42, 244, 275, 294, 371 Knöpfel, Dagmar 363 Kohlhaase, Wolfgang 300 Kolditz, Gottfried 305, 308, 309, 347 König, Hans 387‒88 König, Stefan 93 Kratzert, Hans 309, 347 Krohmer, Stefan 105, 331 Kronthaler, Thomas 364, 382 Lamac, Carl 144 Lampe, Felix 134 Leitner, Hermann 238 Link, Caroline 163, 174 Maccarone, Angelina 15, 390, 405, 408‒15, 430 Maetzig, Kurt 298, 305, 346 Marischka, Franz 238‒39, 283 May, Paul 188 Minck, Bady 423 Müller, Hans 177 Neudecker, Gabriele 423 Ockermüller, Kurt 216 Ormiston-Smith, Frank 76‒77 Ostermayr, Peter 57‒60, 135 Paulus, Wolfram 73, 363 Petzold, Christian 422, 428 Pohl, Artur 301 Prochaska, Andreas 387 Rehling, Erwin 423 Reidemeister, Helga 422, 423 Reitz, Edgar 12-13, 31‒32, 48, 63, 70, 148, 241, 261ff., 295, 297, 305, 332, 362, 375, 414 Richter, Roland Suso 364

Riefenstahl, Leni 9, 10, 58, 77, 82, 86‒93, 103‒5, 111, 115‒17, 119‒30, 133, 148, 149, 285, 376 Rödl, Joseph 297 Roitzheim, Tanja 422 Rosenbaum, Marianne 362 Rosenmüller, Marcus H. 15, 63, 64, 72, 364‒65, 375‒82, 388, 389, 434, 436 Ruzowitzky, Stefan 73, 260, 363, 422 Sämann, Peter 64, 216 Sander-Brahms, Helma 396 Saurer, Karl 363 Schilling, Niklaus 373, 388 Schlöndorff , Volker 12, 62‒63, 69, 242, 244, 253, 254‒61, 275, 339, 362, 387 Schmid, Hans-Christian 14, 65, 365, 370‒75 Schmidt-Märkl, Markus 422 Schneider, C. B. 423 Schneider, Robert 32 Schündler, Rudolf 229, 238 Schütte, Jan 397 Schwägerl, Gerburg Rosa 423 Schwarzenberger, Xaver 297, 363, 384 Seitz, Franz 134, 181 Sell, Alexandra 364 Siodmak, Robert 149, 182 Sonjevski-Jamrowski, Rolf von 136 Staudte, Wolfgang 177, 182, 187, 298, 299, 344 Steinbichler, Hans Sebastian 15, 363, 365‒70, 375, 382, 384, 385, 386, 422, 434 Stölzl, Philipp 105, 130 Taddicken, Sven 364 Theininger, Martina 423 Timm, Peter 13, 14, 312, 316‒19, 349, 435 Tressler, Georg 240 Trenker, Luis 10, 58, 77, 82, 93‒105, 111, 115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 121, 125‒30, 135, 140, 148, 149, 181, 265, 267, 281, 313, 382 Trotta, Margarethe von 12, 254‒61 Tykwer, Tom 10, 104‒16, 130, 131, 435 474

Index of Film Directors

Vilsmaier, Joseph 105, 361‒62, 384 Vinterberg, Thomas 369, 385 Vogeler, Volker 130, 252, 253, 387 Wagner, Christian 362 Wagner, Dagmar 363 Wagner, Ulla 64 Weingartner, Hans 333, 337ff., 435

Weiß, Helmut 201, 221 Weisse, Ina 105 Wessel, Kai 363 Wisbar, Frank 182 Wolf, Konrad 299, 304‒5, 309‒10 Wortmann, Sӧnke 11, 13, 206ff., 333, 400, 434 York, Eugen 298

475