Screening Twentieth Century Europe: Television, History, Memory [1st ed.] 9783030604950, 9783030604967

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xiv
Introduction: Mediating European History (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 1-21
History as Mediated and Embodied Narratives (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 23-41
Historical Genres on Television: The Broader European Picture (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 43-71
The Meaning of Small Things: Everyday Drama and History from Below (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 73-108
History from Above: Historical Biopics (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 109-136
Grand Illusions and the Great War: World War I Narratives (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 137-164
Living on the Edge: The Roaring Twenties and World Crisis (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 165-201
Hell on Earth: World War II Narratives (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 203-231
Post-war Europe: A Social and Cultural Revolution (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 233-269
Europe 1989 and Beyond: Towards a New Millennium (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 271-295
Conclusion: History on Our Minds and the Forms of Mediated History (Ib Bondebjerg)....Pages 297-309
Back Matter ....Pages 311-318

Citation preview

PALGRAVE EUROPEAN FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES

Screening Twentieth Century Europe Television, History, Memory Ib Bondebjerg

Palgrave European Film and Media Studies

Series Editors Ib Bondebjerg Copenhagen, Denmark Andrew Higson University of York York, UK Mette Hjort Hong Kong Baptist University Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Palgrave European Film and Media Studies is dedicated to historical and contemporary studies of film and media in a European context and to the study of the role of film and media in European societies and cultures. The series invite research done in both humanities and social sciences and invite scholars working with the role of film and other media in relation to the development of a European society, culture and identity. Books in the series can deal with both media content and media genres, with national and transnational aspects of film and media policy, with the sociology of media as institutions and with audiences and reception, and the impact of film and media on everyday life, culture and society. The series encourage books working with European integration or themes cutting across nation states in Europe and books working with Europe in a more global perspective. The series especially invite publications with a comparative, European perspective based on research outside a traditional nation state perspective. In an era of increased European integration and globalization there is a need to move away from the single nation study focus and the single discipline study of Europe.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14704

Ib Bondebjerg

Screening Twentieth Century Europe Television, History, Memory

Ib Bondebjerg Copenhagen, Denmark

ISSN 2634-615X ISSN 2634-6168 (electronic) Palgrave European Film and Media Studies ISBN 978-3-030-60495-0 ISBN 978-3-030-60496-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: Graffiti on the west side of the Berlin Wall offers a glimpse into East Germany, 1989. Hum Images/Alamy Stock Photo Cover design by eStudioCalamar This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book is a result of a very long research interest in Europe and European media. Since the late 1990s this interest has pretty much dominated my research. It started with my membership from 1994 to 1997 of the standing committee for The European Research Foundation, committed to developing cross-European and interdisciplinary research. From 2000 to 2005 I was lucky enough to develop a European media project with Peter Golding—Changing Media—Changing Europe—a project that produced around 12 books and many articles. The idea behind the project was to study how media are important for European integration, how media create cultural encounters between people in Europe, and how important creative collaboration between media in Europe is. From 2008 to 2011 this led me to initiate the Centre for Modern European Research at the University of Copenhagen, a centre for collaboration between humanities, social science and law. Finally, from 2013 to 2016, I developed the European research project Mediating Cultural Encounters Through European Screens (MeCETES), together with Andrew Higson and Caroline Pauwels. These collective research projects have meant a lot to me personally and as a researcher. I could not have written my books and articles on European media culture without the inspiration from and collaboration with all the wonderful people in these projects, and I want to thank them all. This new book is, however, especially influenced by the MeCETES project, and the books that emerged from it. It was very inspiring to work v

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with Eva Novrup Redvall and Andrew Higson on the edited volume European Cinema and Television. Cultural Policy and Everyday Life (2015), in which many ideas and concepts were developed. The research group I led in the MeCETES project also produced a book, Transnational European Television Drama. Production, Genres and Audiences (2015), of which my new book is a direct continuation. We worked as a really integrated collective on this book, so I owe all my co-authors personal and intellectual thanks: Eva Novrup Redvall, Rasmus Helles, Signe Sophus Lai, Henrik Søndergaard and Cecilie Astrupgaard. The ideas of transnational co-production, of transnational reception of television and not least of mediated cultural encounters as a concept are basic to my new book. I began writing this book more than four years ago, but the idea for a book on historical drama and the twentieth century goes further back. I have many people to thank for help during this long process; first my very good colleague, Eva Novrup Redvall, with whom I have worked on several projects and publications. She is always inspiring to work with, and a good friend, and she read and commented on the first drafts of the book. The same goes for my long-time friend in London, Jerry Palmer, who also read early drafts and gave valuable criticism. Our get togethers in London or his house in Greece were treasured by both me and my wife Ulla. I also want to thank the two series editors at Palgrave, Andrew Higson and Mette Hjort. They read the first full draft on which they gave very valuable criticism. I would also like to thank Paul Cooke and Lothar Mikos for information on German sources and literature, and Huw Jones for doing the same in the UK. Copenhagen August 2020

Ib Bondebjerg

Contents

1

1

Introduction: Mediating European History

2

History as Mediated and Embodied Narratives

23

3

Historical Genres on Television: The Broader European Picture

43

The Meaning of Small Things: Everyday Drama and History from Below

73

4

5

History from Above: Historical Biopics

109

6

Grand Illusions and the Great War: World War I Narratives

137

Living on the Edge: The Roaring Twenties and World Crisis

165

8

Hell on Earth: World War II Narratives

203

9

Post-war Europe: A Social and Cultural Revolution

233

7

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CONTENTS

10

Europe 1989 and Beyond: Towards a New Millennium

271

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Conclusion: History on Our Minds and the Forms of Mediated History

297

Index

311

List of Figures

Fig. 2.1

Fig. 2.2

Fig. 3.1

The downstairs and upstairs patriarchs. Downton Abbey is a typical British upstairs-downstairs period drama, and the world’s most watched European historical drama since 2000. It has some heritage nostalgia, but it also clearly shows how life, classes and societies change in the 1920s. Lower classes rise, women are liberated, something that does not please Robert, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and his chief of staff Charles Carson (Jim Carter). In this scene the Earl is told that Carson is to lead the committee on a World War I memorial. Times are changing (Screenshot by author) Audiences identify and experience history best in fictional form, but documentary formats are just as important. Historical documentary in the docudrama format combine elements from fiction with traditional documentary elements. In ITV’s World War One. The People’s Story (2014), documentary footage is combined with dramatized versions of real people’s stories, based on their letters, diaries and memoirs. Women are central to the story, here MyAnna Buring as Dorothy Lawrence (Screenshot by author) Criticism in the media was impossible under communism in the European Soviet vassal states. After 1989 critical dealing with this period soon developed. The Polish science-fiction TV series 1983 (2018) is an example of contra-factual history fiction: what would have happened if communism had taken over again? (Screenshot by author)

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Fig. 3.2

Fig. 3.3

Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3

Fig. 4.4

Italian historical drama is often about the Mafia or political corruption. However, a series like My Brilliant Friend (2018), an Italian production made with HBO based on Else Ferrante’s bestseller novels about Naples and Italy from the 1950s on, is an everyday period drama. We follow two girls and their life as the post-war changes kick in and give them a new freedom, but also new troubles. Lila (left, Gaia Girace) and Elena (Margaritha Mazzuco) are the two main characters (Screenshot by author) In Vlamse Velden (2014) is an ambitious World War I drama combining an extended family story with very realist images of slaughterhouse Flanders. The central Boesman family is Flemish and we learn a lot about a divided multilingual country during war. This scene is one of the last in the series: Marie Boesman (Lize Feryn) finds her brother Vincent (Matthieu Sys) almost dead on the battlefield after the war (Screenshot by author) In the last episode of Heimat 1 (1984), “The celebration of the living and the dead”, Reitz creates a symbolic universe, where the line between past and present is thin. Maria (Marita Breuer) almost looks like an angel as she enters the village meeting hall and joins all the other dead. The living try to look in from the outside, while the dead actually see and comment on the living outside (Screenshot by author) In Heimat 1, as in the following seasons of the series, Reitz experiments with monochrome realism and colour, often with strong emotional effect. This scene from episode 9 focuses on the love story between Hermann (Jörg Richter) and Klärchen (Gudrun Landgrebe). The scene opens in monochrome but switches to colour, as in a romantic painting (Screenshot by author) Peter Moffat wanted to create a British Heimat series with The Village. It has the same intention of narrating twentieth-century history through the lives of ordinary people in a small English village—and with working-class people as main characters. The opening title image indicates this by showing images changing between everyday history and the larger history (Screenshot by author) In The Village, not just working-class but also women’s issues play a central role. Grace Middleton (Maxine Peake) is partly awakened politically by Labour politician Bill Gibby (Derek Riddell); however she also stands up to him and chooses her own path (Screenshot by author)

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Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2

Fig. 5.3

Fig. 5.4

Fig. 5.5

Fig. 6.1

Heinrich Breloer is a central figure in the new German docudrama, particularly on World War II and the principal Nazi figures. He combines traditional documentary research and presentation with dramatization of key scenes and figures. In The Devil’s Architect he follows the life and trial of Albert Speer (Sebastian Koch) (Screenshot by author) With Die Manns Heinrich Breloer presents a docudrama about one of the iconic cultural Germans of the twentieth century, Thomas Mann. He shifts between documentary footage, people around Mann commenting on his life, and dramatized narrative sequences illustrating his life. Identification and reflexive distance combined. Elisabeth, Mann’s only living daughter, is the series’ main narrator (Screenshot by author) In Die Manns there is often a very obvious collision between fictional sequences and documentary layers or traces. In the series Erika Mann (Sophie Rois) and Klaus Mann (Sebastian Koch) represent the cultural avant-garde. Here Erika is in her dressing room, but on the mirror, you see an authentic photo of Thomas Mann and his wife (Screenshot by author) The honeymoon is all too soon over for Elizabeth and Philip. This is the moment she realizes what it entails to be Queen. The conflict between the Crown’s public role and her life as a wife and mother are central to the series. Even if she is Gloriana and a public and political figure, she is also in some ways just a woman and a human being (Screenshot by author) In The Crown it is not just the life of Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) and her family that is central. We also follow the social, political and cultural development of Great Britain and the Empire. One of the first tasks of the new Queen is to visit the Empire on behalf of her dying father. Prince Philip (Matt Smith) and the Queen have difficulty relating to some of the conflicts arising from an empire under dramatic change (Screenshot by author) Our World War. Real Lives, Real War (2014) is a fine example of the new type of war docudrama emerging all over Europe, especially after 2000. The episode “Pals” takes place in 2016, and we get plenty of bloody realism (documentary and fictional) about World War I. We also follow real historical characters who make the reality of war come even closer (Screenshot by author)

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Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3

Fig. 7.1

Fig. 7.2

Fig. 7.3

Fig. 8.1

The move towards docudrama is also very present in the transnational production of 14 people’s lives during World War I, Tagebücher des ersten Weltkriegs/14 Diaries of the First World War (2014). The series often uses graphic design to introduce new characters (Screenshot by author) Parade’s End combines a period drama of a changing Great Britain with a World War I war drama. The main character Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch) is both terribly conservative and rather modern, and this is often shown with a mix of visual heritage nostalgia, harsh realism and avant-garde images. Here he has hallucinations in the trenches in France about his true love, the suffragette Valentine (Adelaide Clemens) (Screenshot by author) Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) is the strong female character of Babylon Berlin. She comes from the poorest working-class neighbourhood, but she fights for herself and her family by all possible means, and she also rises to be a moral centre in the German world of corruption and chaos. Here we see her at Moka Efti, the central cabaret where one dances on the volcano and tries to forget reality, one of the centres of ‘Babylon’ (Screenshot by author) Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) is the main male character of Babylon Berlin. He suffers from severe PTSD, and constantly returns to a situation during the war when he had to abandon his wounded brother. His private trauma is, however, directly connected to the trauma of Germany in this period, and his police work and private life is about getting rid of and escaping from this trauma (Screenshot by author) Dennis Potter‘s Pennies from Heaven mixes the world of the 1930s crisis, especially hitting the lower classes, and the world of songs and dreams. This title illustrates the colourful world of popular culture which lives in the head of Arthur (Bob Hoskins), and erupts on screen when characters sing and dance, or reality is turned into films (Screenshot by author) Generation War is one of the most internationally popular German war dramas. It follows five very different characters from the start of World War II, here before it all starts. We get close to ordinary Germans without a moral filter, and we witness the war reality from very different perspectives (Screenshot by author)

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 8.2

Fig. 9.1

Fig. 9.2

Fig. 9.3

Fig. 9.4

Fig. 10.1

Generation War: the reunion of the surviving characters after the war—a shattered world and two dead. One (Viktor by the piano) barely survived the concentration camps, Wilhelm (by the bar) destined as the German hero, has lost all illusions, and Charlotte, the humanitarian nurse, with the memory of death written all over her (Screenshot by author) Ku’Damm 59 is one the most popular German generation period dramas. We follow a mother and her daughters from 1956, during the rebuilding of German society and the new generation. It is a women’s liberation story, and Monika (Sonja Gerhart) is the rebel of the family, very engaged in both politics and the new music culture (Screenshot by author) In Heimat II the youth rebellion of the 1960s is at the centre of the action. Hermann is caught between art and the politics of 1968. He is attracted to Helga Aufschrey (Noemi Steuer) for a short period, a part of his radical break with his family. But when terrorism sets in, he starts his slow return to and reconciliation with his past and his family (Screenshot by author) In Heimat II , Hermann’s long journey back to his roots is connected with his true love Clarissa and their avantgarde music. The episode “Life and Art” signals a new conflict, where art can no longer substitute for life and family, but where they have to be integrated (Screenshot by author) Call the Midwife is a story about women’s world and the change in the post-war British class society. In the last season to date (two more have been announced) Nonnatus House is threatened by budget cuts. However, the local community and the nurses and nuns unite to fight the council—a very male-dominated group. Nurse Franklin (Helen George) speaks out on behalf of the whole community, and they win the battle for welfare and humanity (Screenshot by author) Heimat III deals with the time from the fall of the Wall in 1989 till New Year’s Eve 1999—with many memory flashbacks. Episode 2, “The World Champions”, celebrates this and the German soccer team winning the World Cup in 1990. Here one of the East German characters, Gunnar Brehme (Uwe Steimle) is thrown into the air for joy, while he is cutting pieces of the Wall, a new commercial memory business

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Fig. 10.2

Fig. 10.3

Fig. 10.4

This is the very last shot of Heimat III, in which Hermann’s only daughter Lulu (Nicola Schössler) is looking with sorrow out on the new world on New Year’s Day 2000. A symbolic farewell to an extreme and dramatic century—sorrow for the past and anxiety for the future, but a new generation is taking over (Screenshot by author) Shane Meadows’ partly autobiographical series This is England (1986, 1988 and 1990) is bleak realism and social critique in a working-class region of England, where youth cultures without hope for the future end up in crime and right-wing nationalism. In the 1990 series there is a tiny hope of better times shining at the end of the tunnel. As the image here illustrates, it is still worn-down reality to start with (Screenshot by author) Karaoke is Dennis Potter’s last series, and clearly a testament. We are in the twenty-fourth century, where the writer, Daniel Feeld (Albert Finney, and clearly Potter’s alter ego) is dead, but his head is captured in a lab. Future society, an authoritarian Orwellian kind of society, is short of real memories and stories, and they tap Daniel’s memory. In the end a rebel releases him and at the same time blows the lab to pieces. A powerful message about the importance of memories and reality from Potter—and a dimension of hope (Screenshot by author)

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Mediating European History

European television became an important national and gradually also transnational cultural factor after 1950. This book is about how central themes and events of twentieth-century European history have been reflected and mediated in historical documentaries, docudramas and different genres of historical drama in the UK and Germany during this period. Focusing on comparing historical dramas from these two countries with rather different national histories allows for a broader and deeper analysis of drama cases, and at the same time the two countries illustrate the diversity of Europe. Throughout the book and in each of the chapters dealing with historical drama, I draw on what historians have said about tendencies in Europe as a whole. I deal with the hopeful expectations and the slow descent into war between 1900 and 1918; with the chaotic years between 1920 and 1945 resulting in the catastrophic WW2 that changed Europe for ever; with the post-war period 1945–1989 with the Cold War, the rise of the welfare state and the cultural revolution of the 1960s; and with the new united Europe after 1989. Most of the historical drama cases I deal with from the two countries were made after 1980, but some are from the late 1960s. In general, historical dramas in the UK and Germany—and in the rest of Europe— grew in numbers and popularity between 1960 and 2020, and European co-production became more important. While the focus in the book is © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_1

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on historical drama in Germany and the UK, I have included a chapter on the broader context of historical drama in Europe (Chapter 3). Here I argue for similarities and differences between Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and Western and Northern Europe, and for why the focus on Germany and UK is more than a comparative study of two nations. The study of the past is also a study of the present. Historical dramas from Germany and the UK reflect a development in our understanding of the past, and they also speak to the present context where they were made.

Our Embodied Mind and Mediated Cultural Encounters It is part of the generic DNA of historical drama (fictional and documentary) that it looks back on the past from a more contemporary perspective. In forms of contemporary historical drama, the distance between the past and the present represented may be quite short; in other forms of historical drama that deal with more distant parts of our past, the distance can be quite long. But it is obvious that history, whether the recent or distant past, fascinates us. The past is not just about the national past—although understanding that is fascinating in itself. It is also about our own personal history, because our past is important for our present understanding of ourselves. As I argue in Chapter 2, memory is an integral part of our embodied mind, and linking our individual memory to a larger and more collective understanding of the past helps us form and develop our self. As cognitive theories of the embodied mind clearly tell us, our autobiographical self is very active and central in connection with historical drama. This is where mental links between the individual level, social group level and more universal dimensions are combined and interact. Our basic way of experiencing the world is not just influenced and constructed by the national and cultural context in which we live. There are universal schemas, cognitive and emotional, that transcend national differences and make it possible for us to understand historical drama from other countries. There are basic features of genres and narratives, basic human emotions and experiences we all share that interact in a dynamic way with new experiences, among them TV drama from other countries. In this book, a cognitive and embodied theory of memory and historical drama is combined with a more socio-cultural theory of national and transnational mediated cultural encounters (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 23ff). Our embodied mind is flexible, it constantly interacts with the reality we live in and new experiences we acquire: national historical

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television drama results in cognitive and emotional experiences for the audiences, and sometimes also in public debate. The argument behind the analysis of the selected cases of historical drama in Europe is that they shape the memory not just of national citizens, but also of other Europeans. Watching historical drama from other European countries helps us bridge differences and understand other Europeans better. In the coming chapters we also discuss the reception of selected series—not systematically, but only when debate has been extensive and divisive.

An Age of Extremes The British historian Eric Hobsbawm (1994) simply calls his book on this century The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991. He tells the story of the century in three parts: “The Age of Catastrophe”, which covers the immense destruction and chaos of two world wars, the Soviet revolution and a profound world crisis; “The Golden Age”, with the miraculous transformation and development of affluent societies in most of Western Europe; and “The Landslide”, with the end of the Cold War, but also new challenges of a demographic and ecological nature, at the heart of which is Europe’s role and place in a changed global world. According to Hobsbawm, the two world wars killed millions of people and destroyed the European empires existing before 1914. The wars created a whole new map of Europe, a continent of nation states. But perhaps even more importantly and surprisingly, the catastrophes paved the way for social and cultural revolutions that changed everyday life for ordinary Europeans: How did the world of the 1990s compare with the world of 1914? It contained over six billion human beings, perhaps three times as many people as at the outbreak of the First World War…. A recent estimate of the century’s megadeaths … is 197 millions, which is the equivalent of more than one in ten of the total world population in 1900 …. Most people until the 1980s lived better than their parents, and, in the advanced economies, better than they had ever expected to live or even imagined it possible to live … humanity was far better educated … the world was filled with revolutionary and constantly advancing technologies … a revolution in transport and communications which virtually annihilated time and distance. (Hobsbawm 1994: 12)

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Hobsbawm is an engaged and excellent historian, and his portrait of the twentieth century is one of the key texts used in this book to understand the main structures influencing societies and people’s lives in this period. The documentaries, docudramas and fictional dramas often tell us another story, a story that tries to reconstruct how people living through historical periods and dramatic events thought and felt. Here we get closer to an attempt to combine macro-history and micro-history, the forces and structures behind historical events and changes, and the way people lived their everyday life. One of the themes running through this book is how television drama reflects history from below and from above.

At the Dawn of a New Century The new century was celebrated in Paris that year. The World Fair (April–November 1900) was an impressive exhibition with more than 24 countries from Europe and the rest of the world represented. The exhibition was spread over 536 acres of land, and when it closed it had been visited by almost 50 million people. The intention of the exhibition was to demonstrate the power of Western European culture and technology, but there was also a certain cosmopolitan dimension. It was a splendid and colossal demonstration of European colonialism and technology. Electricity and other technologies were on display: the power of industrialism and its machines, and the potential behind electricity was demonstrated in the Palace of Industry with its 5000 light bulbs (Kershaw 2015: 11). It was a powerful display of the civilizational aspects of technology, a technology that just 14 years later would show its destructive forces. As Kershaw points out, this must have been a dazzling show for the elites and middle classes from all over the world of especially Europe and its prosperous future and present power. However, the vast majority of Europeans lived in a quite different reality, an agricultural world of villages and small towns with very little comfort, or near industrial centres, also with very poor living conditions. Historians analyze the past, but what did people think about the coming century as the clocks turned on 1 January 1900? How did newspapers around Europe greet the century on behalf of their readers? I take articles from three big European nations (England, Germany and France) and from a small Scandinavian nation (Denmark). Newspapers have different ideological leanings, so this cannot be said to be representative of these countries, but at least the examples can give us a feel of

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how some of the major newspapers looked at the new century. The huge class differences at the beginning of the new century were, in different ways, present in the way newspapers greeted the new century. However, the British conservative The Times in its leading article (1 January 1901) did not focus much on class differences, but on the pride of being British and of belonging to a great nation: The twentieth century has dawned upon us; and as we float past this quiet landmark on the shores of time feelings of awe and wonder naturally creep over us. To Englishmen, Scotsmen, and Irishmen, the first of all considerations must be – how will the new century affect the moral and material greatness of their country and of their Empire? The auguries are not unpropitious. We enter upon the new century with a heritage of achievement and of glory older, more continuous, and not less splendid than that of any other nation in the world. Our national character has … lost nothing of its virility and doggedness when put to the proof of war … We have a reasonable trust that England and her sons will emerge triumphant from that ordeal at the end of the Twentieth Century … and that then and for ages to come they will live and prosper, one united and Imperial people, to be ‘a bulwark for the cause of men’. (The Times quoted by Donald Read 1973: 10–11)

The conservative voice of England in 1901 was clearly pretending to be the voice of a whole nation, but it was a national voice representing the imperial classes. It was also a nation that in many ways became a bulwark for democracy and civilization during two world wars, but also a nation whose national past and heritage as an empire was lost. In Germany the new century was already greeted on the last day of 1899 and the first days of 1900. Berliner Morgenpost (31 December 1899), a centre-right newspaper with certain progressive tendencies, had a leading article on the front page and a poem with the title “Zur Jahrhundertwende (On the turn of the century)”. The poem tries to give voice to different class representatives and people with different educational backgrounds: the worker, the patriot, the philosopher, the apostle of peace, the electro technician, the mathematician, the child and ‘the reality’. Each of these voices have their own visions and ideas. The worker, for instance, claims that other centuries have raised hopes, but not much change, so why should this new century be any better? The electro technician on the other hand claims that the new technology will change the world as happens in fairy tales. The leading article, however, points to the main

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task of achieving peace among the nations of Europe, and gives Germany a central task and role in this project. Where The Times spoke on behalf of an empire and mostly saluted that empire and its leading nation, there is more at stake in Berliner Morgenpost: We wish most of all political and social reforms that can lead us towards the big project of peace and collaboration between classes and nations. No country in the world can wish this more than our dear Germany. No nation among the European countries can want this more at the time of a new century than the German people. Much is still to be done to reach our goal … Only he who aims high, will be rewarded. But even though the task weighs heavy on our shoulders, we enter the new century with the firm belief that we can reach our goals. The new century gives us a chance to be at the front of an army of culture, it gives us the task of acting as pioneers of a future for other nations. Germany is worthy of this honourable task, so therefore happy New Year to the German people. (my translation)

Considering Germany’s tragic role in so many of the catastrophes of the twentieth century, this wish for peace and for a reformed European culture of nations does of course sound rather hollow—but we cannot evaluate history backwards. We must see this as a genuine wish for peace and social reform at a time where the history of the new century was not yet written. It was not only German newspapers that expressed hopes for the new century far from the realities of the century to come. In Denmark, for instance, the more conservative newspaper Jyllands-Posten and the social democratic newspaper Social-Demokraten expressed very different views of the new century. Jyllands-Posten (1 January 1901) carried an article, “XIX–XX”, covering most of the front page, which looked back at the nineteenth century and tried to predict the main tendencies of the new century. A voice of optimism praises the past century for “steam engines, fast ships, around the globe in 63 days in sleeping wagons, X-rays, social questions, insurances, Ibsen’s dramas, newspapers and telephone”. Following this, the past century is seen from the perspective of the modern industrial class, the dominant class in both the past and the coming century: “A man with cool reason and a cold heart … passionate with calculations and numbers, but without feelings for humans”. Following this, the article argues for capitalism as the only way forward, the only way to progress and development for all, just as the natural and

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technical sciences combined with capitalism are a central force also in the coming century. A cultural dimension of this is modern art and literature. All in all, this newspaper greets the new century as a natural continuation of the past, and takes a quite optimistic view, also when it comes to other classes entering the scene of a modern, democratic society: … in the Nineteenth Century the under-class was awoken and for the first time entered history. World history before was just about kings, noblemen, the intrigues of statesmen and the life and deeds of the upper class. The under-class has – under the false banner of socialism – entered history and is making history: the fight for trade unions belongs to our century and has influenced it greatly, and the culmination is still to come: progress everywhere …. The Nineteenth Century was more revolutionary than any of its predecessors, it has taken us many miles towards our distant goal of happiness, by increasing our material welfare. We are in the middle of a further development in this direction.

This conservative discourse of organic progress and no real threats or conflicts is pretty much reversed in the social democratic paper SocialDemokraten. In an article (2 January 1901) looking back on the year 1899, both the national and global agenda is taken up and the focus is on the fight for freedom and democracy everywhere. The article also points out that militarism is growing all over the world. So unlike in Jyllands-Posten, the old and the new century are looked upon in a much more global and conflict-oriented perspective. The main article (1 January 1901) consistently takes the perspective of a more ordinary reader, and there is a clear ideological, critical tone followed by a more utopian dimension: On 1 January 1801 there were no railways or steam ships, no telegraph or telephone, nor matches or gas, shoe factories or dairy co-operatives, no bicycles or trams, and no public schools or parliaments of any significance, no general elections for all, a democratic press or workers’ organisations. Never has our world gone through such dynamic development. A man from 1801 would not recognize our world if he was taken there. But he would not just be in wonder, he would also be appalled at the reactionary tendencies. The Nineteenth Century ends with capitalism, militarism and clericalism. The cosmopolitan independent thought that still dominated with thinkers like Voltaire and Rousseau is gone … Ideals like freedom, equality and fraternity have become the most terrible caricatures.

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Behind the class perspective we also find a utopian dimension in SocialDemokraten, which is much less in tune with what happened in macropolitics in that century. The article predicts that the twentieth century will be the century where socialism prevails in Europe and where the workers take over and ownership of production will be collective. This did happen in Russia in 1918–1919 and spread to Eastern Europe after World War II—but probably not in a form appreciated by the Labour parties in Europe. With the last of the newspapers, the French Le Figaro, we are back in the more conservative discourse. The leading article on the front page of the edition of 1 January 1901, written by the then editor-in-chief Jules Cornély, is called “Bon Siècle (The Good Century)”. The focus is rather national; the potential tendencies in the new century are all seen from a French perspective. The starting point is the old century and the changes in a nation that after the Napoleonic era has lost some of its leading role in Europe. The French defeat in the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1871) under Napoleon III is seen as a disaster after an era of grand Napoleonic dreams. The new republic and the defeat, however, is at the same time seen as the starting point of a new era: … the colossal efforts and sacrifices made by the involved populations to develop war material and new technologies, the knowledge of the kind of destruction these can cause in times of war, has created a new understanding and instinctive attitude which will make wars in the future more difficult, because such wars could threaten the future existence of humanity. (Cornély 1901, my translation)

In this somewhat optimistic conclusion, the article continues with praise of social, political and cultural tendencies in the late nineteenth century, which Cornély predicts will to an even larger degree dominate the twentieth century. The article mentions international agreements that can help peace and understanding, social development and greater welfare, the democratization of art and culture, the role of science in progress, economic welfare and health, and the communications revolution: It is therefore not strange, that we do not want to leave the new century too early but want to follow humanity in the new century running full steam ahead with their steam boats, express trains, telegraphs, and phones,

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all this technology which so wonderfully and finally gives us tools to speak to people in Lille or Marseilles. A person doing this in the Middle Ages would have been put into a straitjacket and burned on a bonfire. (Cornély 1901, my translation)

It is perhaps a result of an understandable human tendency to look more on the bright side than the dark side that we see in these four randomly selected European newspapers. On the other hand, who could have foreseen the dramatic events of the century? The feeling around 1900 was not dystopian—on the contrary. The prospect of technological progress, increase in living standards and health was quite convincing. Taken as prophecies of the twentieth century, the newspapers were not entirely wide of the mark. The road to better living conditions, democracy and a technological revolution in almost all sectors was just bumpier that expected, and the costs of getting there tremendous. However, twentiethcentury Europe ended far more democratic and peaceful than the first half seemed to indicate—although new challenges appeared.

Historical Views of Europe in the Twentieth Century Returning to the historian’s perspective, other historians have in many ways followed in Hobsbawm’s path, at least in his predominant choice of metaphors to describe the century. Mark Mazower’s book Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century (1998) is in line with Hobsbawm, but he also clearly underlines conflicts within the nation states of Europe that have led to ethnic cleansing and extreme hatred. Even though he sees a rise in democracy and nation states after the two wars, nationalism kept its darker and more ugly face even in post-war Europe: The First World War and the collapse of Europe’s old continental empires signalled the triumph not only of democracy but also – and far more enduringly – of nationalism … Yet the triumph of nationalism brought bloodshed, war and civil war in its train, since the spread of the nationstate to the ethnic patchwork of eastern Europe also meant the rise of the minority as a contemporary, political problem. (Mazower 1998: 40)

This question of ethnicity was far more toxic in politics and culture in the first part of the century, but it endured and surfaced again

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in the last part of the century and the beginning of the twenty-first century. Mazower points to the two not altogether successful attempts to create more transnational European structures to deal with such conflicts between nations, within nations and between nations and the global context: the League of Nations (1910–1946) and the European Union (1957–). Even though the latter has been much more successful in integrating by now 27 very different nations and developing transnational policies in many areas, Mazower still points out that “the panoply of national cultures, histories and values does make it hard for Europeans to act cohesively and swiftly in moments of crisis” (Mazower 1998: 409). We see this in the present migrant crisis, and in new tendencies to break out of the EU (UK) or challenge the fundamental principles on which it is based (Hungary, Poland, Romania). The question of nationality and ethnic identity cast a long and deep shadow over European history in the twentieth century, despite all the other more positive developments. This question, along with class and ideology in general, are among the most powerful themes in the European TV series this book deals with. It is therefore wise to note Eric Hobsbawm’s strong words about ethnic nationalism and ethnic identity politics in Europe: What ethnic identity politics had in common with fin-de-siècle ethnic nationalism was the insistence that one’s group identity consisted in some existential, supposedly primordial, unchangeable and therefore personal characteristic shared with other members of the group, and with no one else. Exclusiveness was all the more essential to it, since the actual differences which marked human communities off from each other were attenuated… The tragedy of this exclusionary identity politics, whether or not it set out to establish independent states, was that it could not possibly work. It could only pretend to. … The pretence that there was a Black, or Hindu, or Russian or female truth incomprehensible and therefore essentially incommunicable to those outside the group, could not survive outside institutions whose function was to encourage such views… Identity politics and fin-de-siècle nationalism were thus not so much programmes, still less effective programmes for dealing with the problems of the late twentieth century, but rather emotional reactions to these problems. (Hobsbawm 1994: 429–430)

History tells us that national and ethnic stereotyping can have a strong impact on certain groups in society and that emotions are important

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in understanding history and politics. Historians, like the already cited Hobsbawm and Mazower, do their outmost to catch the big structural changes and from time to time also dive into more everyday lived experience of history. However, media narratives often do a better job in making people understand history through identification and emotional attachment to characters embodying structures and realities of our past (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 257f; Cooke and Stone 2016; Rosenstone 2006). Modern historians do in fact often try to combine different levels and entry points to history. It is not just about structural and macrohistory; it is also about lived history. In Jerry Palmer’s brilliant book Memoirs from the Frontline: Memoirs and Meanings of the Great War from Britain, France and Germany (2018), national differences are less important than social class and the position you speak from. Generals have a different perspective on war from ordinary soldiers in the muddy trenches. Lived history or everyday history is central to most forms of television drama, including documentary series or docudramas. Other historians that have influenced this book—Ian Kershaw’s To Hell and Back Again: Europe 1914–1949 (2015) and Roller-Coaster: Europe 1950–2017 (2018), and Tony Judt’s Post-war: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2007)—all move between large-scale structural history and everyday history. Kershaw clearly demonstrates the self-destructive powers of a nationalist, populist Europe. In the preface, he also states that “a history of Europe cannot … be a sum of national histories. What is at stake are the driving forces that shaped the continent as a whole in all or at least most of its constituent parts” (Kershaw 2015: xxiv). This is a sentence and approach that also defines this book. Seeking the transnational structures behind Europe in the twentieth century does not prevent Kershaw from diving into how history was experienced in the trenches and on the battlefields or how people in their everyday lives experienced the social, political and cultural changes—from family life to work and leisure. As a historian he shifts elegantly between history from above and history from below, the latter by including different voices and documents illustrating how members of specific nations with different class backgrounds experienced specific structural changes or dramatic moments in history. In many ways this is also what TV series can do, by bringing history alive and embodying it in stories of people and everyday life.

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Tony Judt masters this technique in his book about post-war Europe. This is demonstrated in his chapter “The End of old Europe”, in which he quotes people from that period saying that historical changes are very slow. Even if you live through periods with dramatic changes, it can be difficult to see history moving: “The late forties and early fifties thus appear as a transitional age, in which conventions of social deference and claims of rank and authority still held sway, but where the modern state was beginning to displace church and even class as the arbiter of collective behaviour” (Judt 2007: 229). Judt’s analysis of Europe after 1945 deals with the arrival of the affluent society, the global media society and the welfare state. Judt, however, points to the effects of the post-war baby boom, and the move from country to the cities. Although he also deals with the macro-events of European history, the political history, he bases his reading of post-war European history on the profound dynamics, the social and cultural changes in everyday life and demographics. Spectacular surface events, those things that caught the eye of the contemporary media, are measured against the deeper and slower changes of society and culture: “European teenagers of the late fifties and early sixties did not aspire to change the world. They had grown up in security and modest affluence” (Judt 2007: 349). The consumer boom is in many ways more important than the 1968 student revolt against an outdated and old-fashioned education system. For once, the structural forces of history moved quicker than usual and at least the educated individuals of the younger generation caught up in those changes felt historically important. But behind those ‘revolutionary’ and spectacular events, Tony Judt points to much slower and deeper structures: the increased birth rate of the war and post-war generation of the 1940s, the demographic moves from agricultural areas and provincial life forms to big cities, and also the gradual post-1945 liberation of women and the fact that they started working, which led to a deeper change of family structures. On the surface, history often happens dramatically and with sometimes catastrophic force, but it is important also to keep a focus on everyday life and the more fundamental structures of life that do not change with the same speed. The historical drama series we deal with in this book often tell that story and thus give us a deeper understanding of both the structural and human dimensions of history.

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History in Our Culture and Minds: Historical Genres, Mediated Cultural Encounters The ability of historical film and television to bring history alive and close to us is recognized as the strength of historical fiction in comparison with factual historical accounts (Rosenstone 2006; de Groot 2016; Gray and Bell 2013; Burgoyne 2008; Edgerton and Rollins 2001). As this book will demonstrate, historical documentaries and docudrama have learned from fiction. Historical fiction clearly has the ability to make the past come alive, to make us experience and imagine the past in a way that involves both knowledge, identification and emotions. The power of narrative structures is such that a kind of embodiment of history takes place: we feel and identify with, and we live through historical events, characters and settings. Such a screen encounter with a historical world can be seen as a mediated cultural encounter in several ways. It is a cultural encounter with another time and historical characters and events, it is an encounter with an often very different national past and reality, and when we are watching a fiction from another European country, it also becomes a transnational, mediated cultural encounter. Mediated cultural encounters, national or transnational, are thus able to create a socio-cultural relation with the historical past that triggers our individuality as human beings, our feeling of belonging to specific social and cultural groups or nations. It may also raise a more transnational dimension, when for instance a Dane watches a German series or an English person watches a Danish series. In the last instance, viewers apply social and cultural schemes related to imagined or real national differences (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 33ff). This book deals with mediated cultural encounters in a broad sense pertaining to the ability of European historical drama to shape, influence and change our understanding of our national and transnational past. Historical drama—fictional or documentary—can use history to interpret the past and by doing that also speak to us as contemporary individuals, groups and nations in a transnational European context. The basis for such cultural encounters is that our embodied mind has universal features making it possible for us to understand other national television cultures (see Chapters 2 and 3). Throughout the book, I analyze German and British examples of some of the basic historical genres, which are defined in Chapter 3. These are distinct main genres that offer the viewer very different entry points to history: is the perspective everyday life, are families or documentary

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historical events dominant, or do we see things from the viewpoint of a specific person, class or institution? Looking at different historical genres, their aesthetics, their thematic and narrative structure will lead to a tracing of more universal genre elements in Germany and Great Britain as well as national historical and cultural variations. Variations occur as a result of different historical realities and developments, and of public debate on and the state of national history. Combining genre analysis, the socio-cultural context, and cognitive and memory theory gives us a fuller understanding of how our embodied mind, how reason, emotion and memory work together (Damasio 2012; van Dijck 2007; Erll 2011; Landsberg 2015). To understand how historical television genres fascinate us and draw us into the past, we need to understand the more universal dimensions of embodied mind, the way our self is constructed and interacts with real worlds and mediated worlds. The embodied mind theory does not overlook social and cultural differences in how we see and experience the past. However, it points to a dynamic relation between universal dimensions and our social and cultural diversity. Memory studies deal with the complexity of memory. Daniel L. Schacter has expressed this very clearly in his book Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind, and the Past (1996): What has happened to us in the past determines what we take out of our daily encounters in life; memories are records of how we have experienced events, not replicas of the event themselves. Experiences are encoded by brain networks whose connections have already been shaped by previous encounters with the world. This preexisting knowledge powerfully influences how we encode and store new memories, thus contributing to the nature, texture and quality of what we will recall of the moment. (Schacter 1996: 6)

All kinds of media genres contribute to our memories, the way we understand ourselves, our culture and society. Historical media genres shape our individual and collective memory of history by combining very strong individual stories and historical events. Van Dijck defines our cultural memory as an “act of negotiation or struggle to define individuality and collectivity” (van Dijck 2007: 12), and she also refers to media working in both our private and public spheres. Dealing with historical television series in Europe is in many ways dealing with a genre that can potentially influence both private and public imagination of our

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past and present in a fundamental way. What this book demonstrates is how different national media cultures describe the same historical themes, conflicts and periods and how viewers and national publics often react strongly to historical narratives. The past is still very much alive as part of the present, and media can activate an individual and collective relation with the past. German and British series tell us a lot about national history, but in many cases, they also go beyond just the national and appeal to a European imagination and common European heritage. When audiences meet other national stories on television, chances of transnational cultural encounters and debates multiply. Historical drama may change our perception of European others and our common past and heritage. While European TV audiences before 1990 were often confronted with either their own national or with American and English drama series, the period after 1990 offered new developments towards a more transnational television culture (Bondebjerg et al. 2017). Although Europe remains a very fragmented film and television culture, this development is a sign of new tendencies towards co-production and wider distribution of European film and television.

Screening Twentieth-Century Europe: Outline of the Book In the following chapters, I combine theoretical approaches with analysis of documentary and fictional television series dealing with major periods, events, themes, and social and cultural tendencies in the twentieth century. As already mentioned, my main focus will be on Great Britain and Germany, two big European countries that have often been situated in opposite roles in the twentieth century. In each analytical chapter, I start with a historical perspective on the period, followed by a comparative analysis of the selected genres from the two countries, and in some cases I also deal with debate and reception surrounding series that have generated special attention. Chapter 2 deals with the role of individual and collective memory in our understanding of history—our own personal history and the broader social and cultural history of nations and societies. The theory is linked to both fictional and non-fictional examples. The chapter tries to answer the fundamental question of why memory, history and the past are so important for us as human beings. It deals with the forms and functions

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of individual and collective memory and how the mediated forms are connected and trigger our memory and perspective on the past. Memory and the forming of an experience of the past and present dimension of our self is extremely important for our ability to function psychologically, culturally and socially. When we lose our memory, we start losing our sense of self. The chapter offers a definition and a discussion of different levels of the self and of memory, and of narratives, identification and emotions in connection with historical genres. Genres constitute a kind of schematic contract with the viewer, a framework within which documentary or fictional formats invite viewers to relate to reality. Viewers generally know what main prototype they are confronted with or they soon get a feeling and understanding of it. They react to historical narratives with their embodied schemas and emotions, but also with their social, cultural and personal experiences, regardless of whether it is documentary or fiction. Chapter 3 focuses on the definition of the basic historical genres I analyze in the book and on how they build on and interact with memory. The main genres are historical documentaries, docudramas, historical biopics and period drama, each of which have important sub-genres. For documentaries it is authoritative historical documentaries, historical reality TV and drama-documentaries. For historical fiction series it is everyday historical drama, war drama, generational drama and finally some of the very reflexive and symbolic forms of historic drama, which mix generic formats and view history from a very complex perspective. Two other aspects are taken up in this chapter: on the one side I give a structural overview of how the history of the twentieth century has been mediated in Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Poland), Southern Europe (Spain, Italy), Western Europe (France, Belgium) and Northern Europe (Denmark, Sweden)—not the full picture, of course, but examples of national differences and also similarities. A main point illustrated here is the universal dimension of historical genres pointed out in Chapter 2, and the way in which the universal interacts with national variation and diversity. This more transnational European context is finally used to frame the deeper analytical study of historical television genres in the two selected main countries: Germany and Great Britain. Chapter 4 analyzes the relation between macro-history, the big historical events and structures, and micro-history, the lives of everyday people and families and how history influence them. The chapter is based on a comparative analysis of Edgar Reitz’s famous international success

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Heimat —Eine Deutsche Chronik (1984, here called Heimat 1) and Peter Moffat’s English series The Village (I –II , 2013–2014), which the writerdirector himself called ‘a British Heimat’. The two series are placed in a theoretical context of ordinary life studies (Goldfarb 2006; Arendt 1958; Highmore 2011), but the way the two series frame history and the potential point of reception they create to historical events are also discussed in a cognitive memory perspective (Margalit 2002; Kansteiner 2006; Barash 2016). The comparative analysis points to similarities between the two series, but also clear differences. Chapter 5 analyzes another type of historical drama, the biopic, and its perspective on history, in which a famous individual and a perspective from above dominate. The chapter is based on a comparative analysis of two different series: the classical but also innovative British series The Crown (1–3, 2011–2020) which deals with English history from 1947 through a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and her family and includes many other high-ranking politicians and royal characters; and Hans Breloer’s German series Die Manns: Ein Jahrhundertroman (2001) following the life of one of Germany’s and Europe’s world-famous authors, Thomas Mann and his family. The series are not just different in their choice of main character (culture vs. politics), but also in genre format and aesthetics. The comparative analysis of the two series involves a discussion of other biopic docudrama formats (Ebbrecht 2007, 2010), of cognitive memory theory and the way different narrative and generic formats involve different forms of perspective taking (William 2017). Chapter 6 is about war drama and period drama, focusing on the period 1900–1918, a time with great expectations that would turn out to be illusions. The traditional concept of war changed (Kershaw 2015) and this is reflected in the different series dealt with where war became a battle between deadly technologies, a war without a human face and endless stagnation and repetition. The chapter analyzes and compares period dramas, often family narratives, with a broader time perspective, and documentary and fictional war dramas seen from the perspective of soldiers at the front, their families on the home front or the political, strategic game behind the war. The two main examples analyzed are the German docudrama Tagebücher des Ersten Weltkrieges (Great War Diaries) (2014), based on letters and diaries and mixing factual documentary elements with dramatized individual stories, and the fictional British period drama Parade’s End (2013), where war and modernity meets tradition and heritage.

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Chapter 7 deals with narratives about a period which is characterized on the one hand by post-war chaos and fundamental changes in the European nation-state landscape, and on the other hand by utopian, revolutionary hopes and dreams of a new life after a terrible war. All dreams in the end collapsed after the devastating world crisis of 1929, the rise of right-wing nationalism and the beginnings of a new war. Drawing on historical descriptions of this period, this chapter seeks to illustrate a Europe on the edge of catastrophe, but also revitalized after the war. The main analytical focus is on the transnational European docudrama Krieg der Träume (Clash of Futures) (2018) and one of the most complex and successful German historical series Babylon Berlin (2017), and Dennis Potter’s series Pennies from Heaven (1978). In all three series, a chaotic and complex historical reality is mixed with dreams and hopes of a better future. Chapter 8 deals with a war which is probably the most covered in the twentieth century. The chapter looks at some of the most important German and English documentary formats, including docudrama series, and it also deals with the most important forms of period war drama in the two countries. The main comparative analysis, however, is of the British series Dunkirk (2004), a docudrama in three parts, in which fictional sequences are mixed with documentary dimensions and sequences, and the German series Unsere Mütter—Unsere Väter (Generation War) (2013), a series that is part of a whole new generation of German drama taking a new look at World War II. The British series deals with one of the worst, but also most decisive moments in the British war history, while the German series is part of a strong new and almost documentary realism in German war narratives. Chapter 9 discusses historical developments and the fundamental changes in the European social and cultural landscape after the two world wars left a Europe divided into East and West, but also on its way to big social and cultural changes. In German television culture, historical drama in this period is about families and everyday life from an East–West perspective. Analytical examples of this are period dramas like Weissensee (2010–2018) and Tannbach (2015–2018). However, the main part of this chapter is dedicated to different forms of generational period dramas focusing on the cultural revolution of the 1960s, on changing norms and values, the crisis of the paternalistic society, and the transformation of gender roles and family values. Edgar Reitz’s Heimat 2: The Chronicle of a Generation (1992) is the main example while British period dramas

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include the critically acclaimed Our Friends in the North (1996) and the extremely popular and international success Call the Midwife (2012–). Chapter 10 analyzes what happened in 1989, how and why, and what it meant for Germany, Eastern Europe and the rest of the world. I analyze tendencies in German documentary series and fictional period dramas dealing with the events before and after 1989. The most detailed analysis is, however, of Edgar Reitz’s Heimat 3: Chronik einer Zeitwende (A Story of Beginnings and Endings) (2004), a magnificent realist and symbolic tale of 1989 and the new millennium, of memories and divided hopes for an uncertain future. 1989 consisted of very concrete and decisive events for people living in Germany and Eastern Europe, and it was also very important for the rest of Europe. British series of the period seem more focused on the coming of the new millennium, often with a sometimes rather dystopian view of the future. Shane Meadows’ prize-winning trilogy This Is England ’86, ’88 and ’89 (2010–2015), is a freezing realist picture of English youth between utter despair and bleak hopes. Dennis Potter’s final testament, Karaoke and Cold Lazarus (1996), on the other hand, sends a message back from a dystopian future 400 years ahead, by using memories from the twentieth century as revolutionary material. The concluding Chapter 11 returns to look at newspaper articles celebrating a turn of the century, which formed part of the introduction. This time I analyze how newspapers at the turn of the millennium in 2000 discussed the past and the present century, and how this compares with the newspapers around 1900. I summarize the genre analysis and how European series have dealt with twentieth-century European history. I also return to the question of past and present: what can historical TV series tell us about the past, and how do they speak to the present? As well as considering some of the future scenarios we find today—both dystopian and more positive—I return to the overall question of the more cognitive and socio-cultural dimensions of memory and history, and to the question of what mediated cultural encounters with history seen from different European perspectives mean for us as individuals, as nationally located citizens and as members of a perhaps more vague European community. Mediated cultural encounters through fiction and non-fiction are important if we want to avoid national stereotypes, and if we want to have a more open European, global perspective on society, culture and history. The history of the twentieth century is a history that should teach us a lesson about nationalism, ethnicity and hate.

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References Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Barash, J. (2016). Collective Memory and the Historical Past. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Berliner Morgenpost. (31 December 1899). Zur Jahrhundertwende [On the Turn of the Century]. Bondebjerg, I., et al. (2017). Transnational European Television Drama. Production, Genres and Audiences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Burgoyne, R. (2008). The Hollywood Historical Film. Oxford: Blackwell. Cooke, Paul, & Stone, Rob (Eds.). (2016). Screening European Heritage: Creating and Consuming History on Film. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cornély, J. (1901, January 1). Bon Siècle. Le Figaro. Damasio, A. (2012). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. London: Vintage Books. de Groot, J. (2016). Remaking History: The Past in Contemporary Historical Fiction. London: Routledge. Ebbrecht, T. (2007). Docudramatizing History on TV: German and British Docudrama and Historical Event Television in The Memorial Year 2005. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1), 35–53. Ebbrecht, T. (2010). (Re)Constructing Biographies: German Television Docudrama and the Historical Biography. In E. Bell & A. Gray (Eds.), Televising History: Mediating the Past in Postwar Europe (pp. 207–220). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Edgerton, G. R., & Rollins, P. C. (Eds.). (2001). Television Histories: Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Erll, A. (2011). Memory in Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Goldfarb, J. C. (2006). The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gray, A., & Bell, E. (2013). History on Television. London: Routledge. Highmore, B. (2011). Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday. London: Routledge. Hobsbawm, E. (1994). The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914– 1991. London: Abacus Books. Judt, T. (2007 [2005]). Post-War: A History of Europe Since 1945. London: Pimlico. Jyllands-Posten. (1901, January 1). XIX–XX. Kansteiner, W. (2006). In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Kershaw, I. (2015). To Hell and Back Again: Europe 1914–1949. London: Penguin. Kershaw, I. (2018). Roller-Coaster: Europe 1950–2017 . London: Penguin.

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Landsberg, A. (2015). Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press. Margalit, A. (2002). The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mazower, M. (1998). Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century. London: Penguin Books. Palmer, J. (2018). Memoirs from the Frontline: Memoirs and Meanings of the Great War from Britain, France and Germany. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Read, D. (Ed.). (1973). Documents from Edwardian England 1901–1915. London: Harrap. Rosenstone, R. A. (2006). History on Film/Film on History. Harlow: PearsonLongman. Schacter, D. (1996). Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past. New York: Basic Books. Schönpflug, D. (2018). A World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age. London: Macmillan. Social-Demokraten. (1901, January 2). van Dijck, J. (2007). Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. William, J. M. (2017). Cognitive Approaches to German Historical Film: Seeing Is Not Believing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 2

History as Mediated and Embodied Narratives

The past is a part of our present; we carry our historical background with us. History is embodied in our personal and family background, and it is part of our mental framework. History and the past come to us through different forms of mediated memories, such as family stories, family photos, diaries, letters, timelines on Facebook, etc. This part of our past is what we can call individual memory tied to our personal experiences, our place and identity as living beings in a contemporary world with an individual history and a family history. However, history and the past are, of course, much more than that. Our individual history and more personal memories of the past are somehow linked to a collective history and memory brought to us through both education and mediated forms of historical narratives. Since the rise of television in Europe in the 1960s as the most central audio-visual medium and the digitization of film and television programmes on other platforms that followed, historical narratives have been given a new and powerful form of mediation. Historical narratives on the small screen have contributed greatly to a shared sense of our heritage as citizens of different national communities. Through co-production and distribution of historical television narratives across national borders in Europe, historical narratives have also contributed to a shared feeling of a European heritage. European history is not just a © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_2

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history of isolated national cultures, it is also a history of transnational connections and conflicts. The history of Europe is a history of changing nation states and of a shared heritage and culture. Even though historical narratives are often anchored in a specific national context they seem in many cases to travel well across national borders and fascinate a broader, international audience. We all have a history, we carry it with us all our lives, and it is developed from the moment we become conscious of who we are and start understanding the family, the wider group and the society we live in. Our memory and social and cultural imagination grow with age but are also strongly influenced by education, media and the kind of experiences we get. Few individuals living in countries in contemporary Europe have the kind of very local history and mind that some Europeans would have had at the beginning of the twentieth century and in earlier forms of societies. The history for most people in the twentieth century is a history of expansion and new horizons, of media capturing not just the national but gradually also a fundamentally global world. However, tensions between our individual feeling of living in our local/national reality, of belonging to family and group history is still today a very strong reality and feeling. The tensions between this feeling of a specific national and local belonging and that of others that fuelled wars and ethnic hatred in the twentieth century are still here—visible for instance in the present-day migration crisis and the rise of populist right-wing nationalism. However, there is no inherent and automatic link between this feeling of belonging to a specific group or nation and a broader understanding of how humans across national borders are in fact at the same time both very much alike and different. “Unity in Diversity”, the motto of the European Union, very much captures this dimension of a more universal form of humanity, and the diverse local and national cultures we live in. Mediated cultural encounters with screen narratives showing us how we are, how other Europeans are, and how our history is connected and yet different are more important than ever. This is what this book is about.

Mediating History: National and Transnational Dimensions There are individual histories, there are local and national histories, and there are also more transnational histories. If we look at mediated history, there is no doubt at all that mediated national histories dominate. It

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is historical dramas about families or networks of families in a national context that catch the big audiences. However, it is worth noticing that historical drama does travel, that we are fascinated by drama from all over Europe, and it is also a fact that European co-production and even transnational European forms of historical drama are on the rise (Bondebjerg et al. 2017). If we look at mediated cultural encounters from a dual perspective, a socio-cultural and a cognitive-memory perspective, the argument put forward in this book is that we tell different stories with our different national, historical dramas. However, there is also a core of universal similarity that makes it possible for historical drama to travel. It is obvious that among the historical drama genres, it is the family-oriented period drama that seems to be most popular everywhere. No wonder, if our entry into history is through our own individual history and the way it is linked to a family structure and a local national structure. In Denmark, the 24-part series Matador (1978–1981), dealing with characters and families in a small fictional town in Denmark from 1929 to 1947, has become the central television heritage for all Danes, a common framework referred to in numerous contexts as the incarnation of Danish history and our national character as Danes. It was seen by almost all Danes when it was first broadcast, it has been broadcast seven times since then, it has sold millions of copies on DVD, it can now be streamed, and it is well-known that many Danes observe an annual ritual of watching it around Christmas. A follow-up of this historical drama, Krøniken (Better Times) (2004–2007), a series in 22 episodes dealing with the period 1949–1973, was almost as popular. It is a story of how the modern Danish welfare state was born—and even though it is in many ways a very national story it was even nominated for an Emmy, following the Danish success with Emmys for other TV series from 2000 onwards (Redvall 2013) (Fig. 2.1). What is characteristic is that while Matador was only known in Scandinavia, later Danish series, including historical dramas, have gone more international, including 1864 (2014) which was sold to more than 20 countries. This popularity and rising transnational success of rather local historical dramas in Denmark could be told using examples from other European countries. The German mini-series Die Adlon. Eine Familiensaga (2013) is based on the story of the famous Berlin hotel the Adlon. There are also numerous English series based on this familyoriented concept, the internationally most popular example being of course Downton Abbey (2015), where family is extended to a whole image

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Fig. 2.1 The downstairs and upstairs patriarchs. Downton Abbey is a typical British upstairs-downstairs period drama, and the world’s most watched European historical drama since 2000. It has some heritage nostalgia, but it also clearly shows how life, classes and societies change in the 1920s. Lower classes rise, women are liberated, something that does not please Robert, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville) and his chief of staff Charles Carson (Jim Carter). In this scene the Earl is told that Carson is to lead the committee on a World War I memorial. Times are changing (Screenshot by author)

of the inter-war British class society under change—an upstairs–downstairs story. Here a national, historical drama is clearly transformed into a transnational success, the most exported British series ever which has reached more than 120 countries (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 264f). What these national examples illustrate is the fundamental strength of the family narrative and of the local and national. But this is also a transnational phenomenon, since we find it in all national contexts. The generic structure is universal but at the same time of course applied to very different socio-cultural contexts. Distributors and producers have perhaps before believed our history is too specific to travel and be of interest to other national communities (Steemers 2004)—but this is changing. Now, we seem to live in times with growing transnational coproduction and distribution, where this assumption is constantly being proved wrong—also by the intensification of platforms that make still more material available to us. Documentary formats have a very strong

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position on television, and docudrama formats can combine factual and fictional dimension. However, fictional historical narratives are much freer to combine the individual and collective, the psychological and social dimensions of historical narratives. Documentary formats can use some forms of dramatic reconstructions and in some cases use an individual entry to a historical space. However, the combination of a strong narrative and the different forms of character identification in fictional historical narratives is much more geared to draw us into a historical universe. One of the most viewed historical television series ever was the American series Roots (1977), a huge success at home and abroad. In her book Prosthetic Memory. The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture (2004), Alison Landsberg mentions Roots as a powerful example of how mediated forms of history can change and influence public and private memory. In her opinion this series was important in the creation of what she calls the concept of a “hyphenated American” (Landsberg 2004: 102), because it showed a symbolic black identity which Afro-Americans and Americans in general could identify with. The result made the series a lens into a past that could be used to see the present differently, and Landsberg continues: “If a miniseries like Roots could make possible affective bonds that transcended race, bonds that might become the ground for political alliances, then the affect produced will not simply dissolve into emotionalism” (Landsberg 2004: 104). The psychological and emotional impact on viewers in this case also led to broader socio-cultural effects. Another example of an American series with a strong effect in Europe (see Bondebjerg 2005) was the World War II series Holocaust (1978) following the fate of a Jewish family. In Germany it caused a very strong reaction, opening up a public debate on the war, and the series later caused Edgar Reitz to make his series Heimat 1–3 (1984–2004) as a historical counter-narrative to the American one (Bondebjerg 1993: 323f; Kaes 1989: 161ff). In 1978, a German and a broader European audience was quite aware of the Holocaust and the atrocities of World War II. It was often brought up in information and in documentary film and television. Wulf Kansteiner systematically traced how many documentary programmes were shown on German television between 1963 and 1993 in his impressive study In Pursuit of German Memory. History, Television and Politics After Auschwitz (2006). But the reaction in Germany after an American produced a fictional TV series like Holocaust shows that a narrative, fictional story and the forms of identification with the victims

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created by this classic historical Hollywood narrative had an emotional and cognitive effect that went far beyond the documentary effect. In cognitive media theory and studies of memory (see for instance Grodal 2009; Erll 2011), this effect of narrative formats is linked generally to the role of narrative for our understanding and reading of reality. Narrative is not just an element in literature, film and television genres, it is in fact a basic human, cognitive dimension. We are “storytelling animals”, and some argue that in fact stories are one of the things that make us human (Gottschall 2012). According to Bruner, narrative is not just one of our great delights, it is in fact “serious business … it is our preferred, perhaps even our obligatory medium for expressing human aspirations and their vicissitudes, our own and those of others. Our stories also impose a structure, a compelling reality on what we experience, even a philosophical stance” (Bruner 2002: 89). In other words, as Gottschall clearly points out (Gottschall 2012: 55 and 102), narratives have been with us always in different forms and through changing media; they are part of the way we make sense of the world and communicate our history and experiences to others. Gottschall metaphorically describes the evolutionary background for the narrative brain as “a Sherlock Holmes in our brain”, and he goes on: His job is to “reason backwards” from what we can observe in the present and what orderly series of causes led to particular effects. Evolution has given us an “inner Holmes” because the world really is full of stories (intrigues, plots, alliances, relationships of cause and effect), and it pays to detect them. The storytelling mind is a crucial evolutionary adaptation. It allows us to experience our lives as coherent, orderly and meaningful. It is what makes life more than a blooming, buzzing confusion. (Gottschall 2012: 102)

Narrative is not just constructed by culture and society, though they also play an important role in the moulding of our narrative competences. It is in fact an early evolutionary and universal dimension, a universal grammar. This means that, just as we have a universal basic structural grammar for language, which is then developed in certain cultural, national and social formats, we also have a narrative grammar. The stories that have been told from oral to digital culture have a lot in common, and the genres we use to communicate fictional story content have something in common, although large variations of the basic patterns exist.

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History and Our Narrative Mind Narrative is a general capacity of our mind, and it functions in everyday life situations, and in relation to viewing of both documentary and fictional genres. But fiction plays a special role because it is linked to play and the interaction between fantasy, imagination and reality. “Our hunger for meaningful patterns translates into a hunger for story” (Gottschall 2012: 104), so it is our desire to find out how our reality is constructed and how we can make meaning of it that is the essence of our storytelling brain. The relation to play is also evolutionary: when children from early on start playing with things and listen to stories, they are developing their understanding of reality. Play and fictional stories function as a kind of “flight simulator of social life” (Gottschall 2012: 58), and our joy in fiction and narratives of all sorts is the grown-up individual’s continued play with reality (Fig. 2.2). What is central to storytelling and narrative across genres is also central to historical narratives. Historical narratives explore past realities through a fictional framework, and through the narrative structure we get close to the past by mechanisms of cognitive and emotional identification. There is no doubt that historical documentaries can bring us much closer to a historical past and give valuable information on historical characters, events and structural changes. Docudramas can combine this more factual dimension with visual and dramatic re-enactment of certain events, letting us witness historical locations of persons. But hearing the story of Queen Elizabeth I through the dynamic rhetoric of Simon Schama in A History of Britain (2000–2002) is clearly different from reliving her life in a miniseries like Tom Hooper’s Elizabeth I (2006), embodied by Helen Mirren. The narrative, fictional effect is such that we “have empathy for the fictional characters, we know how they are feeling, because we are literally experiencing the same feelings ourselves … Vicarious is not a strong enough word to describe the effect” (Gottschall 2012: 61). The biological term for this is ‘mirror neurons’, which simply means that we react in the same way to persons and actions that we witness in real life and in fictional, audio-visual representations of the same (Wojchiekowski 2015: 115f; D’Aloia 2015: 187f; Damasio 2012: 102f). The more intense the representation of actions and emotions are, the more strongly these neurons fire. Neurons and mirror neurons are the basis for human emotions and our ability to feel empathy. Such neural effects are clearly also found in certain forms of documentary stories, but

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Fig. 2.2 Audiences identify and experience history best in fictional form, but documentary formats are just as important. Historical documentary in the docudrama format combine elements from fiction with traditional documentary elements. In ITV’s World War One. The People’s Story (2014), documentary footage is combined with dramatized versions of real people’s stories, based on their letters, diaries and memoirs. Women are central to the story, here MyAnna Buring as Dorothy Lawrence (Screenshot by author)

it is a fair assumption that fictional narratives have a stronger effect than most documentary formats. Fictional, historical narratives have of course always both interested historians and worried them. Fictional stories based on true historical events and characters always run a high risk of being accused of not getting the historical facts and reality right. Furthermore, historians are often critical of fictional historical narratives because people tend to consume much more fiction than factual historical information. There is a form of eternal conflict between scientific, factual history and historical fiction. This is the theme of Rosenstone’s book History on Film/Film on History (2006) in which he basically argues that fictional historical narratives are very powerful in recreating a ‘look’ of the past and of bringing history alive for a contemporary audience. A documentary and factual

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representation of a historical past can visit real locations and present us with stories of historical persons, but unless reconstructions are used to a large degree, a documentary history cannot let the historical past come alive, it cannot create the kind of narratives that bring us both cognitively and emotionally in line with how it was. Historical drama can use forms of personification and dramatization of events, conflicts and historical knowledge that embody distant and abstract historical structures for a contemporary audience. Easier than academic or journalistic history, a fictional representation can combine the factual and the emotional, the individual and the collective, the messages and the ideologies with experienced and lived life. The fictional distance and freedom in historical films allows the director to take up even very controversial matters and events, events that would otherwise be difficult to deal with in factual discourses. The fictional, historical drama has the potential of recreating history as live experience in which large-scale historical structures of a political, economic, social and cultural nature and small-scale histories of everyday life can be combined.

History and Memory The concern historians have with fictional historical drama cannot be rejected, if you believe in objectivity and historical facts. As Gottschall (2012) and memory researchers like José van Dijck (2007) and Astrid Erll (2011) all point out, our brain stores data on the past from both fiction and non-fiction sources, from real-life experience and mediated experience in such a way that they are often mixed or interact in various ways. Fictional stories affect our minds and memories, teach us facts about the world, and as Gottschall states: “fiction has probably told us as much about the world as anything else” (Gottschall 2012: 149). Fiction needs to be taken seriously as a factor influencing the human mind and our individual and collective memory. But looking at the concept of memory, we can even take this much further. First of all, memory is extremely important both on an individual level and a collective social level. Without memory we lose the feeling of who we are and our social ability to navigate in society disappears. In José van Dijck’s Mediated Memories in the Digital Age (2007), she simply states that: Remembering is vital to our well-being, because without our autobiographical memories we would have no sense of past or future, and we

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would lack any sense of continuity. Our image of who we are … is never stable but it is subject to constant remodelling because our perceptions of who we are change along with our projections and desires of who we want to be. (van Dijck 2007: 3)

She combines this observation with a reference to Susan Bluck’s (2003) definition of the three main functions of autobiographical memory: 1. preserving the sense of being a coherent person over time 2. strengthening social bonds by sharing personal memories 3. and using past experiences to construct models to understand inner worlds of self and others. Memory is not just a vital part of the way we understand ourselves and our identity and self over time, it is also a powerful social mechanism as it ties us together in families, social groups or even bigger communities. It is furthermore important to note that our interest in the past is not just a sign of nostalgia and of looking back: it is in fact a part of our constant efforts to understand the time, society and culture we live in. History and the past experiences of others can teach us how to act in the present— although we also experience how much people can forget and repeat the mistakes of the past. As we all know from experience, memory is imperfect, seen from an objective point of view. We constantly forget things and happenings in the past, or we interpret the same things differently. As Gottschall formulates it: when we try to recall something in the past we are not just simply “queueing up a videotape; we recall bits of data from all around the brain. These data are then sent forward to the storytelling mind … who stiches and pasts the scraps and fragments into a coherent and plausible recreation of what might have occurred” (Gottschall 2012: 169). In other words, the past represented in our mind is a mental simulation—not mere fiction, not without a firm base in actual past experiences, but a narrative, a fictionalization. The neurological, biological background for this can be found in the fact that memory is not located in one specific part of the brain, as Dijck points out: … the establishment of memory depends on the working of the entire brain network, consisting in turn of several memory systems, including

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semantic and episodic memory, declarative or procedural memory … the brain is thus the generator of reflexes, responses, drives, emotions and ultimately, feelings; memory involves both the perception of a certain body state and a certain mind state. (van Dijck 2007: 31)

As already pointed out, memory is not just individual, but has a clear collective dimension and social function. This collective and social form of memory has always been around, but since to a large degree it includes mediated forms, the rise of audio-visual and digital media with vast archive functions has changed our access to collective memory. In an article entitled “A Cognitive Taxonomy of Collective Memory”, cognitive psychologists David Manier and William Hirst (2008) divided the forms of collective memory into three: 1. collective-episodic memory, the form of collective memory shared by a specific social group (including families); 2. collective-semantic memory, the form of collective memory persons or groups can have about past and historic events and times they do not have personal experience of themselves, but where the memory is based on narratives from others and mediated narratives; 3. collective-procedural memory, the form of collective memory which is situated around collective and institutional rituals and thus connected with traditions of remembrance. This distinction between individual and collective memory and the different forms of memory is of course not a sharp division. The different domains and forms of memory interact in any individual’s memory. As individuals we are part of a broader social and cultural context, and mediated collective memories mingle with personal memories. This is clearly spelled out by Eviatar Zerubavel in his book Social Mindscapes. An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology (1997), where he talks about cognitive thought communities and different social mindscapes, and about the existence of different memory communities. The point of departure for Zerubavel’s observations (p. 20ff) is that we all have “universal cognitive commonalities”, that such a thing as a “cognitive universalism” is a fact. Part of our thinking and way of experiencing reality is based on something that we have in common across social and cultural differences. Just as we have individual and collective memories, our mind is also based on subjective, cognitive experiences and on intersubjective

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thought communities. The functions of memory and the interpretation of the past is therefore linked to universality on the one side and cognitive diversity and pluralism on the other (p. 17). To belong to a society means to enter a universe of cognitive pluralism and multiple thought communities (p. 17). When we individually and as members of different social groups experience historical narratives, when we try to find coherence in our own past and the memory of it, or when we enter discussions of public presentations, we take part in the social, cognitive battle of past and present. Remembrance is not just a spontaneous, personal act, it also happens to be regulated by … social rules of remembrance that tell us quite specifically what we should remember and what we must forget … mnemonic traditions affect our memory even more significantly by prompting us to adopt a particular cognitive bias that leads us to remember certain things, but not others. (Zerubavel 1997: 88)

Zerubavel’s point is that our mental horizon of the past is also a gateway to our present, social mindscape. Not only does our present social environment influence the present, it also influences the way we look at the past—and vice versa (Zerubavel 1997: 81). The battle around cognitive and memory communities of the past is in some ways a social battle over who controls the past.

Historical Narratives and the Psychological and Cultural Dimensions of Reception This book combines cognitive perspectives on historical genres and narratives with comparative studies of how British and German television have represented national and transnational dimensions of history. Historical narratives often fascinate viewers and become important elements in private and public memory, but they can also create heavy debate and cause ideological battles over how to understand the past. Historical narratives often touch upon and deal with aspects of history which are still highly emotional and part of an unfinished battle of the construction of a nation or the national understanding of identity and culture. We see that in the very different receptions of the already mentioned Danish series Matador, which was an instant hit with Danish viewers and critics,

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and 1864, which divided the Danish audience. Matador has been institutionalized as a true story of Danish culture and society across ideological lines. The series have been stored in the minds of most Danes as true, Danish heritage. In contrast to this the series 1864 (2014) created a prolonged public battle and evoked harsh criticism from politicians and many historians (Hansen 2016). The series’ criticism of nationalistic hysteria and foolish, aggressive political actions causing the war was directly linked to elements in the present Danish foreign politics. This link between past and present divided the national audience, but at the same time created a much more critical debate and understanding of Denmark’s history as a nation. Historical drama that divides the nation can be just as or even more important than one that unites the nation. Landsberg (2004) uses the term “prosthetic memory” to describe what is most often called mediated memories. Her main point is that such memories are more and more liberated from their original anchoring in national contexts. The modern media culture is much more global. Images float across borders, and even though they retain some of their original cultural context, they also become part of world images and a sort of “portable, fluid and nonessentialist form of memory” (Landsberg 2004: 18). When 1864 became part of this transnational media culture, some of the elements that were very central in the national reception disappeared in a different context. People abroad see the same story and read the narrative and the characters in much the same way, but the emotional and socio-cultural dimensions of reception are not linked to the same kind of national discourse and public controversies (Hansen 2016: 307f). This underlines the hypothesis put forward by Landsberg that collective and public memory is no longer only bound to a specific national context: Cinema and other mass cultural technologies have the capacity to create shared social frameworks for people who inhabit, literally and figuratively, different social spaces, practices and beliefs. As a result, these technologies can structure “imagined communities” that are not necessarily geographically or nationally bounded and that do not presume any kind of affinity among community members. (Landsberg 2004: 8)

The social and cultural dimension of the reception of historical narratives show that our memory and way of relating to both our individual

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and collective past is influenced by external factors and is changing. However, because our mind and memory are embodied, there are also deeper and more universal dimensions of our memory. As Antonio Damasio has argued in Self Comes to Mind. Constructing the Conscious Brain (2012: 130f), our brain has an amazing capability to absorb and digest very complex forms of information and experience and store it for later retrieval and reproduction. The information based on sound, images, smells, words, and so on forms composite memories of events that can be recalled by any of the elements of which the memory was originally made up. It is also of great importance how strong emotions connected with the memory are. Furthermore, memory and our ability to recall past events strongly influences our ability to imagine and process new challenges: It generally helps… that the events to be remembered is emotionally salient, that it jitters the value scale. Provided that a scene has some value, provided that enough emotions was present at the time, the brain will learn multimedia sights, sounds, touches, feels, smells and their like and will bring them back on cue … The ability to manoeuvre the complex world around us depends on this capacity to learn and recall … our ability to imagine possible events also depends on learning and recall and is the foundation of reasoning and navigating the future and, more generally, for creating novel solutions for a problem. (Damasio 2012: 131)

Self and memory are closely related, and the self is an integrated embodied entity of several layers working together. In Damasio’s schematic description (Damasio 2012: 181) we have three levels in this integrated self: • the protoself , that is the spontaneous feelings of the living body, the so-called primordial feelings • the core self , which is generated by interactions between the protoself and the surroundings, and which generates more structured feelings, images, narrative sequences in patterns • the autobiographical self , which is that part of the self where our experiences and interactions with the outside world are established in more permanent coherent patterns and memories.

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Constructing these levels of self and memory building takes place throughout a person’s life, and memories as part of the self can be generated from real-life events or from mediated visual narratives. Since images, narratives and strong emotional coding have a positive effect on memory, it is very likely that visual narratives like historical drama can have a lasting influence on viewers. Very powerful real-life events, especially of a personal nature, probably have a deeper impact. At the same time cognitive theory and psychology claim that there are clear similarities between embodied cognition, emotion and the forming of memories in real life and through an individual’s experience of fiction and thus also historical fiction. As Coëgnarts and Kravanja (2015) state in their book Embodied Cognition and Cinema, a large part of our experience and interaction with the outside world plays out at a very deep level between body, brain and environment. Our reaction to reallife phenomena is also the basis for how we relate to and interact with fictional and documentary narratives, although narratives do involve specific aesthetic qualities and dimensions of sound, form, image, and so on. The interaction between the very basic levels and the more cultural and social dimensions of reception is described by Miklos Kiss (2015: 54) as an interaction between three levels: • elementary formal schemas, universally shared, where we react rather pre-cognitively to stimuli received during the watching of moving images • narrative schemas, more embodied, cognitive processes performing blending and interpretation of basic images and other inputs into storylines • higher-order story schemas, which reflect our differences psychologically, culturally and socially and thus create diverse individual receptions and reactions to visual narratives. Our perception and experience of a visual narrative is what Dehaene (2014: 21) calls “buzzing with myriads of potential perception. Likewise, our memory is teeming with knowledge that could, in the next instant, surface back into our consciousness.” But what seems like a constant information and sensory overload on a more precognitive sensuous level is also at the same time controlled by pre-established frames, schemas and selective filters that guide our understanding of what we see and experience.

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Memory: Social and Subjective Dimensions As indicated in Damasio’s definition of the self, memories and the feeling of being a self are connected to three fundamental, different layers that form the self. These dynamic interactions between our protoself, the core self and the autobiographical self resemble the way memory researchers in both the cognitive and sociological tradition often talk about specific layers or dimensions of memory, even though the levels are quite different. According to Astrid Erll’s Memory in Culture (2011: 84f) and Daniel Schacter (1996) we can talk about three layers of memory, and in the case of the third layer, we can further divide that into three: • semantic memory as our conceptual and factual knowledge, learned and symbolically stored and of a more abstract non-personal nature • episodic memory is tied to a given person’s specific and personal memory derived from a specific episode and context and a specific time of life and, further, is more often coloured by subjective, emotional dimensions • autobiographical memory corresponds to the autobiographical self in the sense that here memory takes a structured, narrative form—a form of life stories • event-specific knowledge (memories tied to a very specific and short time) • general events (memories tied to repeated activities) • lifetime events (memories connected to longer periods of life). Memory is, unsurprisingly, a quite complex phenomenon, and it is not neatly stored in our brain like books in a library. On the contrary, memory is recalled from many areas of our mind that have been affected by many different experiences: learned factual historical knowledge; stories we have been told by teachers or family members; specific events in our life or events of a more collective, social nature; mediated inputs; and our lifelong experience and memories as individuals and members of groups and communities. There have been many attempts to try to define collective memory and individual and subjective memory. Although there is no doubt that we often find references to a collective memory and that of a specific group, community and nation it is very difficult to find evidence of this. This

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doesn’t mean that the broader social and cultural dimension of memory is not relevant and important. But it means that the interaction between the subjective and collective must be analyzed from a different perspective, as indicated by Jens Brockmeier (2002: 9): There is no principal separation of what traditionally is viewed as individual and personal memory from what traditionally is viewed as social, collective or historical memory … As a consequence the investigative focus shifts to the forms of interaction and co-construction, interplay and mutual dependence, fusion, unity between the previously separated spheres of the individual and the collective, the private and the public, the timeless and the historical.

Following Erll (2011: 99), we can understand cultural memory at the individual level as the cognitive and psychological dimension of cultural memory and at the more collective level as those social and cultural institutions related to history and memory, also among media institutions—which hold and mediate our past and cultural heritage. In fact, Astrid Erll states that “cultural memory is unthinkable without media” (Erll 2011: 113) and she continues with the following statement: To sum up, media of memory construct versions of past reality. The materiality of the medium is every bit as much involved in these constructions as is the social dimension: The producers and recipients of a medium of memory actively perform the work of construction – both in the decision as to which phenomena will be ascribed the qualities of memory media, as well as in the encoding and decoding of that which is (to be) remembered. Media and their users create and shape memory and they always do so in very specific cultural and historical contexts. (Erll 2011: 125–126)

In the following chapters I offer a theoretical and analytical perspective on historical genres, drawing on the theories of self, cognition and memory. Media in general and historical genres in particular speak to the different parts of our self and to the different dimensions of memory. Historical genres are experienced by individuals, but the feeling of belonging to a community and the public debates often framing historical genres can contribute to our individual reading and reception. Different genres speak to different parts of our self, or interact with the self in different ways, and our mental and social schemas formed by our life and media experience play a role too. Narrative and aesthetic

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schemas create specific emotions, and the different levels of our memory are activated differently by different historical genres. Historical genres are mental and aesthetic prototypes, not logically defined and clearly distinct categories. A prototype is defined by some basic similarities between all the members belonging to the specific genre prototype, but a single genre exemplar (an actual example of a prototype) does not necessarily have all the elements in common. Historical main prototypes have many variations based on character structures and potential identification patterns, narrative structures and the way they guide viewers along in the story, and according to more complex patterns of style and aesthetics. The interaction between a genre and a viewer is influenced by the schemas we all carry around as human beings. Our individual experience and personality also play an important role, which means that even though something very basic is a common ground, the actual viewer experience differs and has social and cultural variations.

References Bluck, S. (2003). Autobiographical Memory: Exploring its Function in Everyday Life. In Memory, 11(2), 113–123. Bondebjerg, I. (1993/2018). Elektroniske fiktioner. TV som fortællende medie (Electronic Fictions. Television as a Narrative Medium). Copenhagen: Borgen. Republished 2018 as ebook by Lindhart & Ringhoff. https://www. lrdigital.dk/Elektroniske-fiktioner-TV-som-fort%C3%A6llende-medie-978871 1965153. Bondebjerg, I. (2005). European Art Cinema and the American Challenge. In Northern Lights: Film and Media Studies Yearbook (pp. 205–237). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Bondebjerg, I., Redvall, E. N., Helles, R., Lai, S. S., Søndergaard, H., & Astrupgaard, C. (2017). Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Brockmeier, J. (2002). Searching for Cultural Memory. Culture & Psychology, 8(1), 5–14. Bruner, J. (2002). Making Stories: Law, Literature, Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Coëgnarts, M., & Kravanja, P. (Eds). (2015). Embodied Cognition and Cinema. Leuwen: Leuwen University Press. D’Aloia, A. (2015). The Character’s Body and the Viewer: Cinematic Empathy and Embodied Simulation in the Film Experience. In M. Coëgnarts & P. Kravanja (Eds.), Embodied Cognition and Cinema (pp. 187–203). Leuwen: Leuwen University Press.

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Damasio, A. (2012). Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain. London: Vintage Books. Dehaene, S. (2014). Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. New York: Viking. Erll, A. (2011). Memory in Culture. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Gottschall, J. (2012). The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Boston: Mariner Books. Grodal, T. (2009). Embodied Visions: Evolution, Emotion, Culture, and Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hansen, K. T. (2016). Modtagelsen af 1864 uden for Danmark. Et nationalt epos for et internationalt publikum. In K. T. Hansen (Ed.), TV-serien, historien, kritikken (pp. 307–327). Aalborg: Aalborg Universitetsforlag. Kaes, A. (1989). From Hitler to Heimat: The Return of History as Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kansteiner, W. (2006). In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics After Auschwitz. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Kiss, M. (2015). Film Narrative and Embodied Cognition: The Impact of Image Schemas on Narrative Form. In M. Coëgnarts & P. Kravanja (Eds.), Embodied Cognition and Cinema (pp. 43–61). Leuven: Leuven University Press. Landsberg, A. (2004). Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press. Manier, D., & Hirst, W. (2008). A Cognitive Taxonomy of Collective Memory. In A. Erll, A. Nünning, & S. B. Young (Eds.), Cultural Memory Studies: An International and Interdisciplinary Handbook (pp. 253–262). de Gruyter: Berlin and New York. Redvall, E. N. (2013). Writing and Producing Television in Denmark: From The Kingdom to The Killing. Basinstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Rosenstone, R. A. (2006). History on Film/Film on History. Harlow: PearsonLongman. Schacter, D. (1996). Searching for Memory: The Brain, the Mind and the Past. New York: Basic Books. Steemers, A. (2004). Selling Television: British Television in the Global Marketplace. London: BFI. van Dijck, J. (2007). Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Wojciehowski, H. C. (2015). The Floating World: Film Narrative and Viewer Diakrisis. In M. Coëgnarts & P. Kravanja (Eds.), Embodied Cognition and Cinema (pp. 115–139). Leuwen: Leuwen University Press. Zerubavel, E. (1997). Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Historical Genres on Television: The Broader European Picture

The main argument put forward in the previous chapter is that our embodied mind meets both the real world and mediated worlds with basic cognitive and emotional functions and structures that are universal. It is also a key argument that our memory is formed by the way our self is built, from the more spontaneous and primordial feelings and experiences to the full-blown autobiographical self. Our memory works through inputs based on our individual and collective life experiences, and at the same time it is highly influenced by mediated narratives, whether of a fictional or documentary nature. Schemas that are very basic and fundamental to all of us thus shape our interaction with reality and mediated forms of reality, and at the same time our mind and self are developed by the different realities we live in. Our embodied mind is not a closed container through which reality is mechanically coded and transmitted. It is, on the contrary, a very complex mind and self where basic structures interact with and are developed by our interaction with reality and media narratives. The aim of this chapter is to illustrate how historical genres have transnational and universal structures. At the same time genres are characterized by rich variations across Europe in the way the basic formats are used. National and regional history and differences in media system often influence the forms of historical series, and of course the different historical realities © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_3

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create variations in theme, setting, characters, and so on. The underlying argument is therefore that European historical drama is both very similar in basic generic formats, and very different when it comes to the actual realization of story, style and themes. As already spelled out, this book focuses on fictional as well as documentary historical genres on European television, genres dealing with the history of the twentieth century. The focus is, however, not on a broad variety of countries, but on two large Western European countries with an almost dramatically different history: Great Britain and Germany. This book therefore does not claim to cover the broader picture of historical drama in Europe. However, my claim is that many of the basic elements of historical drama and documentary that we find in Great Britain and Germany are representative of European historical drama as such. The basic genre formats are transnational, although with variations in terms of the genres that dominate and the historical themes and reality represented. In this chapter I will try to give an impression of structural tendencies in selected countries in Western Europe (France and Belgium), in Eastern Europe (Poland and Czech Republic), Southern Europe (Spain and Italy) and Northern Europe (Denmark and Sweden). In doing so, I will point to differences in the factual historical development in these countries, differences that have directly influenced the dominant historical themes and narratives. This underlines the social and historical diversity of European countries, just as there are clear differences between central aspects of British and German history. There are also differences in political history and cultural history. Authoritarian rule is not just a part of German history, but also of Spain, Portugal and Greece, and of Eastern Europe under communism. A country like Belgium, today a central part of the EU, is dominated by a linguistic sub-national conflict between regions claiming a different cultural and linguistic identity, and seeking independence, a conflict we also find in Spain and other European nations. Historical, cultural and social diversity is indeed a very strong part of Europe and is reflected in the different national media cultures and in historical drama. However, this book argues that national cultural diversity interacts with universal basic cognitive dimensions in our reception of media genres. Historical television genres, whether fictional or documentary, have a strong structural similarity when it comes to narrative, themes and ways of representing history. To argue that is not to take away the importance of national and cultural diversity and difference. It is to insist on the fact that we can understand and communicate across borders

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with our differences and that television genres do travel. It is to point out that the national media culture is and has always been embedded in transnational, mediated cultural encounters. National audiences and creative communities are part of a transnational, creative and cultural exchange in production and reception. We are both individuals with our very specific background and history, part of a collective culture with often very specific national and regional dimensions, and human beings with rather similar and universal bodies, brains and emotions. It is, for instance, a clear indication of this embodied mind that we find family-based historical narratives in all parts of Europe. Growing up and living in families and smaller communities is one of the most basic dimensions of human life, and therefore a central element in narratives. Characters connected via family structures embedded in everyday life make it easier for us to identify with a historical world and thus combine the concrete, everyday level of history and the bigger structural changes of society. Family-driven historical narratives are present in period drama and war drama biopics. Families are often a very natural context of many types of historical narratives, often those that are nationally and internationally most popular. Family narratives can deal with individuals and their family; however, very often we also find multiple family narratives, illustrating cultural and social differences in everyday life. I shall return to the variations in historical family narratives in different parts of Europe, where there are both interesting similarities across national and cultural divides, and equally striking differences.

Basic Historical Genres Before we return to the question of national and cultural diversity in historical genres, I want to offer a more basic definition of the main historical genres in fiction and documentary, based on cognitive and narrative theory. Most theories dealing with historical documentary and fiction tend to argue that fiction has by far the greatest emotional impact on viewers and is more popular because fiction bring history closer to the viewer; Robert Rosenstone argues along these lines in his influential book History on Film/Film on History (2006: 47). To support this, he mentions the following elements that are likely to strengthen the emotional experience of history and thus influence viewer memory: 1. a stronger and more coherent narrative with a clear moral message;

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2. history is told as stories of concrete individuals, families and groups; 3. history is offered through a narrative of a unitary, closed and completed past; 4. fiction dramatizes, personifies and emotionalizes the past; 5. fiction can recreate the past as it was, give a look into a past physical world. As I will show in this book, there is a lot of truth in this way of describing historical fiction genres, and the elements pointed out also show some prototypical differences between fiction and documentary historical genres and ways of mediating history. But documentary historical formats also come in many forms, and some of them merge elements of fiction and non-fiction, creating more blurred boundaries. In the following I will define prototypes and sub-genres of historical documentaries and historical fiction (see Table 3.1). An important element in the definition of historical drama, unsurprisingly, is time—time in the sense of what we see as historical time, and pertaining to how far Table 3.1 Historical non-fictional and fictional genres on television, partly inspired by Burgoyne (2008) Historical television genres Fictional genres

Documentary genres

Period drama: Focus on specific historic period: everyday drama, generational drama War drama: period drama where war is main theme

Authoritative historical documentary: documentary with strong factual voice and format

Topical drama: focus on historic event

Historical biopic: focus on life of historic character

Hybrid-reflexive drama: drama where historic is dealt with in hybrid or reflexive form

Historical genre series: historic series using popular genre formats with historic setting and characters (comedy, crime, horror, sci-fi etc.) Historical reality-TV : format where contemporary characters relive history in a controlled stage historical setting

Historical docudrama: format mixing dramatized, fictional and traditional documentary strategies

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this historical time is from our own living time and memory, and time in a narrative sense. Moments in our contemporary life technically change to past time every day, but it takes more than that for us to see something as really belonging to the past. Our autobiographical self constantly operates between a present now and our past lifetime, between short-term memory and long-term memory, and perhaps it is the same with a cinematic/televisual understanding of past and present. Some historical film and television programmes deal with a not so unknown and faraway past, while others deal with the more distant times of history. With increased distance in time comes a mediated experience with a past of which few or no one making or viewing the series have any primary personal experience. If we stick to the time frame of this book, television dealing with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 could be an example of a very close historical past, while television dealing with the very early twentieth century would be an example of a historical time of which very few today have personal experience. The second dimension of time, narrative time, is something that differentiates historical film from historical television, although we find the same basic genre formats in both media. The difference lies in the duration of narrative time dedicated to historical narratives on television, where either mini-series or longer series/serials allow for a much deeper representation of historical development of characters and their social and cultural context. Seen from a cognitive and reception perspective, this reconstruction of historical time in a context gives viewers a much better possibility of identifying and living through a fictional or documentary representation of historical reality. With long historical narratives over several years, historical television gets closer to history in real time— although not even the longest TV series could possibly capture every minute of the twentieth century. However, seen from a cognitive and emotional perspective, narrative pace and duration is very important for the feeling of being inside a historical world. Historical narratives can focus on condensed dramatic events in the representation of a historical period or event, or they can linger on the long and more slow development of historical time, or combine the two in some way. For the average viewer, the relation between historical time and narrative time, as well as the distance between time remembered or experienced and represented historical time, is important for the nature and quality of identification and experience of historical narratives.

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Of course, it is not just historical and narrative time that defines the basic genres, it is also very much the theme, the characters and the perspective on a specific historical event offered by style and aesthetics. Table 3.1 lists six basic historical fiction genres and three documentary genres: the first four fictional genres are defined by their relation to a historical theme or to a narrative-historic time frame, or by their focus on historical individuals or broader groups of characters; the last two are mainly defined by adding very specific stylistic and aesthetic dimensions to a historical narrative. The period drama is a historical genre where the focus is on historical development in a specific time period, and such period dramas have several sub-forms, based on their relation to macro-history and micro-/everyday history, and the specific combination of theme, structure and characters. Topical drama on the other hand is thematically and narratively focused on a specific historical event, such as a famous battle, not on a longer historical development. A historical biopic focuses on a well-known historical character, while one could see war drama as a subgenre of period drama or topical drama, but with the war theme and narrative as very determining for the story. The two last genres are, as already pointed out, defined by a special stylistic, aesthetic dimension. In the hybrid-reflexive genre, more traditional narrative elements are combined with a mixture of styles that break the spectator’s traditional narrative reception and forms of identification. Finally, we have the historical genre series, which is a mixture of historical narratives with popular formats that are also used outside historical genres, for instance crime, comedy or musical. The three documentary genre formats follow well-established documentary genres (see Bondebjerg 2014 or Nichols 2001). The authoritative historical documentary is the most factual form of historical narrative, combining an authoritative, lecturing narrator with visual documentation or reconstructions. This form is strong on information but does not create strong emotional identification. In the historical docudrama, on the other hand, historical reconstructions and recreation of historical characters become just as important as more traditional ways of documenting a historical reality. Here, an information effect is combined with the identity effect we see in fictional drama. In historical reality TV , the reconstruction of a historical reality is combined with contemporary individuals or families going back in time in a search for their personal family past, or by reliving history in a reconstructed past context.

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The distinction made here between fictional and documentary genres is a cognitive and formal distinction: documentary genres are genres which we as audiences regard as referring more directly to a factual reality (Bondebjerg 1993/2018). Rhetorically they represent reality in ways that differ from fiction. On the other hand, they can use many of the same stylistic features as fiction, they can have many of the same thematic perspectives on a historical reality as fiction, and in the television docudrama we find direct mixing of documentary and fictional modes. This means that we can also talk of documentary period series, biopics, war narratives and very complex hybrid-reflexive documentaries. However, there is no doubt that documentary genres speak more to our semantic memory, the memory based on acquired knowledge, and that part of our embodied brain that has to do with factual knowledge. But modern historical documentaries have developed ways of speaking to both the factual and the more imaginative and emotional dimensions of our mind. Narrative, character identification and stressing the link between the factual and the emotional are quite visible also in historical documentaries about the twentieth century. In Ann Gray and Erin Bell’s History on Television (2013) they point to a general shift in forms of public history narrative in post-2000 media culture. More dramatic and narrative elements are used in traditional public history told by historians, and we see a development of popular formats involving more personal dimensions. Furthermore, oral history or everyday life history of ordinary people has played a significant role in some forms of historical fiction and in drama-documentaries. This development obviously brings historical documentaries closer to the basic ways in which the past is experienced and talked about by people in general. It brings documentary forms away from history speaking to our semantic and more factual memory, moving them towards more episodic, personal ways of talking about the past. Gray and Bell call it a move from a more authoritative, sweeping historical perspective to a more personally reflexive perspective (Gray and Bell 2013: 69). Simon Schama has publicly defined the key elements in his strategy for The History of Britain as immediacy, imaginative empathy, candid moral engagement and poetic connection (Gray and Bell 2013: 74). The intention is to bring the viewer as close to the past as possible. This is also obvious in historical reality television, for example Channel 4’s series The 1900 House (1999), in which a present-day family move into a London house from 1900 to relive history, or the search for personal family history in Who Do You Think You Are? (2004–), with an almost thriller-like or emotional rollercoaster effect when past family history is revealed.

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Impact and Importance of Historical Fiction and Docudrama As already argued, the cognitive and emotional dimensions that form our interaction with the real world and our feeling of being a self and having a memory are the same dimensions with which we encounter mediated forms, in this case historical TV drama or documentary. However, mediated genres are still a realm of their own, and they have become an incredibly important and powerful part of our understanding of history. Mediated historical narratives can focus and compress history in ways that create strong identification and cognitive and emotional impact. Alison Landsberg has analyzed several historical American series, which she states are not primarily made in order to teach people about history. Still, she suggests that the effect of such long-running TV series that are set in the past is perhaps stronger than programmes with a more didactic discourse and agenda: For the most part, these shows do not teach people about the world historical events that occur in the background or even about the lives of any world historical figures. Instead, viewers watch a group of people – a class or community or social entity within a specific socioeconomic milieu – live. These shows make visible the horizon of possibility, the possible courses of actions, the way public and private spheres are defined, the expectations of gender – in short, how individual lives are circumscribed by the political, economic and social constraints of a given historical moment. (Landsberg 2015: 70)

This is what fictional historical dramas, docudrama or reality TV can do; they situate the viewer in the middle of a specific historical time, as it were, and as viewers we experience almost being there. Through multiple character identification we experience the emotional movements and the cognitive challenges of living in a past world. As we have discussed already, this effect is not only produced by fictional historical narratives, although they may leave the strongest impact on viewers. Documentary genres can also give us that feeling to a certain degree, especially through sequences of dramatization and re-enactment of historic moments with historical characters in docudrama, where the fictional effect is combined with historical factuality. Or it can happen in historical reality formats, where present-day people relive history, or where they are somehow confronted

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with their deeper past on a hunt for ancestors. So historical documentaries are manifold and have fictional qualities in some cases. Besides, there is no reason to underestimate the importance also of more traditional factual formats for our forming of historical knowledge and public and private memory. A new and interesting form in that connection is clearly historical virtual reality narratives (Landsberg 2015: 147f). The basic fiction genres described here and the docudrama format often reflect and use the existence of two major inroads to our historical past: on the one hand the structural access to the large-scale historical changes and on the other an approach to the personal, the everyday life perspective—history from above and history from below and within. The historical biopic does so by combining the lives and times of real historical characters. Period drama on the other hand portrays a historical period or reality through a broader network of characters, and in the everyday drama format, such characters often represent a local community and the lower classes. But the same can happen in docudrama, where real events, an authoritative voice-over narration and authentic footage documenting factual world history is mixed with dramatized versions of real historical characters. As Jerome Groot has pointed out in his book Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Popular Culture (2009), there is a rise in local and everyday history, from the work of ethnographical historians and amateur historian, to popular forms of digging into our own past, sometimes facilitated by TV, and to historical series dealing with local history and the social and cultural dimensions of everyday life. Such series will typically focus on slow changes and see history from below, not so much through major events in themselves, but through the effects they have on ordinary people. Very often they are also carried by a stronger social agenda, and tell stories of class distinctions and social and cultural inequality. So historical formats clearly represent very diverse genres on television. They engage our memory and our self in many ways, and they often create public engagement in the viewer’s own past or a more collective national and transnational past. It is one of the ways in which mediated cultural encounters in Europe make sense.

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Frozen Cultures: Historical Drama in Eastern Europe Until 1989, Eastern European cultures were frozen, controlled by a communist state that did not allow much political or cultural freedom. Communism dominated all sectors, and the media and creative cultures in general were considered dangerous for the Party and the controlling state. To navigate culture and the media in the Eastern bloc was demanding for those who tried to keep some dignity and critical distance—especially if you dealt with recent historical or contemporary themes. Even though waves of resistance existed and the situation after 1956 seemed to promise thaw, the people in power hit hard back on any opposition and alternative ways of making television. Differences do of course exist within the pre-1989 Eastern bloc. Czechoslovakia did at least experience short periods of greater freedom in the 1960s, quickly suppressed with military force. After 1989 sub-national conflicts in 1993 ended up splitting the country in two: Czech Republic and Slovakia. The former Yugoslavia under Tito was at least pretty independent from the Soviet Union, but the civil war and dissolution of the country into separate nations in the 1990s was bloody and dramatic. This showed how linguistic, cultural, ethnic and religious conflicts still dominated in a Europe shaped by two wars. When the dramatic changes in Polish history in 1918 ended with a new, independent nation, a republic, it was still a country influenced by being pushed around during the period of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and constantly under pressure from the Russian and German empires. All this points to the sleeping forces of different ethnic and subnational groups in the Europe that emerged from World War I and World War II. The historic and present diversity, and the dramatic historical changes of Europe are perhaps nowhere as clear as in communist and post-communist Europe in the twentieth century. However, the political history of Southern Europe also moves between periods of authoritarian rule and democracy, and in Southern Europe, Great Britain and Belgium we find intense regional conflicts within the nation state. In Czechoslovakia before 1989, television, and perhaps especially historical programmes, were heavily controlled by the Communist Party, and the same is the case with Poland and other communist countries. In Czechoslovakia regular public television broadcasting started in 1954, with a second channel arriving in 1970, but not until 1991 was a law

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on independent public-service TV established. In Poland public television started almost at the same time, with regular broadcasts in 1953, and after 1989 the new Polish public-service channels TVP1, TVP2 and TVP3 were quickly challenged by private, commercial channels such as Polona and Polsat. Compared to non-communist Europe, the birth of a modern television culture was very late, but after 1989 these countries were gradually included in the European and global tendencies—with national variations. Ursula Jarecka (2010: 96f) points out that just as in all other Eastern European countries between 1945 and 1989, Polish television was controlled by the Party, and it was seen as a medium for propaganda for communism as “the best political system in the world”. Almost all the programmes on television came from the Soviet Union or other Eastern European countries, and very few programmes were exported to Western Europe. It was indeed a controlled, frozen and isolated media culture—although some people managed to see Western TV illegally. When it comes to actual historical programming tendencies before 1989, one can make two general observations: there was a strong tendency to make historical series and programmes that were based on classical literature, and which dealt with earlier periods than the twentieth century (Jarecka 2010: 96f); programmes that dealt with more contemporary issues were often—both in fiction and documentary formats—about heroic antifascists and communists. A very popular Polish example of the latter was Stawka wiekszu niz zycie (More than Life at Stake) (1967– 1968), a series about a Polish soldier acting as a spy for Poland and the Soviet Union during World War II (Godzic 2016: 56). An example of a more everyday-oriented docudrama was Sensacje XX wieku (Sensations of the Twentieth Century), which started in 1983 as a heavily monitored programme under communism, but resurfaced and survived 1989—even though it was part propagandistic (Godzic 2016: 56). It is worth remembering that some directors in communist countries before 1989 did try to maintain some kind of freedom by choosing their subjects with care, for example Krzystztof Kieslowski in Poland. However, it is not until the years after 1989 that a more independent and critical look at twentieth-century Eastern European history is born. One way of avoiding the dominant ideology, even before 1989, was to let ordinary people and everyday history replace the more heroic and propagandistic programmes. Historical propaganda programmes could try to popularize characters representing the communist regime, for

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instance Gottwald (1986) or Tricet priapadu majora Zerman (Thirty Cases of Major Zeman) (1976) about the work of the secret police. Such programmes probably did not affect many viewers; strong ideological bias works against identification and emotional engagement. Other programmes during the communist era did, however, try to avoid the most obvious ideological tendency by following the life of more ordinary people, for instance the series Byl jednou jeden dum (Once Upon a Time there was a House) (1974), a period drama following people in a Prague tenement house between 1930 and 1945 (Dvoráková 2010: 78). Looking at tendencies in both the Czech Republic and Poland before and after 1989, we see that even before 1989 some of the basic historical genres in Europe exist, but are restricted to very specific themes and under ideological control. After 1989 the integration into the rest of Europe means that the same genres get a new freedom of expression: it becomes possible to speak more freely and critically about the past, and the ideological heroism and pathos under communism give way to a new realism. Family-based historical narratives on Czech television made after 1989 often deal with the communist period or the transition from communism to democracy, while historical drama under communism often neglected many aspects of twentieth-century history (Dvoráková 2010: 77f). One of the most popular of the post-1989 series is Vyprávej (Tell a Story) (2009– , Biser Arichtev), in which we follow ordinary families and everyday life in Czechoslovakia between 1964 and 2005 (Dvováková 2010: 81). Here family history is linked to broader history through a narrative where identification at individual and group level plays a major role. In the Czech documentary series by Jan Sikl, Soukromé Století (Private Century) (2006), we see a more documentary version of the same. Here actual home-movie footage from the 1920s to the 1960s is used to chronicle the history of Czechoslovakia in the twentieth century. In eight episodes of 52 minutes, the major events of Czech history are depicted through the experiences of real-life Czech citizens. The depression of the 1930s, World War II and the early years of communism are here seen through the eyes of different ordinary Czechs. This specific form of everyday historical documentary seems to be strong in the Czech Republic, where Helena Trestiková is famous for her long-term observational documentaries (Dvováková 2010: 83–84) illustrating history through the life of individuals and groups, for instance Marcela (2006) which follows a woman and her friends and their families from the 1980s on (Fig. 3.1). The integration into the rest of Europe also led to very experimental and different forms of historical drama, often co-produced/co-distributed by the new global streaming services. One example is the Polish series

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Fig. 3.1 Criticism in the media was impossible under communism in the European Soviet vassal states. After 1989 critical dealing with this period soon developed. The Polish science-fiction TV series 1983 (2018) is an example of contra-factual history fiction: what would have happened if communism had taken over again? (Screenshot by author)

1983 (2018: 1–8) created by Joshua Long and Maciej Musial, directed by a team of Polish directors and distributed by Netflix. The premise of the series is that a terrorist attack in 1983 changed history so that Poland is still a communist nation. This plot opens up a dark historical tale of crimes and terror under communism. Another relevant historical drama to mention, although not made by a former Eastern European nation, is the UK/US/HBO production Chernobyl (2019: 1–5) about the nuclear accident in the Soviet Union in 1986. The series reminds us of the fact there are still nations that do not want to speak freely about the past, and for whom not being caught making disastrous mistakes is more important than the lives of local citizens. The series goes to the heart of this tragic accident, and the narrative is meticulously based on voices from those who experienced it, and those Russian scientists who tried to warn but paid the price with their lives—from radiation—and their freedom to do research and to speak.

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Challenged Democracies: Southern Europe Twentieth-century Europe represents, apart from terrible wars and crisis, the birth of modern democracy and nation states. Democracy, however, was often born under internal struggles and even civil war, and we need to remind ourselves that authoritarian rule in Europe did not end with the German defeat in 1945, nor was it after that time restricted to communism in Eastern Europe. In Southern Europe (Portugal, Greece, Spain) the road to modern democracies and into the EU was challenged by military coups and fascist rule that lasted well into the 1970s. In Portugal a republic was created in 1910, but from 1926 to 1974 the country was dominated by military and fascist rule, ending with the Carnation Revolution in 1974, which paved the way for a modern democracy. In Greece coups and counter-coups dominated from around 1909 until a new constitution in 1975 paved the way for a modern Greek democracy. Also, in Spain, we find a long and tragic history of civil war and fascist rule that lasted until Franco’s death in 1975. Add to this list of challenged European democracies a country like Italy, which became a fascist state in the 1920s and 1930s, and which has always struggled with unstable political governments, the Mafia and corruption. Although we find the same basic historical genres in the nations of Southern Europe, their dramatic twentieth-century history influences the main themes and narratives from these countries. Among the Southern European nations, Italy experienced the shortest period of fascism, however the theme of the Mafia persisted. In her book, Italian TV Drama & Beyond: Stories from the Soil, Stories from the Sea (2012), Milly Buonanno points to two dominant historical genres on Italian TV: the biopic in many different forms and with very different main characters; and the Mafia drama, also covering the connections between the Mafia and the political and economic system in general. It is quite unique to find such a long series of contemporary/historical drama as La Piovra (The Octopus) (1984–2001). It is an extremely popular series, and Buonanno calls its most important quality the “capacity of gaining a firm place in the agenda of national political debate” (Buonanno 2012: 51). As Buonanno also points out, La Piovra is the most important and popular, but there are many others. The importance of the Mafia and corruption theme in Italy is clearly illustrated by the national and international success of the trilogy 1992 (2015), 1993 (2017) and 1994

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(2019)—also available on HBO. In this series, a contemporary historical drama, we follow the dramatic political changes in the 1990s and the attempt to get rid of the web of corruption between big banks and companies, the political system and the Mafia. Historical dramas on crime and corruption in politics and business can be found in other European countries, but there is no doubt that the Italian versions are much more dominant and play a stronger role in public debate. The Mafia story represents a contemporary historical genre in Italy, whereas the biopic, according to Buonanno (2012: 167f), dates to the early days of television. Early historical drama from the 1950s onwards was dominated by biopics of big Italian or European artists and philosophers, and by a large number of religious biopics. The last genre from the 1990s, often named the Bible project, has huge audience ratings, indicating another specific profile for Italian historical drama: the strength of Catholicism in Italian society and culture. Religious biopics exist elsewhere in Europe, but not in such abundance and popularity. Still, Buonanno (2012: 189) points to the fact that religious biopics have also contributed to the transformation of religion and its place in modern society. Period drama also has a strong place in Italy, and unlike smaller European nations, Italy has a very big production of series spanning most centuries of its national history. However, as Buonanno points out (Buonanno 2012: 214f), within the history of the twentieth century, there seems to be a specific interest in and focus on the perhaps most problematic period in modern Italian history, the fascist period from 1920 to 1945. Such Italian dramas include period drama and biopic, for instance Perlasca un eroe italiano (Perlasca an Italian Hero) (2002), the Italian version of Schindler, a businessman saving thousands of Jews in Budapest, or the opposite camp so to speak in Edda (2005), which tells the story of Italian fascism through Mussolini’s daughter. As Buonanno sums up: “Historical memory is often conflictual: for reasons pertaining to civil wars and deep politico-ideological fractures that have characterized Italian history and life since unification Italian memories have often been divided” (Buonanno 2012: 216). Although this can be said about historical memory in all countries, the divisions are very strong in a challenged democracy like Italy, and historical drama about the twentieth century clearly reflects this (Fig. 3.2). Although Italian historical drama seems to lean towards heroic or religious biopics or political and social period dramas and conflict stories

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Fig. 3.2 Italian historical drama is often about the Mafia or political corruption. However, a series like My Brilliant Friend (2018), an Italian production made with HBO based on Else Ferrante’s bestseller novels about Naples and Italy from the 1950s on, is an everyday period drama. We follow two girls and their life as the post-war changes kick in and give them a new freedom, but also new troubles. Lila (left, Gaia Girace) and Elena (Margaritha Mazzuco) are the two main characters (Screenshot by author)

about the twentieth century, the history of ordinary people and families is also very well represented—and popular with audiences. Based on novels or as original stories, such period dramas have painted Italian history from many different angles and representing early and more recent periods. Assunta Spina (2006), for instance, deals with the history of Naples in the early decades of the twentieth century, based on Salvatore di Giacomo’s successful play from 1909. A more modern Naples series, which really deals with ordinary people and families in Naples, is My Brilliant Friend (2018), based on Else Ferrante’s international bestselling novels and made as an Italian/HBO co-production. The series unfolds the transformation of Italy from the 1950s on, very much seen through the eyes and lives of two very different girls, their families, love lives, education— all seen in the light of the fundamental post-war change of European culture and society.

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This is also the theme of La meglio gioventù (The Best of Youth) (2003) directed by Marco Tullio Giordana, a very precise portrayal of aspects of Italian and European post-war history with a focus on the babyboom generation, the profound changes in family and gender culture and the often violent generational conflict, including the radical Italian terrorist groups. The series deals with the Carati family, mainly the two brothers Matteo and Nicola and their very different development, but also involves two sisters, Giovanna and Francesca. The personal, sexual lives of the main characters are interspersed with a portrayal of their educational and professional lives, and more political issues also divide the family members and the characters they relate to through the years. During the student revolts the two brothers thus end up on opposite sides, and Nicola’s wife Giulia later joins the Red Brigades and is eventually sentenced to 17 years in prison for terrorist acts. Through a family story spanning three generations, the series manages to capture many of the themes and conflicts related to this period. However, the series also—like other European period dramas dealing with this generation— ends with a reconciliation between generational values, between past and present. Italy has a troubled past of a pre-war fascist dictatorship, a deeply corrupted Mafia system and a very unstable democracy. However, even though regional conflicts exist, it lacks the deep internal split dominating Spain, with, for instance, Catalonia and the Basque country regions basically aspiring to become independent nations. At the same time, the authoritarian, fascist heritage is much longer and deeper in Spain. Even though TV was established in Spain in 1956 and a second channel in 1965, it was kept on a rather tight leash until the death of Franco in 1975. This changed gradually from 1977 and into the 1990s, but on the whole, it hampered creative freedom for Spanish TV, although there were cracks in the regime’s control, as Paul Julian Smith notes in his book Television in Spain: From Franco to Almodóvar (2006: 60). However, as Smith also points out, one of the most popular docudramas from the Franco period, Crónicas de un pueblo (Diary of a Village) (1971–1974), telling the story of life in a village in Castile, was simply commissioned with the political intent of the Franco regime to make his politics popular by showing ordinary people’s lives. So narrative threads and dialogue were created to embody the political messages of the regime (Smith 2006: 66f). The popularity and dominance of the family narrative and everyday life is also obvious in Cuéntame cómo pasó (Tell me How it Happened)

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(2001–2005, TVE1). It is both a period drama about Spain in the 1960s and a family story, and represents the birth of a new historical drama in Spain. Between 2001 and 2005 it was the most popular series in Spain (Smith 2006: 11ff). As a period drama it has the specific quality of dealing with the then still existing Franco regime in Europe, but at the same time the family drama shows us the inner struggles and contradictions in a society under authoritarian rule from 1939 to 1975. This reflects the fact that the script is written by the exiled anti-Franco writer Ladrón de Guevara. The family narrative becomes a part of a critical encounter with an authoritarian heritage which is also a strong part of Eastern European history but not a common European heritage after 1945. Given such creative restraints and direct political intervention until 1975, it is no wonder that Smith and others (Pastor-Gonzáles 2016) writing the history of Spanish TV have largely chosen to focus on the post-Franco period. As Smith points out, where national drama before 1975 seemed to seek a specific, ideological unity, Cuéntame cómo pasó allows for a developing open-ended narrative on the transition from fascism to modern democracy. Moreover, it does so through ordinary people and families using both realism and humour. Post-Franco historical TV dramas of course take up other genres, including adaptations of classical historical literature and biopics. These also include new perspectives on women’s history, for instance in Fortunata y Jacinta (Fortunata and Jacinta) (1980), a co-production with France and Switzerland, which over ten hour-long episodes tells the story of an upper-class woman (Jacinta) and a working-class woman (Fortunata), taking up class and gender issues (Smith 2006: 43f). The reinvention of independent, creative television also involves docudrama formats that take up new, controversial historical issues. Here Spain in the period after Franco follows tendencies in the rest of Europe, but as Pastor-Gonzáles has pointed out (Pastor-Gonzáles 2016: 156), Spain did not take part in the two world wars, and for that reason those wars are almost completely absent from historical fiction and docudrama. In the post-Franco era, it was unsurprisingly the long history of the Franco regime’s rise to power, the Spanish civil war and the transition to democracy that are most dominant. This includes the failed military coup on 23 February 1981 when the young King Juan Carlos I stepped in and defended democracy, portrayed in two docudramas, one of which, 23F: El dia mas dificil del Rey (23F: The Most Difficult Day for the King) (2009), is the most viewed docudrama in modern Spanish TV history

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(Pastor-Gonzáles 2016: 157). To date, however, fictional period drama and docudrama have clearly focused most broadly on the years between 1930 and 1975, and with a focus on both everyday life and the more political aspects. The first can be found in the long-running fictional series Amar en tiempos revueltos (Love in Revolutionary Times) (2005–2012), where we follow many different characters during and after the civil war in Spain. 14 de abril, La Republica (14 April, The Republic) (2011) focuses more narrowly on the Second Spanish Republic and the civil war of 1936– 1939, and it does so from the perspective of a wealthier family and the class differences and political, ideological conflicts in this period.

Creative Encounters and Structures of Co-production: Western and Northern Europe I have argued from the very beginning of this book that there is a fundamental dynamic between basic cognitive, emotional, narrative and generic patterns of European historical drama, which transcends national borders, and the national and cultural diversity that also determines the actual themes, forms and creative diversity of historical drama in Europe. There are dimensions of historical drama that we understand almost intuitively, and things we see as specific and different from the national and cultural context we are most embedded in and familiar with—and this is not necessarily our own national culture, given the strong influence of American culture in Europe. As demonstrated in Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 79f), there are clear new patterns of co-production and codistribution networks in Europe, driven by EU and regional funding policies, but these new patterns still show distinct regional differences. In this chapter so far, I have dealt with Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, regions that for historical reasons were outside the core of the EU until the 1990s. In the following I take a broader look at Western (France, Belgium) and Northern (Denmark, Sweden) Europe, and the way they interact in relation to their own region and in a broader coproduction context. This also leads up to a final argument about the different roles of Great Britain and Germany in this broader European context and the reason for choosing these two countries as main examples. While France is one of the biggest TV nations in Europe, its programmes do in fact have a rather limited or selective transnational distribution in Europe (mainly to Southern Europe) and an equally very

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selective co-production profile (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 88). There is very intense collaboration with the French-speaking part of Belgium, and some with Southern European countries and Poland. While this rather limited co-production leaves France more ‘isolated’, its very active role in the European French/German TV station ARTE points in the other direction, at least in the area of documentaries and docudrama (Stankiewicz 2017). But in terms of historical documentaries on the twentieth century, France has a very differentiated production of genres, although few of them have been widely distributed across Europe. It seems that historical dramas taking place in other periods have been more successful abroad, for instance Le Comte de Monte Cristo (1998) with Gérard Depardieu (see Cajueiro et al. 1998: 41f). Even though French historical drama about twentieth-century history is not as well-known abroad as historical drama from other periods— and indeed also other TV genres such as crime—French TV has a varied production of historical drama. La Maison des Bois (1971) is a fine World War I drama directed by Maurice Pialat, where the war is seen from the perspective of families in a very small village, and the same perspective is taken in Les feux de Saint Jean (1996), a two-part mini-series where rural drama and war drama meet. Just like in other countries, there is a tradition of combining everyday drama and family drama with other elements in historical drama. In the war drama Ceux de 14 (2014), France joins the centenary of the start of World War I with a traditional drama from the front line. We see the same narrative tendencies in two of the best-known French World War II series: Resistance (2014: 1–6) is about a group of young resistance fighters in Paris, opposing both the Germans and the French Vichy collaborator government; and Un village français (2009– 2017) where we follow a much larger group of people in a village from 1940 to 1945. The first series was also a success on channel M4 in the UK and in other European countries, while the second was much more popular in France, as the many seasons and 72 episodes show. France is a major political and cultural power in the EU, but as a nation it relies more on national production and distribution than European— although its participation in ARTE and other genres than historical drama on the twentieth century point in other directions. Belgium is not just in comparison a small nation, it is also a culturally divided one with no less than three linguistic communities (Flemish, German and French). The French part has close connections with France, while the Flemish often collaborates with the Netherlands. Even though Brussels is the capital of

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Europe, Belgium as such represent a side of Europe where regional differences within nation states cause political and cultural problems. Historical drama from Belgium seldom makes it outside Belgium, the Netherlands, France and sometimes Germany, although a crime series like Salamander (2012–2018) had a broader European distribution. Research into how audiences react to historical television drama in Belgium, therefore, tends to deal with the sub-national communities, for instance the Flemish, rather than the Belgian as such (Dhoest 2006, 2007). The ambitious Flemish World War I series In Vlaamse Velden (2014: 1–10, French title “Au Champ d’Honneur”, English title “In Flanders Field”) is a very good example of how a national war narrative can reflect internal conflicts. It was produced by the Flemish production company Menuet and shown on the Flemish broadcaster VRT’s channel Eén. It has been shown in Hungary and came out in France on DVD, but apart from that it has had no major international distribution. Despite its rather national-local elements, it is a fine series, which adds new dimensions to the many series that came out in connection with the World War I centennial (Fig. 3.3). The series clearly illustrates how multilingual communities (of which there are several others in Europe) can experience more intense internal conflicts during a war. Even though the series deals with what different nationalities, cultures and languages mean to people, how they emotionally identify with certain forms of imagined communities, it also shows that the disasters of war and the wonders and tragedies of love often cross those lines. The series was clearly a major success on Flemish television, but it was not exported outside Belgium. The same goes for another bigbudget historical period and family drama, De Smaak van de Keyser (The Taste of Keyser) (2008) dealing with the gin-producing Keyser family between 1940 and today. Flemish television in Belgium seems to be producing historical TV drama for a very limited and mostly local market. This used to be the case also with TV drama from the small Scandinavian countries. However, since 2000 Denmark, Sweden and lately Norway have experienced quite an international breakthrough, mostly however with ‘Nordic noir’ crime series and contemporary drama, even though historical drama has also benefitted from this international boost. One of the reasons for this is that the Scandinavian countries, unlike Belgium, have strong regional collaboration supported by Nordisk Film and TV Fond, and take a very active part in a wider European coproduction and co-distribution network (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 90).

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Fig. 3.3 In Vlamse Velden (2014) is an ambitious World War I drama combining an extended family story with very realist images of slaughterhouse Flanders. The central Boesman family is Flemish and we learn a lot about a divided multilingual country during war. This scene is one of the last in the series: Marie Boesman (Lize Feryn) finds her brother Vincent (Matthieu Sys) almost dead on the battlefield after the war (Screenshot by author)

There is thus a very strong regional Scandinavian basis, where almost all forms of TV drama are co-produced and distributed in countries that are very alike in their basic cultural and social parameters. Secondly, they have embarked on wider European co-production, with Germany as the main partner. In terms of co-production and distribution, Scandinavia and Germany thus form a very strong Northern European network. The missing link is UK: the UK is not a strong European co-production partner, mostly co-producing with the US. However, the UK is important as a distribution area for European co-productions, because it is the entry point to the big American/English-speaking world market. The Nordic noir breakthrough happened via the UK, and the success of crime and contemporary drama also brought a stronger international breakthrough for Scandinavian historical drama: the Danish historical drama about the Danish-German war, 1864 (2014) was not just distributed to

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the co-producing countries (Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Finland, France, Germany and Czech Republic) but also to for instance Croatia, Belgium, Slovenia, South Korea and Spain—and it was clearly the UK success that paved the way (Hansen 2016: 307ff). Looking at the broader tradition of historical drama in Scandinavia, however, it is obvious that large parts of the national tradition have had problems finding an international audience—for obvious reasons the older parts, but also relatively new series. The popular jewel in the Danish tradition, Matador (1978–1981) dealing with the period 1929–1947, has for instance only been shown in Scandinavia, while the follow-up, Krøniken (Better Times) (2004–2007) covering 1950–1972 is distributed to a few other countries (Brazil, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland and Brazil). The same is clearly the case with Swedish historical drama, although Jan Troell’s fabulous two-film series Utvandrarna (The Immigrants) (1971) and Nybyggarna (The new land) (1972) had already had an international breakthrough and was nominated for an Oscar when it was first shown, and can now be found on Netflix. In the coming years streaming platforms will most likely lead to a revival of national classics. But these rather isolated examples cannot hide the fact that the national, Scandinavian traditions of historical drama have until recently been living a quiet life in Scandinavia. The big Swedish Scandinavian-German co-production Vår tid er nu/Familien Löwander (2017), following a family and its employees from 1945 on, is showing in the co-producing countries and a few other European countries. Our understanding of cultural and historical variations of European historical drama is of course restricted by the fact that many countries are still lagging behind in wider distributions. This also means that some of the early and innovative trends can go unnoticed. There is no doubt, for instance, that Scandinavia was ahead in dealing with women’s history, even though we do find women’s history in other countries, but equally little known and distributed. This is perhaps especially the case with series where women were also in creative control. One of the first of these was in fact the Danish series Krigsdøtre (Daughters of War) (1981: 1– 5), a series made by women and with women as the main characters. One of the initiators, Sidsel Jacobsen, a dramaturg at DR, suggested the series in 1977 as a kind of Danish history of women since 1950. She also suggested that it should be made solely by women, which of course was quite controversial in an institution clearly dominated by men. The series was written by some of the best female authors at that time. As Anne

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Hjort has demonstrated (Hjort 1984: 220f), the series was very much valued by women, especially more educated women, but it was also a general success across gender and class. Another much later case is the Swedish series Systrar, 1968 (Sisters, 1968) (2018: 1–3). As a project it was very much inspired by Group 8, a feminist organization started by eight women in Stockholm in the 1960s dedicated to cultural projects and more general feminist issues. The series was written and directed by women: Martina Bigert, Maria Thulin and Kristina Humle. Unlike Krigsdøtre it doesn’t show a longer historical development, but takes place mostly on one location (Ystad) in one year (1968). Kristina Humle sees the series as a film about female empowerment and the political awakening of a group of young Swedish women (Annika Pham 2019). The main character is the journalist Karin, who fights hard to be accepted in a very male-dominated world, but her closest friend, the very rebellious and liberated artist Lottie, also has problems. The focus of the series is clearly a critique of not just the traditional male-dominated family institution, but also male dominance over women in social, political and work institutions, and in the domain of sexuality and women’s lack of control over their own body.

Imagining and Narrating Twentieth-Century Europe: Focus and Perspectives In their inspiring book Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories (2003), Konrad Jarausch and Michael Geyer set out to analyse German memories on an individual level and through more collective, mediated public memories. They deal with attempts by official history to create master narratives and with the very divided narratives and memories we find in all nations, but which in Germany have been extremely dominating. In Germany, all the catastrophes seem to mingle with astonishing modernity and progress, and thus the dark past has created an almost obsessive memory culture moving between guilt and hope. Jarausch and Geyer in their conclusion describe the German twentieth century like this: … the important, but limited impact of Germany on the twentieth century was profoundly ambivalent, transforming itself from the civil to the catastrophic and back. Undoubtedly, the Germans were central participants in World War I and under the Nazi regime bore the ultimate responsibility for World War II, as well as for the horrors of the Holocaust. These

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unspeakable crimes have tarnished the German name and will continue to darken the historical record. But after 1945 West German leaders also helped spearhead the drive toward European integration. (Jarausch and Geyer 2003: 369)

Quoting a New York Times article from 9 October 2000, “One Germany” (New York Times, 2000), the authors further underline this point, although the article also states that Germany is “a peaceful, prosperous nation surrounded by allies in the heart of Europe, and not a troubling powder keg … [however] the painful memories will continue to linger for a long time to come” (Jarausch and Geyer 2003: 369). No European nation’s history is the same as that of other nations, though similar tendencies and experiences exist. In fact, as Jarausch and Geyer point out: “Contrary to the claims of the master narratives, no single-story line of development can adequately capture the confusing crosscurrents of … Europe during the twentieth century” (Jarausch and Geyer 2003: 358). This has been underlined in this chapter, where I have tried to paint a picture of how very fundamental historical genres and narratives do appear in some form in all nations, but where many thematic, narrative and stylistic variations exist. These variations also reflect different historical developments, for instance between Eastern Europe and Western Europe, or between authoritarian periods in Southern Europe. No single narrative can express the complexity of historical drama dealing with the European twentieth century. In the following chapters of the book, I focus on only two countries, Germany and Great Britain, allowing for a much deeper form of comparative analysis of two different and central European countries. Historical drama in Germany reflects a nation that tried to conquer Europe by military power, was defeated twice, split into two countries and then united again. It has become one of the most stable and important countries in modern Europe and a strong European cultural power. Historical drama from Germany reflects German history, but also broader aspects of European history in terms of war and the division between East and West. Great Britain, on the other hand, has not just geographically been separated from the European continent. It has also in many ways always been an empire of its own, and although it finally joined the EU in 1973, it left again in 2020. Britain is the biggest military power in Europe, and historically World Wars I and II would have looked very different if they had not taken

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the position they did. In terms of film and television culture, the UK has been a model for the rest of Europe, and British film and television, together with America, have long dominated European screens. However, today Germany is the biggest key player in European co-production, while Great Britain is looking more towards the US. We have, however, seen a European breakthrough on British television since 2000, with Nordic noir paving the way for other European TV series (Weissmann 2012: 186f). With Brexit, it is to be feared that the intended political and economic independence could also increase Britain’s turning of its cultural back to the rest of Europe. In focusing on and comparing German and British history and historical drama, I am not just analyzing two very different nations, I am in fact also analyzing two very different cultures within Europe. The fact that German history is haunted by authoritarian ideologies and racial and ethnic cleansing, that we have a long period with a communist and a democratic Germany, makes German history relevant for the understanding of similar historical and contemporary tendencies in other countries. Great Britain’s heritage of a declining empire, a quite strong class-differentiated culture (‘upstairs and downstairs’) and a strong mix of ethnic cultures from the empire also has a historical and contemporary lesson to tell with implications for other parts of Europe. Globalization and migration have a long story in the British Empire, and the new move towards British independence with Brexit also has elements of a populist taking back the nation and the former historical empire. The history of British and German historical drama tells a story of European diversity. British television drama became a global export as early as the 1950s (Steemers 2004), and ever since the BBC serial The Forsyte Saga (1967), British heritage period drama has had a strong cultural image abroad (Leggott and Taddeo 2015: xx). The most recent stunning global success of Downton Abbey (2010–2015) has underlined Great Britain’s dominance in this genre, although British historical drama is more than lavish literary adaptations. Germany, on the other hand, was never really an old class-structured empire, but a modern troubled republic. This means that German historical drama is much more mundane, much more about families and everyday life or about big historical events. German biopics often deal with authors, politicians or businessmen, while British television is strong on royalty and the kind of upper-class heritage drama celebrating the lifestyle of a declining aristocracy (Bell and Gray 2010). German television may also be a bit more

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auteur dominated and experimental (Fassbinder, Edgar Reitz and Tom Tykwer, for instance), although UK drama also includes characters like that (for instance, Dennis Potter and Tom Stoppard). In most Western European nations, the 1960s are crucial and formative years for modern television narratives. While television until then—partly because of technological restrictions—was more inspired by theatre and literature than by film, the new television drama in the 1960s and 1970s became visual narratives. Adaptations were still important, but original drama made for TV became much more dominant. In his book, Das Fernsehspiel der Bundesrepublik: Themen, Form, Struktur, Theorie und Geschichte (1980: 234f), Knut Hickethier has documented the steep rise in the number of original fictional and documentary dramas in Germany between 1960 and 1977: from 105 in the 1950s to 993 in the 1970s. This development, in which among others Egon Monk plays a central role, also involves a move towards more twentieth century-focused historical themes (Hickethier 1980: 213), and a more critical, realistic style and relation to reality (Hickethier 1980: 223). Even though British heritage drama has not left a strong influence in Germany, there is a much more direct influence and inspiration when it comes to documentary and realist drama. The BBC’s realism from the 1960s also helped create a new German television style. Although we find basically the same main genres in German and British television, and even though there is direct inspiration, the two countries still represent rather different European histories and forms of historical television drama. By comparing them over time and in relation to genres, themes and styles, we are not just seeing the profile of two nations, but also variations that appear between other European countries. Great Britain is an old nation by any standard and one of the earliest developed television nations, as it has left a deep imprint on the rest of Europe. Germany as a democratic nation is quite young, and it became a unified nation rather late (1871), only to be divided in 1945 and re-united in 1989. The deepest influence on Europe Germany had until 1945 was extremely negative and catastrophic. But Germany after 1945 gradually developed a new form of historical drama, and became a cornerstone in the development of the European Union, hand in hand with its old adversary France. Britain came to the EU late, and with Brexit in 2020, it has once again separated itself from Europe.

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References Bell, E., & Gray, A. (2010). Televising History: Mediating the Past in Postwar Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bondebjerg, I. (1993/2018). Elektroniske fiktioner. TV som fortællende medie (Electronic Fictions. Television as a Narrative Medium). Copenhagen: Borgen. Republished 2018 as e-book by Lindhart & Ringhoff. https://www. lrdigital.dk/Elektroniske-fiktioner-TV-som-fort%C3%A6llende-medie-978871 1965153. Bondebjerg, I. (2014). Engaging with Reality: Documentary and Globalization. Chicago and Bristol: Chicago University Press and Intellect Books. Bondebjerg, I., et al. (2017). Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Buonanno, M. (2012). Italian Drama & Beyond: Stories from the Soil, Stories from the Sea. Bristol: Intellect Books. Burgoyne, R. (2008). The Hollywood Historical Film. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Cajueiro, M. A., Chaniac, R., & Jézéquel, J.-P. (1998). Towards a Diversification: French TV Fiction in 1998. In M. Buonanno (Ed.), Continuity and Change: Television Fiction in Europe (pp. 7–28). Luton: Luton University Press. Dhoest, A. (2006). Everybody Liked It: Collective Memories of Early Flemish Television Fiction. Particip@tions, 3, 1. http://www.participations.org.vol ume3/issue1/3_01_dhoest.htm. Dhoest, A. (2007). Identifying with the Nation: Viewer Memories of Flemish TV Fiction. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1), 55–73. Dvoráková, T. C. (2010). Marriages (Not only) of Convenience: History in Czech Television & Television in Czech history. In L. Cigognetti, L. Servetii, & P. Sorlin (Eds.), History on Television in Seven East Europe Countries (pp. 65–92). Centro Europe Direct Assemblea Legislativa: Emilio-Romagna. Godzic, W. (2016). Polish Docudrama: Finding a Balance Between Difficult and Easy Pleasures. In T. Ebbrecht-Hartmann & D. Paget (Eds.), Docudrama on European Television: A Selective Survey (pp. 53–78). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gray, A., & Bell, E. (2013). History on Television. London: Routledge. de Groot, J. (2009). Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Culture. London: Routledge. Hansen, K. T. (2016). Modtagelsen af 1864 uden for Danmark. Et nationalt epos for et internationalt publikum. In K. T. Hansen (Ed.), TV-serien, historien, kritikken (pp. 307–327). Aalborg: Aalborg Universitetsforlag. Hickethier, K. (1980). Das Fernsehspiel der Bundesrepublik: Themen, Form, Strukture, Theorie und Geschichte (The Television Play of West Germany: Themes, Form, Structure, Theory and History). Stuttgart: J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung.

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Hjort, A. (1984). Når kvinder ser TV (When Women Watch TV) (PhD dissertation). University of Copenhagen. Jarausch, K., & Geyer, M. (2003). Shattered Past: Reconstructing German Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Jarecka, U. (2010). Televising History in Polish Television. In L. Cigognetti, L. Servetii, & S. Pierre (Eds.), History on Television in Seven East Europe Countries (pp. 93–124). Centro Europe Direct Assemblea Legislativa: EmilioRomagna. Landsberg, A. (2015). Engaging the Past: Mass Culture and the Production of Historical Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press. Leggott, J., & Taddeo, J. A. (Eds.). (2015). Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama from the Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. New York Times. (2000, October 9). One Germany. Editorial. Nichols, B. (2001). Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Pastor-Gonzáles, V. (2016). Spanish Docudrama: Of Heroes and Celebrities. In T. Ebbrecht-Hartmann & P. Derek (Eds.), Docudrama on European Television: A Selective Survey (pp. 135–166). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rosenstone, R. A. (2006). History on Film/Film on History. Harlow: PearsonLongman. Smith, P. J. (2006). Television in Spain: From Franco to Almodovar. New York: Tamesis. Stankiewicz, D. (2017). Europe UN-Imagined: Nation and Culture at a FrenchGerman Television Channel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Steemers, J. (2004). Selling Television: British Television in the Global Marketplace. London: BFI. Weissmann, E. (2012). Transnational Television Drama: Special Relations and Mutual Influence Between the US and UK. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 4

The Meaning of Small Things: Everyday Drama and History from Below

In his book, The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times (2006), Jeffrey Goldfarb argues that one of the foundations of society, democracy and historical development is the shape and form of our daily life. It is about the historical importance of our individual life on a day-to-day basis and the way we interact with our family and our close groups and networks. The bigger structural and institutional dimensions of history, politics, economy and tragic events are of course central and often dominant in historical accounts and documentary formats. But in our understanding of history and in the way we create historical narratives, everyday life and the world of small things and mundane reality ought to be just as important: In our daily lives, the forces of history are present. Economic conditions determine personal destiny. Political order shapes intimate relationships. Religious developments form individual character. But there is another side to this matter. Daily life shapes the economy, the polity, and civilization itself … When people freely meet and talk to each other as equals, reveal their differences, display their distinctions, and develop a capacity to act together, they create power. (Goldfarb 2006: 1 and 4)

In his book Goldfarb looks at historical moments of transformation like 1968 and 1989, historical moments and developments I also deal with © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_4

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in this book (see Chapters 9 and 10). These big historical moments of change are also shaped by people acting together, by the power of everyday life, and historically such events to a large degree get their energy from needs of transformation of everyday life, from all the small things and structures that stand in the way of the good life. The series analyzed in this and the following chapters confirm Goldfarb’s thesis in the sense that most fictional series or docudramas tend to see history from a perspective involving individual characters, families, groups and networks. Historical reality comes alive not just through seeing the fundamental contours of a historical reality, but also by identifying with characters and seeing with their eyes, thus also feeling history. This dimension is central in connection both with docudramas combining reconstructed lives of real characters with historical events, and with fictional, historical dramas dealing with large-scale history or the history of a smaller everyday reality. Even in period dramas or biopics that deal with large-scale history, with national or world politics, or in factual documentaries telling and showing us the more institutional and ideological sides of history, the more ordinary, mundane and everyday history often acts as a context. There is a strong tendency in most historical European TV series analyzed in this book to get closer to the lives of ordinary people, and to point to the smaller things behind the often large and very catastrophic realities. Even the evil and catastrophic parts of our history have a human dimension of some sort. As Goldfarb points out, this approach can be credited to Hannah Arendt (1958) and Erwin Goffmann (1959), the first through her study of psychology and morality in connection with evil, the second for his intense study of how individuals present themselves and interact in daily life—an ethnography of human interaction and communication. There is also a much wider historical, ethnographic and sociological theory behind this way of understanding everyday life in a historical and contemporary perspective, as has been demonstrated by, for instance, Ben Highmore in Ordinary Lives: Studies in the Everyday (2011). Dating back to such things as mass observation or the ethnographic study of how people lived and worked in different historical periods, a focus on ordinary life underlines the fact that history is also played out through routines and repetitive structures in family and work, in fact most of our historical time is dedicated to such activities. Everyday life, the small ordinary things can be described as a thick mass in history that probably moves much more slowly than other historical forces. Also everyday life and the ordinary

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undergo historical change, and if we want to understand the deeper layers and connections of history, the ordinary and the everyday is important.

The Embodiment of History I have already (Chapter 2) argued for the concept of embodied mind and the implications this theory has for our memory and mediated forms of history. Memory works on several levels and it builds on factual knowledge of history, personal memory and those forms of mediated history, for instance through TV, that link personal memories with more collective memories that we share with others. History, like all other things human engage in, is very much embodied through our memory. Historical narratives speak to those deeper layers of individual and collective memory that we all have. Through everyday life characters’ historical reality takes a very concrete, human form. Therefore, historical narratives embody history for us, bring the past closer to us, even when it is very different from our own past and present. It would probably be easy for a historian or sociologist to create a factual documentary about how life was in London’s East End in the 1950s, based on statistics and footage from that period, maybe even statements from people who lived there. Such programmes are of course extremely important for our historical mind, they speak to our semantic memory, our factual historical knowledge. However, there is a reason for the transnational popularity of the long-running British series Call the Midwife (2012–). Here British history and everyday life among the poorest is embodied through a group of midwives and their visits and connections with women, children and families in this post-war workingclass reality. The midwives and the working-class women also embody women’s history. It is everyday history at its best, showing us the basics of classes and social life in a dark and troubled neighbourhood before modern social welfare really kicked in. The embodiment of history in narratives can take different forms. A war drama like Das Boot (The submarine) (1981) simply creates this embodied feeling of history by locking the viewer into everyday life onboard a German submarine, stripping away all heroic layers and focusing on the tough everyday reality of war. In other German series, such as Peter Steinbach’s Liebesau. Die andere Heimat (2001), we follow life in the fictional DDR village Liebesau from 1953 to 1989, played by former well-known GDR actors who had lived through that period.

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However, the two series most in focus in this chapter are Edgar Reitz’s monumental German series Heimat I (1984, 11 episodes) and Peter Moffat’s British series The Village I –II (2013–2014). Even though they are different on many levels, they share an ambition of telling twentiethcentury national and European history from the perspective of everyday life in a small, regional village. Reitz tells German history from 1919 to 1982 and develops an aesthetic for combining the ordinary and everyday life and the big structures of history. We are in a very small village (Schabbach) in Germany and all characters and networks, and all the big and small events are somehow connected with this symbolic middle of the world. Peter Moffat’s series is set in a small fictional Derbyshire village, and we follow a struggling farming family as they go through a slow transformation of their life, experiencing dramatic historical changes between 1914 and 1930. Moffat has explicitly stated (Gilbert 2013) that he wanted to create “A British Heimat ”, far removed from the normal heritage drama look at the past (see Leggott and Taddeo 2015). Just as Reitz uses one of the characters in Schabbach as narrator and link between episodes, Moffat also uses a character in the story as the narrator, the 100year-old Ben looking back at his life and times at the beginning of each episode.

Heimat: A Reflexive and Symbolic Narrative of Everyday Life Reitz’s monumental Heimat project (Heimat 1, 2 and 3, which will be analyzed in different chapters in this book), telling the story of Germany between 1919 and 2000) and Die Andere Heimat (2013), which takes us back to the same spot in the nineteenth century, is clearly a project with a personal background. It is also a project combining history from a German provincial and everyday life perspective with at the same time a more universal and global perspective. It is slow, everyday family microhistory combined with grand, structural historical changes and embedded in German literature, music and philosophy. It is a story of the slow movements of human existence and everyday life, of the most basic human emotions and way of life that unifies us across national differences. It is at the same time a symbolic story of German and European culture, and all the dramatic changes during the century, all the things that have shaped and changed our societies and way of life.

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Edgar Reitz was born in the small German village of Morbach in Hunsrück in November 1932, and the experience of Nazism and World War II in his childhood and teenage years were formative for his later career as a filmmaker. He was strongly influenced by the modernization of German democracy and culture from the 1960s onwards, the division of Germany, the generational conflicts and the Left–Right controversies over Germany’s past and present. During his studies in Munich from 1952 he became part of a group of filmmakers, the Oberhausen Group, and the Oberhausen Manifesto of 1962 with the popular slogan “Papas Kino ist tot ” (Dad’s Cinema is Dead), was a starting point for what became the New German Cinema (see Elsaesser 1989). The avant-garde position from those years is still very much alive in Heimat 1–3, especially in Heimat 2–3, where we follow the young Hermann in Munich and Berlin with the avant-garde and the youth rebellion in the 1960s (see Chapters 9 and 10). Heimat 1, originally called Heimat – Eine Deutsche Chronic (Heimat – A German chronicle), takes place between 1919 and 1982, and covers the longest stretch of time of the Heimat narratives. It is clearly a very personal story, a story of Hermann, an intellectual and artist growing up in a tiny, provincial German village, a story where a local provincial mind and experience meets a cosmopolitan mind and global reality. It is also the story of Paul (married to Maria, Hermann’s mother) who left for the US and became a big industrialist, and Hermann’s halfbrothers Anton, who became the local capitalist, and Ernst, who never found rest anywhere. Throughout Reitz’s Heimat project a longing out of ‘Heimat’, a wish to conquer a new and broader cultural and social reality, is mixed with an ambivalent feeling of home and memories of a past belonging. The main character in the Heimat project, Reitz’s alter ego, Hermann Simon, the internationally recognized composer, is embedded in a large-scale network of family stories and links to German history in a broader context. The entry to history through the personal, through family history, through a strongly visualized memory of home, is part of an explicit strategy that came out of the impact of the American TV series Holocaust in 1978 on the German public. The broadcasting of this series was a huge media event in Germany, and its impact on the general public challenged the representatives of the New German Cinema and their avant-garde ideology, and became one of the main reasons for embarking on the Heimat project.

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For the new generation of filmmakers to which Reitz belonged there were two challenges: on the one hand, the traditional German cinema and especially the popular Heimat films that celebrated a traditional rural Germany; on the other hand, the dominant American film and television tradition. The Heimat films (see Von Molkte 2005) had dominated German film culture and had been extremely popular with a large audience. At the same time both national film and television, especially documentaries, and international film and television had dealt rather intensely with World War II, the Holocaust and Germans as both perpetrators and victims. Seen from the perspective of the New German Cinema generation, the role of the past in contemporary German society was not a strong issue on the public agenda. It was therefore a huge event when the American TV mini-series in four parts, Holocaust , was broadcast in Germany in April 1978. The mini-series had some well-known Hollywood stars, among them Meryl Streep, cast in the role of the daughter of a Jewish family in Berlin. In the series we follow both this Jewish family and a German family turning to Nazism as things develop towards a Nazi takeover, war and the Holocaust. It is a classic Hollywood melodrama with focus on family and characters as part of a historical past, but told with due realism and care for the historical facts. Before the German and European broadcast of the series, critics and representatives of the American Jewish community had criticized the series publicly. Eli Wiesel, himself a Holocaust survivor, denounced the series as trivializing history, as emotional kitsch and as a bad mixture of semi-facts and semi-fiction. He called the series a soap opera and expressed a strong revulsion at this turning “an ontological event into a show” (Wiesel 1978). In the US broadcast of the series, the mixing of commercials with concentration-camp scenes during commercial breaks added another dimension to Wiesel’s criticism. As Anton Kaes points out (Kaes 1989: 28–29), Wiesel’s probably pretty much covers the initial reactions of the German Left and the New German Cinema generation. However, in the weeks following the German broadcast of the series, it became a massive public event and part of a wide-ranging debate about the German past. Approximately 20 million viewers tuned in and followed all episodes, and more than 30,000 phone calls were made to the broadcaster WDR, who also received thousands of letters. All major radio stations, newspapers and magazines in West Germany received letters or calls from readers, and the theme of Holocaust and the role of Germans

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as perpetrators was a subject of public discourse in a way not seen before. Der Spiegel seemed to summarize what many were thinking: An American television series, made in a trivial style, produced more for commercial than moral reasons, more for entertainment than enlightenment, accomplished what hundreds of books, plays, films and television programs, thousands of documents, and all the concentration camp trials have failed to do in the more than three decades since the end of the war: to inform Germans about crimes against Jews committed in their name so that millions were emotionally touched and moved. (Höhne 1979: 22)

The reaction of the German audience to Holocaust seems to confirm what theories of memory and social cognition tell us: that character-driven narratives have an emotional power that challenge more reason- and factbased understandings of historical knowledge and our memory of the past (Bruner 2002; Gottschall 2012). Character and empathy play an important role also for our reason, and in fact emotion and reason are not ontologically opposites—they work together (Damasio 1994). Fictional, historical narratives or indeed dramatization of factual historical presentations exert a very powerful grip on audiences. This does not diminish the important role of factual history and research, nor of documentary, but it may explain why humans react as they do to character-driven historical narratives (van Dijck 2007: 31): “the brain is thus the generator of reflexes, responses, drives, emotions and ultimately, feelings; memory involves both the perception of a certain body state and a certain mind state.” The theoretical point made in cognitive studies of narratives and memory has a clear relation to the debate among intellectuals and filmmakers following the Holocaust event. Günter Rohrbach, the director of WDR’s entertainment section, directly stated that this event changed television in Germany forever, and that the neat and easy division between high culture and low culture could not be sustained (Kaes 1989: 31). Influential critics like Marion Dönhoff (Die Zeit ) or Sabina Lietzmann (Frankfurter Allgemeine) attacked the sharp division often made by film critics between avant-garde and mainstream. They both argued for a more neutral, functional dimension in discussions of film and television, not just an aesthetic verdict based on certain normative taste parameters. For Edgar Reitz the Holocaust moment was also a clear wake-up call. Starting from his feeling of how the commercial, Hollywood aesthetic

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had taken “charge of German history”, and even the feeling of having been “ripped of our own German history” (Kaes 1989: 34), he gradually developed a more constructive response. Reitz’s Heimat project was a response to Holocaust , an attempt to take German history back, but in a different way. Reitz’s response is one of the most impressive attempts to transform a generation’s understanding and feeling for past and present, a transformative narrative, where also Reitz developed his understanding of film as a narrative and aesthetic medium. One of the intentions of the whole Heimat project was to create a fictional narrative universe that put strong emphasis on the development of everyday life over more than 200 years, putting personal and family life firmly at the centre of historical development. Film and art in general are important, not just because art can recreate and make us experience a living reality, past or present, in a form that sensually triggers memories and emotions, but also because they make us reflect on how our own reality and the reality on the screen are related. Reitz’s Heimat project carries a vision of transforming generations of Germans by confronting them with a multi-layered, visual narrative. In an article in 1979 (Reitz 1979), Reitz talked about the necessity of working with our memories and the everyday dimension: If we are to come to terms with the Third Reich and the crimes committed in our country, it has to be by the same means we use the everyday to take stock of the world we live in. We suffer from a hopeless lack of meaningfully communicated experience. One should put an end to thinking in categories in this respect, even where this terrible part of our history is concerned. As far as possible we must work on our memories. This way film, literature, images come into being that bring us to our senses and restore our reflexes. (Reitz 1979, quoted in Elsaesser 1989: 272)

Reitz’s project succeeded, especially in the case of Heimat 1 (1984), in creating a huge public and international debate, with both very critical and very positive voices. But his project perhaps also points to the increasing role of film and television as places of collective memory shaping and stronger historical reflexivity. At least Wulf Kansteiner, in In Pursuit of German Memory (2006), dealing with television and politics after Auschwitz, says the following:

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Since the consumption of history becomes more and more discontinuous and fragmented in time and space, communities of memory might only rarely be constituted on the basis of shared interpretations of specific events. Increasingly consumers are only linked through the media that they access individually and very selectively. Consequently, the media, their structure, and the rituals of consumption they underwrite might be the most important shared component of people’s historical consciousness, although this non-confrontational, semiconscious, non-referential and decentralized process is extremely difficult to reconstruct after the fact. (Kansteiner 2006: 25)

What this quotation from Kansteiner clearly defines is the rise of the importance of mediated cultural encounters in contemporary societies. The public sphere is no longer so much constituted by physical collective spaces. We experience past and present through individual media use, which then feed into the shaping of our individual and collective memory.

Heimat 1: A Symbolic and Realist Story of Home and the World Beyond Reitz had learned from Holocaust in the sense that he had discovered the importance of character identification, of narrative structures, memories, imagination and emotions. His Heimat project was, however, also conceived as an alternative to the way Hollywood created stories. Reitz wanted to create European stories, stories from below, with emphasis on the local and everyday life as it is interwoven with the processes of larger historical developments and modernization. By focusing on everyday life, he wanted to stress the slowness and thickness of the experiences we live in. He retained his scepticism of linear narratives and too much action-driven storytelling and the forms of emotionality linked to it. In an interview around the first German broadcast of Heimat 1 he talked about how commercial scriptwriters could develop scenes and characters to embody and illustrate ideas or developments and what he called narratives of experiences. With special reference to mainstream American narratives he stated: These TV series are also stories about families. I myself am amazed at how effective the family is as a narrative element. As soon as the family is the connecting element there is a great attentiveness on the part of the viewers, even in a world like ours, in which the family as an institution is

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endangered. But that’s about all, because Dallas and Dynasty, like many other standard products are made according to totally different rules and above all, they are not personal. (Reitz, 1979: 21–22, quoted in Elsaesser 1989: 272)

It seems that what Reitz is trying to do with his alternative narrative project is to take narrative and the emotional dimension of storytelling quite seriously, in one sense to learn from the success of Holocaust . He accepts how important personal, individual and collective family memories are for our understanding of the past and the present. He speaks of the need to develop an alternative narrative strategy based on not just events, actions and efficient narrative drives, but on “experiences … tied to human beings and their faculty of memory … subjectivity and uniqueness” (Reitz 1979, quoted in Elsaesser 1989: 272). The title sequence of all episodes of Heimat 1 shows a dramatically coloured rural German landscape and in the front a huge rock with the inscription ‘Made in Germany’. This is of course an ironic message to Holocaust and the American dominance of Europe, but the sequence also has a critical edge against national, German Heimat kitsch. The dramatic moving clouds and skies over the rock also signal that historical developments have changed the German Heimat forever. In his book The Ethics of Memory (2002), the Jewish philosopher Avishai Margalit makes a useful distinction between what he calls thick and thin human relations (Margalit 2002: 7). Thick relations are basically relations you have with family or other close friends and relatives, often anchored in a shared past and memories. Thin relations are relations with more distant others with whom we share a less concrete relation because we have something in common as human beings. In his book Margalit talks about “memory as the cement that holds thick relations together” and in that sense he defines an ethics of memory related to such “communities of memory” (Margalit 2002: 8). The ethics of memory is tied to the fact that societies have institutions and policies on how and what to forget and what to remember, policies and institutions that can be changed and develop new strategies. For democracies in particular it is important to have an open and very reflexive strategy for this, and one aspect that distinguishes authoritarian or traditionalistic societies and memory communities is the obvious fact that non-democratic societies are very eager to control memory and have a monopoly of ways to express and access knowledge and narratives of the past (Margalit 2002: 11).

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There is a link between Margalit’s theory of memory and ethics and Reitz’s Heimat project in the sense that Reitz’s use of narrative memory triggers (for instance photos) to focus on family and everyday life directly cuts into what Margalit calls thick relations. It is through those thick relations, the individual and personal, the family nucleus, that the narrative is trying to take us from the personal and family memories to the bigger structures of historical change. As Margalit points out, there is an element of nostalgia and potential traditionalism in such an approach, which is contrasted with a historical approach that tries to avoid relying too much on specific shared memories of the past and instead is constantly looking for alternative ways of seeing and understanding history (Margalit 2002: 60–61). Even though some critics denounced Heimat as a whitewash of the German past, for not speaking critically about the Nazi atrocities (see Ash 1985) or for being nostalgic, Reitz was from the start very direct and clear about what his project did and did not do. He wanted to study how people could keep on living through all that, he wanted to describe the thickness of everyday life and families against questions connected with big history. His approach was not primarily critical and moral: I think there is a certain anarchic element in the nature of man and society, a principle of living-in-spite-of-everything-under-all-circumstances. And I wanted to study something like this. … the small everyday things, which affect the majority of the people, do not appear in the history books. (Reitz in Birgel 1986: 7)

In the opening of the almost four-hour-long film prequel to the Heimat project, Die andere Heimat . Eine Chronik von Sehnsuch (The Other Heimat. A Chronicle of Longing) (2013), we are back in the years around 1842–1844 and the same little village, Schabbach. As the camera pans around in the narrow streets and houses of this village, just like in the 1984 Heimat series, the focus is not initially on home as a nostalgic place, something to long for. On the contrary, in one of the first scenes the young Jakob Simon, an ancestor of the later Simons, is literally kicked out of the home by his agitated father because he reads and dreams too much and doesn’t take part in the daily work. While this happens, the narrative is following people who leave and emigrate to South America, and visually Jakob’s reading of a book about South America is illustrating his longing to get out of the village. A poetic montage of letters and images is superimposed on his face, just as we see the wide horizon outside the

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village with lines of carriages leaving. On the other hand, Jakob’s longing to get out is contrasted with the homecoming of his older brother from military service. In a symbolic reference to the same homecoming scene in Heimat 1 we see him taking his seat at the table with a sigh of relief and satisfaction on his face. Clearly the portrait of home/Heimat is very ambivalent in the whole Heimat project, as Reitz has explained in several statements and interviews: Heimat is both—as in the romantic tradition—a place of heritage, poetry, dreams, utopias and longings, and it is the practical, very nonromantic everyday life with a quite narrow horizon: In our German culture there is hardly a more ambivalent feeling, hardly a more terrible mixture of happiness and brutality than the experience behind the word Heimat … Heimat is such that if one goes closer to it, one would discover that at the moment of arrival it is gone, it has dissolved into nothingness. (Reitz quoted in Birgel 1986: 4–5)

In Die andere Heimat , Jakob is caught up in the village, his dreams never come true. But in the process of the film’s narrative we witness profound changes related to the first signs of democracy, and the rebellion against a very hierarchic and authoritarian society. In the final scene of the film, technicians arrive to measure the landscape around Schabbach in order to start the building of a new road that will eventually link the village more directly to general social development and modernization. This principle of building a narrative based on the thick relations of family and everyday life, related to overarching historical changes and transformations that structurally contextualize the everyday life is continued throughout the Heimat project. So is the very ambivalent and complex emotional, social and cultural relation to the concept of family and home. In Heimat 1 the homecoming scene where Paul Simon returns to Schabbach after World War I clearly illustrates this ambivalent feeling of home. The first scenes are shot in a stunning montage of very long shots from the village of a man returning, intertwined with close-up shots from the inside of the village and tracking shots following the approach from Paul’s perspective. So home is in one and the same row of sequences seen from a far distance, from an outsider’s approaching perspective, and from the insider’s very restricted vision. By the very symbolic use of colour and black and white during the whole series, Reitz also manages to describe the home from both a very grey realistic perspective and a more emotional

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nostalgic one. In the opening scene where Paul arrives, black and white dominates, but suddenly the red flames of the forge of his father lights up as Paul quite naturally joins in and works with his father as if they had never been apart. This shift from black and white to colour is also repeated in the kitchen scene where colours light up as Paul looks round. However, in this first episode of Heimat 1 the negative connotations of home are also clearly thematized, not least in Paul’s sudden disappearance from his family after having married and become the father of two sons, Anton and Ernst. With Hermann—a later child of Maria and Otto—the lives of these three sons become symbols of different trends in German history. Paul’s disappearance visually repeats his homecoming at the beginning of the episode, but this time seen from inside and out, and with a very meaningful shot at the end of a fox caught in a trap. Paul, who later returns as a wealthy businessman from America, together with his eldest son Anton, encapsulates the whole post-war Wirtschaftswunder in Germany and the rise of the consumer society. Episode 1 is characteristically entitled “Fernweh (Longing out)” and focuses on the very thick and realistic dimensions of everyday life in a little village—a clear form of everyday realism. Reitz, however, also manages to insert broader symbolic and historical layers in his narrative. Out of this everyday life grows an image of a culture that is also extremely closed around a traditionalistic core of unspoken norms and rituals. Through the story of a French refugee woman (Appolonia) in the village we learn about the hostility towards strangers, and forms of national chauvinism are clearly demonstrated through the fight over the building of a war memorial. Reitz also uses a rather interesting narrator, the handicapped village fool Glasich. By choosing an outsider and letting his voice and perspective dominate our view of the village, for instance when recapitulating the previous episode using photos from a family album, he establishes a clear distance from a nostalgic view. This becomes quite evident in later episodes, where most of the village gradually becomes part of the Nazi movement, which then in a quite perverted way is just turned into another chapter in the interaction between structures inside the local community and structures from the outside. The outside look at the village, or the ‘longing out’, is also clearly shown or expressed through the role of technology: Paul’s longing out is expressed through his obsession with all kinds of technology, especially communication and transport. In the loft of the family house he experiments with and succeeds in building a radio.

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The world outside the village appears in the village establishing a localnational-global axis to which the series repeatedly returns. The story of Hermann repeats on a much larger and more radical scale Anton’s break with the local everyday life of the village. In Hermann’s case music is his road to a more global modernity. The relation between Heimat and non-Heimat is developed throughout the whole Heimat project, and in a way Heimat 1 is a narrative that reflects the history of a family and a nation. Not only does German society in this period between 1919 and 1982 go through dramatic periods of disruption and gradual reconstruction, but in Paul’s story and the stories of his sons, the whole Heimat concept is critically and reflexively dealt with. Anton becomes the symbol of tradition, the one who stays and becomes ever fatter and richer, the embodiment of the German capitalism. Ernst is the adventurer, a pilot, but also a corrupt person who uses his surroundings and uses Heimat kitsch as part of a commercial venture. Hermann is the artist and the intellectual who fundamentally breaks with his Heimat —and yet deep down, it seems, is longing back. Hermann’s break with home is shown in episode 9 (“Hermännchen”), the story of his love affair with the older Klärchen and the beginning of his development as a composer, both aspects not really appreciated by his family. His ambivalent longing back, but also the deeply ambivalent relation with the old Heimat and the new Germany is shown in the last episode (11) of Heimat 1, “Das Fest der Lebende und Tote” (The Celebration of the Living and the Dead), where all the family members reunite around Maria’s (the mother of the three sons) funeral (Fig. 4.1). This last episode of Heimat 1 is the most surreal and symbolic episode of them all. Hermann is late arriving for the funeral and nearly drives his car into his mother’s coffin, which has been left in the middle of the road because of very heavy rain and thunder. But the funeral also takes place at the same time as the annual market feast in the village. Here the sons and their father meet up and get drunk, nostalgic and sentimental over their life, and the fact that death is coming closer. Eventually the whole scene is turned into a meeting between the dead, coming to life in the village hall, and the living, joining hands on the market square in a medieval chain dance, where the shadows of the dancing are grotesquely enlarged and reflected on the house walls. Scenes from everyday life past and present, among the living and the dead, are united in this symbolic representation of history and memories from more than 70 years.

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Fig. 4.1 In the last episode of Heimat 1 (1984), “The celebration of the living and the dead”, Reitz creates a symbolic universe, where the line between past and present is thin. Maria (Marita Breuer) almost looks like an angel as she enters the village meeting hall and joins all the other dead. The living try to look in from the outside, while the dead actually see and comment on the living outside (Screenshot by author)

The other important symbolic narrative following this medieval carnival is the broadcasting of the new work of the returned Hermann, who for the first time demonstrates how sounds and stories from his Heimat can be used as inspiration for and transformed into a modern choral work. Glasich, who dies early on in this last episode, is one of Hermann’s key sources of local sounds and stories. It is very telling that part of the lyrics of the choral work are: “Upstairs and downstairs, outdoors and indoors, above and below, far and near, you and me, yours and mine, godfather and godmother, yes even in heaven they speak ‘hundsrücker platdeutsch’.” These are the words of Glasich, the other outsider in the series, and it signals integration of past and present, the local and the global. In an almost too Freudian sense, this musical work is broadcast from a cave deep below Schabbach. Reitz uses the cables connecting the

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broadcasting unit above the earth as umbilical cords: Herman is above in the control room, but the camera moves from the surface to the recording down in the cave. It is a symbolic linking of past and present. The cables are gigantic symbols of links between the present, and individual and collective memories. With his music Hermann performs a rebirth, so to speak, and renews the connection with his past which he so strongly rejected in episode 9, a rejection which is even stronger in episode 1 of Heimat II , where his childhood home and surroundings are literally and symbolically destroyed (see Chapter 9). The very last sequences of Heimat 1 repeat the narrative and visual patterns of the beginning of the first episode, when Hermann’s father Paul first arrives home and then leaves again. But there is a very significant change in the ways it is done visually. The camera movements signal Hermann’s integration in a modernized reality, although with a more relaxed and reflexive relation to the Heimat he left and rejected so dramatically. His father Paul in episode 1 arrives from a far horizon to a waiting camera, and then disappears into the far horizon again. But Hermann in the last episode is not physically moving, he is in his recording unit all the time. Through a fast-tracking camera movement away from him, which ends the series, the camera leaves him there, standing in the open door of the unit. The camera looks at Hermann from a greater and greater distance, and since he is near the village, the camera leaves him in this unit near the village. But Hermann is looking in the direction of the camera as it moves away and is thus looking away from the village into the far horizon. Symbolically this means that he is at the same time home and not home. He is performing a choral work and connected to his home ‘cave’ via cables, a choral work building on elements from his local home culture, but his work is also based on very modern, international global formats, and it is based on and transmitted via a technology that can in fact combine any place with any other place. The global and the local have merged in new ways. Here we are at the core of the narrative and symbolic message of Reitz’s Heimat project: the local and national should not be antagonistic to globalization. There is a symbolic attempt here to create a new, open and global understanding of Heimat. Not the closed world of home, but home as important for individuals and societies or social groups and communities. Home is a background we need to come to terms with the past, to keep memories and narratives of the past alive, at the same time as we need to develop out of and beyond our original home. The story Reitz

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tells in his Heimat project is certainly not the whole story of contemporary Germany—but who can tell the whole story? The story he tells is a story based on everyday life history, the thick and slow-changing history we all live in. It is, for instance, not the political story of Germany in any detail, it is not a story that seeks to explain and understand the atrocities of World War II, the Holocaust and Germans as perpetrators. It is a story that tries to understand how German everyday life has been transformed both from within and from the outside under the influence of social, political and technological changes, and processes of globalization.

Reitz and the Visual and Narrative Language of Memory Reitz in many ways revised his concept of the importance of narrative, identification and focusing on individual and collective stories around families. However, he certainly did not forget his symbolic visual style and his special reflexive way of creating webs of memories and telling largescale history through network of smaller stories and incidents. For Reitz and other directors and scriptwriters in the tradition of everyday drama, history was basically a network of narratives told by people through time. This was the kind of narrative and world of memories Reitz was aiming at telling in response to more traditional, linear forms of narrative. It was not his intention to forget or deny German history between 1919 and 1982 as a story of atrocities and terrible political ideologies and movements. It was a way of getting deeper than the moral guilt narratives, to the bottom of how such things could happen while life somehow also went on and resumed afterwards. It is a sign of this that Reitz and his co-author on Heimat 1 spent a lot of time in the village Woppenroth in Hunsrück, where most of the series was shot, and that they used many people from the village in the film and based some of the stories on their memories. In a wide-ranging interview with Reitz (Birgel 1986), he makes the case for his use of oral and local history as opposed to many of the documentary ways of dealing with the official history or the classical fictional narratives: For many years we have been encountering these clever people who say that the Nazis are “the others.” They themselves are, so to speak, morally in good position. I find it is neither a sufficient nor an intellectual position to be only moral, to place oneself on the side of the morally good and by criticism only understand the moral evil. That would mean that these many

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millions of people wanted in one way or another what happened there … which makes an entire nation into criminals. I can’t believe that … I think this Nazi Reich was possible because the moral question does not play that role in the lives of people which we think it does … I think there is a certain anarchic element in the nature of man and society, a principle of living-in-spite of everything under all conceivable circumstances … In the history books the lives of the mighty, the great wars, battles, great disasters are described. But the small everyday things which affect the majority do not appear in history books, and their testimonies and sources are not collected, preserved and handed down. The only thing we have is what we carry in our memory, these private testimonies, these documents usually do not go beyond the family, and these sources disappear along with the people whose lives are documented there. (Reitz in Birgel 1986: 7)

The quote illustrates this search for an everyday reality, for the memories and stories of the people involved in the series in the way the big historical events are systematically downplayed or pushed to the margins of the narrative, or seen from a quite local perspective. At the same time Reitz uses a rather spectacular form of visual symbolism in order to make subjective visions and memories stand out. Communication technologies are used throughout the series as another way of connecting the local and the global—technology and its role in everyday life is in a way given priority over historical events. As we have already seen, this is very much the case in Glasich’s role as narrator (photo), Paul’s story (radio) and Hermann’s story (electronics and music). But there is another strong visual component in the use of subjective vision and continuous shifts from black and white to colour. This visual dimension of the series points towards not just memories but also dreams, longings and deeper emotional layers of the characters (Fig. 4.2). The visual symbolism and the shift between black and white and colour, and between point of view, is also very powerful when it comes to the main opposition in the series: the opposition between the longing for home, and the just as strong feeling of home as a closed repressive place. This dimension is clearly most visible in the stories of Paul, Anton and Hermann, and this means that the women, especially in Heimat 1, represent this dual function of Heimat, whereas the women in the later seasons also follow the path of post-war liberation. This comes out strongly in the very emotional and symbolic episode 9, which takes place in 1955 and tells the story of Hermann’s love for Klärchen, and the break with his family this love story causes.

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Fig. 4.2 In Heimat 1, as in the following seasons of the series, Reitz experiments with monochrome realism and colour, often with strong emotional effect. This scene from episode 9 focuses on the love story between Hermann (Jörg Richter) and Klärchen (Gudrun Landgrebe). The scene opens in monochrome but switches to colour, as in a romantic painting (Screenshot by author)

In the opening sequences Glasich tells the story of Paul, Anton and Ernst through black-and-white photos, ending with Hermann and all the family expectations about him. Then in a swift camera movement we are suddenly in a hilly German landscape, where Hermann is on a biking holiday in this beautiful, almost dreamlike place with Ernst’s helicopter flying over the landscape. This nostalgic ‘painting’ of Heimat is contrasted with Hermann’s song in the tent, a sad and melancholy modern song about being alone and a stranger. The episode is also characterized by young people searching for love, sex and a new identity and by images of the new post-war industrial miracle. But there is a clear opposition between a more open, cosmopolitan, modern youth culture and the traditional German Heimat culture. This theme is carried forward

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by Hermann’s experimental music and by the strong and sensual relationship between Klärchen and Hermann. Hermann’s sexual debut with both Klärchen and her friend Lottie stands in contrast to the rather vulgar party organized by Anton, which makes Hermann sick, and the scene with Klärchen and Lottie is visually marked with a shift from colour to black and white, a shift that underlines the poetic intensity of the scene as opposed to Anton’s party. The following morning, he is fast asleep, too late for school, and rushes out pursued by his mother’s words “You are no longer yourself”. This is the start of Hermann’s exodus from Heimat, and of a changing perspective on Maria as the central mother figure and almost the embodiment of home. Where she has earlier visually been portrayed as almost the centre of the world, of all the good and caring, she is now clearly symbolically transformed into the morally restrictive and narrow-minded Heimat figure. The scenes between Klärchen and Hermann are visually described as romantic (with direct reference to Goethe and the paintings of Casper David Friedrich) and at the same time the relationship is directly sensual and physical, involving also activities like dancing, all things Maria regards as wrong and decadent. But the relationship also boosts Hermann’s creative talents for both music and writing or reading poetry. In a very poetic scene (original film script, Reitz and Steinbach’s 1985: 452f) we see Hermann and Klärchen walking over a meadow (in black and white), Klärchen with her hand on his penis through his pockets while telling him a sensual dream. Then for a moment, the images change to colour, and suddenly they literally march towards the full moon. Of course, Hermann’s forbidden and partly secret love cannot endure. The parting scene is a masterpiece of visual narration. Sitting in an icecold car, its windows almost frozen over, Hermann waves goodbye to Klärchen through a tiny hole in the ice. The whole scene is then literally closed by a shot of Anton’s brutal letter to Klärchen, then changes to a picture of an angry Anton, arms crossed in front of his factory. Then there is a pan over the village, ending on the church where Hermann in wild protest and anger is playing the organ. It all comes to this, because a letter Klärchen has sent to Hermann falls into Maria’s hands. Hermann’s total emotional break with his Heimat is illustrated by a scene where Klärchen’s letter lies open in Maria’s kitchen, and as she reads the letter off screen, the camera goes on a visual tour round the kitchen which throughout the series has represented the centre of the world, but has now become a too narrow space for the love, life and aspirations Hermann represents.

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The international and especially the German reception of Heimat 1 shows that the way Reitz told this story was important, that it could function as a transformative narrative in the national context, precisely because it took the everyday life route, and a form and film language that was an alternative to the powerful American story of perpetrators and victims. However, both stories need to be told, in as many ways as possible. As already indicated, the popularity of Heimat 1 with a broad German audience was also followed by a sometimes very heated debate over the series, especially the episodes dealing with the Nazi period and with 1943 and 1944. In many ways the series managed to open up yet another kind of public engagement with the historical past and the relation between past and present, just as Holocaust had done. Even though Reitz’s Heimat project was conceived as an alternative to Holocaust , one might also see the two series and others as part of the broader historical and intellectual debate in Germany in the 1970s and 1980s, where Alltagsgeschichte was one of the key elements. As Kansteiner puts it: Media events such as The Diary of Anne Frank, Heimat, Holocaust and to a lesser extent Schindler’s List , as well as grassroots movements such as that of the history workshops in the 1970s, offered the audience or participants a tangible sense of historical and moral identity, on the audiences or the participants own terms. (Kansteiner 2006: 71)

Reitz’s Heimat project is thus a transformative narrative of enormous proportions, and even though he lost the large popular audience which followed Heimat 1 in his following series, the series is still a monumental work. His project shows that film and television can greatly influence not just public debate and collective imagination and memory, but can also flesh out philosophical, political, existential and historical issues in ways that theory and academic research cannot. Films and other visual narratives are embodied narrative forms that speak to our emotions and our minds in ways that create identification and reflections of another kind.

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The Village: The English Heimat Series with a Difference Reitz’s impressive Heimat project covers not just the twentieth century, but even parts of the nineteenth—most probably one of the most ambitious attempts at telling German and European everyday history. Peter Moffat’s explicit intention with The Village (2013–2014) was to create a series like Heimat, a series about everyday life in a small fictional Derbyshire village and the historical changes influencing it from 1914 onwards. The first season covers the years from 1914 to 1920, the second season just two years, 1923–1924, and it is uncertain whether the BBC will continue the series further into the twentieth century. Each of the seasons already produced and broadcast have six episodes each around 60 minutes, so compared to Reitz’s Heimat, this a much shorter everyday drama, but they have the same quite slow narrative pace, the tendency to dwell on everyday details and routines, rather than spectacular narrative and historical events. In this way of building a historical narrative there is a deviation from the very strong English tradition of upstairs-downstairs series. Where the life of the working class and the servants in such series is embedded in upper-class households, with few views of other forms of everyday life, the everyday format in The Village puts rural working-class families living and trying to make it on their own at the centre of the narrative (see also Byrne 2015: 137f). On the BBC’s website, the series is described thus: In the series the camera never leaves the village. Births, deaths. love and betrayal, great political events, upheavals in national identity, ways of working, rules kept and rebellions made, sex religion, class, the shaping of modern – all refracted through the lives of the villagers and the village. One man, Bert Middleton, lives across the entire hundred years and his life story from boyhood to extreme old age provide the narrative backbone. His last great act of remembering is our way into an examination of our recent past. (quoted in Byrne 2015: 138)

Just as the Simon family in Heimat is at the centre of the story, but is tied to a much larger network of different characters as the story develops, the poor Middleton farming family is the narrative core of The Village, and it is mainly from their perspective that we meet other people in the village. The narrator is Bert, the youngest son in the Middleton family, and his voice-over gives the viewer a specific framing and interpretation

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of the events. Like Hermann in Heimat he has a strong longing to get out into the world, and away from the small village world he lives in— but he never manages it. The same is even more tragically true of his brother Joe, who is torn between a desire to go to the big city and get an education and his demanding and stern father, who wants him to work on the farm. Characteristic of the role of women in the series, his mother Grace encourages him to seek a life of his own. But literally nobody from the village leaves it. Occasionally new things or people from the outside come to the village, but none of the main characters ever escape, there is neither a Paul nor a Hermann in this series. Gerard Eyre, the teacher and his later wife Martha Lane are the only ones leaving by choice, but he comes from the outside, and she is also an outsider. Unlike Heimat, where those who go to war in the family return, Joe, who works hard on their own farm and as a gardener on the Allingham estate—the local nobility—is killed in WW1. He is quite wrongly accused and shot as a deserter. The only thing he leaves behind is a child with the young Lady Allingham (Caro), one of the narrative conflicts crossing class lines in the story (Fig. 4.3).

Fig. 4.3 Peter Moffat wanted to create a British Heimat series with The Village. It has the same intention of narrating twentieth-century history through the lives of ordinary people in a small English village—and with working-class people as main characters. The opening title image indicates this by showing images changing between everyday history and the larger history (Screenshot by author)

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Where Heimat combines everyday realism with strong symbolic, poetic and reflexive dimensions, The Village sticks much more to intense and gritty realism, and it has a much more direct political and ideological edge in its class and gender perspective and in its focus on the rise of political democracy. This doesn’t mean that there is no visual celebration of the beauty of the landscape surrounding the village. Many poetic scenes take place here and in general the open landscape signals a longing out and is also a part of the longing home. But there is much less playing with the visual language and much more sticking to the hardness of life and the fight to make a living and defend your human dignity and independence. The fact that the camera never leaves the village area and the landscape around it, and that history is literally experienced from below and within is stressed in the series’ visual signature. Here we see the Middleton farm at the centre of a hilly landscape, where big clouds, most of them dark, rush from right to left, and inserted into this sky of fast-moving clouds, signalling forces of history influencing life in the village, we see scenes representing everyday life for men and women, new technologies arriving, soldiers marching to war, political gatherings, etc. The world of small things is directly linked to the world of bigger things, the world in there influenced by the world out there. The priority of small things in the narrative also becomes clear when Bert, the 100-year-old narrator, asks where we are in the story, and as a woman says “the summer of 1914”, his reaction is not to talk about the coming war, but “it was the summer the bus came”—with a big smile. We then go to a black-and-white photo of children waiting for the bus to arrive, described by Bert as a “solemn occasion”. The world outside brings new technology to the village and new ideas. We see the bus arriving, but as Bert says, nobody expected anyone to get off the bus. But arriving with it is the local minister’s daughter Martha Lane, who is a socialist and feminist. She brings turbulence and change to the whole village and even manages to influence the upper classes, represented by the Allinghams. As already mentioned, she is the first to leave the village to go to Africa and work as a teacher there, together with her husband Gerard, the local schoolteacher. But the change doesn’t just come from the outside, as Grace and the group of more ordinary women demonstrate. As Grace says to her husband, as she starts developing into a leader of the women working in the local boot factory (season 2, episode 1): “Something is going to change and it is us that are going to do it”. This is in strong opposition to Lady Allingham’s statement (season 1, episode 1) that “in woman alone rests the preservation of peace in the

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house, and it is that which inspires work all across Europe, the suffragettes are reckless and foolish”.

Gender, Class, Sex and the Roaring Twenties As pointed out by Byrne (Byrne 2015: 140ff), the series not only has class and social oppression written all over it, it also puts women’s liberation in focus. Generally, the men, from father John Middleton to Lord Allingham, are very authoritarian male chauvinists. John Middleton is one of the poorest workers, not even owning his own land and house, and he is also violent against both his sons and his wife. He is a classic case of someone oppressed reacting by being a bully. But his wife Grace gradually rises against him and takes control, and her romance with the Labour politician Bill Gibby (in season 2) combines the working class and female liberation. In the village the women also have a sort of sanctuary, the village bath, where they can talk more freely about their life and problems (Fig. 4.4).

Fig. 4.4 In The Village, not just working-class but also women’s issues play a central role. Grace Middleton (Maxine Peake) is partly awakened politically by Labour politician Bill Gibby (Derek Riddell); however she also stands up to him and chooses her own path (Screenshot by author)

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Again, it is events from the outside that give the women a new position in the village: as the men go to war, they must take over their jobs, in this case the local factory starting to produce military boots. Grace not only has to fight her husband to leave her traditional role at home, she must also fight most of the established male system, become shop steward and gradually also the political voice of the villagers. Her relationship with Gibby opens her eyes, and her new critical voice is first heard around the establishment of a World War I memorial in the village, where the conservative Edmund Allingham, son of Lord Allingham, tries to speak about unity and common memories of the war. Grace responds: “That is wrong, everyone’s grief is different. Do you want the generals and the politicians who took us into this, to tell us how to mourn?” And her response to Edmund’s attempt to talk about the time before the war as a golden age is just as sharp: “You had more servants, that’s what was golden about them. It wasn’t a golden age for others outside your class.” In the series the role of Grace indicates the ways in which all the women obtain still more independence and act more and more freely, not just in relation to gender roles in the family but also by getting a political voice and more control over their sexuality and body in general. There are many examples of seduction and rape and illegal and dangerous abortions, but also of women more decisively taking control in sexual and marital matters. Caro gets her child with Joe back after a huge fight with her rich, upper-class family. This link between the Allinghams and the Middletons is a sign of social change, of new democratic times. As a female character in the series, Grace is, however, also very true to her family and village, despite everything. She is clearly tempted by the Labour politician Gibby, both as a man and as political inspiration. The turning point is, however, when she finds out (episode 6, season 2) that he supports a development project to make better conditions for the workers in nearby Sheffield, a project that will flood the village: “I have been tempted away from home by excitement and passion, both of which are part of politics. But my home, my family, my village is my most important fight. We may be small, but we will be heard.” Even for a more and more liberated mind like Grace’s, the village remains her world. Despite its dominant, gritty realism and focus on class and politics, The Village is also a lively portrait of events that show the deeper layers of social oppression and humiliation, and at the same time the more frivolous aspects of sex and entertainment. The first aspect of everyday life in the village is illustrated by the way Bert is humiliated, first in the annual

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‘fox hunt’ on the Allingham estate, where he acts as the fox, followed by incidents at the annual village fair, where not just Bert, but also a black boxer, Ghana, takes part. In the fox hunt Bert manages to avoid being caught and should receive the prize money, but Lord Allingham accuses him of cheating and denies him his prize. Only by simply invading the Allingham estate during a party is Grace later able to get the money. At the market fair, Ghana is unable to box professionally despite his war service. Lord Allingham wins because Ghana’s ‘owner’ forces him to lose. People from the underclasses are like animals for the upper class. Bert is ordered before the fox hunt to take off his shirt so the dogs can smell it. Lord Allingham says: “England unperfumed. Breathe deeply. The Middle Ages, Burdoch, Barley. Nose of pig’s breath, dog’s tongue, perhaps. Oh yes, an ancient peasant bitterness.” The smell of class society, the embodiment of underdog feelings and prejudices gives the realism of the series an extra dimension of graphic reality. The same goes for sexuality and the revelation of the merrier aspects of village life. It is not just the rather direct portrayal of Edmund Allingham’s homosexual love, or Joe and Caro’s intense sexual joy in free nature, it is the series’ ability to display all forms of sexual relations and pleasures going on beneath the surface of everyday life. A good example of this is connected to the ‘roaring Twenties’, when the local shopkeeper, Arnold Hankin, and his rather sexually frustrated wife Norma finally have sex during the opening of a dance hall in the village. At the end of the chapter Bert the narrator comments on this: “Love had danced into the village and announced its giddy power. It brought with it the twin agonies of happiness and pain, and every emotion in between. It was the roaring Twenties, and love, public, private, thrilling, reckless had made its move and asked its big questions. What’s the best of us and the worst? Shall we dance?” The whole episode is about love, in Bert’s introduction called the best thing ever invented, but Bert himself still struggles with his love for Phoebe and his more passionate and impossible love for Martha. Even Martha’s father, the local vicar, catches fire when a strange lady (Joy!) comes to town, and starts teaching the women about sex and family planning. The episode swirls round love and sex, and cross-cuttings between couples or others talking about sex or like Grace citing poetry, inspired by the awakening Gibby has brought about. Gerard Gilbert and Bert discuss sexual experiences in the pub, and the tricky sex-only relation between Barstow (Allingham’s informer) and Agnes, where he uses her, and the

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new emerging love between Gilbert and Agnes adds to the complexity. So does the dying relation between Martha and the war-damaged Edmund Allingham, not to speak of Norma, who seeks advice from Joy because she has never had sex with her husband. It all comes together in the intense last part of the episode, when the dance hall opens. The dance clearly opens people up: relations are broken and new ones established, even Norma and Arnold and the vicar find their way to sex. And in their own way Grace and John seem to be reunited, dancing by stomping mud for the cows.

Everyday Drama: Impact, Reception and the Dimensions of Memory As already pointed out (Chapter 2), memory research distinguishes between different dimensions of memory, for instance memories of a more episodic nature tied to specific events and lifetime memories linked to memories over a longer time. It is generally assumed that the distinction discussed in many theories of memory between individual or autobiographical memory and collective memory is much more difficult to define, although much literature talks about collective memory and identity as a quite given thing. In his book Collective Memory and the Historical Past (2016), Jeffrey A. Barash writes that one way to differentiate between individual and collective memory is to maintain that all memory activities are basically grounded on the individual level: According to its primary signification, remembrance is carried out in the original sphere of the self. In a strict sense, collectives never ‘remember’ any more than they have an autonomous, substantial being. And yet, members of a community, as vast as it may be, may share remembrances of what can be publicly communicated through word, image and gesture. (Barash 2016: 40)

In other words, no matter whether we talk about a national or any other cultural identity, it does not essentially rest on a fully conscious and shared collective memory. The same goes for our feeling of the past, our way of remembering and understanding history. Memories are always basically individual, even mediated memories brought to us through series like those we deal with in this book.

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We can only speculate on the lasting effect of series like Heimat or The Village on our individual and collective memory. We have empirical evidence of Heimat ’s massive influence on the German public in the huge viewing figures—also in other parts of Europe—so the series has stirred up both individual and collective memories and reactions in private and public. The impact of The Village can be documented in the same way. It opened with 8.7 million viewers, quite spectacular, but somewhat below hit series like Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife with continued viewing figures above 10 million. The figures for The Village declined at the end of season 1 and in season 2 to around 4–5 million. The series also created some debate, but not nearly as intense as Heimat. Even though both series belong to the genre of everyday drama and appeal to audiences through some of the same visual and narrative strategies, their impact on public debate and memory and their ability to engage viewers emotionally is different. This points to a difference in historical and cultural context. The reception of The Village was mixed and corresponds to the decline in audiences. The Village speaks to a national UK context rich in all kinds of historical dramas in this period, and compared to the most popular, the series came out as gloomy, depressive realism, without the glossy qualities of traditional heritage drama. The tabloids were not surprisingly very hostile. Christopher Stevens in the Daily Mail gave the show two out of five stars and concluded: Last year’s resounding drama disappointment was The Village (BBC1). It was underlit, it was miserable, it was cliched and it failed to capture the spirit of rural England. Worst of all, writer Peter Moffat badly misread the country’s attitude towards World War I as the centenary approached. He assumed viewers subscribed to the cynical, Islington-Lefty notion that the war had been for nothing, that the gullible troops were betrayed by the toffs. Imagine a Victorian melodrama written by Red Ken Livingstone and you’ve got the gist. (Stevens 2014)

Writing about the first episode (Stevens, 1 April 2013), he also noted the series as the “evocation of an era, drawn with an obsessive eye for historical detail”. The rejection of the series thus seems grounded in both its political perspectives and its everyday gritty realism. Also in the Daily Mail, Francesca Infante and Luke Salkeld (2013) pointed to the many comments by readers and viewers on the Daily Mail ’s comment page and on Twitter that this series was no rival to ITV’s Downton Abbey; it was

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described as a misery-fest, referring to the overall impression of depressing life circumstances, misery and violence. The journalists concluded this by citing specific evaluations by viewers: “One viewer, Zoe, wrote: ‘Don’t think I can watch any more of The Village – want to end the week on a high not a low.’” Sharing her view Sarah, another Twitter user, said: “I don’t need my drama to be all hearts and flowers and happy endings but I struggle with unrelenting grimness in The Village.” The tabloids and a great part of the original audience was lost already during the first season, but the broadsheets were more positive, and probably thus represented the remaining viewers— resembling their readers. Arifa Akbar (Akbar, 2013) calls it “a proper, grown-up period drama”, and although he noted that “the story was ostensibly small and specific, revolving around the interior life of this family and this village”, he also acknowledges the more sweeping panoramic dimension, the visual use of landscape and the bigger historical context. His review was thus, in contrast to the tabloids’, extremely positive, also in relation to the realism and emotional impact of the series, and its ability to rival traditional period and costume drama: It was a moving and mature period drama with a pitch-perfect star cast who play the Middleton family … it was a welcome relief from those costume dramas … a drama that – to make another lofty comparison – combined the same unsettling mix of nostalgia, fear and casual cruelty inflicted by adults on to children that was captured in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon. In form, it followed the classic shape of “the Heimat film” in which rural life plays out bigger, factitious events of the nation … Peter Moffat’s taut, emotionally restrained manuscript succeeded in bringing out the inner landscape of each family member, who all seemed, in one way or another, to be locked into their own private pain.

The Independent was not alone in this positive review. Ben Lawrence (Lawrence 2013) called the series “the most accomplished new drama of the year so far”, and speaking directly against the tabloid sector, noted it as positive that “things soon became strange, poetic, ugly and dark”. Furthermore, he liked the efforts to “create an authentic community” and to stick to recreating a historical reality, “where the past is definitely another country”. However, the same Ben Lawrence is more critical of the opening of the second season (Lawrence 2014), talking of the series as “shackled by history” and far from “Andrew Davies’ brand of heritage TV”. What this means is apparently that the gritty realism, although the

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series has its moments: “Perhaps it is impossible to simultaneously chart the events of the 20th century and create good drama. The Village occasionally scores on both counts, but the dissonance between trying to give us a history lesson and creating sympathetic characters means that the end result is muddled.” A similar mixed review can be found in The Guardian (Wollaston 2014), whose reviewer follows his original verdict of the series as bleak with the headline “Still bleak but now with jazz”. So it is getting better, but still problematic: “I am not saying I’m now enjoying The Village (it’s still bleak as bleak) but with the new series and the new era, Peter Moffat’s bold idea of creating an epic 42-part saga documenting 20th century rural England through one Peak District community begins to make sense and take on a new importance.” The Village fails to reach a broad audience like Heimat 1. As Katherine Byrne points out in her thorough study of English heritage and period drama, most such dramas do not tell the gritty, ugly side of the recent past. Apart from Call the Midwife (2012–) which takes us into the poorest East London districts in the 1950s and 1960s, with quite graphic images, The Village is the first period drama to show the reality of rural workingclass life (Byrne 2015: 157). In contrast to this, Heimat 1 (though not the following season of the series) managed in both Germany and elsewhere to cut across audience segments (Bondebjerg 1993: 357). Especially German viewers were both intellectually and emotionally involved in the series, which seemed to have worked in 1984 as a focal point for a shift in memories and interpretation of German history. So here individual viewer memories turned into a collective debate about the past, and the public debate involved the whole political spectrum. It became a part of the shift in the 1980s towards a new form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. As Anton Kaes has pointed out in his book From Hitler to Heimat. The Return of History as Film (1989: 163ff), Heimat 1 is the most debated TV series in German history, at the level of the debate over Holocaust in 1979, but with a more lasting influence on public memory. Because of the role of Nazism and the Holocaust in German history and the also problematic notion of Heimat as a more nostalgic, conservative concept, Reitz’s attempt to re-interpret German history using this concept in a more critical way had a much stronger impact than The Village and its similar attack on the more nostalgic forms of English heritage. However, despite Heimat 1’s massive success with the German audience, it also divided the political and intellectual Germany. Some saw it as a whitewashing of negative aspects of German history and even as a

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nostalgic rehabilitation of the original Heimat tradition in films and in general. When Der Spiegel in October 1984 (Spiegel, 1984) ran a cover story on Heimat and openly criticized Reitz for wanting to rehabilitate Heimat in the tradition of Nazi ideology, Reitz in a later interview with Frankfurter Rundschau (Weyand 1984, see also Kaes 1989: 168) reacted very strongly: Just the opposite. I feel uncomfortable with that view. But I don’t believe that the film as a whole fosters such a tendency. I would be disappointed if that would happen. The film ends with a sense of estrangement. “Heimat”, closeness, childhood, security, warmth, grandmotherliness, and all these things are being destroyed and turned into memories. That happens more and more the closer we get to the present in the story … I would consider it a terrible corny lie if the film suggested a permanent inner world of Heimat which cannot exist. It can only exist in memory. (Reitz in Weyand 1984)

Nevertheless, criticism of this sort, especially from German Leftleaning intellectuals, a group Reitz himself identifies with, appeared both in the reviews of the series and in the aftermath. In the autumn of 1985, the journal New German Critique (nr. 36) published a thematic issue on Reitz’s series and the Heimat as historical and contemporary concept. One of the editors, Miriam Hansen, in her article “Dossier on Heimat ” (Hansen 1985) saw the series as partly leaning towards the new green movements and their alternative version of regionalism, and as counterhegemonic. But she was also critical of the tendency to remove central ideological questions in the series’ basic everyday history approach. As she demonstrates, this duality also appeared in many of the newspaper reviews. Karsten Witte in Die Zeit (Witte 1984) sees the film as a rehabilitation of Heimat, but stripped of idyllic clichés and thus a birth of a new way of relating to and experiencing German history. This is also taken up in Michael E. Geisler’s very thorough article, “Heimat and the German Left: The Anamnesis of a Trauma” (Geisler 1985), in the already mentioned thematic issue of New German Critique. His reading of Heimat is quite positive, but he demonstrates how much of the established press seems to have mainstreamed the series. Geisler accuses the media of contributing to the reduction of the critical aspects of the series and its potential positive effect on the understanding and memory of

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German history. He concludes his reading of the reception in the liberal and conservative press thus: All these irritants, however, were simply ploughed under by a viewing public that had, for the most part, determined in advance what kind of a tale Heimat would have to tell … only a minority has translated this concern into concrete political action. Most of the others dealt with these fears by displacing them to the symbolic realm. Relieved at the “de-Nazification” of the Heimat discussion, they responded to what they perceived as a purely nostalgic issue. This reading shifted the emphasis of interpretation from the political and cultural politics of New Regionalism to a broad, conciliatory notion of a mythical place of (national) identification, the blue flower of a depoliticized, de-historicized quest for home. (Geisler 1985: 53)

Despite the ideologically divided reception of Heimat, the overwhelming audience response and the wide public debate shows that in the case of Heimat 1, the everyday approach to history really made a difference and contributed to a whole new form of dealing with German history, including its difficult and morally vulnerable aspects. By entering history from below and with a focus on everyday life, Reitz attempted to boost a way of remembering the past which was not about forgetting big history and problematic sides of German history, but all about understanding from the inside how small and big history are interlinked. As Anton Kaes also writes: The film Heimat belongs to this emotionally and semantically overdetermined discourse on Heimat and regionalism; it seems like the culmination of all the positive and negative connotations associated with Heimat from the 1920s and on. The film shows the hominess of a secure childhood in the country, the power of the village life to create deep bonds, strenuous but unalienated manual labour, and local eccentrics. It also shows the smug narrowness of simple-minded provincials and their inhumanity, which excludes everything that is not heimisch or “local” … it adopts a stock narrative pattern and evokes sentimental pictures of regional life … yet at the same time it ultimately undermines any spurious idyllic façade by its ending. (Kaes 1989: 167)

Period dramas in general appeal to our narrative mind and to our individual memory by combining family and social networks in a narrative space of intimacy and character identification and a community of a

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manageable size. Seeing historical development embedded in such a structure triggers very basic ways of experiencing our own life and the closer circles we move in; it matches elements in our ordinary way of remembering things. In Reitz’s and Moffat’s form of everyday drama there is a stronger focus on the local, on the slow processes of everyday life, which accelerates the basic dimension of period drama. We only see the larger, structural dimensions of history through this perspective, and all things equal this can increase the concrete identification and emotional dimension of looking into a past reality. The different receptions of the two series no doubt had something to do with the different historical context they appeared in: Heimat came at a time in German history when a new understanding of the past was high on the agenda; The Village, on the other hand, hit a sore spot in a new revival of nationalism in the UK, and the gritty realist image of the past was not popular with large segments of the audience. The way historical drama tell stories of the past in a contemporary context can be crucial for its effect.

References Akbar, A. (2013, April 1). The Village Gives Viewers—Finally—A Proper, Grown-Up Period Drama. The Independent. Arendt, H. (1958). The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Barash, J. (2016). Collective Memory and the Historical Past. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Birgel, F. (1986). You Can Go Home Again: An Interview with Edgar Reitz. Film Quarterly 4. Bondebjerg, I. (1993/2018). Elektroniske fiktioner. TV som fortællende medie (Electronic Fictions. Television as a Narrative Medium). Copenhagen: Borgen. Republished 2018 as ebook by Lindhart & Ringhoff. https://www. lrdigital.dk/Elektroniske-fiktioner-TV-som-fort%C3%A6llende-medie-978871 1965153. Bruner, J. (2002). Making Stories. Law, Literature, Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Byrne, K. (2015). Edwardians on Screen: From Downton Abbey to Parade’s End. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Avon Books. Elsaesser, T. (1989). New German Cinema: A History. London: Macmillan/BFI. Geisler, M. E. (1985). “Heimat” and the German Left: The Anamnesis of a Traum. New German Critique, 36(Special Issue on Heimat), 25–66.

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Gilbert, G. (2013, March 14). A Very British Heimat: Will BBC Drama The Village Be as Epic as the German Saga? The Independent. Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books. Goldfarb, J. C. (2006). The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times. Chicago: Chicago University Press. (Kindle Locations 43–44). Kindle Edition. Gottschall, J. (2012). The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human. Boston: Mariner Books. Hansen, M. (1985). Dossier on Heimat. New German Critique, 36(Fall). Höhne, H. (1979, January). Schwarzer Freitag für die Historiker: Holocaust: Fiktion oder Wirklichkeit. Der Spiegel. Infante, F., & Salkeld, L. (2013, April 1). A Miserable Start for The Village, the BBC’s Answer to Downton Abbey. Daily Mail. Kaes, A. (1989). From Hitler to Heimat: The return of History as Film. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kansteiner, W. (2006). In Pursuit of German Memory. History, Television, and Politics After Auschwitz. Athens-Ohio: Ohio University Press. Lawrence, B. (2013, March 31). The Village: The Most Accomplished New Drama of the Year so Far. The Telegraph. Lawrence, B. (2014, August 10). The Village Has Its Moments But the End Result Is Muddled. The Telegraph. Leggott, J., & Taddeo, J. A. (Eds.). (2015). Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Margalit, A. (2002). The Ethics of Memory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Reitz, E. (1979, May). Statt Holocaust, Erinnerungen aufarbeiten. Medium. Reitz, E., & Steinbach, P. (1985). Heimat eine deutsche Chronik. Nördlingen: Greno. Stevens, C. (2014, August 11). Oh No! The Beeb’s Sentenced Us to 100 Years of Boring Lefty Claptrap. Daily Mail. van Dijck, J. (2007). Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Von Molkte, Johannes. (2005). No Place Like Home. Locations of Heimat in German Cinema. Berkely: University of California Press. Weyand, A. (1984, 20 October). Heimat: Eine Entfernung (Heimat: A Distance). Frankfurter Rundschau. Wiesel, E. (1978, April 16). Trivializing the Holocaust: Semi-Fact and SemiFiction. New York Times.

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Witte, K. (1984, September 14). Von der Grösse der kleinen Leute (On the Greatness of Small People). Die Zeit. Wollaston, S. (2014, August 11). The Village Review—Still Bleak But Now with Jazz. The Guardian.

CHAPTER 5

History from Above: Historical Biopics

The sub-genre of period drama described in the previous chapter as everyday drama is focused on ordinary people, families living in smaller or larger communities, but also in many cases embedded in a broader social universe with distinct class differences. Although some individual characters may stand out in such narratives, they are not famous real-life characters like those iconic historical figures that define a historical biopic. The fact that we move from ordinary life to well-known historical characters does not mean, however, that a broader social context of families and other historical characters is absent in biopics—on the contrary. The difference lies in the focus on an individual character, but in biopics as in other genres and life in general, an individual is defined by their social and cultural context. However, biopics can take many sub-forms, and the degree of complex, reflexive narration varies a lot (Burgoyne 2008: 100f). The following analysis of The Crown (1–3, 2011–19) and Die Manns. Ein Jahrhundertroman (The Mann family. A Century Novel) (1–3, 2001) clearly demonstrates that. The first series puts the life of Queen Elizabeth II in focus and chooses a more traditional, narrative form—although with many critical framing elements (Abbiss 2019). In the second, we experience Thomas Mann and his family life through a mix of documentary and fictional strategies. This results in a very complex and reflexive way of presenting an iconic cultural figure in a historical context. Even though © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_5

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audiences in general seem to indulge in historical biopics, the genre is also sometimes criticized for reducing our historical reality to the rich and powerful. Despite such criticism, mostly from newspaper critics or academic research, biopics easily cross frontiers in Europe. Famous historical figures are fascinating, and nationality here seems less important than transnational iconic quality. As I will argue in the analysis of Die Manns and The Crown, it makes little sense simply to reject such stories because they deal with the upper echelons of society in politics or social and cultural life. Both series analyzed here do in fact tell a much broader story of the recent historical past, and they clearly choose a critical distanced position along with the narrative, a position that equals the discussion on heritage drama as more than nostalgic celebration of the past (Abbiss 2019; Monk 2011; Higson 2003, 2016; Meck 2016). Biopics do not just tell us about those at the top, the famous and privileged, at their best they actually see history from above, but within a broader social and cultural context.

German Biopics: The Bad and the Good Characters German twentieth-century history is troubled by war experiences, authoritarian politics and the heavy burden of the Holocaust. But like any other European nation they also have a long cultural tradition, with authors, composers and philosophers that are part of the European cultural heritage of the twentieth century. German history represents both the most catastrophic political and cultural tendencies and the most humanistic and enlightened contributions to European culture. German biopics have tried to deal with both aspects of German history by getting close to the personal and public aspects of historical figures representing different tendencies. Dealing with the evil and the beast is of course much more difficult than portraying people representing a humanistic and democratic tradition. However, in films and TV series since the 1960s (Kansteiner 2006: 109ff) there have been continued attempts to deal with the bad and the good, with Nazi characters and some of those that tried to oppose the regime and paid the price. There is a tradition of biopics with a strong documentary format, but also formats that mix fictional reconstruction and documentary. Hitler and the men around him have been the focus of numerous documentary programmes, but ZDF and Guido Knoop’s series of documentary biopics were some of the most watched and discussed. The six-part series Hitler – Eine Bilanz (Hitler— a Reckoning) (1995) is to date one of the most complete accounts of

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Hitler’s rise to power: his childhood and family background, his politics and forms of propaganda, his interior and foreign policy, and his holocaust project and military strategies. This form of documentary-driven biopics was continued in Hitlers Helfer (Hitler’s Henchmen) (1997) dealing with the whole gang of top Nazis: Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler, Joseph Goebbels, Herman Göring, Albert Speer and Karl Dönitz. Most of these documentary biopics were sold and distributed across Europe, and can also be found on Netflix and other streaming channels. They are no doubt important for how Nazism has been mediated not just in Germany, but also in the rest of Europe. As Kansteiner has demonstrated (Kansteiner 2006: 173), these documentary biopics found a big audience, but they also created a debate in the German press, where many found that the series created ‘Nazi kitsch’, a kind of use of documentary for entertainment rather than for historical information, and with a lack of critical reflexivity in the way the programmes are made. Other historians and the prominent Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who was interviewed and used as an expert in several of the programmes (Kansteiner 2006: 173), did however defend these biopics as an important way of keeping history and memory alive and showing in detail how the Nazi reality was constructed and shaped. From a more cognitive reception perspective one could also argue that historians and the media often overlook viewers’ ability to deal with what they see on the screen. They can use their personal memories and experiences and their already acquired and mediated knowledge of history. The personal and direct experience of main characters in documentary biopics has a clear potential for creating the kind of identification with historical characters that could lead to greater cognitive understanding of historical developments. To get close up and face to face with ‘evil’ as something also human may lead to greater understanding of the causes and effects of humans and the context they act in. Empathy and identification as a narrative strategy is not in opposition to critical understanding. As Jennifer Marston William has pointed out in her book Cognitive Approaches to German Historical Film: Seeing Is Not Believing (2017: 117), the term “perspective taking” is important here, that is “the ability to understand the distinct perspective of self and other”. The point is that historical films and TV series have the ability to let us experience role taking, to see the life of others through identification and distance: “… a positive historical effect of popular historical film spectatorship [is] that one’s perspective

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is broadened through exposure to unfamiliar situations and characters whom one may not identify with as similar to one’s in-group” (ibid.). William discusses this in connection with a chapter on how spectators react to films about World War II characters, in particular Oliver Hiersbiegel’s film Der Untergang (Downfall) (2004), one of the first fictional biopics of Hitler in German film culture, and Sophie Scholl: Die Letzen Tage (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days) (2005), a film about a member of the anti-Nazi resistance. Viewers are here faced with two quite opposite characters in the same historical context, and while no one has questioned the value of portraying Sophie Scholl the hero, there was a heated debate in Germany over the portrait of Hitler and other top Nazi figures. But seen from a reception point of view, these films are of equal importance, and Marston William in her conclusion clearly point this out: Perspective-taking and empathic reaction can lead … to a broadening of one’s horizons and a deeper understanding of the world beyond the screen through a combination of strong emotion and focused mental activity … The feeling and thinking viewer is engaged in perspective-taking, a cognitive process, and is thus primed for critical (re)evaluation of the historical situation. The emotions thereby evoked, even especially negative ones, ensure that the impression is a lasting one. Popular historical film thus becomes a vehicle not only for entertainment, but also for illumination on a personal level that may be a stepping stone toward broader-scale attitudinal changes. (William 2017: 157)

This attitude towards not just biopics but other historical genres is important, and is one of the key arguments in this book. In public debates in Europe over controversial historical issues, we often find that the debate fails to understand the core elements of how historical fiction and docudrama works, how narrative, identification and emotional elements are extremely important for historical learning and memory. Semantic and episodic memory, the more factual dimensions of our memory, are important. However, the kind of narrative perspective and space we enter through historical fiction and docudrama is a very strong element in creating a link to our deeper autobiographical self, and in linking individual and collective memory.

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Biopics as Multi-Layered Docudrama: The Case of Heinrich Breloer This understanding of the deeper levels of reception of historical series and biopics is very often not present in the debates surrounding historical documentaries, fictions or forms that mix the factual and the fictional. In German television history one of the most innovative docudrama directors is Heinrich Breloer. Many of his films and TV series deal with historical incidents during and after World War II and he very often uses a rather complex form of docudrama in his biopics about central and controversial figures. His biopics include docudramas about post-war politicians, such as Willy Brandt (Kampfname: Willy Brandt , 1983) and the Red Army Faction (Todesspiel / Death Game, 1997). His most successful TV series are biopics of historical figures connected to the Nazi period, or of important cultural figures in German history like Bertolt Brecht, Klaus Mann or Thomas Mann (Fig. 5.1).

Fig. 5.1 Heinrich Breloer is a central figure in the new German docudrama, particularly on World War II and the principal Nazi figures. He combines traditional documentary research and presentation with dramatization of key scenes and figures. In The Devil’s Architect he follows the life and trial of Albert Speer (Sebastian Koch) (Screenshot by author)

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One of his most controversial TV series is Speer und Er (The Devil’s Architect) (2004), which deals with notorious war and armaments minister Albert Speer, a close ally of Adolf Hitler and architect of his regime, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for his war crimes at the Nurnberg trials. The series to a great extent reconstructs Speer’s memories and diaries and allows us to get psychologically quite close to him as a historical figure and human being. In four parts we first meet Speer (played by Sebastian Koch) trying to go back in time and discuss his ideas for a new Germania in Berlin especially, but his memory is rather weak when it comes to his role in the deportation of Jews and the taking over of their homes. The focus of the second part is his trial and sentence, but during the trial he is also confronted with the atrocities of the Holocaust and begins to see the full picture of what he has been part of. In part 3 we follow him in jail, while Germany is changing and he is writing his memoirs, while part 4 deals with how he tries to at least partly justify himself as an unpolitical man who was misled. But since the film is also based on meticulous historical research, reconstructed or real documentary footage and more than 20 interviews with historical witnesses, it is not a film that lets Speer off the hook easily, rather it is a film that gives a condemned man a more complex, human life story. The TV series had quite a large audience and won the Golden Romy for best TV film in 2006, as well as the similar Jupiter Prize, but critical reviews of the film were mixed. Heinrich Schwendemann in Die Zeit (Schwendemann 2005) focused on the late unmasking of Speer and his systematic denials and lies, and criticized the drama side for giving him too much voice, thus calling into question the revealing fourth part of the series. This critic blamed the mix of reconstructions and the more documentary voices and conclusions for hiding the historical reality or at least creating an imbalance in the historical picture. In the British reviews the focus was more on the fact that German film and television had finally dared to portray Nazis more directly as complex human beings, despite their obvious evil, historical role. Discussing the upcoming British broadcast of the series, Rupert Smith in The Guardian (Smith 2004) concludes that the series is based on meticulous historical research and numerous interviews with historical witnesses, and reveals new compromising aspects of Speer’s past. The Guardian article also clearly points to the series’ potential enrichment of viewers’ understanding of Speer, compared to the documentary films that have dominated German screens so far. This is also the main point in a Danish review

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of the series. In Information, Anita Brask Rasmussen (Rasmussen 2006) says: The discussion of whether one can portray Hitler as a human being surfaced already in Germany in connection with Der Untergang /The Downfall. It is disturbing to think that such a man probably was good to children and animals. The same goes for Speer. Why wasn’t he just a violent, alcoholic husband, a pervert misusing his own children? It would have been so much easier. But he wasn’t. Unpleasant. But necessary. Not because we should apologize his deeds by also seeing him as a being human. Rather because if we do not see such characters as human, it will be much easier for us to convince ourselves that this could not happen again. But it can. There are such humans everywhere. Maybe you are sitting near one just now.

The Complex Cultural, Historical Biopic: Breloer and the Mann Family Heinrich Breloer has occasionally made fictional historical dramas, but he is most known for the kind of multi-layered docudramas already mentioned. Not least in a German context, this form of docudrama dealing with ‘evil Germans’ has been heavily criticized, as already mentioned. Tobias Ebbrecht, a German specialist in this genre, has been one of the most outspoken. In an analysis of Breloer’s works, he writes, with specific focus on his Nazi biopics: Heinrich Breloer, one of the most significant creators of docudrama in Germany, does not use the historic documentary images to illustrate recreated fictional scenes or to produce an effect of authenticity. Instead he reorganizes the material without any distinction in a flow of montage that combines different levels of time and space and of subjective and objective experience … Images from Nazi propaganda and post-war documentary footage become part of a subjective visual imagination with no historical evidence. By mixing these different images with recreated scenes they lose every specific historical value; also, the recreated scenes cannot be decoded unambiguously as representative of a historic truth. (Ebbrecht 2007: 43–44)

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Although Die Manns – Ein Jahrhundertroman makes use of the same form of docudrama, Ebbrecht in another article on German biographical drama (Ebbrecht 2010: 207ff) does not raise the same fundamental criticism, although he still performs a rather critical reading. As pointed out in the discussion above of the identity and emotional power of the historical biopic, I would like in my reading of Die Manns to agree with Robert Burgoyne, who describes Schindler’s List (1993) as a biopic and underlines its double quality in two dimensions: it combines the emotional power of a popular narrative with a complex narrative technique of a Brechtian nature (Burgoyne 2008: 103). The film is very effective in combining the ‘vertical’ (character) and ‘horizontal’ (historical context of the Holocaust) in its narrative form (Burgoyne 2008: 111). It is, in other words, a complex and multi-layered narrative that creates both identification and reflexive distance and perspective. In Ebbrecht’s reading of Die Manns , however, he claims that there is too much focus on personal life and too little on Mann’s artistic works; in fact, he sees the artistic work repatriated in the biography (Ebbrecht 2010: 217). He also criticizes a tendency to make the transitions and shift between the many layers invisible and smooth. This, he claims, results in a personalization and emotionalization of the narrative and a nostalgic tendency to dissolve the relation between past and present: “A tension between the public and private memory … and between the investigative deconstructive mode, looking for gaps, conflicts and transgression, and the more harmonious mode of the family novel” (Ebbrecht 2010: 218). This seems like a rather far-fetched criticism of the series, which tells a story of a family with strong conflicts and tragic fates, and which reflexively documents the tension between past and present on a social, cultural, political and personal level. Die Manns does what any biopic does, it gives an intense portrait of the life and works of a very central character, in this case one of Germany’s most famous authors, whose personal and family life in many ways embody the story of a century, a story of Europe’s tragic history and transformation from the end of the nineteenth century to his death in 1955. Born into a merchant family in Lübeck in 1875, he grew up in a Germany under transformation and unification, a fragile democracy, two world wars, exile and finally an experience of two Germanies. Both his life and his novels clearly reflect the change of Germany and Europe, and it is not by accident that the most authoritative biography to date, by Hermann Kurzke, is called Thomas Mann. Das Leben als Kunstwerk. Eine Biographie (2001). Social history in Thomas Mann’s lifetime is

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a story of catastrophe and the late arrival of democracy in Germany, and his own family story is just as dramatic. Two of his six children committed suicide (Klaus and Michael) and his oldest daughter Erika was severely traumatized and in her later years quite estranged from the family. On top of that, Thomas Mann and his elder brother Heinrich were enemies for decades, opposed to each other both ideologically and as authors— Heinrich as a socialist, Thomas as a conservative. There is plenty in the family story and the story of social and cultural history in Mann’s life to tell a very critical story of a great historical person and his complex life and the times he lived in. This is exactly what the series does, and in a very reflexive and complex way. The series is told in three parts (1923–1933, 1933–1941 and 1942– 1955), but the clear chronology is rather deceptive, since the narrative often jumps backwards and forwards in time, covering events both before 1923 and after 1955. It is, however, not just a narrative that plays with linear time, it is also a series with very many narrative and aesthetic layers, and with a reflexive use of documentary and fictional sequences. This structure is established from the very beginning and continued through all four parts, even though the balance between the elements varies. We have six very dominant and important levels (examples taken from part 1): 1. Classical, fictional sequences with reconstructions of scenes in the life of the Mann family played by actors—historical fiction, but very much based on what the director and screenwriter believe to be true and reflecting actual events. 2. Visual, symbolic sequences within the fictional narratives, clearly in visual style distancing themselves from the more traditional realist narrative sequences: they indicate deeper connections between Mann’s fictional universe and his own life, or scenes with a strong personal dimension (traumas, desires etc). 3. Documentary sequences where Elisabeth (the only living daughter) comments on scenes in the narrative or visits places with relevance for the Mann family’s life. This is a continued and very dominant layer, creating a permanent reflexive commentary to the narrative. 4. Documentary sequences where representatives of the Mann family or other central characters are given a voice through historical interviews. It is usually historical footage inserted in the narrative, or

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reflexive commentaries and historical contextualization of the biopic and family story. 5. Documentary footage derived from existing material illustrating events in the period from 1875 onwards—representing a broader social, cultural, political and historical context. 6. Voice-over—a rather unusual element in fictional narratives, although they do exist, but here the voice-over narrator can cross and combine fictional and documentary sequences (Fig. 5.2). All in all, the fictional sequences dominate, if we count broadcast time. Measured in viewing time the fictional dimension is the primary one; it is most certainly a biopic drama. But documentary elements often appear and the shifts between documentary and fictional elements happen with an almost invisible editing back and forth. In the early chapters of part 1, for instance, we go back in time to Thomas Mann’s parents, the marriage between a solid merchant and an exotic beauty, a fact used in

Fig. 5.2 With Die Manns Heinrich Breloer presents a docudrama about one of the iconic cultural Germans of the twentieth century, Thomas Mann. He shifts between documentary footage, people around Mann commenting on his life, and dramatized narrative sequences illustrating his life. Identification and reflexive distance combined. Elisabeth, Mann’s only living daughter, is the series’ main narrator (Screenshot by author)

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the series to illustrate tendencies in the family: the bourgeois solidity and the longing for a more sensual and free life. The voice-over guides us, and reconstructed marriage and family scenes are combined with actual family photos. This format is then continued in some scenes involving Heinrich and Thomas Mann—who appear to represent the same family dichotomy. We then jump to 1923 and Thomas Mann and his family in their Munich house, that is the fictional house representing it. Then we see Elisabeth visiting the real house in the present day, commenting on it, and in many of the following sequences the story shifts between the fictional world and the documentary: we see the fictional Thomas Mann, the fictional Elisabeth and their documentary counterparts, and the relation between Elisabeth and her father finally leads us to a daring New Year party in the Munich house in 1923. Here we clearly see the family dichotomy: Mann’s wilder children (Klaus and Erika), Mann himself as the distanced person in a magician’s outfit, watching everyone, and in a later sequence he is reading a story of love, clearly inspired by characters and events in his own family (Fig. 5.3).

Fig. 5.3 In Die Manns there is often a very obvious collision between fictional sequences and documentary layers or traces. In the series Erika Mann (Sophie Rois) and Klaus Mann (Sebastian Koch) represent the cultural avant-garde. Here Erika is in her dressing room, but on the mirror, you see an authentic photo of Thomas Mann and his wife (Screenshot by author)

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In later chapters we find clear examples of more visual and symbolic fictional sequences, in this case (part 3) illustrating Thomas Mann’s wellknown latent homosexuality. The camera pans Thomas Mann’s study and lingers on a statue of a naked young man, followed by a dream-like sequence in which his son Golo is dancing naked in front of a mirror and Mann stares secretly and fascinated from a distance. The voice-over then quotes Mann’s diary, in which the episode is commented on: strong bodily feelings which are suppressed. Comments also by his openly gay son Klaus Mann and Monika, his daughter—all leading to a sequence on Mann’s way of distancing himself, living a bit on his own and in his fictional world. The symbolic layers of the fictional story clearly link to the interaction between Mann’s life and his fictional worlds, his ability to use his own life, but also historical events to create art. There are many such symbolic scenes with strong effects in part 1, for instance around the death of Thomas Mann’s mother, an event that begins the reconciliation of Thomas and his brother Heinrich, two German authors representing two political and ideological opposites in German culture. The scenes leading up to her death are filled with strong symbolic images and montage: her life and death seem to mirror German history. But the split between Heinrich and Thomas Mann is even more symbolic for twentieth-century German history, and therefore their reconciliation around 1923, just before the Nazi challenge increased, is also historically significant. Henrich Mann was a popular writer in his own right and was the more radical, at times even socialist in his views on society, while Thomas Mann, at least before 1914, was a conservative nationalist. They represented two sides of Germany, and they were also in competition as authors. At the same time, as we see in part 1, Heinrich Mann lived life to the full, with many women, and was deeply involved in the experimental Berliner culture, just like Thomas Mann’s children Klaus and Erika (Flügge 2016: 117: ff). In the scenes around their mother’s death, Thomas Mann admits he was wrong and Heinrich was right in his radical defence of democracy, and his warnings against the rise of Hitler. But the scene just after their reconciliation shows Thomas Mann struggling alone in the snow, symbolizing isolation and emptiness, and gradually we hear his voice reading from Der Zaubergberg (The Magic Mountain) (1924), a work not just reflecting the harshness and experiences of Mann’s own life, but also the sickness in German culture.

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In part 1, we see the entire complexity of the Mann family, representing all sides of German culture and society, including the advanced, modern and, for some, perverted Berlin culture. The rift not just with his older brother Heinrich, but also with his own children fighting against their strong, domineering father image, becomes clear as the story develops. His gifted son Klaus and daughter Erika seem to vanish in a haze of drugs and drinking, as the political situation deteriorates in Germany. The split between the kind of humanism Thomas Mann represents and the growing Nazism is clear when Thomas is awarded the Nobel Prize in 1929. Shortly afterwards Nazis appear virtually at the doorstep of the Manns’ house in Munich in the 1930s. We also see Thomas Mann receive a burned copy of Buddenbrooks as a Nazi warning, and we witness him speaking against Nazi rule in public and being booed. Shortly afterwards the family is forced into exile, first in Switzerland and later in America. The complex narrative and aesthetic structure of the series continues in part 2, which deals with the period of exile in Switzerland and the US, and in part 3 dealing with the last years of World War II and the return to Europe, Switzerland—which became Mann’s final home. The principle of mirroring the interaction between family life, society and art is continued to great effect. The exile takes its toll on everybody, and even though Thomas Mann in the US becomes a strong humanistic, democratic voice for Europe, the exile is an exile from all they feel connected to, and many of the family members commit suicide or die. The return to Europe, if not Germany, is also given a prominent place in part 3, where we follow Thomas Mann’s celebrated travel to a divided Germany—in documentary and fictional sequences. He is remembered and celebrated in both East and West as a true European writer. The series has been a huge success, was distributed across Europe on mainly public-service stations, is out on DVD and has—as already documented—received positive reviews in most countries. But just as The Crown was met with criticism for a perspective on history too much from above and from a privileged family, Die Manns was also criticized. In a debate on the World Socialist Net, Stefan Steinberg attacks the series, while Ulrich Rippert defends it (Steinberg and Rippert 2002). Steinberg claims that the series does not mount a sufficiently critical attack on bourgeois ideology and that Thomas Mann and his life and writings are not sufficiently representative of German culture and history. Rippert, as a contemporary socialist, defends Thomas Mann and the series as part of the great humanistic heritage. One of Die Welt ’s critics (Krause 2000)

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sees the series as a melodrama, and satirically points to elements of an overloaded family drama. However, most reviews in leading German, English and American newspapers celebrate the series. In Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Seifert 2001) viewers discuss the complicated docudrama structure, but the verdict is clearly positive: the fictional and documentary levels together ensure that complex images of what it means to be a German in the twentieth century meet the viewer. It is seen as a historical biopic that touches on and expands the central dimensions of not just one man, one family, one author, but a hugely complex family that tells us a lot about German and European history, society and culture between 1900 and 1955, and does so in a strong mix of fictional and documentary formats.

The Crown: An Intense Story of Queendom and Personal Freedom Compared to Breloer’s Mann series, Peter Morgan’s (scriptwriter and producer) historical drama and biopic of the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II is a much bigger task, with its planned five seasons and more than 50 episodes altogether covering a period from 1947 to present-day England—with some flashbacks to earlier times. The first season (2016) covers 1947–1955, the second season (2017) 1956–1964, while the third season (2019) covers 1964–1976, each season thus so far covering roughly a decade. With the series’ high ambition of historical realism, and shooting in many actual locations in the UK and around the world, with its huge number of characters and production value in clothes and interior design, it is believed to be one of the world’s most expensive TV series ever when complete. In Lucy Mangan’s highly positive review of season 1 in The Guardian (Mangan 2016), she points to the quality of both the personal story of the main character and those around her, and the solid anchoring of the story in a historical context: All the main historical markers are hit. There’s Churchill’s re-election and battle with ill health … the toxic London smog of 1952, Commonwealth tours as anti-British sentiment gather around the globe, the coronation, the refusal to let Princess Margaret and Group Captain Peter Townsend marry, the beginning of Anthony Eden’s premiership (and Benzedrine habit) … [Claire] Foy’s performance as Elizabeth Mountbatten is as ruthlessly unshowy as the woman herself. It is a considerable challenge to play

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a character who becomes more and more fiercely restricted over time, but Foy manages to register every layer of misery and frustration as Elisabeth Ordinarius evolves into Elizabeth Regina, seeking a way to reconcile the conflicts of personal freedom and desire, wifehood and queendom …

Mangan also points out that Morgan and his team researched for 2 ½ years before they even began writing the series, without contact with or the consent of the monarchy: “It seems to have freed them to make a rich, non-reverent drama that jibes with what we know, or think we know, about them without being enslaved by it” (Mangan 2016). There were of course, as we have seen already, other more critical voices. The royal historian Hugo Vickers for instance, writing in The Daily Mail (Vickers 2019), found that the series as a whole was marred by sensationalist historical errors, by vulgarizing persons (for instance Philip naked in bed, Philip to Elizabeth: “shall we fuck?”) or tasteless images of people in undignified situations (George VI spitting blood, and his embalmment after his death). For some, apparently, royalty calls for special discretion. Others have found soap-opera tendencies in the many royal scandals depicted in the series: royalty is, as we all know, the stuff that tabloids and magazines thrive on. But it seems that most of the reviews of the series salute the ability of Peter Morgan and his team to make interesting and different human beings out of the grand gallery of royals, politicians and other famous public figures, and at the same time weave these personal stories into the greater narrative of UK, European and world history. No wonder, since Peter Morgan is a specialist in such biopics with, for instance, his films The Queen (2006), The Last King of Scotland (2006) and Frost/ Nixon (2008). The series has already won numerous UK and international awards including Golden Globe for best television series and best actress (Claire Foy), an American Film Institute award and several Bafta and Emmy awards, among several for production design and script (Fig. 5.4). As a biopic The Crown, just like the Mann series, is based on a true story, and the historical dimension in all its aspects is grounded in documented research on many levels. Unlike the Mann series however, The Crown sticks much more to a coherent, fictional narrative, a selective reconstruction of things that we know happened, although creative freedom and interpretation have also played a major role, not least in relation to the more personal, psychological space of individual characters and the relations between them. There is a space for interpretation

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Fig. 5.4 The honeymoon is all too soon over for Elizabeth and Philip. This is the moment she realizes what it entails to be Queen. The conflict between the Crown’s public role and her life as a wife and mother are central to the series. Even if she is Gloriana and a public and political figure, she is also in some ways just a woman and a human being (Screenshot by author)

around historically well-documented events that characters go through and a more private emotional space. In this space between private and public, between the life of public figures on the stage of history, and the backstage and even deep backstage of private life, the series make more open decisions. This ability to combine the official and the personal is part of showing us that even very remote and distant historical characters have something in common with all of us. We have seen that in the lively history of private life in Die Manns and we see it in The Crown, where many of the characters show plenty of ordinary human feelings and ways of behaving. Despite this high degree of fictionalization of history, there are also elements of direct documentary effects in the narrative space. This is mostly achieved by media quotations from newspapers, radio and television (see also Abbiss 2019: 8f). Most of these narrative structures combining ordinary privacy with the historical reality of iconic figures are established as early as part 1

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episode 1. In the opening scene of the whole series, King George VI is coughing blood. Here we are clearly deep backstage, but this leads up to Philip, newly styled Mountbatten, being created Duke of Edinburgh by the King, a more public front-stage act again leading up to the even more public marriage of Philip and Elizabeth—a display of royalty and power. In the private interaction between Philip and Elizabeth, we return to a more normal human kind of role play between man and wife. Philip is complaining that he doesn’t feel really welcome at court, just tolerated. His public royal face is just a mask covering the more emotional and even sensual relations between the two. Behind the spectacular, iconic historical figures we find real people: Philip and Elizabeth are throughout the series also involved in an ordinary love affair, a family life with both happiness and conflicts, having to adjust to the fact that they are not just two ordinary people. Gradually through the series, the space they move in become more and more narrow and defined by rules, and this also influences the way others on the royal stage can behave, most clearly illustrated in the case of Elizabeth’s sister Margaret. Margaret in both historical and fictional reality is the character who most clearly show us the price of living in royal chains and in front of a press hungry for sensational stories. However, in his frustration at being kept on a tight leash, Philip also at times ends up in nearly public scandals involving backstage activities quite at odds with the demands of his front-stage role as married to the Queen. Especially in the first episodes of the series, a young Queen Elizabeth, suddenly called to her new role and duties, tries to protect her privacy and family life. It is nowhere more visible than in episode 3, where there is still an open discussion of where the family will live, and what name Elizabeth will give her family. Philip wants his family name (Mountbatten) to be the new royal name, and he wants to stay in Clarence House, not at Buckingham Palace. Elizabeth tries to meet both these wishes and to involve both Churchill and the former King Edward VIII (who abdicated for his love of a non-royal divorcee) in a deal to reach this goal. It is significant that Edward VIII, now Duke of Windsor, is met with great respect and interest by the population and the press: he is the symbol of a man who put love above titles and power. Elizabeth cannot and will not do that; instead she appeals to Churchill to understand her double situation: “Yes, I am queen, but I am also a woman and a wife. I want my marriage to be a happy one, and maybe that is also good for the stability of this country.” As it turns out, Elizabeth loses both battles on behalf

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of her husband: the family name becomes Windsor, and they move to Buckingham Palace. Ordinary people often have to bend of necessity, but royal figures must also do so: institutions, systems and circumstances are often stronger than individuals.

The Crown: A Story of the Transformation of Post-War Britain This constant interaction between stories of iconic, royal figures and their life frontstage and backstage is very central to the whole narrative through seasons 1 and 2, and probably also all the following seasons yet to come. This is the human side of a much bigger story, of a society and a British Empire under transformation—a very important story that points towards more general changes in family values, women’s lives and equality, and the relation between an ancient kingdom, the political system and the media. The series reflect the main themes in a story of the transition from a more rule-governed traditional society to a more modern society. Elizabeth’s defeat in episode 3 in her attempt to modernize the way things are done indicates how tricky and difficult change can be. This is even more the case looking at Princess Margaret’s lifelong struggle to find love, and to find someone accepted at court—and by her sister. We may see a direct line from this story to the story of Lady Diana Spencer and Prince Charles in season 3 and the following seasons, and it is also richly illustrated in the series by the story of Edward VIII, who abdicated to follow his true love. In a modern era saturated with media, the life of royal characters is even more exposed to public scrutiny as symbols of what you can and cannot do and be. Even though norms of sexuality, gender roles and family life are changing profoundly after 1945, those in public office and the royals still represent traditions that go far back in time. The narrative constantly circles around such dilemmas, and the contrasting or illustrative montage of sequences often underlines this. This is the case with the last five minutes of season 1, episode 3 (“Windsor”). After Elizabeth’s defeat at the hands of the political and royal system concerning the name and home of her family, she must first tell Philip about it. On the one hand, an ordinary conversation between a disappointed husband and a wife who cannot give him what he (and she) wants. On the other hand, a historical scene where tradition weighs down human relations. Following this we see the couple and their children arriving at the huge, monstrous Buckingham Palace, then a sequence

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showing the abdicated King Edward VIII leaving the country by boat, saluted by big crowds and the press, then back to the Queen declaring her family Windsor in front of the Palace staff and politicians. Then back to the children and a sulky Philip taking possession of the place. As she declares the name to be Windsor, the camera lingers on a disillusioned Philip and they seem to stare at each other in a fight for power and control. Then a short sequence with the abdicated king and a last look at the family at Buckingham Palace, with the Master of the Household and Ceremonies close behind them. One royal free, the rest under control— a classic story of duty and freedom, of just being a human and being a human figure. This whole intrigue is of course created by the fact that Philip and Elizabeth are plunged into new roles and duties by the early and sudden death of Elizabeth’s father. In episode 1 we follow them on their honeymoon to Africa, where she has only ceremonial duties, but the King’s death changes everything. The viewer knows about the death before her, and radio plays a role here, as it does in episode 2 (“Hyde Park Corner”). In this episode the political dimension of the series is also more clearly revealed. The death of the King affects not only the royal system, it also touches the political system, in this case the fight between Churchill and Anthony Eden. Radio plays an important role again as the medium through which you address the public, and as a global medium. The BBC’s announcement of the King’s death stands at the centre of a montage of radio voices from the British Empire and other parts of the world. You get a clear feeling of the still existing global British Empire, a theme that returns later in seasons 1 and 2. In the last part of episode 2, this power of the media is illustrated through a truly masterful montage of sequences during Churchill’s brilliant speech on the BBC announcing the death of a king and the new Queen, but also about new times to come, a modern challenge to the old Victorian era and the challenges to the British Empire. As Elizabeth is on her way back from her honeymoon to become Queen, we hear the voice of Queen Mary, the grandmother, speaking about a conflict between personal interest and duty that could threaten the throne. We follow Elizabeth dressing up as Regina, away with Lilibet (Elizabeth’s pet name), the Crown must always win, and Philip being put in second place. We then follow Churchill preparing for his radio broadcast, the other politicians gathering and anticipating his failure and possible fall as prime minister. It is, however, once more the old Churchill speaking to the whole nation

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as he did during World War II. His words resonate in royal circles, to the people. In a masterly, visual series of sequences, we hear his speech as Elizabeth enters Buckingham Palace, visits her dead father and is saluted by the whole family, and finally we see her grandmother kneeling in front of her in a mark of respect for the Crown. The final shot is a close-up of Elizabeth almost overwhelmed by this demonstration of the power and position bestowed upon her. The transformation of post-war Britain takes place on many levels: the way royalty is being challenged by established norms and ways of life also happening in the lives of ordinary people; the challenge of the rise of new media changing the way the royal and political systems interact and politics in general; and the decline of the British Empire and the UK’s new place in global politics. Much of the first level is already analyzed above, including some of the media and political aspects. But the changing role of the UK in global politics is also marked from the start of the first season, running through the second season as one of the major themes. Elizabeth’s honeymoon Commonwealth tour is portrayed as a very innocent experience of an exotic empire, but her father’s death ushers in a more modern era (Fig. 5.5). This global and iconic function of the Empire continues to be saluted in episode 5, where Elizabeth’s coronation becomes the first global transmission reaching all corners of the Empire. In episode 6 things begin to change, not only because of the long-running internal scandal around Margaret and her men, and the role of a more a more sensationalist press getting inside information, but also because of the Egyptian rebellion and Nasser on global television declaring the death of all imperialists. This is a starting point for many colonies to demand independence, following the example of India. In episode 8 this rebellion is underlined by Elizabeth and Philip touring all the colonies, a trip that Philip calls an absurd pantomime and an extravagant show of UK power and dominance—but with little effect. Elizabeth is nearly crushed between him, Churchill and the system which demands that she rises to the latent rebellion by being strong and shining through in the global media as Regina the eternal, and not the earthly Elizabeth. In a very strong final montage at the end of episode 9, the crisis in Egypt escalates, after Anthony Eden has visited Nasser, only to make things worse. As we follow Nasser speaking on television claiming that the UK and the West despise Arabs, we see in contrasting shots Elizabeth having her official photo as Queen taken with great pomp and circumstance. She is indeed Glorious Gloriana, Regina. But her family is

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Fig. 5.5 In The Crown it is not just the life of Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy) and her family that is central. We also follow the social, political and cultural development of Great Britain and the Empire. One of the first tasks of the new Queen is to visit the Empire on behalf of her dying father. Prince Philip (Matt Smith) and the Queen have difficulty relating to some of the conflicts arising from an empire under dramatic change (Screenshot by author)

in turmoil, and at the same time we see the sick Anthony Eden taking his injection while watching Nasser speak. He collapses in front of the screen, and the film melts and catches fire. Strong visual symbols of a politically weak empire, the only symbolic shaping of Elizabeth as the eternal Regina, and a looming fire presaging global developments to come. This new global development is not just the loss of an empire, it is also a change in the UK’s role on the world stage. The first indication comes in episode 7 around the Soviet nuclear armaments. Churchill presses for Britain to play a major role as the oldest of civilizations, and against letting the US get the upper hand. But Anthony Eden’s performance in Washington only undermines this, and the whole theme of US–UK relations is played out in season 2, not least in connection with the Kennedys’ visit.

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The Crown: A Story of Everyday Life and Mediated Politics As already indicated, the media play a central role in this story, and the demonstration of how the media operate in a modern context is related to the royal, the political and the everyday dimensions. Throughout the series there are many occasions when we witness how the media influence the political arena and how politicians react to and use the media. The same goes for the royal narrative, with the Crown increasingly realizing that it cannot manipulate and play on the media as before. The everyday life dimension has to do with the fact that the general public—especially with the rise of radio and television—take part in a deeply mediated reality, and that the dimension of everyday life is exposed by the media to a greater extent, gaining a new importance. One of the best illustrations of this is episode 4 in the first season (“Act of God”), in which the big London smog of 1952 plays a key role. As is announced at the end of the episode, this fog lasted for four days, is estimated to have killed more than 10,000 people, and revealed grave shortcomings in London’s protection against such incidents, including insufficient hospital capacity. The structure of this episode is a masterpiece of narrative montage and complexity, and it brings monarchy and political system head to head. It is a challenge for Churchill, who somewhat late but with great political skill—not least drawing on his wartime experience—emerges victorious. The episode opens at the Meteorological Institute in London where a forecast of the fog creates alarm, and the alarming news moves from the lowest employee to the head of the Institute. Finally, a letter goes to 10 Downing Street, but it fails to reach Churchill immediately. Instead, one of his staff (who is more loyal to the Labour Party) leaks it to a journalist, who takes it directly to Labour’s headquarters and Clement Atlee. Here we learn that following a similar environmental catastrophe in the US years before, it was decided to take measures to improve the UK system and prevent similar accidents. However, nothing has been done, among other things because it would require major reforms to heating systems in ordinary citizens’ homes. When the warning finally reaches Churchill, at first he fails to take it seriously, leading to an attempt to replace him which is presented to Queen Elizabeth. As the early signs of the fog begin to appear and the news spreads, things get serious. The ability of the media to cause alarm is here combined with a political plot involving both sides

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of the political system, Philip’s father Lord Mountbatten, and the whole royal system. There is, however, a higher and symbolic level involved in this episode, featuring Churchill’s secretary and the old Queen Mary. As the fog thickens, Elizabeth wants to visit Queen Mary, but it is so thick she cannot drive and decides to walk. Queen Mary’s advice to Elizabeth in this crisis is that the monarchy is called by God to give ordinary people something to look up to and aspire to. The voice of the ancient regime. The voice of the modern regime comes from Elizabeth herself, but in this case also from Churchill’s secretary. On the evening before the fog, she takes home Churchill’s biography and the morning after she reads passages aloud to him about passion, energy, hope and fire—about serving the nation and the people. Churchill is clearly moved, and when he later learns that not just his secretary’s mother, but also the secretary herself has died because of the fog, he leaves a government meeting and goes straight to the hospital. As viewers we are thus directly confronted with the realities of ordinary people’s lives, and although Churchill is told that Queen Elizabeth has asked him to come as soon as possible, he instead summons the media to the hospital to give one of his famous speeches on the spot. In his short speech he says “Only God can remove the fog, but I can alleviate the effects”, and he then goes on to mention the political solutions he wants to set in motion. When the papers report this next morning and he meets the Queen, the political plot falls apart. There is a strong element of realism in this smog plot and its combination of politics, the royal system, the media system and everyday life. But there is also a layer of symbolism in the opposition between an ancient system, represented by old Queen Mary, which understands a God-given order between those who govern and ordinary people, and Churchill who directly speaks against that, the brutal political reality clearly showing us that other forces than God and royalty reign. The use of Mozart’s Requiem in this episode can be taken as an underlining of this shift: when first used it underlines a clear, starry night despite the fog warning; it is used for the last time when Churchill enters the meeting with Queen Elizabeth, and the fog lifts in an amazing visual effect. There are powers in nature we cannot control very much, being mere mortals, but on the other hand we can act on many levels and try to make things better.

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Lived Lives, Living History: Biopics and Historical Debate The Crown was generally met with very positive reviews and a large transnational audience. David Sims’ review in the American journal The Atlantic (Sims 2016) is a good example of this. David Sims calls it “a sweeping, sumptuous history lesson”, and he notes that this is not just one of Netflix’s most expensive and lavish productions. In his words this is “storytelling on an epic scale”, charting one of the world’s most famous families through Elizabeth II’s post-war reign. Reflecting on how royalty in the tabloid media is often described with a focus on their opulent and expensive lifestyle, David Sims notes that the series is actually “light on soapy backstabbing and scandalous romantic twists”, and he continues: “it’s a surprisingly granular, methodological look at British political life … filtered through the eyes of Queen Elizabeth and her family”. Sims’ characterization of The Crown in many ways goes to the heart of the historical biopic: they are very often about iconic, historical figures at the top of society, and they therefore give a very specific and often limited view of history. However, no one would deny that iconic figures of power, tied to important institutions in society, are an important part of history, and that they offer a strong narrative entry point for historical narratives. Families, not just a specific family, but often a network of families and subjects representing social, cultural and political tendencies and positions are central to our understanding of reality—and are thus also important for identification with a historical reality. They function as recognizable elements in history over time, we can emotionally identify with or relate to them, and they embody ideologies and tendencies in history that give us a deeper and more intense experience of history. The power of narrative and the use of both families and iconic individuals is part of what makes history come alive and create a dialogue with our present. As we saw above, David Sims embraced The Crown as an important historical series teaching viewers about central aspects of UK, Commonwealth and European history. However, the debate in the UK about the series also gave rise to severe criticism, on behalf of ordinary people, so to speak. A Guardian reader, Harry Leslie Smith (Smith 2016) called the series’ “portrayal of history an insult to my generation’s struggles”, adding that the series “joins a long line of period dramas that ignore the lives of ordinary men and women”. He describes the historical sacrifices the population has had to make since World War II and sees the battle

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for the welfare state and social equality as much more central than this lavish and expensive play about the upper classes. In the end Smith points to another story that needs to be told, and he also connects past and present: Because of austerity and Brexit, Britain has become a house divided. We need more than ever our great film-makers and television producers to tell the stories from our collective past that reflect all its pathos and wonder. And they need to tell it from the perspective of those ordinary, brilliant and profound men and women who, a lifetime ago, helped shape the way we live today through their deeds. (Smith 2016)

Historical narratives are very likely to cause debate over the past, and biopics perhaps more than other narratives, because the past is here represented by individuals with power, individuals unlike most of us. Where everyday drama celebrates the ordinary, biopics celebrate the extraordinary. Despite criticism of biopics from journalists and historians, audiences in general love them. Even though identifying with ordinary people is a strong part of historical narratives, we are clearly also fascinated by great historical figures, by looking into the chambers and institutions of those above us. Historical biopics are about people who have made their mark on history and stand out as iconic figures—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, but most often a little of both. Since no man or woman is an island, such historical narratives seldom only focus on the outstanding individual. They also give us a broader insight into families, social and cultural networks, and the historical events that have formed or influenced their lives. Biopics contain elements of national history—in this case UK history and German history—but they are also European biopics in the sense that the life and influence of the characters at their heart often resonate across Europe and in fact globally. They illustrate that national figures, national events and the stories told about them form networks of meanings and stories that travel. The books of Thomas Mann are European and world heritage, and his life illustrates central parts of European history from 1900 to 1955—he is the migrant democratic voice of another Germany. Queen Elizabeth II represents a royal figure of a nation and an empire under dramatic transformation in modern European democracies and an increasingly global world. She is also a media figure in a very much transformed media culture in Europe, and as later seasons of the series will

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show, the wider family history has spectacular and tragic elements that reflect the further development in the mediation of politics and royal life in Europe. In an article on the image of British monarchs in the media, Andrew Higson (2016) clearly points to the interplay between tradition and heritage, and contemporality and modernization, and in the mediation of historical biopics: Heritage is not politically neutral – heritage artefacts, events and representations always carry with them particular ideas about how we might view the past, and how the past might be used in the present. One of the most vital features of Britain’s royal heritage is the sense of longevity and tradition; to mobilise it is in part to establish a sense of continuity between past and present, to insert the national present into a national tradition. Paradoxically, if the royal films at one level align their celluloid monarchs with the ideologies of tradition and continuity, at another they play a vital role in modernising the contemporary image of the British monarchy. Thus, they tell relatively familiar stories in new ways, variously drawing on the conventions of romantic drama, action adventure and family drama, and on the conventions of both historical drama and contemporary drama. (Higson 2016: 340)

The fact that both The Crown and Die Manns – Ein Jahrhundertroman have had a broad success all over Europe indicates that such stories of real historical persons and their wider context speak to people across national borders and perhaps make viewers aware of both differences and similarities in Europe. Biopics may create controversy if they are seen as a celebration of those in power, those sitting at the top of society and culture. On the other hand, this is also a sign of what such series can do, and neither of the two main series analyzed celebrates power or forgets the broader perspective of history. As pointed out by Will Abbiss: The Crown maintains an overriding ambiguity around its central concept, allowing for the monarchy to be both criticized and supported depending on the viewer’s own disposition. The aesthetic pleasures of heritage drama are frequently apparent, but are challenged and at times subverted by the sustained interrogation undertaken by The Crown’s serialized narrative. (Abbiss 2019: 13)

Both Die Manns and The Crown represent one way of viewing national and European history. They have a special vantage point from which

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to view history, a vantage point that is clearly popular with a broader audience. But this vantage point is also a critical position, where the identification with an iconic historical figure reflects a broader historical perspective, and where the fictional narrative and documentary dimensions merge in a reflexive way. Identification is not just with a person and the power elite, but also with other historical perspectives.

References Abbiss, W. S. (2019). Proposing a Post-Heritage Critical Framework: The Crown, Ambiguity and Media Self-Consciousness. Television & New Media, 10(1), 1–17. Burgoyne, R. (2008). The Hollywood Historical Film. Oxford: Blackwell. Ebbrecht, T. (2007). Docudramatizing History on TV. German and British Docudrama and Historical Event Television in the Memorial Year 2005. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1), 35–53. Ebbrecht, T. (2010). (Re)constructing Biographies. German Television Docudrama and the Historical Biography. In E. Bell & A. Gray (Eds.), Televising History: Mediating the Past in Postwar Europe (pp. 207–220). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Flügge, M. (2016). Das Jahrhundert der Manns [The Century of the Mann Family]. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag. Higson, A. (2003). English Heritage, English Cinema. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Higson, A. (2016). From Political Power to the Power of the Image. ‘British’ Cinema and the Nation’s Monarchs. In M. Meck (Ed.), British Monarchy on Screen (pp. 339–363). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kansteiner, W. (2006). In Pursuit of German Memory. History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Krause, T. (2000, September 1). Die Manns, Ein Melodrama. Die Welt. Kurzke, H. (2001). Thomas Mann. Das Leben als Kunstwerk. Eine Biographie. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag. Mangan, L. (2016, November 4). The Crown Review—The £100 m Gamble on the Queen Pays Off Royally. The Guardian. Meck, M. (Ed.). (2016). British Monarchy on Screen. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Monk, C. (2011). Heritage Film Audiences: Period Films and Contemporary Audiences in the UK. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Rasmussen, A. B. (2006, November 11). Djævlens arkitekt. Information. Schwendemann, H. (2005, May 4). Späte Entarnung eines Lügners [Late Unmasking of a Liar]. Die Zeit.

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Seifert, H. (2001, November 30). Familiendrama und Jahrhunderroman. Neue Zürcher Zeitung. Sims, D. (2016, November 4). The Crown Is a Sweeping, Sumptuous History Lesson. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/ 2016/11/the-crown-netflix-review/506522/. Accessed 27 June 2019. Smith, H. L. (2016, November 8). The Crown’s Portrayal of History Is an Insult to My Generation’s Struggles. The Guardian. https://www.thegua rdian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/08/the-crown-portrayal-of-history-ins ult-to-my-generations-struggles/. Accessed 4 June 2019. Smith, R. (2004, July 5). Isle Be Damned. The Guardian. Steinberg, S., & Rippert, U. (2002, March 2). Eine Debatte über Die Manns - Eine Jahrhundertroman. On World Socialist Web. https://www.wsws.org/ de/articles/2002/03/mann-m02.html. Vickers, H. (2019, June 11). With a £100 Million Budget Netflix’s EagerlyAnticipated New Show The Crown Is the Most Lavish Biopic, But It’s by Marred Sensationalist Errors and Some Remarkable Lapses into Vulgarity. The Daily Mail. William, J. M. (2017). Cognitive Approaches to German Historical Film: Seeing Is Not Believing. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

CHAPTER 6

Grand Illusions and the Great War: World War I Narratives

The twentieth century was greeted with big hopes and dreams—dreams and hopes that did of course mirror different expectations according to class, culture and ideology. Yet, 1900–1914 was a promising beginning to a new era: industrial projects were launched, consumerism was booming, and ideas to improve living conditions, workers’ and women’s rights, and health and medicine became part of reality. These were later themes in historical documentary and fiction series looking back at this period. The Great War, which is at the centre of this chapter, should therefore also be seen in the context of period dramas from Germany and England dealing with the historical reality before 1914. The dreams and hopes are part of the history of the war itself, not least a background for what came after the war. The series analyzed in this chapter are mostly war narratives, where war and actions related to war are the driving forces of the narrative. World War I was an event that disastrously dimmed the hopes and dreams of Europeans with grand expectations of better lives and better societies— a strong theme in some of the historical period dramas describing the years leading up to the war. In British war and period dramas, this element of seeing the war as the ultimate end of the Edwardian era often leads to a somewhat nostalgic look at the immediate past, and a critical look at the modern post-war era. German period dramas, on the other hand, are more modern and forward looking. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_6

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The End of an Era: British and German Period Dramas What comes to life in British and German period dramas from the 1960s on is—perhaps particularly in British drama—the feeling of the breakdown of the old order, a new and democratic modernity, and the change of norms and values which some may have seen as part of the nation’s cultural heritage and ideology. Seen from a British conservative heritage point of view, this was a dramatic change often causing nostalgia, although new modern ideologies were also dealt with. The unfolding of more complex period narratives, the larger networks of characters representing social and cultural tendencies and classes did, however, also gave rise to contrasting feelings and ideological clashes. However, in these period dramas, the visual and symbolic use of landscapes, and the celebration of ways of life often reflect a deeper embodiment of emotions and psychology reflecting a period that was on the verge of being lost. Despite the fact that Downton Abbey (2010–2015) only deals with the years after World War I, it is in fact a historical series which clearly demonstrates a double perspective on the past: on the one hand the upstairs world where tradition reigns, also supported in many ways downstairs; and on the other a quite clear and realistic story of slow democratic change. Here representatives of new classes take the stage, helping to fulfil the transition from conservative traditions to modern democracy. The Forsyte Saga (1967 and remade in 2002) is also a very clear ‘heritage modernity’ narrative based on John Galsworthy’s series of novels written between 1906 and 1912. The 1967 version was one of the most successful British series, with the 26 episodes seen by 18 million people, a huge audience in those days, and it was also a world success. The series clearly deals with the Edwardian upper classes, but the narrative also describes the slow change of family roles and structures, reflecting a time when industrialization, liberal reforms and the rise of the consumer society went hand in hand with the liberation of women. All this is reflected in family relations and conflicts in the historical context of a period ranging from the late Victorian age through the Edwardian era and into the beginning of a new modernity. According to Byrne (2015), the original and the new versions of The Forsyte Saga are different in how hard-hitting and realistic their version of the family story is, but both share the slight nostalgia of Galsworthy’s novels:

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Galsworthy joins the other twentieth century writers who, immediately following the First World War, look back at the Edwardian period with an affection and nostalgia which at the time it had not merited: as one of Galsworthy’s biographers put it, “there was a considerable feeling just then for continuity, for reaching back and linking up with the peace we had once known”. (Byrne 2015: 44)

In contrast, a series like Mr. Selfridge (2013) deals with a new class of social and cultural entrepreneurs; it is a series with a modern look at capitalism and the consumer society. Despite what Byrne (2015: 90) calls a mix of “soap opera and heritage drama”, this period drama about a department store paints a more modern version of the early twentieth century and gives a central role to women’s rise in public life and business. The narrative is focused on the rise of a new form of capitalism and society, not so much a nostalgic family story. Where other period dramas from this period may indicate a certain scepticism towards American capitalism, Mr. Selfridge describes an American entrepreneur bringing a new dynamic to a much more traditional London and England. The episodes during World War I focus on how the store is managed at a time of crisis, although they also reflect national issues of a nation at war. Although nostalgia for a lost past is not absent from German period dramas dealing with the early 1900s, they seem to offer a different basic perspective. They tell a story about social and political life in the early twentieth century, about classes and different families, about projects and ideas representing the new century. They are about the hardship of conflicts between old and new, and within the new world and emerging modernity. Das Adlon. Eine Familiensaga (Adlon. A Family Story) (2013) is a broad historical narrative about a famous hotel. Alongside a portrait of the new classes behind industrial capitalism and the new consumer society, we see a large gallery of figures representing all other classes, representatives of the old and the new Germany, and international guests. The Germany of the past is centrally involved in shaping a new Germany, and Lorenz Adlon says: “This is a hotel made for the twentieth century, where the Gods meet to invent the future.” As the first part shows, this new bourgeois Germany wrapped in an old empire completely falls apart during World War I, and with the loss of also the colonies, a new Germany is created. The story of the Adlon is a story not just of a hotel but also of a country that had to reinvent itself again and again. Woven into the broader story, however, is also a story of another change,

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a story of how new classes arise within old classes, and how new and old worlds interact. The story’s narrator, Sonja, represents the experience of the German past and the price it has had to pay, but in also representing a new mundane and more open-minded present, she is designed as the incarnation of German reason and democracy. Perhaps for the same reason, the series is one of ZDF’s most successful since 2010, with an average audience of 8.5 million and a very strong share of 24%. A period drama like Charité (2017) shows other aspects of the modern era. It is a historical period drama about an institution—a hospital. Seeing the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century through this institution clearly enables medicine and science as the rational search for truth to be set against traditional, conventional ideologies and social norms. If we see the twentieth century as a century of modern science and technology providing a better quality of life for all, Charité is the incarnation of this century. The problems Charité faces are the same as many of those facing enlightenment and modern development. Women are not really allowed to be scientists and doctors, the rich are often privileged at the expense of the poor, and religion and superstition often fight science. So do political ideologies, ethnic ideologies and wars. As the title indicates, Charité represents progress and humanity.

War and the Changing Map of Europe The map of Europe and the rest of the world looked very different in 1913 compared to the end of the war in 1918. It was indeed a new kind of war in many ways, a war that ended the great expectations and illusions of the early twentieth century, changed the map of Europe by creating a new landscape of nation states, and once and for all removed the traditional heroic conception of war, giving birth to a new and ever more technological kind of war. The map of Europe in 1913 was a map of multinational multi-ethnic empires: The Habsburg Empire of Austria and Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire and the old empires of England, France and Germany. Most of these empires had colonies, especially the vast British Empire with possessions in Africa, Asia and the Middle East or even further away. France and Germany had fewer but still important overseas possessions. World War I resulted in the gradual fall of these empires and a move towards a map of new nation states in Europe and in the backyard of European empires. This was, however, a very slow continuous process,

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which paved the way for more fundamental changes after 1945. The Great War was not just a war in and with Europeans, but also a war involving soldiers and people from all over the old empires. On top of this, the Russian Empire collapsed because of the war and the communist uprising and revolution. After 1918, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia became separate nations. World War I also saw the beginning of the decline of European world dominance, with America rising as the new world leader. But perhaps the worst to come out of World War I and the new Europe of nations and weakened empires was a strong nationalist and very toxic ethnic mixture of ideologies, which—especially in Germany after the Versailles peace treaty—created the conditions for World War II. Millions never returned from the trenches or returned as invalids severely wounded by bombs, bullets and poisonous gas. Even though civilians were not killed in their millions as in World War II, the home front suffered from a shortage of everything and the workforce was drastically reduced. As the war dragged on, the home front had to rely on the elderly or especially the women to take over and manage farms, industries, shops and even weapons production. “Women and the First World War: a Taste of Freedom” (Rowbotham 2018) was the title of an article in The Guardian celebrating the centennial of the end of World War I. It is noted that during the war more than 100,000 women joined organizations like the Women’s Land Army (farming), the Women’s Royal Airforce or the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. Even though a setback came after the war, when the men returned, this meant the beginning of a change in traditional gender roles and family structures. But the fight for voting and other equal rights for women continued, although it was not until after World War II that the incipient equality revolution took another leap forward. The development was, however, strong enough to enter both documentary and fictional narratives of World War I.

Realities and Memories Reverend Musser’s family had always lived in Alsace, but as he tells New York Times reporter Katrin Bennhold (2018), not always in the same country. His grandfather fought for the Germans in World War I and his father for the French in World War II. Now his younger relatives are crossing this invisible border without ever noticing it. He reflects on this as a result of the two wars. The title of the article is “Can Europe’s Liberal Order Survive as the Memory of War Fades?” and in Musser’s opinion the

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enormous achievement of the European Union is threatened: “The foundation of the European Union is the memory of war, but that memory is fading.” The article was written as leaders from all over the world gathered in France to commemorate the end of World War I. But European voices raised doubts about the future: nationalism and populism were on the rise, and the French author Dominique Moïsi is quoted in the article as saying: “A century ago, Europe was the centre of the world—even if it was the dark and tragic centre”. The German historian Daniel Schönpflug adds to that: “Once the generation with living memory of fighting had died, the next war came along. History teaches us that when the generation that experienced war dies out, caution diminishes and naiveté towards war increases.” (Schönpflug in Bennhold 2018, see also Schönpflug 2018). If this is true, it also stresses the need for continued fictional and documentary narratives that can continuously recreate our longer historical memory. In 2018, 100 years after the end of World War I, both winners and losers were consensually involved, but this has not always been the case. As Neil MacGregor has pointed out in his book Germany: Memoirs of a Nation (2016): “In Germany there is no annual remembrance of the First World War, or even the more terrible conflict of the Second World War” (MacGregor 2016: 529). The German sculptor Ernst Barlach, who had been a soldier in the First World War, created war memorials dedicated to a pacifist lamentation of war, and expressing the need for memory and inner reflection. As MacGregor points out, such memorials immediately drew the attention of local patriots and right-wing movements. They wanted memorials like Georg Kolbe’s 1934 monument showing strong Arian male figures and bearing the inscription “1914–1918 you have not fallen in vain”. When the Nazi regime took over in the 1930s, memorials like Barlach’s and others were removed. Many nation states were in turmoil after the end of World War I, and ideological conflicts were plentiful. However, the defeated Germany was hit harder than any other European country, and the conflict over war realities and the role of Germany was not just about these realities and their memorialization. It was about unfinished and deep conflicts in a German nation soon to be torn apart by inner tensions and united again under an authoritarian and aggressive ideology. Barlach’s monuments did not return to Germany until 1981, in a ceremony where both the GDR leader Erich Honecker and the West German chancellor Helmuth Kohl

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were present. Despite two wars and Germany’s role in them, the return of Barlach’s Angel, according to MacGregor, shows that: … dialogues … were possible [and] the painful and difficult conversations between Germany and the world in the quest for resolution and reconciliation. All of this has shaped the angel and given it ever deeper meaning. Like Germany itself, it has been dishonoured, destroyed, dismembered and refashioned. But it has always carried in itself the survival of an ideal, and the hope of renewal. (MacGregor 2016: 542)

The First World War is not completely absent from German culture, especially not in historical documentaries and of course in books, journals and newspapers. But looking at how both world wars were dealt with later in film and television, World War I is clearly much more present in British, French and Belgian media, where we find an organized attempt to interpret the Great War in both 2014 and 2018. In the period before 1945 we also find a divided and intense debate in Germany. The German attempt to come to terms with the past of two wars became much stronger after 1945, as Wulf Kansteiner has demonstrated in his book In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz (2006). A prolonged debate at all levels of German society, a very explicit memory politics and an attempt to go through different phases in dealing with a collective symbolic and real guilt took place. However, even after 1945 the memories and realities of World War I did not seem as relevant as the those of World War II, even though it appears as a historic landmark in the period dramas already mentioned.

First World War Documentaries: Memories, Experiences and Factual Narratives In Jerry Palmer’s Memoirs from the Frontline (2018), which compares memoirs and novels about World War I in three countries, England, France and Germany, he points to the fact that the spreading of mass literacy had created a new public and a new genre with a focus on personal experience. It was based on a new realism in describing what war really is, contesting early forms of more heroic war reporting. The memoirs and novels offer a specific, experience-based contribution of war and the politics behind war that clearly influenced public debate in the period after the war. The result was a new, more authentic, experience-based move away

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from abstract, strategic forms and more romantic, heroic and national forms of public discourse. Another interesting aspect is, of course, that this new way of talking about war was present in all countries involved. Despite national differences, novels from all three countries were based on the same themes of authenticity, realism and personal experience, and they all became transnational bestsellers. About the pattern of transnational reception Palmer concludes: In the texts themselves, concern with truth to experience emerges in various elements of composition: attention to detail, frankness about the varieties of experience, and capacity to render the rich texture of experience as it is lived in a way commensurate with its complexity. All of these features transcend the divisions between nations, and in some respects are universal in the texts analysed; both international and intra-national political distinctions arise in the way in which these features of textuality are used. (Palmer 2018: 305)

The main tendencies in such war narratives and memoirs based on factual, personal experience are to a large extent the same as we find in later TV documentaries. Looking back on this development, Basil L. Hart, author of History of the First World War (1973), declared that he saw himself as part of a movement in which documents alone cannot be relied on, and that personal direct experience of events or the testimony of witnesses is the only way of testing official documents (Dillon 2010: 141). In the two first English series about World War I, the BBC and Jeremy Isaac’s The Great War (26 episodes, 1964) and ITV’s First World War (1961, six episodes) it is exactly this tendency to mix a more authoritative, fact-based form with personal narratives, memories and witnesses that we see. As Emma Hanna has pointed out (Hanna 2009) this development within the history and documentary departments of television did not just appear out of the blue. In the years after 1918 we see a widespread movement to gather memories from individuals and families all over England related to the war and its impact on everyday life: British documentaries about the First World War have utilized the language and imagery of remembrance rituals that we established in the immediate post-war period by resonating with elements of commemoration: the grief and consolation which lie at the heart of Britain’s memory 1914-18. (Hanna 2009: 90)

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Jeremy Isaacs’ The Great War was in fact based on interviews not just with British people, but also with 1200 people from six different countries involved in the war. This means that we are not talking about a national narrative of the war, it is a transnational narrative trying to combine different national points of view. It was also the first documentary narrative to describe the war not from a political, national perspective, but to a large degree from the personal memories and statements of veterans of the war. It was the first documentary war narrative to use not just montage and a clear dramatic structure, but also poetic elements both visually and in the form of poems, photographs and paintings. The series certainly also underlined the tendency in soldier memoirs to stress the grim reality of war, to show it as it was. Emma Hanna, who explored the series’ reception in the UK, concluded that the series attracted an unusually wide range of viewers and that it had a strong cognitive and emotional impact: “The viewers’ cultural understanding of the war as a bloody and terrible event was reinforced by the visual and emotional power of the series, and personified by the image of the staring soldier [the series start image]. Viewers’ letters suggest that they felt compelled to meet his gaze.” (Hanna: 2009: 103).

Documentary War Narratives: Multiple Voices and Narrative Strategies Although we do find elements of a new documentary style in war narratives on World War I in the UK and Germany before 1990, the great changes happened after 1990 (Hanna 2009: 17). Re-enactments, dramadocumentary formats, reality TV, and an altogether stronger mix of the factual and authoritative with the subjective became more common. Malcolm Brown’s Battle of the Somme (1976, BBC) presents this famous battle by mixing reports and soldier testimonies with poems, paintings and music related to the war or public feelings about the war (Hanna 2009: 21–22). The combination of testimonies from soldiers and other people with a more authoritative, factual narrator and a chronological narrative is very dominant in modern war documentaries. Channel Four’s ten-part series The First World War: An Historical Insight (2003) is a well-made documentary combining these two main modes. The basic narrative, rhetorical and visual structures are the following:

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• The authoritative historian narrator gives the background analysis and facts and keeps the different layers together. • Embedded in the narrative we find testimonies and comments from a wide spectrum of historical voices: politicians, high-ranking military figures, ordinary soldiers, civilians, poets, journalists, diplomats, etc. • Bio-sequences where some characters do not just give testimony but also get a broader background story to understand their historical role. • Maps—often live—are important for visualizing military strategic and political changes. • Scenes from civilian life showing the impact of war on everyday life are as important as scenes from battles and military life. • Visually the series uses a lot of archive footage, but sometimes also montage photos combining several forms of archive footage. A special kind of montage is when images of the past and images of the present (taken in the same places) are seen together. The dimension of stories from soldiers and their families is used consistently in the form of still photos and readings from letters and memoirs of soldiers from Germany, France, Russia, Serbia and England. The dimension of the experience of the ordinary soldier and of everyday life more generally has become a central part of more authoritative forms of television war narrative. Politicians, generals and the social and cultural elite remain very dominant, but the whole narrative is built on a direct dialogue between public and private voices, between those in power and ordinary people, between authors, poets, journalists and those speaking on behalf of the establishment. We see this development in two even more impressive documentaries: Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old (2018), in which he created a whole new film out of original footage from World War I archives, and in the UK–US co-production People’s Century (1995–1997), a 26-part series dealing with twentieth-century history not just in Europe, but more globally. People’s Century is in fact a very radical documentary which shifts the focus on historical events to ordinary people and everyday life. The series has a narrator, and we do from time to time see the usual historical footage of events in this dramatic century, but two-thirds of the series is footage of civilians and soldiers, and a very important element is interviews with people who witnessed and lived through the historical events. They Shall Not Grow Old is in many ways just as radical and moving.

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Peter Jackson restored and coloured archive footage from the Imperial War Museum, with the focus on the life of ordinary soldiers. There is no authoritative narrator or other outside commentators; all we see and hear are the soldiers themselves and the voices and stories of the veterans who survived—in this case reusing many interviews recorded in 1964 and later. Jackson and his team even changed the rhythms of the old films to bring them closer to real-life rhythms. Lip-sync recreation of some of the dialogues on the silent film footage has been added, with the dialogue then inserted by actors. The Guardian’s film critic Mark Kermode called the result breathtaking, and the whole feeling of watching the film is described as the past coming alive (Kermode 2018) (Fig. 6.1). Yet another move in the direction of representing the experiences of ordinary soldiers can be found in Our World War. Real Lives, Real War (2014) produced by BBC3 and clearly targeted at the younger audience of this channel. The story is in three parts and deals with three legendary

Fig. 6.1 Our World War. Real Lives, Real War (2014) is a fine example of the new type of war docudrama emerging all over Europe, especially after 2000. The episode “Pals” takes place in 2016, and we get plenty of bloody realism (documentary and fictional) about World War I. We also follow real historical characters who make the reality of war come even closer (Screenshot by author)

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and very brutal World War I battles. The first episode, “The First Day”, focuses on the Battle of Mons in Belgium between the British Royal Fusiliers and the Germans. The second episode, “Pals”, on the Battle of the Somme in France involves a regiment from Manchester, and in the third episode, “War Machine”, we witness the Battle of Amiens, also in France, this time with a tank regiment. The script is written by Joe Barton, but strictly based on accounts, testimonies and diary notes from real soldiers. We are thus talking about a classical docudrama recreating events that really took place and real-life characters played by actors. The series was shot to a great extent from the perspective of the soldiers, using helmet and gun cams, adding to the dramatic visual quality of the narrative and placing the viewer literally in the position of the characters. Besides representing a soldier’s perspective, we might also see the high dramatic tension and the positioning of the viewer in a character position as a way of appealing to a younger audience fascinated with computer games. Episode 2, “Pals”, takes place in 1916 and is about a group of office clerks from Manchester. The theme of this episode is the friendships and the solidarity between soldiers at war, but an ethical and loyalty conflict also runs through it. As we see in the opening scene, a firing squad has been selected to execute a person for trying to desert. We also follow the pals as they leave their office jobs in Manchester, through training and combat at the Somme. Through the main character Paddy, we also follow life in their camp, fraternizing with military nurses, etc. Most of the episode, like the whole series, looks like a realist war drama, including the musical score (P. J. Harvey). However, there are also traditional documentary elements, for instance the use of live maps on which we follow the positions of the Pal company and the enemy in the combat zone. There is also a general use of original photo stills in many parts of the series, especially in the opening and closing scenes. The series was generally well received in the UK, but it did divide critics because of its obvious appeal to a younger audience, the highdrama intensity and the use of computer game-derived technology, also including experiments with light. The Guardian was on the positive side (Wollaston 2014), while The Independent felt the modern touch and the way it was told made the story backfire badly (Jones 2014). Wollaston does mention that this attempt to speak to a new young generation could have misfired, but concludes that it works and is beautifully done. He admires the realism in the war images and the intensity of the human

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drama: “the best, and most affecting, of the first world war programmes, I’ve seen so far”. Jones, on the other hand, is very negative and concludes: “Our World War deserves some credit for its willingness to try something different from the usual First World War drama … but the experiment has failed. This didn’t help us understand what is was like to be a young soldier in 1914; it helped us understand what it’s like to be a young actor in 2014.”

German and Transnational European War Documentaries In the German tradition of World War I documentaries, we also find more authoritative documentaries like Guido Knoop’s Weltenbrand (World Fire) (2014), and docudramas like 14 – Tagebücher des Ersten Weltkriegs (14 Diaries of The First World War) (2014), which combines much more dramatized personal stories with more informational strategies. However, what is interesting about documentaries about World War I, especially those made after 2000, is that in general they use narrative strategies where the macro perspectives of war and politics are linked to a strong focus on historical characters and everyday life and the home front. It is also quite obvious that the traditional use of an authoritative narrator and historical experts goes hand in hand with reconstructions and with dramatic and contrasting editing of original documentary footage. It is furthermore quite clear that even though German and English documentaries take a national perspective, this perspective is at the same time embedded in a transnational understanding of the war. Weltenbrand is a clear example of this, and the fact that it is a FrenchGerman co-production (ZDF and France TV) points to the dialectic between the national and transnational, as does the broad use of experts from many European countries (UK, Germany, Belgium, France, for instance). The series tells the story of World War I in three parts (each of 45 minutes): “Der Sündenfall (The Fall)”, 1914, about the background to the start of the war; “Fegefeuer (Purgatory)”, 1915–1916, about the terror and catastrophes of war on all levels; and “Völkerschlacht ” (Slaughterhouse)”, 1917–1918, about the ending of the war. One of the main points of the series, summarized by the British historian Ian Kershaw, is that World War I did not end in 1918, but in 1945. The Europe left after 1918 was so full of unfinished conflicts that it carried a new war

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with it. Building on this, the series uses six main characters who experienced World War I on the battlefield and with this experience went on to play very different roles in World War II. In part one it is the British Bernard Montgomery and Adolf Hitler (according to Kershaw, the latter saw World War I as “his university”; in part 2 it is Herman Göring and Charles de Gaulle; and in part 3 it is the later German and American generals Walther Model and George Patton. All six characters are introduced in relation to their roles in World War II, and through reconstructions we follow their World War I experience and the lessons they drew from it. Each character is also dealt with by experts, putting the reconstructions in context. Throughout the series we also hear the voices of ordinary soldiers through letters home or diaries, just as the series from start to finish shows us life both at the frontline and on the home front. Almost all the original documentary footage is coloured and the quality enhanced, which contributes to enabling the viewer to relive and identify with a past world of war and people’s lives during a war. The first episode is particularly interesting in this connection, focusing on people in the cities of Europe completely unaware of what is going to happen, continuing to live life in a civilized Europe where both the royals and everyone else are just one big family enjoying life and the new possibilities of life in a new promising century. The dreams and hopes are confronted with the terrible realities of a completely new kind of war, life in the trenches, new deadly war technologies and enormous losses of human life, which soon forces German newspapers to stop publishing lists of the dead. Through the reconstruction of the six characters and the lessons they learn from the war and the more authoritative documentary narrative (the narrator, the use of footage and the experts), there is clearly a very realistic and quite critical line on Germany’s role in the war. This is shown, for instance, in the German war crime in Leeuwen, Belgium in 1914 (part one), where massacres of civilians shape the image of Germans as monsters in the European press, and in the images in part two and three of the German generals and leaders systematically exaggerating their military power and possibilities and underestimating how tired the German soldiers and people are of the war. Hitler, Göring and Model all appear in the last part of the series as the angry, defeated revanchists, while the soldiers in Kiel start the rebellion leading to the abdication of the German emperor, and the birth of a new, but short-lived German democracy. The foundations of World War II were laid on the slaughterhouse of World

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War I, the creation of a series of new war technologies, and a new more chaotic Europe of new nations (Fig. 6.2). Even though World War I was a conflict between empires and nations where national interests, ideologies and emotions played a key role, most of the TV documentaries we have dealt with so far follow a more transnational narrative strategy. This is of course natural for war documentaries focusing on battles between nations. In comparison, some of the fictional works we will be looking at in the following sections often create a more national focal point and perspective. But the perhaps most transnational of the documentary series, a series also clearly mixing fictional recreation with authentic footage, is the European co-production 14 – Tagebücher des Ersten Weltkriegs (14 Diaries of The First World War) (2014). What Jeremy Isaacs started in 1964, when he combined memoirs and personal stories, is here taken to a much more radical level. In many ways this series and the similar Krieg der Träume (Clash of Cultures) about the interwar period (see Chapter 7) represent a new tendency in European historical television drama towards transnational, European co-production and oral history.

Fig. 6.2 The move towards docudrama is also very present in the transnational production of 14 people’s lives during World War I, Tagebücher des ersten Weltkriegs/14 Diaries of the First World War (2014). The series often uses graphic design to introduce new characters (Screenshot by author)

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Based on memories, diaries and letters from 14 people who lived through World War I, this series seeks to narrate war history based on a mix of historical figures through reconstructions of their lives combined with more traditional documentary footage. It is part of the tendency towards bringing history closer to viewers by creating stronger identification and emotional ties between the past and the present. The main characters in the series represent different classes, occupations and nations, giving the series a quite distinctive focus on World War I. The eight episodes follow the war chronologically and describes events with documentary footage, but it is the inserted life stories that give it a special ambience and bring us closer to an authentic experience of the past. They also give the viewer a more direct personification of transnational and European history—also in terms of languages, as we hear German, French, English, Russian and Italian spoken. A European co-production, the series was a direct collaboration between Gunnar Dedio from the German production company LOOKSfilm and Ulrike Dotzer from ARTE. The script was written by two Germans, Jan Peter, who also directed, and Youry Winterberg, but Maarten van der Duin (Netherlands) and Andrew Bampfield (UK) were also involved in developing ideas and script. As ARTE is a German/French collaborative enterprise, France is strongly represented in creative development and production by, among others, Serge Lalou, Laurent Duret and Paul Cadieux. As a co-production this series was also supported financially by many funds and TV channels in addition to LOOKSfilm and ARTE, including the BBC, ORF, IRIS production, Les Films d’ICI, NDR, WDR, YLE and Creative Media Europe. Looking at the profile of this transnational European co-production financially and creatively, it is fair to say that ARTE was the main driver, and that a creative French-German alliance is clearly visible. But as a production it is has a strong European and transnational profile. The characters forming the more personal, individual narratives of the series represent very different nationalities, ideologies and views on the time they live in: • Louis Barthas (1879–1952, born in France, worker (cooper), experiencing but surviving the trenches) • Sarah Broom Macnaughtan (1864–1916, born in Scotland, nurse, working in Belgium and France during the war)

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• Charles Edward Montague (1867–1928, born in London, journalist and pacifist, but still joined the army) • Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945, born in Germany, artist) • Caroline Ethel Cooper (1871–1961, born in Australia, studied music in Leipzig, where she lived during the war) • Karl Kasser (1889–1976, born in Austria and fighting on the Russian front, where he was taken prisoner) • Gabrielle West (1890–unknown, born in the UK as daughter of a wealthy family, worked during the war in a weapons factory) • Marie Pireaud (1892–1978, born in France, married to Paul Pireaud, a farmer) • Paul Pireaud (1890–1970, born in France, farmer and soldier, married to Marie Pireaud) • Vincenco D’Aquila (1893–1971, born in Italy, but emigrated to US with his parents, joined the Italian army in 1915) • Ernst Jünger (1895–1998, born in Germany, writer, German soldier from start to finish of the war) • Marina Yulova (1900–1984, born in Russia as daughter of a colonel, follows her father in war and becomes a soldier herself) • Elfriede Alice Kuhr (1902–1989, born in Germany, dancer and writer) • Yves Congar (1904–1995, born in France, as a child witnesses German occupation, later becomes a Catholic cardinal)

The stories of these characters, based on their diaries, memoirs, writings and other biographical material is the core of the narrative, and the dramatic reconstruction of scenes from their lives is mixed with a more or less chronological description of the war from 1914 to 1918, told by a voice-over narrator with extensive use of authentic documentary material which creates a macro-historical context around the 14 individual stories. Besides seeing the 14 main characters played by actors in reconstructed scenes, we also hear their voices offline in the form of quotes from letters or memoirs, and in the case of artists also from their works. An extra dimension is very often added when other historical characters comment on historical events and developments. The different episodes are not just defined by chronology, but also by shifts in thematic focus. The eight episodes have different names: “The Abyss”, “The Attack”, “The Wounded”, “The Longing”, “The Destruction”, “Home”, “Rebellion” and “The Final Result”. The result of these different approaches to

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historical events is that personal stories and memories interact with factual historical accounts, that we see reality from different perspectives, one of them allowing us to live out identification and emotional experiences. It also means that the narrative flow is constantly shifted and challenged: we do not follow just one character or all characters in any of the episodes: we follow different characters who illustrate not just historical time and events but also different themes. This means that different national, cultural, gender and individual voices are mixed and heard. It is a quite reflexive multi-vocal way of narrating history, and it takes viewers away from easy ways of understanding the past. Europeans are of course different in some ways, and this war does look different from a German and a French or English perspective. But the combination of a historical, factual account of this first catastrophic war in the twentieth century, and the way 14 different people experienced it, also shows us that war strikes all people in the same way and that we face it with the same kind of feelings. The terrible experience in episode 3 of the wounded, seen from the perspective of those caring for them, the way in which all soldiers and their families are just longing for home and to get back to normal everyday life (episode 6) or the longing for love and human contact and relations in focus in episode 4—all point beyond national, cultural dimensions to things that are universally human. The series has been shown in many countries in Europe, and was also made in a slightly differently edited UK version (Great War Diaries ). Reviews have generally been positive, also in Germany, where Der Spiegel Online (Pilarczyk 2014) concluded: Although the opening scenes of the series have a fatalistic dimension in the images of a former glorious Europe deciding to follow the path toward barbarism against progress, the program tells a very nuanced story. The narrator Udo Samei doesn’t hold back on pathos and emotional, rhetorical pauses. However, the reason for different nations to go to war is meticulously explained and documented. The stories of the protagonists give the historical narrative a much more complex foundation as biographical life worlds meets historical reality – it is a series even more dialectic than many forms of more traditional historical drama. (Pilarczyk 2014)

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ARTE also developed a very complex website (http://www.14-tagebu echer.de), which contributes to the building of a history fact and memory archive to be used by the general public and educational institutions.

British War Period Drama Unlike World War II, there are no period dramas in Germany on World War I. In the UK, on the other hand, we find a rich variety of period dramas where the war is very central to the narrative in different ways. The Passing Bells (2014) is a British-Polish co-production telling the story of an English and a German young man joining the war. The narrative moves almost seamlessly between the two characters, who also meet during and at the end of the war. It also moves back and forth between those at home and those at the front: through letters and in the imagination of the soldiers and their loved ones. The pictures of family life on both sides is also completely parallel. In this way the universal dimension of humanity is underlined and the national dimensions of war downplayed. The Crimson Field (2014), written by Sarah Phelps, deals with the lives of medical staff and patients at a field hospital in France, and women play a major role here. One of the main themes is actually the new order and new possibilities for women, not just because of the need for women in all sectors of society, but also because the war is an indication of more fundamental changes. The reality of war as it arrives at the hospital is a realist background for a more general conflict between two worlds: heritage and the traditional class society and world order, and the painful birth of a new world order, new social and cultural norms and values. Birdsong is a quite different kind of period and war drama, where a complicated love story is combined with a harsh and very realistic war story. The narrative is told in flashback from Stephen’s perspective, his memories of the love affair visualized and crosscut with the war story. The narrative, visual and thematic effect of this way of telling the story is stunning: the love scenes are shot in lush pastel colours, sunny green, often slightly in slow motion, like a dream of paradise and life as it can be; in contrast the war scenes are shot in grey, black and brownish colours. The action scenes portray war as hell, slaughter, death and chaos. Stephen is almost killed three times but miraculously survives. However, all heroism and celebration of the war is stripped away from the narrative, in Stephen’s response to a senior officer talking about fighting this war

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for king and country: “This isn’t a war, sir. It is an exploration of how far men can be degraded.” The memories of the love story are clearly a large part of Stephen’s survival, which we see in the acceleration of the crosscutting between the two narrative layers as the war intensifies. The love story clearly functions as symbolic counterimage to the war. This is made extremely clear in the already gruesome Battle of the Somme in 1916, where we see the soldiers march out to their deaths, while we get flashbacks to the night before the battle, and we hear quotes in voice-over from the letters the soldiers write back to their families and loved ones. It is also clearly heard in the last war scene where Stephen is caught in a tunnel with one of his dying men, Jack Firebrace, who has lost his son and says: “There is nothing more, sir. To love and be loved.” This is clearly a message to Stephen, who gets out and hears from two German soldiers that the war is over. Even though the love story helps Stephen to get through the war, the love story is just as complex and from a certain point of view also tragic. His love Isabelle dies before the end of the war, leaving him a daughter. War and love are intertwined in a highly emotional war and period drama.

Parade’s End: Heritage Toryism and Cloud-Cuckoo Land Parade’s End is clearly a high-quality production involving one of the most skilled in the screenwriting business, Tom Stoppard, and with a strong female director, Susanna White, known for modernized versions of heritage dramas like Bleak House (2005) and Jane Eyre (2006). The five-episode adaptation of Ford Maddox Ford’s four novels (1924–1928) is not so much a war narrative as a period drama about the old order of English society and culture going under, partly as a consequence of war, but also due to deeper currents of social change. The narrative opens in 1908 and ends just after the war is finishes in November 1918. It is not a steadily flowing chronological and causal narrative, but rather a narrative that jumps in time and between characters and sub-plots. Visually and in terms of scenography, the series celebrates a heritage landscape around Yorkshire and other places, and the glamour of interiors and especially of female dresses. But there is also a continued use of montage and visual effects that indicate a more fractured, modern world, sometimes mirrored in references to literature and art, sometimes tied to and illustrating how some of the main characters experience the reality they live in.

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The main male character, Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch) is a mixed character. He works at the Imperial Department of Statistics, which places him in the realm of fact, and he proves several times in the series that he likes to stick to a truthful picture of society and later warfare—although he is often forced to manipulate the facts for political reasons by his superiors. In the first episode he predicts the coming war, and in episode 2 he attacks those not seeing what is coming for “living in cloud-cuckoo land”. But at the same time, he is a romantic figure living in the past in a ‘toryism’ which is being destroyed and corrupted. The family estate, Groby in Yorkshire, represents the heritage, and throughout the series a huge tree with all kinds of memory things dangling from the branches, symbolizes the past and continuity. It is very significant that this tree is cut down by his very flamboyant and defiant wife Sylvia (Rebecca Hall) in the last episode, where they finally break loose from each other. Where Christopher claims to stand for monogamy and chastity, Sylvia rebels against being tied up by marriage, and seem to create scandal wherever she goes. However, her somewhat arrogant and selfish way of acting in love and life is very different from what the feminist and suffragette, Christopher’s final love, Valentine Wannop (Adelaide Clemens), represents. An important part of the modernity breaking through behind the dominant heritage culture in this series is that women are moving out of centuries-old gender roles and are starting to live a life of their own. In fact, the first meeting between Christopher and Valentine (episode 1), following a suffragette demonstration for women’s rights, displays the ridiculous male chauvinism of the time, with only Christopher trying to live up the challenge of new times (Fig. 6.3). In many ways there is an inherent paradox in Christopher’s attitude to modernity, a paradox running through the whole series. He claims to stand for chastity and monogamy, and yet in the opening of episode 1, while he is on his way to marry Sylvia (already pregnant) we witness in a flashback him and Sylvia having passionate sex on a train at their first chance encounter. When he later learns she is pregnant, he behaves like a classic gentleman, even though, as he says, “I don’t even know if the baby is mine”. He agrees to marry Sylvia even though she seems to be all that he is against. Visually it is interesting that the images presenting their first meeting are made in a cubist expressionist way, indicating that the meeting with Sylvia also represents his meeting with a modernity he cannot quite handle. In a discussion with Vincent MacMaster later in episode 2, where he once more agrees to take Sylvia back after a

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Fig. 6.3 Parade’s End combines a period drama of a changing Great Britain with a World War I war drama. The main character Christopher Tietjens (Benedict Cumberbatch) is both terribly conservative and rather modern, and this is often shown with a mix of visual heritage nostalgia, harsh realism and avant-garde images. Here he has hallucinations in the trenches in France about his true love, the suffragette Valentine (Adelaide Clemens) (Screenshot by author)

new affair, his answer, referring to the title of the series, is: “Well for a gentleman, there is such thing as – well, call it parade”. This word is repeated in the final sequences in episode 5, where the soldiers are discharged with the words: “There will be no more parade”. The word parade and its end obviously refers not only to the end of World War I, it also becomes the symbol of an epoch coming to an end, in line with the cutting down of the family tree at Groby, and the expression on Christopher’s face in the final episode, when he discovers that a tractor has finally replaced the traditional horses. Christopher is a man from the old regime, he believes in those values, but he is also a realist and a rationalist, the kind of man who will not make up fake data about the war just to please politicians and generals. He will not take part in the “cloudcuckoo land” either, the hiding from where things are going. Instead he joins the war as an ordinary soldier in protest. When (in episode 2) he tells this to Valentine and she questions him about his motives, we get his full support for the world as it was:

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Christopher: I love every field and hedgerow. The land is England, and once it was the foundation of order. Before money took over and handed the country over to swindlers and schemers. Toryism of the pig’s trough. Valentine: And what is your Toryism? Christopher: Duty and service to above, frugality, keeping your word, honouring the past. Looking after your people and beggaring yourself if needs be before letting your duty go hang. If we had stayed out, I would have gone to France to fight for France. For agriculture against industrialism. For the 18th century against the 20th if you like.

Valentine seem to respect this, although she and her whole family are strongly against war—her brother Edward is arrested for not wanting to join the army. Valentine, with her suffragette agenda and her activism, is clearly at least mentally for modernity, even though she seems decent and traditional, even naïve, when it comes to matters of love and sex. But in this symbolic battle between old and modern, the war comes in gradually from episode 3 onwards, as a grim dose of reality, where the old system is certainly exposed as not very decent and human. As Katherine Byrne (2015: 126) has pointed out in her analysis of the series, Tom Stoppard wanted to make the series much less of a war story, and more of a love story of a man caught between two very different women. The war narrative was to be more like a catalyst for a social change of which the love story was also a part. However, the series does include a significant number of war scenes from the trenches and battlefields in France, and we do get a clear picture of the horrors and of the class divisions also very visible in the war. The series also constantly switches between the war front and the home front—especially through reactions from Sylvia and Valentine, and Sylvia even makes her appearance there. Scenes from the war are often marked with horror, and with symbolic visual sequences of nightmare and a sort of splintered vision that adds a modernist look to the realism. We see this in the beginning of episode 3, where Christopher is wounded and has nightmares, and especially in episode 5, which is the main war part of the series. In between some of the worst combat scenes Christopher has mental flashbacks of life at home, the past, or of Valentine, whom he has decided to make his mistress if he comes home alive. In that sense, the war is a symptom of what changed the soldiers who took part in it, both in a more literal sense as traumas or PTSD, but also in terms of a changed attitude towards life and the values they used to fight for. They were fighting for the world they grew

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up in, but they ended up in a new century, where everything was about to change. The series was aired on BBC2, indicating that BBC expected an audience quite different from popular series like Call the Midwife, which went head to head with ITV’s extremely popular global success Downton Abbey. The average of around 2.3 million viewers was expected, as were the very positive reviews in most British newspapers claiming it to be a high-quality period drama. However, the series reached a quite wide international audience, partly because it was a co-production between UK-based Mammoth Screen and US-based HBO. There were very positive reviews in the US, Canada, France, Belgium and Scandinavia. In Denmark there were very positive reviews and discussions of the series, and a renewed interest in Ford Maddox Ford, and the Danish press took up the inner conflict in the book between traditional heritage and the modernist-realist dimension. It was noted by Hans Hauge in a review in Berlingske Tidende (Hauge 2013) and by Bo Tao Michaelis in Politiken (Michaelis 2013) that Maddox Ford was a modernist with a nostalgic romantic and conservative vision, just like the main character. It was also noted that the military experience of the main character and the author partly explains the lost illusions of this generation. It was also clearly noted that this is a series that overshadows Downton Abbey in its depth and realism.

A War that Changed Europe Forever As shown in Chapter 1, hopes and dreams for the future were high around 1900, and the World Fair in Paris that year showed people a wonderful new world with new stunning technologies and promises of a better life. The old world of the nineteenth century with its big social class distinctions and a lack of genuine democracies, of empires led by elites, seemed a thing of the past. Dreams of a new modern world were widespread, although in many cases very different dreams. No one at that time—even though the coming world war was easy to see in hindsight—anticipated that this promising world would soon destroy itself in a kind of war never seen before. It was a war on all continents fought by empires, and it was a new technological war that completely changed the concept of war as a fight between men, an ‘honourable’ fight on defined battlefields. The modern technology that was meant to bring progress brought disastrous destruction, where machine guns, tanks, aeroplanes and long-range

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canons relentlessly killed millions. Modernity showed its most ugly face, technology was turned against humanity as vast machines of destruction. But this first European world war also destroyed the Europe of empires and created a new Europe of nation states, where national belonging, ethnicity and language suddenly created new social and cultural borderlines. In many of the new nation states, nationality and ethnicity created the tensions that would gradually lead to a new world war just 20 years after the first started. World War I also divided Europe and the world around in nations of liberal democracies, the reality of which was fragile (as in Germany) or a new communism, brought about in Russia as a result of the war. The Versailles treaty of 1919 and the forming of the League of Nations from 1920 was supposed to create an international order to prevent war again—an attempt we all know was almost from the beginning doomed to fail (Kershaw 2015: 114f). The social, economic and cultural disaster of World War I also gravely affected ordinary people, as we have seen in the documentary and fictional series dealing with this war. The strength of the different genres of television narratives, and the fact that they represent different nationalities, is that we discover similarities between these narratives, whether you belong to the victorious or the losing side, as well as clear variations and differences. The feeling of guilt, loss and perhaps also anger can be stronger for the losers of a war, and Germans of right national observation were quick to use their defeat in the war to prepare the next. The second thing we can conclude is that the relation between individual stories and their bigger historical contexts has moved to the centre in modern historical television narratives. History does not just happen at political, strategic levels among elites. If we are to understand history more fully, we need to combine these two aspects, we need to connect individual and collective memory. This tendency goes back to the use of soldier memoirs analyzed by Jerry Palmer (Palmer 2018), but has been developed even further in both documentary and docudrama and in fictional war period dramas. In the series mentioned in this chapter, the emotional dimensions of loss, nostalgia, hopes and dreams cut across national borders. They shed light on a universal human dimension beneath the differences and ideologies that dominate macropolitics and the way we often see each other. This dimension of loss and nostalgia for the old world that is disappearing is strong in the British war and period dramas, but even here the old and the new worlds play out in the narratives and in the minds of characters representing different positions and ideologies.

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World War I narratives as we see them in the selected examples in this chapter create a complex understanding of history in general, and war in particular. TV series in the forms of documentaries, fictional war dramas and broader period dramas appear from the 1960s onwards, especially in the UK, and the intensity of series in both countries rises towards the centennial in 2014 and after. It is quite understandable that World War I series are harder to find in Germany, with the much later development of German television (Hickethier 1998). Hickethier points to a change beginning around 1960 towards a new realism and inspiration from cinema rather than theatre, and a tendency to use the series format. This development took time, and before 1980 it seemed that World War II and the East–West conflict and division of Germany were the biggest historical themes (Hickethier 1998: 155ff) in both fiction and documentaries. The early years of German television were more occupied with recent history (World War II, Nazism) and contemporary issues, and it is not until the 1980s that we find period dramas where the years between 1900 and 1918 are significantly represented. The feeling of loss and nostalgia for an old world going under is not as strong in Germany as in the UK. The role of Germany as a nation causing the wars moves the focus towards a perspective which is, rather: how could this happen, why were we part of this? We see this in Weltenbrand’s quite strong critical portrait of Germany during World War I. We do, however, from the perspective of the German upper class in Das Adlon, see a feeling of loss in connection with the lost German empires. Looking back on World War I from a post-2000 perspective, as in the Germaninitiated but transnational European series 14 – Tagebücher des Ersten Weltkriegs (14 Diaries of The First World War), it is not nostalgia and loss, but the ideological confrontations and the chaos that led to and dominated the war. This is mirrored in characters from many parts of the world who must navigate in a new reality and reconsider their lives and dreams. Personal memory is an important part of history. The power of concrete, personal memories, of narratives that make us feel and understand history in a different way from mere historical facts is extremely important. Memory, narrative and emotion combined is a powerful route to history, including factual history. It is the diversity of inputs to our historical understanding that makes our individual memory more concrete, and the collective memory and public debate richer and more nuanced. In this chapter we have dealt with the first of the catastrophic events in Europe’s twentieth century, a past all Europeans share. Our

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understanding is, however, often framed by a national perspective, and such a perspective tend to create stereotypes of who were the villains and who the heroes. The examples here show that the tragedy was a tragedy for all, and by watching series of a transnational European nature or different national versions of the same past event, we can also hope for a better collective understanding of our common European heritage.

References Bennhold, K. (2018, November 10). Can Europe’s Liberal Order Survive as the Memory of War Fades? New York Times. Byrne, K. (2015). Edwardians on Screen: From Downton Abbey to Parades’s End. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dillon, R. (2010). History on British Television: Constructing Nation, Nationality and Collective Memory. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Hanna, E. (2009). The Great War on the Small Screen. Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press. Hart, B. L. (1973). History of the First World War. London: Book Club Association. Hauge, H. (2013, March 3). Klassiske idealer som modvægt. Berlingske. Hickethier, K. (1998). Geschichte des Deutschen Fernsehen (History of German Television). Stuttgart: J.B. Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Jones, E. (2014, August 8). One World War, TV-review: Jarring Modern Touches Mean Great War Story Badly Misfires. Independent. Kansteiner, W. (2006). In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics After Auschwitz. Athens: Ohio University Press. Kermode, M. (2018, November 11). They Shall Not Grow Old Review—An Utterly Breathtaking Journey into the Trenches. The Guardian. Kershaw, I. (2015). To Hell and Back Again: Europe 1914–1949. London: Penguin. MacGregor, N. ([2014] 2016). Germany: Memories of a Nation. London: Penguin Books. Michaelis, B. T. (2013, February 24). Giftgas, granatchok og den sidste Gentleman. Politiken. Palmer, J. (2018). Memoirs from the Frontline: Memoirs and Meanings of the Great War from Britain, France and Germany. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Pilarczyk, H. (2014, April 29). Docu-soap mit Ernst Jünger. Der Speigel. https://www.spiegel.de/kultur/tv/doku-projekt-14-tagebuecher-zum-ers ten-weltkrieg-a-966496.html.

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Rowbotham, S. (2018, November 11). Women and the First World War: A Taste of Freedom. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/ nov/11/women-first-world-war-taste-of-freedom. Schönpflug, D. (2018). A World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age. London: Macmillan. Wollaston, S. (2014, August 8). Our World War Review—Excellent, Innovative and Moving Television. The Guardian.

CHAPTER 7

Living on the Edge: The Roaring Twenties and World Crisis

When the guns and cannons fell silent on Monday, 11 November 1918, joy erupted around a Europe that had been gravely hit by a war that had killed an estimated nine million people (soldiers, civilians)—followed by an estimated 20 million victims of the Spanish flu in the aftermath of the war. The celebration was of course most intense for the victorious nations, but at least for soldiers returning from the frontlines and trenches and for ordinary people, the joy was probably the same on both sides. What few people could foresee was that this end of a devastating war that changed Europe for ever was by no means the end of war, but the beginning of a new and even more devastating and technologically advanced war. People were not living in a post-war period, even though the beginning of the 1920s seemed to be a golden age, ‘the roaring Twenties’; they were living in an inter-war period. With the world crisis from 1929 and the Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933, Europe began spinning out of control and into a new disaster. The soldiers from the different nation states returned to a changed home, and a changed Europe marked by economic, political and social chaos, and they saw the rise of various revolutionary movements from right or left. The new nation states were part of a general European trend to seek more homogeneous nation states (Mazower 1998: 40f). This created a more toxic form of nationalism, a tendency to think in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_7

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terms of pure ethnicity: language and culture had to conform to a certain national understanding of culture. The result of this in its most cruel form was the Nazis’ attempt to erase Jews from the face of the earth. Since Europe has always been quite multicultural, the idea of pure nation states was an idea far from reality. How could such an idea of a new national purity deal with the many minorities in Europe, and with figures such as the playwright Odon von Horvath, who had difficulty defining his own national identity: “I was born in Fiume, grew up in Belgrade, Budapest, Pressburg, Vienna and Munich, and I have a Hungarian passport; but I have no fatherland. I am a very typical mix of old Austria-Hungary: at once Magyar, Croatian, German and Czech, my country is Hungary, my mother tongue is German” (Mazower 1998: 43).

Fragile Democracies and Radicalized Political Cultures It was one of the tasks of the League of Nations to secure the rights of minorities in the new European nation states, but it is no surprise that this was difficult for a European organization without strong legitimacy. Tensions across Europe were strong, and the new states were not eager to listen to or follow instructions from a transnational organization. In Russia, a Bolshevik revolution was trying to find its own way, which soon ended in bloodshed and the persecution of minorities and political dissidents. In the Balkans and in Eastern Europe, ethnic and national conflicts were dominant, and in Germany and other nations, movements on the right and left were fighting. In Germany, Italy and Spain authoritarian fascist movements would soon undermine democracy. They did so by political means and aggressive military and police control, but also by appealing to a specific nationalist concept of the individual and the family, which was extremely dogmatic and derived from religious and Blut und Boden ideas. The Handbook for the German Family, which was circulated from around 1935 (Mazower 1998: 77) has ten commandments, like the Bible: they stress German identity and encourage marriage between Nordic and German blood, as well as physical strength and many children. This leads directly to racial eugenics and to the persecution and killing of people who did not fit the German-Nordic criteria. These ideas were particularly strong in Germany, but they can be found across the continent, and they were combined with a celebration of Heimat, the national landscape, as a counterimage of modernism in the arts and city planning:

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As the political outlook in Europe darkened, this public love affair with an idealized countryside intensified. Across the continent, the modernist idiom of the 1920s – internationalist, mechanized – gave way in the arts to a more nationalist concern with the organic and with a life, close to nature. Rationalism was replaced by an emphasis on the instinctual, individualism by the tribal and communal life, the brain by the body. (Mazower 1998: 95)

This was of course mere ideology, since the Nazi Germany developing in the 1930s was one of the most industrialized projects of modern times, building not just a technological war machine of gigantic proportions, but a new very modern Germany with cars, roads, public transport and a modernization of family life and homes. The fact that Hitler and his regime brought the country out of hyperinflation and chaos and modernized it may help to explain his popularity. The darker sides of the ideology and authoritarian nationalism were something people did not see so much, or chose to overlook. The rise of German nazism and fascism in general in Europe was not just the end of liberal democracies in these countries, it was also the end of human rights and a direct route to total war. The killing of six million Jews is the direct consequence of this pure concept of nationalism, but ideas of race and ethnicity were fairly common in many European countries. According to Eric Hobsbawm, the development of fascism was a movement that to a certain degree appealed to the lower and middle groups of European societies (Hobsbawm 1994: 121). However, Nazi ideology was much stronger, mostly among those parts of the middle class that felt caught between a radicalized working class and big business: The Rise of the radical Right after the First World War was undoubtedly a response to the danger, indeed the reality of social revolution and working-class power in general, to the October revolution and Leninism in particular. Without these, there would have been no fascism, for though the demagogic Right-wing Ultras had been politically vocal and aggressive in a number of European countries since the end of the nineteenth century, they had almost invariably been kept well under control before 1914. (Hobsbawm 1994: 124)

Although we find these tendencies in several European countries, it was in a defeated Germany that we find the most turbulent peace and attacks on democracy. As early as 1920, the first attempt was made by military

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and right-wing groups to overthrow the democratically elected government, a group called the Fatherland Party and the paramilitary Freikorps. It failed in strongholds like Berlin and Munich, as did weaker attempts by communist groups in Hamburg. The weak democracy of the Weimar period was unstable, and the hyperinflation of the 1920s made it even worse. Things stabilized for a time after 1924, but the world crisis in 1929 created the right environment for a new right-wing mobilization. The rest is history. If people were singing and dancing on the ruins of World War I and the political and economic crisis, and if art and culture in general showed a picture of a very fractured period (Blom 2015), there was a good reason. They were trying to forget the pain of everyday life and the anxiety about a new war. According to Paul Blom’s book Fracture: Life and Culture in the West 1918–38 (2015) the new mass culture of cinema, jazz, swing and dance was a new phase in Europe’s process of modernization and culture wars. It was the more popular version of modern art’s break with tradition: “The culture wars between conservative values and the world view of the post-war generation was played out throughout Europe, and in many of these battles America became a symbol for the liberating power of the New World, far away from the stifling atmosphere of Europe’s prewar ideas” (Blom 2015: 62). Berlin was one of the centres of this battle, and so was London.

Singing and Dancing on the Volcano: Life in the 1920s It is hard to say whether life in Europe and especially European cities in the 1920s and 1930s was worse than earlier periods, but what we can say is that never has a new generation had such an appetite for living after having survived hell on earth. In 1929 a Protestant priest commented on the working-class youth in German cities with the following words: “If we were to ask them about the meaning and purpose of life, the only answer they could give would be: We don’t know what the purpose of life is, and we’re not interested in finding out. But since we are alive, we want to get as much out of life as we possibly can” (Kershaw 2015: 149). The Charleston, jazz and a more liberated way of life are generally seen as characteristic of the younger generation in the bigger cities that survived the war and in those that were still young enough to live such a life after 1918. Berlin was perhaps the most prolific symbol of this, but similar

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tendencies can be found among others in Paris, London, Copenhagen and Milan. It was clearly a European reaction to the great war, and it was perhaps also an escape from the not so glamorous life in parts of the big cities of Europe. For people living in provincial and agricultural areas life was different. It was certainly not the result of a booming economy, rather the urge to live and enjoy life was a reaction to how the world had been, and the lack of real trust in a better future. All in all, it was about living life while you could, it was about enjoying popular culture in all its forms: cinema, dance, jazz and a feeling of personal and sexual freedom, even as life became gloomier after the roaring Twenties and the world crisis created mass unemployment and economic poverty. But for the cultural elite, those behind modernist trends in art, theatre, film and music, the perspective on life after 1918 was a bit different. For the prolific painter George Grosz, born in Berlin in 1896, still in the kingdom of Prussia in the German Empire, life seemed like the splintered montage images he made of all types of Germans, caricatures of a sick society. As a communist, Grosz hated war and was very conscious of class conflicts. As a communist he was of course in favour of revolution and a pacifist. He did, however, volunteer for military service, hoping to avoid being sent to the front. He was drafted again for a short time in 1917, but in early 1918 finally dismissed as unfit for military service. In a comment at the end of the war, he wrote: For us, peace was declared. But not everyone was drunk and happy. Basically, people did not change much, with a few exceptions: the proud German soldier was now a beaten, worn-out soldier, and the army had fallen apart like the uniforms partially made of wood pulp and the fakeleather pouches. I was not disappointed that the war was lost. That people had supported and put up with it for years and that no one listened to the few voices that protested the mass slaughter – that was my real disappointment. (quoted from Schönpflug 2018: 94)

The critical look here reflects the understanding of many among the cultural elites in Germany and around Europe. In his paintings Grosz observed life around him in Berlin, focusing not just on the singing, dancing and wild life at the cafes, but also the political, social and ideological trends under the volcano of the roaring Twenties. In his Dadainspired new objectivism, characters became caricatures revealing a reality

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behind the surface: nothing was sacred, there was nothing that could not be shown or mocked. He was, however, several times accused of offending the army or of blasphemy, and in 1932, just before Hitler came to power, he moved to America, where he later became a citizen. The modernists generally saw their own art as an avant-garde for a new society with more equality and freedom. As such, they also saw themselves as spokesmen for the working class. As Hobsbawm has noted (Hobsbawm 1994: 181), this cultural avant-garde was indeed in many ways an expression of an old European reality that had collapsed. They painted images or wrote stories that broke with naturalism and clear-cut narratives. At the same time, however, modernism for a long time remained an elite art, although the different forms of modernism, from art to architecture, gradually became a part of everyday life for broader groups. But as an elite they remained throughout this period outside the tastes and main concerns of a mass audience and thus also the working classes. The Bauhaus movement was an avant-garde with a lasting effect on European culture, although they never reached a mass audience. There were, however, other voices in the cultural elite in this period, voices that deal more directly with the working class in a more realist way: Alfred Döblin wrote a classic novel about the Berlin underclass, Berlin Alexanderplatz (1929), a strong realist picture of a city; or Hans Fallada’s neue Sachlichkeit in a novel like Kleiner Mann was nun? (1933), where we follow Johannes Pinneberg during the world crisis. The nationalist purification of cultures that took place in European countries under authoritarian rule reached a climax in Germany in the late 1930s. Around and after the opening of the Nazi propaganda exhibition in 1937, Degenerate Art, the cultural arm of the regime had identified more than 20,000 works of art that were unwanted. Artworks and books were burned, but as one historian observes (MacGregor 2016), the purification of German culture proved more difficult than expected, maybe especially the racial purification: “Just as most of the Nazi senior leadership did not look especially Aryan, even less ‘a shiningly beautiful type of human being’, so in the pantheon of German Culture, it proved hard to identify the desired German tradition” (MacGregor 2016: 442). The purified Germany of Nazism and the liberal, free modern forms of art, including the new forms of realism, represented two very different forms of Europe between 1918 and 1939. In the long run, it was the latter that prevailed, and MacGregor (2016: 456–457) points to the fact that this heritage and the memory of the Nazi manipulation and attempt

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to purify the concept of Germany has created a passionate commitment to freedom of expression and artistic freedom in the Germany of today. As we shall see in the following, this ideological cultural battle, this battle between political movements and very different lifestyles runs through the broader European narratives dealing with the period 1918–1939.

Documenting the Past Through Personal European Stories: Clash of Futures as Transnational Memory Drama As already pointed out, there is a general tendency to deal with the history of this and other periods of the twentieth century by combining an everyday perspective with more traditional large-scale history. We have already seen this tendency in World War I documentaries, and we find the same tendencies in World War II documentaries. More radical documentary history formats, in which people are moved back in time to experience how reality was before, is part of this. A British example is Back in Time for the Corner Shop (2020), in which the Ardern family relive life and business in a corner shop in a working-class suburb of Sheffield from the late nineteenth century till 1990. In the episodes dealing with the 1920s and 1930s, the theme of modernization, of advertising and trying to meet customers in a new way is mixed with the Depression years. In many ways this living history programme captures the essence of everyday life in this period: a period of crisis going from bad to worse, but also a period with modern ideas and change. A very ambitious mix of documented history and lived history of the time between the two world wars can be found in Krieg der Traüme (Clash of Futures), a docudrama in eight episodes each of 52 minutes about the period 1918–1939. It was first broadcast on the French-German channel ARTE in the autumn of 2018, but has since been broadcast all over Europe. The series represents the growing tendency towards European co-productions and ambitious multi-national co-financing in film and television. The main co-producing companies include the German LOOKSfilm, the French Les Films d’ICI and the IRIS Group from Luxembourg, but several television channels across Europe have also acted as co-distributors The series was co-written by Jean-Louis Schlesser (France), Jan Peter (Germany) and Frederic Goupil

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(France), a creative team reflecting ARTE’s German-French collaboration. The idea for the series came from the producers behind 14—Tagebücher des Ersten Weltkriegs (2014, see p. xx), and as docudrama they both follow the same narrative and documentary strategy. In an interview in Die Zeit (Ströbele 2018), Gunnar Dedio of LOOKSfilm said that both series were made in order to bring history closer to European viewers, by combining structural and personal history. He also pointed out that another creative inspiration was the frightening similarities between the past and today. He then goes on to say: We wanted to shake and wake up Europeans. Let us learn from our common history. What we have achieved together in Europe is not something we can take for granted. It is important to fight for it, and not – like our forefathers – in a bloody fight against each other. Let us try to use democratic means and not go to extremes … We have a collective memory because things are presented to us in certain ways, and we have not been critical enough about how the media present history. With our series we wanted to influence people’s understanding of history. Therefore, we have tried in our selection of characters and episodes to go against the grain of mainstream history. (Ströbele 2018, my translation)

This clearly indicates a very conscious use of historical material, and a series created as a European series that wanted to address a European audience and to shape collective memories by using real people and their stories. Dedio is not very confident that coming generations will remember how wars started before, and understand the importance of Europe. The series therefore also points to a specific strategy to link past and present, a transnational, European perspective using real characters. In a more direct comment on the merging of the reconstructed character stories and the documentary frame, he says: Well, it was a big challenge. We could not just form our characters like we wanted as you do in a normal drama-series. We had to find real characters, men and women of different nationalities, with different outlooks on life and ideologies, who had left diaries, letters or other forms of material saying something about their life in that period. … [we worked] for a long time with comparing biographies and seeing them in context with each other, and with the construction of a structure and a narrative that worked. (Ströbele 2018, my translation)

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As docudrama this series is highly innovative and experimental, not just through its strong focus on personal memories and stories, but also through a narrative and visual flow that constantly shifts between reconstructed scenes, factual film clips, documents and quotes from historical persons, and between the various personal stories. Often the series creates a direct link between a reconstructed historical reality around a specific person and factual images of the same. This means that the historical period speaks to us directly through very different people that experienced the inter-war years. We are, so to speak, invited to identify with the development of history through different historical characters. People from different national backgrounds, with different social, cultural and political views, start commenting on each other. This creates a dialogue in the mind of the viewer on how different the same historical events can look from different perspectives. The series includes such very different real historical characters as the Polish-born, German and American film star Pola Negri (1897–1987), the German sailor Hans Beimler (1895– 1936) who took part in the navy uprising against the war in 1918 and was one of the founders of the Communist Party in Germany (KPD), the British Nazi Unity Mitford, daughter of a baron (1914–1948), the even more notorious German Nazi and Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss (1900–1947), and the Swedish journalist and feminist Eline Ottesen (1886–1973). The selection of characters—representing the extreme left and the extreme right—shows a very open and non-judgemental approach to this complicated historical period. The series does have characters that are not public figures, but for obvious reasons, most of the characters are linked to politics or culture. In a statement on the series web page Jan Peters underlines this: We try to show the life of our main characters as it happens. We do not judge them in advance or with the often know-all attitude and vision of things that those born long after the events happened have. History is also what happens to us every day and where the outcome and turn of things are still open. (my translation)

The narrative of the series is largely chronological and follows the period from 1918, focusing on the week just before peace is established, to the start of World War II on 1 September 1939. Each of the eight episodes has a thematic focus, and from this focus a broader thematic network opens up. In the first half of the series we go from hopes and

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new movements and ideas after 1918 to the world crisis in 1929. The first episode, “Surviving” (1918–1919), deals with dramatic changes but also new hopes arising in society and the main characters: from Hans Beimler’s dream of a communist Germany and May Picqueray’s dreams of anarchism to Pola Negri’s dream of becoming a film star. The second episode, “Peace” (1918–1921), has a very strong focus on the Versailles treaty and how it changes Europe. We follow the Italian finance minister Silvio Crespi (1868–1944) during the negotiations, and despite all the new countries emerging, the result is mostly despair, especially in Germany, embodied in Rudolf Höss’s reactions to the peace treaty. But through the Italian negotiator Crespio, we also witness the political game of big powers playing with the destiny of Europe in a rather arrogant and selfconfident way. Episode 3, “Decisions” (1921–1923), very much deals with characters taking important ideological or personal decisions in their life and with the revolutionary uprisings. Pola Negri becomes a film star in Germany and experiences sexy, decadent Berlin, the Ukrainian Marina Yurlova (1900–1987) starts her change from female soldier to dancer and author in the US. Silvio Crespi, clothing industrialist and Italian negotiator of the Versailles treaty, starts drifting towards Mussolini. In episode 4, “Revolution” (1923–1924), we follow the anarchist May Picqueray (1898–1983) and Nguyen Ai Quoc (1890–1969, later the Vietnamese communist leader Ho Chi Minh) to Moscow and dreams of a world revolution. This episode also deals with other radical ideas of the 1920s, for instance Eline Ottesen’s project of securing birth control and equal rights in society for women. In the second half of the series, we follow Europe in a slow but definite decline towards a new war—shattering all the dreams and hopes of the beginning of the series. In episode 5, “Crash” (1928–1930), the narrative starts ironically with all the achievements and promises of the twentieth century, all the dreams people and societies build on. Then it goes on to describe the 1929 world financial crash and all the dramatic subsequent events pointing to a deeper crisis and war. Eline Ottesen’s project is also hit by big personal problems, at the same time as Marcel Jamet (1889–1962) in France continues his project to create the perfect brothel, but with rising financial and ideological problems. The JewishAustrian medical student Edith Wellspacher (1909–2004), on the other hand, embodies the march towards female equality, but now threatened by the approaching hunting down of Jews by the Nazis. Episode 6, “Promises” (1933–1934), starts with Rudolf Höss burning books and

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declaring the birth of a new regime based on German blood, the true German family and against the hated Weimar Republic. His speech is crosscut with factual images of a Germany in economic crisis and Nazi demonstrations in the street. Hitler is on his way to power. Hans Beimler must flee and leave his two children behind, while Höss’s wife is pregnant. The fight between the right and left is intensified, and in England Unity Mitford prepares for her great project: an alliance between Germany and England, the two countries representing the true superior race. Episode 7, “Betrayal” (1936–1938), starts with Stepan Podlubny (1914–1998) in Moscow, where he lives with his mother under a false name, because he is Ukrainian and his father has been condemned as an enemy of the people. He is eventually forced to spy for the government, and this is followed by Marcel Jamet, also forced to use his brothel as a spy centre for French right-wing parties. But this is also the episode where we see the Nazi regime in full flow with the systematic persecution of Jews and communists and where the big betrayal by Nazis, communists and the rest of Europe of the elected Spanish government is dealt with. Hans Beimler is killed in Spain. It is also the episode where Stalin’s true regime is shown. The final episode 8, “War” (1938–1939) opens with the English Nazi Unity Mitford’s experience of the pomp and circumstance of the Nazi regime and her personal meeting with Hitler—portrayed as almost a ridiculous and naïve girlish infatuation. It ends with her sitting with a gun in her hand, listening to Chamberlain’s famous announcement of the war, considering suicide. In between, we follow Edith Wellspacher’s more and more problematic situation as a Jew, and her last-minute escape from Europe before war and all hell breaks loose. The narrative and thematic structure of this docudrama is quite unique. It combines general historical research and facts about this period with equally central research into the personal lives of 13 people, a few not so well known, but mostly known and famous or more infamous figures. Based on their letters, diaries, family photos and other data about their lives, the narrative constructs 13 life stories that form the backbone of the historical narrative. It is around these figures and their lives that the story of this period is told; more than mere illustrations, they embody the history of the period between 1918 and 1939. Their hopes and dreams, their despair and sufferings are the same as those of other Europeans. The reconstructed stories have two levels: the central parts of their lives in this period are reconstructed and staged as real-life drama, but this drama is supported by more factual bio-sequences, where they speak with

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their ‘own voice’ based on the documentation they have left behind. So reconstructed staged real-life drama, their life as embodied action, is combined with self-reflections by the 13 protagonists. The drama part of the series is thus just as complex as the factual historical part, the documentary part that accompanies the drama side. We constantly get news from different parts of Europe creating a context around the drama, we see news films showing the factual side of what we experience, and a constant series of quotes commenting on events from politicians, writers and military personnel representing positions just as diverse as those of the main protagonists. The message behind this series seems to be that a combination of nationalism and extreme ideological positions is a toxic cocktail.

The Weimar Years: Crisis, Political Chaos and the Cultural Avant-Garde 1919–1938 is a dramatic period in German history, representing a last fight for culture and democracy before the Nazi hell broke loose. New trends in art and literature, new ways of living followed the terrible experience of World War I. The short life of the Weimar Republic was a burst of creativity, a meeting between daring modernism and critical realism. The novels of Hans Fallada were often adapted for television in the very early days of television. His big 1930 crisis novel Kleiner Mann was nun was produced twice: first by GDR television (1967) and then by West German television (1970). The story of Pinneberg and his wife barely making it through the rough political and economic times is a classic in the new German realism, also on TV. While these adaptations have mostly historical value today, two other Fallada adaptations represent the birth of a new and more filmic form of television. Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben (1973), directed by the leading German TV director at that time, Egon Monk, and awarded the German TV prize that year, is interesting because it paints a broader image of class and ideological conflicts in a provincial Germany. Set in the fictional town of Altholm, it deals with farmers taking action against the local authorities with bombs and demonstrations, and it all ends in court, where the local mayor tries in vain to defend the Weimar democracy. In the last part we follow him past a long row of posters showing all the political parties. It is the last hours of the republic, and the farmers celebrate with a flag that signals violence against all those who do not belong

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to “our German culture and identity”. Although the theme is different, the same goes for Ein Mann will nach Oben (1978), an ambitious early adaptation of Fallada’s novel in 13 parts. Here we follow Karl Siebrecht (Matthieu Carriere) as he leaves his home town to seek his fortune in Berlin. He first seems to make it, establishing a company. But World War I makes life difficult and the crisis in the 1930s adds to his problems. Navigating in a country hit by deep ideological conflicts, Karl rises nearly to the top in business. With its huge cast of around 5000 extras and 250 actors, this seemingly ambitious period picture is a forerunner of modern Berlin-Weimar Republic TV series. Another TV series that has survived time is Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), an adaptation of Alfred Döblin’s 1929 novel, a masterpiece of modernism, its montage style combined with strong panoramic realism of Berlin as a modern metropolis. The expressive style and modernism and the razor-sharp, almost grotesque realism of the novel is recreated for TV in Fassbinder’s version. Fassbinder’s very expressive and modernistic montage of Berlin, mixing everyday life, politics, culture and society during the 1920s, gives a dynamic image of a culture of vitality doomed to go under. The viewer is sucked into the maelstrom of the chaotic and dangerous Weimar years. The older tradition of TV series dealing with the Weimar years draws on both modernist and realist traditions to capture the social and political chaos. In style and themes, they are forerunners of the most recent series, Babylon Berlin, which is the main analytical example in this chapter. However, the newest series, Die Neue Zeit (2018), co-produced by ZDF and ARTE, deals directly with the Bauhaus movement, and thus with one of the main centres of the cultural avant-garde of the Weimar period. As the series clearly shows, it is not just about modernist architecture and art in general, it is also an intended revolution of how we should live our lives, including gender roles and love. It was, however, an avant-garde that ran into political trouble with the Nazi ideology, and which also ran into internal trouble. The series brings us inside the Bauhaus world of modern art and thinking, illustrating how the cultural and political battle of the Weimar years developed, and it also brings us into the complex story of how difficult it can be to change the way we live together, a theme that points to post-war Europe and the cultural revolution of the 1960s (see Chapter 9).

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German Noir: Babylon Berlin as Period and Crime Drama Babylon Berlin (1–2, 2017) is indebted to this tradition of TV series about the Weimar years, stylistically and thematically. At the same time, it is clearly one of the most innovative and ground-breaking German TV series ever made, and one of the most expensive. It cost almost e40 million to produce the 16 episodes, eight episodes of 45 minutes in each season—and two or three more seasons are planned. It was also a historic production in the sense that it is the first series to be produced by a public-service channel (ARD) and a commercial channel (Sky Germany). On top of that, Netflix bought the US-Canadian rights, HBO took the series to Eastern Europe, and it was supported by the EU Creative Media programme. The series is thus yet another example of the tendency towards transnational European co-productions which has been boosting budgets and quality in European drama series since 2000 (Bondebjerg et al. 2017). The European success of these transnational co-productions that manage to keep local creative control is clear—by 2018, the series had been sold to more than 90 countries. In an interview one of the producers, Stefan Arndt, talks about changing the basic narrative concept of German TV series: “The rules of German TV were very strict – it was still one story arc per episode – and you focus on your one hero” (Roxborough 2017). In contrast to this, the plot in Babylon Berlin is very complex, which is reflected in the 157 characters, all of them individually rich, some of whom change position or pose as something they are clearly not before they are revealed. So double identity and interacting plotlines involving several investigative crime cases make the story richer but also puzzling at times. Complicated political plots and the more than 300 locations add to the viewer’s experience of Berlin on many levels, from fancy inner-city shops, cabarets and restaurants to crowded and poor working-class areas and those institutions supposed to support and defend democracy. We have plotlines related to the rich Weimar Berlin culture of music, cabarets, film, modern art, theatre, architecture and sexual liberation, and we have the strong tensions between critical theory, psychoanalysis, left-wing politics and a slowly growing new aggressive nationalism and authoritarian politics. The series is based on the crime novels of Volker Kutscher, which secures the basic crime plots and the whole German noir feeling of the series. But as a basis for this crime plot, we also find a rich period drama, where 1929

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is the turning point for a world and a Germany soon to plunge into crisis and war, leading directly to Hitler’s coup d’état of 1933. The three directors (Tom Tykwer, Achim von Borries and Henk Handloegten) and also Stefan Arndt (from the production company X Filme Creative Pool) were agreed on not making the traditional story of Hitler coming to power, but instead telling the story of all that went just before, all the things that helped pave the way for what was yet to come. The series puts us on a level with many of the characters in the series who did not know what was happening until it was too late. One of the conspiracies—the Black Army, a group of leading German officers who want to get rid of the republic and reinstall the German Emperor—fails in episode 13. The attempt to assassinate Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann—during a performance of Bertolt Brecht’s Dreigroschen Oper—and then to take over in the subsequent chaos is prevented by the main character of the series, Gereon Rath, in the first open confrontation with his police colleague, Bruno Wolter. Bruno Wolter is from the outset playing a double game, and in reality is secretly behind the Black Army, which the political police at the same time is trying to bring to court. The political plot of the series goes right to the heart of German right-wing revanchist politics, but before the real devil appears. Hitler is only mentioned once in the series, just as we do not see the Nazi Brownshirts in action before late in the second season. But the fact that one of the coupmakers (Oberst Wendt) in episode 16 takes office as leader of the political police replacing the democrat August Benda, who is killed by a bomb placed by Brownshirts, spells trouble. The same goes for the fact that Paul van Hindenburg, the president of the republic, supports the right-wing revanchists all the way (Fig. 7.1). The title alone of Babylon Berlin seems to combine a well-known historical place, a specific European city with deep historical roots with biblical, symbolic and mythological overtones. Like Berlin, Babylon was an actual historical location in ancient Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq)— a rich, central and powerful centre of civilization. Babylon is, however, also mentioned in the Bible, as a warning to humans against pride and hubris, as illustrated in the tale of the Tower of Babel, which aspired to reach heaven. In the biblical tradition, the Whore of Babylon is also a symbol of decadence connected with Babylon. In the series Berlin is clearly described in all its complexity as a modern post-war European city, a city trying to gain strength and build a new world on the ruins of the old. As a period drama, Babylon Berlin covers most of the central

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Fig. 7.1 Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries) is the strong female character of Babylon Berlin. She comes from the poorest working-class neighbourhood, but she fights for herself and her family by all possible means, and she also rises to be a moral centre in the German world of corruption and chaos. Here we see her at Moka Efti, the central cabaret where one dances on the volcano and tries to forget reality, one of the centres of ‘Babylon’ (Screenshot by author)

places and classes in a dramatically socially divided city. There is a world of difference between the ‘red’ working-class neighbourhoods with too many people stuffed into unhealthy apartments, far from the norms of modernist architects in the Bauhaus movement, and the fancy glamorous apartments, cabarets, restaurants and shops of the rich and powerful. As one of the main characters in the series, Charlotte Ritter, demonstrates, there is no hubris in the working-class areas, just a desperate attempt to survive and move upwards—as she does when she becomes a police inspector. There is also a vast difference between the upper world and the underworld—things you can observe on the surface of life in Berlin, and all that takes place in dark and hidden places. The series is both a period and a crime drama, with both ends of the ‘noir’ genre scale playing an important role; it is the crime story that drives the plot, and the period drama that gives it a broader foundation in a historical reality. Berlin is light, colour, vitality, a new sexual freedom and all the forms of the historical

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Weimar culture, but behind this we find political intrigues to overthrow democracy, we find brutality, murder, corruption and decadence. Visually and through its narrative form the series switches between different parts of the upper world and the underworld. This is a vital part of the aesthetic fascination of watching it, and the fact that seasons 1 and 2 take place in 1929, just before the big crisis and political backlash set in for real, brings us face to face with characters who had no clear idea of what was waiting around the corner. The characters often work in the dark (literally and symbolically), in tunnels, deserted industrial spaces, back alleys or secret basements. It is here that the old world is operating, in the shadows of modernity, ready to strike and destroy Berlin and the Weimar Republic itself, which for them is a modern Babylon, a city without proper moral values. The series show with icy realism and a strong visual noir aesthetics how the rotten and corrupt elements in the upper levels but in darkness are gradually growing to become the new power elite. The series shows a culture and a democracy living on borrowed time—as if already hit by cancer, but not yet diagnosed. The political plots—and there is more than one—are certainly central to the story. There are the German communists, severely persecuted by the police and led by the charismatic female Doctor Völker, working primarily in the working-class neighbourhood. There is the Russian communist plotline, with the official party involved in collaboration with the German army (weapons, aeroplanes, poison gas) and the Trotskyists, with their own agenda tied to a mysterious relation between ‘Countess’ Svetlana Sorokina and one of her lovers (the Trotskyist Alex Kardakow). Sorokina also appears in the Cabaret Moka Efti, disguised as a man, a disguise she also uses when she informs the Russian Embassy of topics of interest. And by the way, she is also the lover of Alfred Nyssen, the big steel manufacturer, clearly collaborating with the right-wing coup-makers. A fox needs many exits, and in the political plot you need to keep your eyes wide open, in order to see who is playing on which side. Then there is of course also the train with gold, which opens the first episode of the first season, gold that seems to interest almost all involved in the political plot, but in the end also Edgar ‘The Armenian’. He is the owner of the Moka Efti establishment, and thus the king of the Berlin underworld with its singing, dancing, drinking, but also narcotics, porn film production and prostitution. The gold in the end escapes all of them and goes back to the Soviet Union, because only a few are aware that the gold is not in the wagon, the wagon itself is made of gold. In the end it seems

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all is connected to the Berlin underworld and the three main characters, to whom we can now turn. The first episode of the first season opens and the last episode of the second season closes with the same very symbolic and psychological plotline. I will call this the ‘memory-trauma’ plotline. It is very important for the interpretation of the series to understand this plotline for at least two reasons. First of all, it deals with some very traumatic events in the life of the main character, Cologne police officer Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch), sent to Berlin to investigate a case involving porn film and photos that can potentially harm Konrad Adenauer, mayor of Cologne. The trauma is partly war damage: he is suffering from PTSD, a diagnosis not accepted in those days, but he is on drugs to control his trembling and psychological condition. Second, this personal memory trauma is in fact not just personal, it becomes a memory trauma representing the whole German post-war generation on several levels. As the memory trauma develops— and it returns ten times during the first and second seasons—it becomes a symbolic representation of two sides of the German nation. These two sides are represented in the way Gereon struggles with his whole family history and his very problematic relationship with his brother (Anno Rath), missing in action. The military connection is supplemented by the fact that he has had a year-long affair with his brother’s wife, Helga Rath. Finally, his trauma is linked to his very dominant father (Engelbert Rath) and his authoritarian, Catholic and cynical view of life—especially after the death of Gereon’s mother just after the war (Fig. 7.2). One more character plays an important role in this memory-trauma dimension, the psycho- therapist Arno Schmidt, who runs a clinic with very controversial theories of how to treat PTSD with suggestive hypnosis therapy. At the beginning of episode 7 Arno Schmidt lectures about his work with PTSD patients and gives examples of how hypnosis and suggestive therapeutics can help. However, his lecture is met with complete rejection and the view that all such patients are just cowards. Gereon gets his regular strong medication through a pharmacist in exchange for pornographic pictures, but how he is taken on for treatment by Arno Schmidt is not clear. However, the opening scene of episode 1 is a very symbolic flashback montage of memories, and Arno Schmidt says he will take him back to “the source of his anxiety”. First he seems to be experiencing something that has just happened or is about to happen: he is in a strangely lit tunnel, running backwards, he is under water, he is at the police station, he is on the Moka Efti dancefloor, in Alex Kardakoff’s

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Fig. 7.2 Gereon Rath (Volker Bruch) is the main male character of Babylon Berlin. He suffers from severe PTSD, and constantly returns to a situation during the war when he had to abandon his wounded brother. His private trauma is, however, directly connected to the trauma of Germany in this period, and his police work and private life is about getting rid of and escaping from this trauma (Screenshot by author)

apartment, somebody is holding a gun to his head, he sees a dead dog being dragged along the floor, he is kissing a prostitute at the Pepita bar, Charlotte Ritter (Liv Lisa Fries, his partner in policework, but also working as a prostitute) is dancing half naked at Moka Efti, he follows railway tracks, he sees police and communist workers clashing in the streets of Berlin, he sees a car having an accident and ending under water, and finally he is involved in a shooting scene in Moka Efti. All these dream sequences refer to things that happen in the subsequent story line. In the dream sequence, Gereon seems to arrive in the past and the deeper layer of his memory: he sees himself in a World War I battle scene, bombs falling and a horse with gas mask, then he is praying in a church in Cologne, and leaving the altar he passes his priest and his father. Then we hear Arno Schmidt saying, “you longed to go to war and put all this behind you”, and now we see Gereon’s brother Anno and his wife Helga on their wedding day. Arno Schmidt comments: “There is the woman you

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love, but something is standing in your way”. Then his brother turns half around, and Gereon starts running back to the present through a tunnel. While the first more present layers of memory link his story to some of the main plotlines in what is to follow, the second deeper layer of memory is clearly causing a much stronger reaction from Gereon. But at this point those deeper layers are left open, as he mentally flees back. In many ways, however, this is rather indicative of the strength of those memories. The present reality in Berlin is scary in itself and full of unexpected challenges and dangers, but apparently elements of his war past, his childhood and more personal memories are even stronger. Now these memories return, first in rather small sequences, but then with stronger intensity. In episode 5 Helga phones him from Cologne, and he tells her that he has had a very strange dream of his brother Anno and his horse (Yucatan)—the horse with gas mask we see in the war memories in episode 1—and also the horse that appears on one of the porn images he is investigating. In episode 6 a person calls Gereon at the police station, and whistles the soldiers’ song “Der gute Kamerad (The good comrade)”. This tune has a function in the German military tradition: it is used at soldiers’ funerals, but it also stands for solidarity with the military and with the men you are fighting next to. In other words, it indicates that somebody, maybe also Gereon himself, sees him as a coward and as not having lived up to this kind of solidarity. A key line in the song is that you treat comrades as if “they were a part of you”. This song returns several times; in episode 7 the patients at Schmidt’s clinic are forced to sing it standing to attention, and in the same episode, where Gereon accidentally enters a meeting of the Black Army, the participants sing it. The song is therefore not just a simple song about solidarity, it is a song symbolizing right-wing nationalism, and it is a key symbolic element in the understanding of Gereon’s war trauma. Episode 7 is a central episode in the memory-trauma plot, because the theme of the song unleashes a new memory of his brother. This time he gets a flashback while he sings with others: first we see the first part of the memory, where his brother and his horse are wounded; the memory is then temporarily interrupted, but returns again later, when Bruno Wolter and General Seeger (both part of the Black Army conspiracy) talk very positively about Gereon’s brother as a soldier and man. In the new sequence we see Gereon act as the good soldier, he runs to fetch his wounded brother, he carries him back to a trench, but is then taken away by French soldiers and forced to leave his brother. Seeger’s remark, “He

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is holding his post and hiding somewhere, just waiting for us to prevail and the old order to return”, may indicate that some see his brother as a better soldier and man than Gereon. Now these memories are the work of a tormented and twisted mind, so we cannot know if this is a true portrait of what happened, or indeed of what his brother is like. In episode 9 Helga arrives in Berlin with her son Moritz, and Anno is officially declared dead. Gereon continues to have his nightmares, and in both episodes 8 and 14 he has terrible anxiety attacks as he is being followed by a ‘priest’—a hired killer for Edgar ‘The Armenian’. However, in episode 11 and in the final sequences of the series the memory-trauma plot takes some dramatic turns, especially through the intervention of his father in his memories. What he is seeing here is two different episodes with his father, and one with Helga, pregnant with her son Moritz. A common thread in all three episodes is that he is rejected by the family and seen as inferior to his brother, but other more existential themes are also present. In memory one he is at the barber’s with his father as a child, and in memory two he visits his father at his mother’s deathbed. In both scenes the father seems to be almost lecturing him and his words are quite strong: Now they are trying to make us believe that all humans are equal. Yet another one of the delusions of our time. Humans are imperfect. The masses pose a danger, and capitalism is full of temptations. We are all sinners, only in that sense are we equal, but in body and soul we are very different and this is something god given. Take your brother Anno for example. Don’t ever make the mistake of setting the same goals as he did. Humans are different, specifically in their ability to lead. If you are not humble enough to realize that you should avoid grasping for power. In the state we find our true human nature. A divine order can only find its form in a society that accepts a structured state. Hierarchy is established through the divine origin of the state. (my translation of German screen dialogue)

This seems to suggest very strong support for a (divine) authoritarian state, and if his brother is the one chosen by his father, this adds an extra dimension to Gereon’s struggle with war memories and family narratives. According to this, both his father and brother have this understanding of the state, and Gereon does not. This is certainly underlined in his second memory at the mother’s deathbed, where his father continues, speaking to his dead wife: “God has abandoned us, and what are we left with,

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a human carcass. A tree without roots, a world without light. First the wrong son (my italics) returns, and then you (the dead mother) leave me alone with him (Gereon).” So Gereon in this version is the wrong son, and apparently also a representative of a system (democracy) that is a delusion leading us astray from God. In the last memory this rejection is repeated as Gereon asks Helga: “Why have you left me?” and she answers: “Because I am in love with your brother.” Now from the rest of the story we know that to be not entirely true, but in this memory, Gereon experiences total rejection by his whole family, not just for what he is, but also for what he seems to believe in—even though he also betrays his ideals several times. The last and rather puzzling sequence in this memory-trauma plot closes the second season of the series. Again, we hear the words of Arno Schmidt and see Gereon under hypnosis: “And now you go back again, deeper than you did before. Imagine the place where you feel safe, loved, secure, perhaps in your family.” We then go back to the same church scene as in episode 1. But this time the brother standing at his wedding with Helga turns around and faces Gereon. Then Gereon is back on the front line, walking on mud, sitting looking over the edge of his ditch position as the bombs fall and chaos intensifies. It is the morning of 4 November 1918, just before the German surrender. “I will take you back to confront the truth”, says Arno Schmidt. Gereon seems more and more uneasy with the situation, he changes between seeing his brother lying wounded and looking straight at us and Schmidt. As Schmidt says, “when you open your eyes your anxiety will have vanished”, he opens his eyes and for a split second he sees Schmidt as his missing brother, they hug and Gereon is crying with relief. What we witness here is no doubt a therapeutic projection only taking place in Gereon’s twisted mind, not in reality. In the previous sequences in this memory-trauma plot, his trauma is not just his personal trauma, it is much more deeply embedded in his family situation, and in a wider sense in the two sides fighting for control in post-war Germany and Berlin. Just before this ‘liberation’ from a past trauma, the present reality seems to catch up with him: the new head of the political police after August Benda ‘promotes’ him to lead a secret police organization for internal revision (read political control), and on the orders of his new boss he lies at the court hearing into the killing of people at the 1 May demonstration in the working-class area of Berlin. Helga seems to be leaving him for Alfred Nyssen, and as he is attacked by an angry communist for lying in court, only the King of the Underworld,

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Edgar ‘The Armenian’, and his people come to his rescue. His morale and personality seem challenged, or at least split. Survival of the fittest in a still more brutal Berlin reality. People are not always what they seem to be, and characters can serve different masters and have open and secret agendas, or they can simply have split identities and traumas—this is one of the main themes of this series. We have already seen it in the case of our main character Gereon, and it is certainly also, in a more spectacular sense, the case with the mysterious Russian ‘Countess’ and singer, Svetlana Sorokina. Her story of being the only survivor of a noble Russian family killed by the communists, whose father managed to melt all their gold into a train wagon, is revealed as false by Gereon and Charlotte. She is most probably the daughter of the family’s chauffeur, and all her plotting and scheming and making alliances with all sides serve more personal purposes. But if we look at the three main characters in the police force, we find other variations of this social and psychological theme. We have already discussed Gereon Rath’s complicated and split personality, but still he seems like one of the most honest, democratic characters, even though he is corrupted in the end. For Charlotte Ritter other elements are important. She clearly belongs to the poorest working-class segment in the series, and the jobs she seeks here and there on a day-to-day basis with the police, and also her prostitution, are primarily simply a matter of surviving and contributing to the daily cost of her rather large family (parents, an elder sister and her husband, and a younger sister). When she accidentally gets the chance of more permanent work in the homicide section and eventually rises to be a full-time police officer, it speaks for her energy, and for all females in this period fighting for equality. Gereon and Charlotte develop to become the moral centre of the series, the toughest when it comes to nailing all sorts of bad guys—outside or inside the police force. But just as Gereon has his own traumas to fight, Charlotte is blackmailed and has to play a double game, under duress from the third police character, Bruno Wolter, the rotten apple in the police force. Like Gereon, Bruno belongs to the middle class, he treats his sick wife very gently, and he seems at times to be very helpful to people and colleagues. But he is the policeman behind the Black Army who organizes the mass killing of communists in the May demonstration. He also kills his own colleague Stefan Jäncke in cold blood when he comes too close to revealing the Black Army coup. He finally attempts to murder both Gereon and Charlotte by forcing their car off the road and into

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a lake. They survive, and the almost Wild West-like showdown between Gereon and Bruno standing on a train at full speed in episode 16 is one of the most dramatic scenes in the series. It is the end of Bruno—but as we know, not the end of the evil forces he represents. On the other hand, in the series Gereon and Charlotte seem to develop not just a stronger and stronger professional relationship, but also a personal relationship— bordering on a beginning love, but which at the end of season 1 and 2 is still unfulfilled. Gereon and Charlotte as characters are both as complex as the period they live in, but they represent an attempt to fight against the dark forces and a dream of a new life after the disaster of World War I. As I write this, we are still waiting for season 3 and the inevitable road to the next disaster. The main characters probably have a feeling of where history is heading, and they can already almost see the end of the dream of a new modernism and democracy they embody. Still, this is the most watched series in German history, and it has already won almost all the prizes it can. Like the viewers, critics have pointed out that the series is not just about the past, but also tells a story that sends warnings to our presentday Europe. This is what Thomas E. Schmidt points out in Die Zeit (Schmidt 2017), referring to the reappearance of right-wing populism and stronger national identity positions.

Between Two Wars: Class and Culture in British Period Drama Great Britain was not hit by post-World War I chaos on many levels in the same way, and the right-wing tendencies we see in Germany were much weaker. Still, in the aftermath of the Great War, we also see fundamental changes in British society. There was a stronger focus on the transition from a traditional class-based society towards a new modern era where the working class and women were on the move. We have already seen this cultural and social conflict play out in period dramas dealing with World War I (see Chapter 6), and in a series like The Village (see Chapter 4). Just like in Germany, there is a tendency towards increased focus on workingclass and gender issues, but unlike in Germany, the upper-class theme still dominates, either in the form of the upstairs–downstairs narrative, the tradition–modernity perspective, even though the changing times and new challenges were, all in all, much stronger. It is perhaps not surprising that it was the UK that first produced the longest-running soap opera

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Coronation Street (1960–) focusing on working-class everyday life in the Manchester area. The working-class and everyday-life perspective in a broader sense also influenced historical TV series. This tradition of historical working-class drama dealing with this period dates back to the 1970s. In the context of the BBC’s ambitious new drama series, The Wednesday Play (1964–1970) and Play for Today (1970–1984), a new realism was developed, a realism with a new class focus (Bondebjerg 1993: 244ff; Cooke 2003: 66ff). The productions were mostly single plays, but some series were also produced, and one of the most interesting is Ken Loach’s Days of Hope (1975), a four-part series dealing with the General Strike of 1926 and people, families and politics around this strike. The four parts cover the period from 1916 to 1926, and the narrative chronologically follows the war and its influence on the local community and the whole process leading up to the strike. The series is not just about the 1926 strike, but about working-class life in Great Britain during and between the wars, and we follow individuals and families in their everyday life and during conflicts. There is also a clear perspective on the political system and the trade unions, and the whole war and post-war drama is unfolded from a new perspective. There is even a side narrative on the Irish conflict. Most new TV drama from the mid-1960s took up contemporary issues, but as the producer Tony Garnett said to Radio Times before the premiere of Days of Hope: “Our motive for going into the past is not to escape the present: we go into the past to draw lessons from it. History is contemporary” (Cooke 2003: 99). This can be taken in a very direct sense, since Days of Hope, was also a historical comment on the 1973–1974 strike that had taken place under a Conservative government. Loach’s period drama introduces a new working-class drama in British television, a tradition that would remain strong also in contemporary drama. There were, however, other formats in this tradition, for instance BBC’s very popular and very long-running series When the Boat Comes In (51 episodes, 1976–1981). Here we experience the development between 1919 and 1939, seen through the main character Jack Ford (James Bolam) as he returns as a sergeant to his poverty-stricken home town of Gallowshield in the north-east of England. The series gives us a broad historical image of this part of England, but also of London in this period through a broad gallery of characters representing different classes and political ideologies. Jack is from the outset a working-class character, and his political leaning is to the left. He is active during the strike in 1926,

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he quarrels with British fascists, he supports the weak and he takes part in the Spanish Civil War. When the Boat Comes In is in many ways a genuine working-class drama with a strong hero who tries everything to make a better living. However, it is also a drama about a man rising socially through the union movement by engaging in national and international politics and trying to make a fortune by bootlegging and other dubious activities. It is a series that shows us many sides of a chaotic period and a rich network of social characters representing all aspects of this period. Taking a big leap in time, the working-class theme in British historical TV series renews itself in Steve Knight’s spectacular historical crime and working-class drama Peaky Blinders (2013). Inspired by the life of a real Birmingham gang, the Shelby family, this series shows how crime can make one family rise to power although at a great cost. At the same time the series gives an often realistic image of working-class life between 1919 and the world crisis in 1929. This includes insights into class and power structures, the conflicts between roles in a very violent, male-dominated gang culture, their families and the strong women contesting their power. We see this, for instance, in some of the season 5 episodes, where the leader Tommy Shelby is confronted and threatened with strikes by a female union leader. Paul Long, who has written an article about the series (Long 2017), describes it as a mix of the American realism of The Wire (2002) and the more opulent period drama in the American crime drama Boardwalk Empire (2010). However, the series of course also draws on the two opposite forces of British working-class realism and the heritage drama with its stylized focus on historical aesthetics in clothing, lifestyle and settings (Long 2017: 154). The cinematography of this period drama is extraordinary, with even working-class neighbourhoods appearing as almost stylized places, and this violent gang eventually rises to the highest levels of society, where they have connections from the King down. In season 4, Tommy is even elected to parliament. The cinematography, the dramatic, action-paced and bloody narrative takes this series far away from the Loach tradition, but many of the historical themes and conflicts continue in an updated form in this very different crime period drama rooted in historical Birmingham working-class culture. The popularity of this series in the UK went from not so great when broadcast on BBC2, to very high when it was moved to BBC1. Add to that a pretty broad international success, among other things on Netflix.

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Working-class historical drama has a strong place in British television; however, most viewers probably see the heritage period drama as more typical. They deal with this historic transition period in a different style and narrative form. The classic example is of course the enormously popular Brideshead Revisited (1981), an adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s 1945 novel, and named one of the top titles on the BFI list of the alltime best 100 television programmes. The story is told very much from the perspective of Charles (Jeremy Irons), who from the start of the series in 1943 looks back on his life at Oxford and his friendship with Sebastian (Anthony Andrews) and his immensely rich family. Seen from 1943 it becomes the story of a time and a life about to disappear forever, or at least change fundamentally. The voice of Charles throughout the series is nostalgic, although he also has a quite realistic look at his time and Sebastian’s family. A special dimension is the global narrative, created by an ever more disillusioned Sebastian who wants to get away from his life and family and seek pleasure and experiences in Europe and Africa. One could of course see this as yet another proof of the English upper class and its vast empire, but it is also a sign of the decline of the very foundations of the English heritage. When Sebastian dies—very symbolically in 1939 as World War II is imminent—Charles’s planned marriage with his sister is called off. Charles is gradually cut off from the life form he has been visiting, and in the last episode, he visits the almost empty Brideshead, now designated at least temporarily as military quarters.

Down Dark and Sunny Lanes: Dennis Potter, Realism and Dreams of Popular Culture Dennis Potter is in many ways a lone figure in the landscape of period drama described above, and his style and forms of narration are gradually developed into a very strong mix of genres and discursive levels. He was part of the new realism in the 1960s, when his local stories and working-class issues bring him close to Ken Loach and others. He did, however, from the late 1970s on develop a more personal and very original universe, and with historical series like Pennies from Heaven (1978) and not least The Singing Detective (1986) he managed to explore historical periods, partly autobiographical memories, in a very symbolic, reflexive way, involving a very creative use of popular genre formats (Bondebjerg 1993: 371ff; Creeber 1998: 110ff). Though very different from Edgar Reitz in Germany, it is the same kind of reflexive use of history

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and the many levels of our self, memory, and our dreams, hopes and worst fears. They are both modernists, but modernists with a clear understanding of emotions, memories, dreams, fantasies and the importance of everyday life as the basis of our life and history. There are also plenty of dreams of a better life in Babylon Berlin, a desperate attempt to live life to the full despite the dark forces creeping up around the main characters. There is also a deep understanding of popular culture: the scenes from the Moka Efti dancefloor with all its glittering surfaces and the lower levels with sex and drugs are both a vital and a mixed symbol of what has gone down in historical memory as the ‘roaring Twenties’. At the same time the series have a similar approach to the mixing of genres: we have gruesome war elements, we have traditional crime drama, we have political drama and we have almost kitchen-sink realism, all embedded in a symbolic period context where we go deep into surreal dreams and traumas. The series stop just before the darker 1930s start, with the Great Depression and all the political and ideological turmoil that followed. This is where Dennis Potter’s six-part series, Pennies from Heaven, begins with a powerful narrative in which a world of dreams expressed through popular songs clashes with hard realities. The main character, Arthur Parker (Bob Hoskins), “a wannabe high on dreams yet low on cash” (Cook 1995: 163), is a salesman in sheet music, without much success and with a very petty-bourgeois wife for whom swearing and sex are just filthy. Potter’s first series for the BBC is very innovative in its mix of realism and musical, where all the characters can suddenly break out into song and sometimes dance. They perform lip sync to the original songs, so sometimes women perform with male voices and vice versa. This obvious break with realism, creating a reflexive dimension between reality and the inner dreams and emotions of characters, is further enhanced by changes in scenography, for instance light and colour. In the most direct sense the songs, dreams and emotions light up the duller and darker everyday reality the characters live in. Even though Potter throughout his life was very critical of commercialization, fearing it would restrict artistic freedom, he obviously did not support the idea behind much critical theory that mass culture or popular culture was just the seduction of the masses (Bondebjerg 1993: 371ff, Creeber 1998: 134f). He used songs and popular culture in general as part of an understanding of characters and historical periods, not only in Pennies from Heaven, but also in The Singing Detective (1986) and

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Lipstick on your Collar (1993). He defends his main character Arthur like this: “The only good thing about Arthur, even though he was an adulterer and a liar and was weak and dishonest, was that he really wanted the world to be like in the songs, as he explained them, or tried to explain them in his less than articulate way” (Potter in Fuller 1993: 88). So Potter builds on popular culture as an expression of a utopian or at least better world; there is a truth in there somewhere that explains their popularity. This belief in the power of dreams and the utopian dimension in popular culture is also clearly demonstrated in the ending of Pennies from Heaven. After having made Eileen, an innocent school teacher, pregnant, eventually forcing her into an abortion and a life as a prostitute, Arthur meets her again and it turns out they are in love, in spite of everything. Even after Arthur has been condemned to hang for murdering a girl—of which he is innocent—and following an absurd and farcical trial, played out as a musical most of the time, he and Eileen are united and he is resurrected. As Arthur says triumphantly in his strong cockney accent: “I’m like a bad penny, en’ I? I keep turning up, don’t I? A Penny from Heaven … Couldn’t go all through that wivaht a bleed’n ‘appy endin’ now, could we?” His last hour before being hanged of course takes place with Arthur and his prison guards singing and dancing “I Like to go Back in the Evening” and “In the Dark” after the execution. An ending like that and the long row of singing and dancing scenes—plus all the other references to popular culture in all parts of the series—shows that Potter really takes popular culture seriously. They are not just commercial speculation and naïve dreams; they point towards emotions and dreams that mean something to people. John Cook is quite right when he says: In Pennies, a careful balance between optimism (the songs) and pessimism (the “real” world) is preserved right to the very end, albeit with one qualification. Since it is the dreams and hopes expressed in the songs which ultimately triumph and are celebrated in the plays, this necessarily undercuts many of the doubts and ambiguities troubling the narrative. (Cook 1995: 165)

But even though songs and the dreams and emotions they represent seem to concur in the bleak reality of the 1930s and even death, the series also carries a strong form of realism: it presents a structural analysis of classes and ways of living in an England hit by severe economic depression, and a country in which politics and ideologies indicate the

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even more dangerous world events ahead. Just as in Babylon Berlin, there is a noir feeling, an undercurrent of especially radical conservative ideologies, and an upper class trying to live as if nothing is wrong. It is all about preserving your own interests and about supporting nation, king and queen, as if we are still living in the grand past. We hear this tune of nationalistic conservatism already in part 2, after Arthur has been struck by love meeting Eileen. She is at the morning session at the school, all very Christian and decent, the children singing psalms, having readings from the Bible, with some boys publicly punished for singing the national anthem as “God save our Old Tom Cat”, to which the headmaster says: “To make fun of the National Anthem in this way, and to compare His Majesty King George the Fifth to an old tom cat – and in Jubilee Year too! – you ought to be ashamed … You live in the greatest Empire the world has yet seen” (Potter 1996: 42–43). There is a direct link from here to a sequence in episode 5, where Major Archibald Paxville, MC, a Conservative MP, speaking at a meeting, claims that the British people are “fundamentally one” and have shown not just their love and respect for king and country, but also their “contempt for the sour and alien creeds which would set one class at the throat of another, which could trample the country … Let us show the world … that our difficulties are nothing compared with our virtues and strengths” (Potter 1996: 184–185). This harsh realism, this political-ideological dimension, pops up all the time, for instance in a scene in part 2 where all the travelling salesmen meet for breakfast. Arthur is in a dream world after the meeting with Eileen and doesn’t really hear what they are saying. They are talking about what a disgusting country England is, and some of them are calling for a bit of Italian law and order (meaning Mussolini), and talking about immigrants who should be kicked out and about England choosing the wrong side in World War I (Potter 1996: 64–65). When Arthur wakes up, he delivers a passionate defence of dreams and hopes in a world where “they pin a medal on somebody’s chest if he blows up a thousand women and kids. Oh, I’ve seen it, I have. The things I’ve seen, the terrible, horrible, ghastly things I’ve witnessed” (Potter 1996: 69). The dreams and songs, the whole popular universe is here used directly in opposition to a political position that seems to feed into aggressive, nationalist and fascist feelings. There is often an underlying anti-American tendency in some of those nationalist-conservative positions. When Arthur in episode 4 has finally persuaded his wife Joan to invest in a little record shop (Jubilee Records), one of Arthur’s first customers is looking for military records, because we

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need to prepare for the next war, a war against the dominance of the US. Of course, Arthur loves American popular culture. He tells Eileen later in the same episode: “I’d rather be a Yank. They got the best songs. I want to live in a world where the songs come true” (Potter 1996: 163). This, then, is perhaps where Arthur’s sense of reality fails. In the series, the upper classes, and to a great extent also the middle classes aspiring to move upwards, largely take a populist position: police, judges, politicians, the pimps living on prostitution, some of the salesmen. This doesn’t mean that Pennies from Heaven is dominated by politics and ideology directly, but the structures of the real world are painted quite clearly as a background for the imaginary story and dimension, where dreams are made about another and better world. Joan and her women friends play a role here too. They obviously live in a very gendered world, where dreams of perfect looks and love are filtered through weekly magazines. Here, the dreams often seem to rest on emptiness, because they promise too much with too little. They are thus caught in a world that never really allows them to break out. Arthur and Eileen’s story, on the other hand, shows the grave costs and potential of trying to break free completely—also free of a very locked-in traditional gender role. The working class is of course primarily represented by Arthur, at least by his background, but it is also present in the mysterious hiker/accordion man whom Arthur encounters in episode 1. He, together with other homeless men, with prostitutes on the street and with Eileen’s father and two brothers—who are miners and partly out of work—represent the lowest part of the working class, those most hard hit by the crisis. Now there is quite significant symbolism in the fact that Joan at one point meets the hiker in the street outside her home, playing his religious hymns for money, and mistakenly takes him for Arthur. If we look at the central crime-noir story in the series, this link is further underlined by the fact that the murder of the blind girl from the Forest of Dean is committed by the hiker, although Arthur is suspected of and eventually hangs for it. Arthur does meet the blind girl, and is fascinated by her, the same way he is fascinated by Eileen, so it is not all that strange that the hiker, when he meets Eileen by coincidence, sees her as the blind girl and is shocked. The symbolic relation between Arthur, the hiker, the blind girl and Eileen thus suggests they are connected identities, they represent aspects of each other, destinies from the lower classes, potential roles and fates.

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The Stuff that Dreams Are Made of: The Imaginary and Enchanting Dimension The opening sequences of the six episodes tell about the locations of the series: they are coloured drawings of where the narrative is set (Fig. 7.3). Often bright colours dominate, vibrating with optimism and hopes, but in other cases (for instance episodes 3 and 4) the images become dark and grey, revealing a pessimism and a noir mood which corresponds to the more realist part of the series: it signals poverty, lack of hope, misery and even death. The opening drawings correspond to dominant elements in the narrative development of each episode, but such imaginary, emotional signifiers can also be found in the use of popular culture elements in each episode. Song-and-dance acts are of course very richly represented in all

Fig. 7.3 Dennis Potter‘s Pennies from Heaven mixes the world of the 1930s crisis, especially hitting the lower classes, and the world of songs and dreams. This title illustrates the colourful world of popular culture which lives in the head of Arthur (Bob Hoskins), and erupts on screen when characters sing and dance, or reality is turned into films (Screenshot by author)

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episodes, but weekly magazines, film, radio, religious symbolism, folk tales and folk culture also play a significant role. One example besides the songs can be found in Eileen’s song reaction to being told to read a psalm for her school and a following reading of fairy tales for her own school class. In the first instance she suddenly starts singing “You got me crying again”, undermining the psalm and its religious message with a message of love. Underlying Eileen’s development is a story of a woman taking her fate into her own hands—even the hard parts of it. She seems very shy and vulnerable at the beginning of the series, but turns out to be the strongest character of all. In her class she reads the fairy tale of Rapunzel, a story of secret longing and sexual desire, and the children are fascinated, in contrast to their behaviour when the headmaster preaches about religion and the national anthem. Shortly afterwards we meet Eileen in her family, and she now has plaits like Rapunzel in the fairy tale when Arthur comes to visit. However, after he has seduced her, she has become pregnant and she finds out he has lied to her and seems to have disappeared, she turns the fairy tale into a dark and negative story in front of the shocked children. Even though the imaginary and poetic dimensions of the series are made up of many popular-culture elements, it is of course singing and dancing that dominate, and in that sense, the series is a mixture of a special form of musical and a more realistic period drama. The way the singing and dancing interfere with the narrative is quite special and comes in at least two very different forms: in some instances it seems as though the songs reveal the inner feelings of the character performing, but the other characters do not react to it directly; in other cases—the most dominant form—a character starts a song which then gradually involves most of the characters in that particular scene, transforming the entire scene into a musical act. The song-and-dance element also influences the scenography differently. In the very first song in episode 1, Arthur is waking up and trying without success to persuade his wife to have sex. The first song we hear is “Down Sunnyside Lane” as underscore, but then later Arthur sings lip sync to Elsie Carlisle’s version of “The clouds will soon roll by”, a man singing in a woman’s voice. As he starts singing, the whole kitchen lights up, filling with sunshine, and he turns towards the viewer and soon directly involves his wife, smiling lovingly. Then all the light disappears, he stiffens in his movements, and Joan says, as if it never happened, “What did you say Arthur?” The involvement here from others is quite lowkey, as it is in the Knapp Café scene, where the hiker sings the series’

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tune “Pennies from Heaven” almost unnoticed by all in the café except Arthur; even his dancing round among people doesn’t create much reaction. But the effect of this alter ego of Arthur singing that tune is strong. Examples of a more collective form of singing and dancing can be found throughout the series, for instance in episode 1 in a scene in a bar where Arthur picks up a prostitute, and a whole group dance and sing. A similar scene is found when all Joan’s visiting women friends dance and sing to “I’ll be glad when you’re dead, you rascal you”. We also find dreamlike sequences where characters dance on real stages, imitating Hollywood musicals, for instance in a scene in episode 1 where Arthur and Eileen perform like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. A much more advanced musical act takes place in a Salvation Army hostel for men, where the hiker sleeps together with a lot of other homeless men. The hiker is haunted by his murder of the blind girl at night, and suddenly he starts singing “Serenade in the Night”, while all the men join in dancing and the dead girl also appears. The whole of the scenery signals depression and the utter poverty of the lowest in society. The use of song and dance here has an almost surreal and macabre character, and as a matter of fact it shortly afterwards leads to the hiker committing suicide by jumping into the river Thames. It is in fact also a rather sad love sang, a song about lost love and love in vain, played out by hikers all on accordions. The songs in themselves thus represent a rich variety of musical acts, and they move through all sorts of emotions, all, however, very much expressing the feelings and dreams of the different characters. Often the breaking-out into song in the middle of an ordinary scene shifts the mood and direction of the narrative, creating a reflexive dimension and tension between themes, characters and emotional states. Just like Babylon Berlin, though in a rather different way, Potter’s series combines and plays with several basic genres: first, it is at the profound heart of the narrative a bleak and harsh realistic series about the severe crisis in Britain; second, it is a noir story, both in the sense that crime, death, suicide and dark times are combined and the noir enhances the harsh realism; third, it is a romance, a story of love, marriage and sex, from the morally constrained forms of marriage to prostitution and to free and passionate sex; and fourth, it is a musical creating a top layer of hopes, dreams, emotions and very much also carrying the love story on and at the same time bathing the whole narrative in creative colours and scenography. Compared to Babylon Berlin, the political context does contain some of the same right-wing, nationalist elements produced by the crisis,

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but in the German context this layer of corruption and conspiracy is much stronger. In Berlin they were dancing on the edge of a volcano that was soon to erupt and create a world war; in London they had a crisis and certain ideologies were influenced by the world crisis and right-wing ideologies in other parts of Europe, but they were weak in comparison to the German version.

A Creative, Chaotic, Violent and Divisive Period Life in Europe between 1918 and 1939 must have been like trying to live as if the catastrophe was not already there. The catastrophes were there: first in the form of the Spanish flu, adding millions to the many already dead in the war; then in the form of intense ideological divisions between extreme right and extreme left, the modernists and the traditionalist; then in the form of an economic world crisis; and finally in fascism taking over in Germany, Spain and Italy and a new world war. It is no wonder that Krieg der Träume shows a world of divisive and desperate ideologies and dreams of a new life, that Babylon Berlin shows a world with a dark underworld and a glittering surface of life and vitality, and that Pennies from Heaven combines a dream world of popular culture with the bleak realities of everyday life. However, in both documentary series and fictional series from Germany and the UK dealing with this period, the narrative is rather different. The British series dealing with this inter-war period represent two very different positions: there is a position of looking back at not just a historical transformation but also at a loss of values and a way of life; and there is a position offering a more critical and to a certain degree forwardlooking perspective. Period dramas representing the first position have a nostalgic dimension, a feeling of a national heritage and tradition going under. The other position sees the historical transformation more from a working-class perspective, a perspective from which any change of tradition gives hope for a better future. Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven clearly belongs to the second position with its gritty realism and critical perspective on the crisis in the 1930s seen from the perspective of a man struggling to make ends meet, and a lively portrait of the dreams and hopes of ordinary men and women. The series’ realism and noir dimension show us how the crisis hit people with full force, but at the same time they point to a dimension of dreams and hopes that live on despite the crisis, a world of song, dance and popular culture which is not just commercial junk, but which has a true utopian dimension.

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The clear division in British series dealing with this period is not found in German series. Germany doesn’t have the long tradition of a nation state and an empire, and the history of Germany in the twentieth century does not exactly produce a feeling of lost traditions. It was more a feeling of repairing a shattered past and finding a new national unity after disaster and division. It is, as Neil MacGregor points out right from the introduction of his book Germany. Memories of a Nation (2014: xxii–xiii), a fact that Germany, unlike other European nations, does not have the same “single, national narratives”. Germany’s imagined national identity and memories are conflicting, contradictory, fragmented, even though the unification in 1871 created the first foundation for a national narrative. We therefore see German period dramas from the 1960s onward rather being about looking forward and telling stories of modernization and progress, or trying to see through the chaos of crisis, war and strong ideological division. German series portraying life and society in the fragile Weimar years deal with political chaos and violence, and with the life of ordinary people experiencing social decay. Krieg der Träume takes a complex road across national boundaries into extremely different ideologies, life stories and national trajectories. Babylon Berlin tells a complex story of classes and ideologies, of defenders of democracy and betrayal. It is a rich and nuanced story, blending genres and symbolic and stylistic levels. It is also a story of memories and traumas, where modernity and democracy are fighting a losing battle against dark political forces. Even though German series seem to face a grim reality and British series are divided between nostalgic and critical perspectives, all the series mentioned here tell a fundamental story of a world in dramatic transition, a story of loss, strong dreams and new energies. In Potter’s Pennies from Heaven, dreams even seem to defy death. In some series the energy comes from dreams and hopes of building on hopes for a new modern world, in others the new world seems to bring a loss, but in all series the reality of this period between two wars is deeply challenging.

References Blom, P. (2015). Fracture: Life and Culture in the West. 1918–1939. New York: Basic Books. Bondebjerg, I. (1993/2018). Elektroniske fiktioner. TV som fortællende medie (Electronic Fictions. Television as a Narrative Medium). Copenhagen:

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Borgen. Republished 2018 as ebook by Lindhart & Ringhoff. https://www. lrdigital.dk/Elektroniske-fiktioner-TV-som-fort%C3%A6llende-medie-978871 1965153. Bondebjerg, I., Redvall, E. N., Helles, R., Lai, S. S., Søndergaard, H., & Astrupgaard, C. (2017). Transnational European Television Drama: Production, Genres and Audiences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cook, J. R. (1995). Dennis Potter: A Life on Screen. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cooke, L. (2003). British Television Drama: A History. London: BFI. Creeber, G. (1998). Dennis Potter Between Two Worlds: A Critical Reassessment. London: MacMillan Press. Fuller, G. (Ed.). (1993). Potter on Potter. London: Faber & Faber. Hobsbawm, E. (1994). The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914– 1991. London: Abacus Books. Kershaw, I. (2015). To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949. London: Penguin. Long, P. (2017). Class, Place and History in the Imaginative Landscapes of Peaky Blinders. In F. David & B. Johnsson (Eds.), Social Class and Television Drama in Contemporary Britain (pp. 165–179). London: Palgrave Macmillan. MacGregor, N. ([2014] 2016). Germany: Memories of a Nation. London: Penguin Books. Mazower, M. (1998). Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century. London: Penguin Books. Peters, J. Clash of Futures webpage. https://krieg-der-träume.de/tv-serie. Accessed 10 January 2019. Potter, D. (1996). Pennies from Heaven [Original Manuscript]. London: Faber & Faber. Roxborough, S. (2017, February 9). Babylon Berlin: How the German Series Could Change High-End TV. Hollywood Reporter. Schmidt, T. E. (2017, October 13). Weimarer Popkultur. Die Zeit. Schönpflug, D. (2018). A World on Edge: The End of the Great War and the Dawn of a New Age. London: MacMillan. Ströbele, C. (2018). Die Parallelität macht schon Angst. Interview mit Gunnar Dedio. Television, 4(1), 102. https://doi.org/10.3366/jbctv.2007.4.1.102.

CHAPTER 8

Hell on Earth: World War II Narratives

World War I left 9 million dead, an incredible number and mainly soldiers, but if that was a disaster, World War II was a catastrophe of much larger proportions: “hell on earth”, as Kershaw (2015: 346) calls it. This time civilian casualties were widespread and quite outnumbered the military losses. Historians estimate that 40–55 million people (depending on how you count, Kershaw 2015: 346) died during those five years: at least 25 million in the Soviet Union, 7 million in Germany and 6 million in Poland, while Britain, France and Italy suffered proportionally lesser losses. Add to this the losses in Japan and other overseas territories. Most historians see the war as created by World War I and the years that followed the problematic Versailles treaty: The second war within a generation was the unfinished business of the first. Beyond the millions mourning loved ones, the earlier war had left a continent in convulsion. Immense nationalist, ethnic and class hatred, interwoven with each other, had created a climate of extreme political violence and polarized politics out of which Hitler’s regime had emerged to endanger Europe’s peace. For Germany more than any other country, the first war had left unfinished business. But a grab for continental, eventually even world dominance, through another war was an enormous gamble. (Kershaw 2015: 347)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_8

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Europe almost destroyed itself during this war, and especially the Soviet Union paid a very high price, but most of Germany and other parts of Europe were also in ruins in 1945. Another important factor from a post-1945 perspective was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, which brought America into war again and developed American world power and strong influence in Europe. Furthermore, the atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 started the atomic age, which was to dominate the subsequent Cold War in Europe. World War II was framed by the unbelievable German holocaust of around 6 million Jews, and a new weapon that seemed capable of destroying the whole human race. Genocide, racial hatred and ethnic cleansing left a deep imprint on European history. At the end of the war, when Allied Western forces swept from south and west to liberate Germany and the German-occupied zones, and Russian forces moved from east to west to do the same, this was not just a military operation, but also a matter of great ideological and political importance that was going to influence Europe for decades. The two armies and liberators met in Berlin, and they created an Eastern and a Western Europe between which an iron curtain soon descended, an iron curtain which would not disappear until 1989. Before this could happen, Europe had to go through a period of recreating and re-building the devastated homes and nations.

The Most Mediated War in Modern European History Visual documentation of war as it happened was already a phenomenon during World War I, but it became much more widespread during World War II, when cameras and sound recording had been dramatically improved, and because news reels became much more institutionalized for a greater audience. Europeans could follow the war not just on their radios but also in cinemas, and at the same time the use of film became an embedded part of war propaganda, both for the Germans and the Allies. This of course also meant that many hours of original footage were to hand when the post-war interpretation of what had happened started. This was especially relevant for documentaries and docudramas, in which much of the original material could be reused and re-edited for new films and TV programmes. However, it also meant that fictional films and series

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could in different ways benefit from historical documentation of battles, events and everyday life. Wulf Kansteiner (2006) has systematically looked at documentary programmes on the German television channels ZDF and ARD on the Holocaust and World War II. Between 1963 and 1993, ZDF alone broadcast more than 1200 classic documentary programmes (Kansteiner 2006: 111). Many, understandably, aimed at understanding the Holocaust and identified with the victims. However, around 1980, following the immense success of Holocaust in Germany (see p. 93f.), a new strategy towards World War II started developing on German television, a strategy Kansteiner illustrates with a quote from Barbara Sichterman in Die Zeit: “The television play can present subjectivity, unfamiliar experiences of the victims whose fate only very few of us have shared. If television wants to critically reflect the past, including the NS-past, the perpetrators must begin to appear on the screen, as subjects and not as caricatures” (Kansteiner 2006: 123). The historical debate on World War II has followed a similar path from silence and neglect to very empirical documentations of German atrocities, and much more direct confrontation with the role of Germans, instead of just the victims of Nazi Germany. The move towards a broader presentation of what Germans did in that period, both the well-known National Socialist figures and a broader array of ordinary Germans, made a big difference in ways of dealing with German history after 1990. The change, however, coincided with new tendencies in all European countries, a change Tobias Ebbrecht (2007: 36) has called a change from explanatory television to visually narrative television. This change affected documentaries, which moved towards docudrama, and it also led to a stronger focus on fictional, historical narratives that went deeper into historical everyday reality. Ebbrecht sees this as a result of changes in the generational memories in Germany in particular, but also the rest of Europe: The cultural production of collective memory is no longer affected directly by an intergenerational conflict between formerly Nazi fathers and their sons and daughters alone. A new temporal distance has allowed emotional empathy between grandchildren and grandfathers. History is not only personalized, but the new forms of historical television also absorb elements of the structure by which memories are passed on in society through the generations. (Ebbrecht 2007: 37)

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The quote here is even followed by a reference to a study on memory, which confirms the fact underlined by all empirical and theoretical studies of memory: family conversations, memories in social networks and in fictional film and television are more important than explanatory communication of memory and historical facts. This should not make us abandon historical facts or neglect explanatory historical genres, but it indicates that diverse entries into historical understanding and memory are important.

World War II Documentaries: Explanation, Imagination and Narrative There is no shortage of solid, traditional documentaries on World War II in Germany and the UK, but British documentaries and docudrama formats also developed more imaginative and narrative documentary formats combining authoritative explanations with elements that make us experience and imagine what it was like to live through the war. This means using witness memories, and not just witnesses from the top military and political ranks, but witnesses who fought on the ground or lived a civilian’s life during the war. It can also mean using narrative forms of reconstruction and dramatization, based on factual accounts and data. In the British context, Jane Chapman has argued (Chapman 2007) that the most valuable and innovative programmes on World War II from the 1970s and later represent a deliberate new aesthetic strategy for combining dramatic, narrative forms with the traditional explanatory strength of documentaries. She tracks its roots all the way back to the British documentary tradition of the 1930s and 1940s, and she uses the impressive Thames Television production The World at War (1973–74) in 26 parts as a first example, and the mini-series Dunkirk (2004) as a more advanced example of dramatized reconstruction. The World at War is one of the most thorough documentary series made about World War II and the BFI has ranked it 19 among the 100 greatest television programmes. It has been repeatedly shown on European and American channels around the world since its premiere in 1973 on ITV in the UK, and can be accessed on DVD and various streaming services. It is dominated by an authoritative narrator commenting on the development of the war and authentic, historic footage, edited to fit the overall rhetorical and narrative purpose. However, Laurence Olivier’s classical authoritative voice is often emotional and poetic. Reconstruction and

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dramatization are not used, but the documentary narrative is clearly organized in a way that underlines the dramatic events and creates emotional impact. The real innovative dimension of the series is, however, the use of interviews and testimonies, and especially eyewitness accounts from civilians and quite ordinary people instead of just well-known public figures in politics and the military. Another important aspect of the series is that the history of World War II is told as a Europe-wide story, with witnesses and voices from many countries. Another impressive and innovative documentary is the US–UK production The People’s Century, a documentary series in 26 episodes (1995–97) covering the whole of the twentieth century. Episode 11 on World War II, “Total War” (1995), covers the war just as globally as The World at War, but the main difference is that here civilians and ordinary people from many different countries dominate totally in the way the story is told and mediated. It is very visible in the programme signature where a montage of pictures of individuals and groups of people indicates the focus. In “Total War” the narrator explains the perspective for this episode: “Civilians play an important role in history, but now they are also marked as targets. All over the world, war has changed, it will engulf the whole society, all people will be targets.” So, this episode underlines the fact that this is the first war to have many more civilian casualties than any other war in modern times. In the opening sequences we see civilians preparing for war, building shelters, and we see people sending their children to safety in the countryside or even, in the UK case, to the US. In the following sequences we see people fleeing from the German armies and refugees on the roads. This is commented on by the narrator, but also by witnesses like Elizabeth Finn (UK) and Pierre Rondas (Belgium). But we also see the very different German civilians during the war, with German witnesses such as Horst Westphal, Margaret Zeffel and Hans Brunsvig. Later in the episode we follow the same Germans as the Allied bombardment starts killing thousands of German civilians and destroying whole cities; 42,000 Germans, for instance, were killed in one week in Hamburg. Another characteristic element in People’s Century, apart from the systematic focus on civilians and live witnesses, is the use of songs, music and popular culture (cinema, dance, etc.). We hear British songs appealing to women to join the workforce, we hear the German song “Bombs over England”, we see Miss America at work for mobilization, we hear Bing Crosby and George Formby and others. Popular culture illustrates that civilian life tends to go on, no matter what. Perhaps the most emotional

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use of music in this episode is the part focusing on the 800 days of the German siege of Leningrad. This part of the episode gives a terrifying account and visual documentation of the immense suffering of the people of Leningrad, people literally dying of hunger in the streets, and how they fought on against all the odds and tried to live the life they could. Through Russian witnesses like Elena Taramkliva, Leonid Galperin, Lyubov Zhakarova and Ksenia Matus, this harsh war reality comes very much to life. This part of the episode finishes with an astonishing act of defiance as the Leningrad Radio Symphonics in June 1942 played Shostakovich’s “Leningrad” symphony to a local audience. They could barely get the orchestra together, and some of the members were almost too weak to play, but they finished the concert and broadcast it amidst bombings and death. One of the most innovative docudramas about World War II is Alex Holmes’ UK series in three parts, Dunkirk (2004), produced by BBC2. The Dunkirk evacuation is of course one of the most mythical events of the war, a retreat and defeat but also a landslide operation that was the beginning of the preparation for the later invasion—for D-Day. Especially in Western European memory of the war, Dunkirk and D-Day are very central narratives, and numerous documentaries and films have been made about those events. In his analysis of documentaries and docudramas about World War II James Chapman calls Dunkirk “the fullest integration of actuality film into dramatic narrative” (Chapman 2007: 22) of all the productions he deals with. Also, documentary series like D-Day to Berlin (2005) and Blitz: London’s Firestorm (2005) combine a factual, documentary form with elements of dramatization and, furthermore, inclusion of oral history in the form of testimonies from both central characters and ordinary people. It is, however, Dunkirk which develops the model of factuality and drama to a much higher level. The dimension of reconstructed and dramatized historical drama is very strong indeed, since all the central historical characters, from politicians such as Winston Churchill (Simon Russell Beale) and Anthony Eden (Jack Fortune), to military personal such as Lieutenant Jimmy Langley (Benedict Cumberbatch), are played by well-known English actors. The cast of characters also involves the famous fishermen taking part in the evacuation. The events we follow during the three episodes (“Retreat”, “Evacuation” and “Deliverance”) are based on what actually happened. All the events and characters are based on factual evidence; the authoritative narrator guides us through

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events, hour by hour, day by day, and comments on a narrative where actual footage of the event is combined with eyewitness accounts and photos of the historical characters and reconstructed scenes. The shifts between those narrative layers are close to seamless, but the viewer can easily distinguish between modern and historical images because of the difference in visual quality. The series is also innovative as it is one of the first docudramas to use computer-generated images (CGI). As James Chapman notes, this technique was already widely used in American war movies like Saving Private Ryan (1998), a technique that increases the visual spectacle and allows for shifts in focus and effects within and between shots (Chapman 2007: 23). In Dunkirk the use of CGI is not excessive, but the use of POV shots during the evacuation making the viewer experience reality both with the eye of the camera and from character POV, for instance, was a crucial technique. Other examples of interplay between the reconstructed and the factual historical dimension is the introduction of all the characters in the film, when they appear for the first time, with a photo of the real person the actor is playing. This in a simple way reaffirms the anchoring of the drama in historical reality; another way of doing that was that the broadcast of Dunkirk on BBC involved a ‘red button’ facility, which viewers could use to access further information. The series provides us with a lot of factual evidence via the narrator’s comments, maps, speeches, and so on, but on top of that we get close to politicians, top military people and ordinary soldiers on the ground. In this kind of mixture of drama and real footage they add a more individual dimension to large-scale history. Everyday life during a critical war situation comes more alive, the war reality becomes deeper and more complex. It is, however, also interesting that of all the World War II films, this film became the centre of a debate in which some critics and newspapers (especially The Daily Telegraph and The Times ) saw the film as a critique of more heroic versions of the events around Dunkirk (Chapman 2007: 25–26). It seems that for the more conservative and nationalistic newspapers, the film got so close, and was so complex in its approach to the event, that a traditional, heroic narrative was diminished or challenged, although Alex Holmes denied that this was the intention.

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World War II and Popular British Fiction Series There are plenty of British documentaries and docudramas on World War II, produced in a steady stream since 1960. There is also a strong tradition of fictional World War II series, and in many ways the tendency in documentary formats dealing with war and ordinary people or those fighting the war is the same for fiction. Some of the series are broader period dramas, with the war narrative as an important dimension or as a background. This is for instance the case with the two big Granada productions A Family at War (1970–72) about the Ashton family in Liverpool from 1938 to the end of the war, and The Spoils of War (1980– 81) which in 24 episodes follows two families in the Lake District trying to get back on their feet after 1945. Other series are more focused on those directly involved in war from different angles: Danger UXB (1979) following a bomb disposal group, Piece of Cake (1988) about an RAF bomber squadron, Colditz (1972–74) about British and Allied soldiers imprisoned in a German castle, Warship (1973–77) about life onboard a Royal Navy ship, Secret Army (1977–79) about a Belgian resistance group, made in collaboration with the Belgian VTR, or series dealing with the important role of women, such as Land Girls (2009–11). One of the most popular period war dramas, A Family at War, was made for the regionalized channel ITV (established 1955) by one of its local production companies Granada. According to Lez Cooke’s book A Sense of Place. Regional British Television Drama 1956–1982 (2012), this regional dimension is clearly reflected in the series, just like the tendency to build narratives using a type of realism where ordinary lives, the slow rhythm of everyday life, is very characteristic. A Family at War follows three connected families in Liverpool just before and after World War II, and through the 52 episodes, most scenes are set in and around these families in Liverpool, even though there are also scenes of war outside Britain and in other locations in England, Wales, Scotland and Guernsey. We basically see the war not just from a rather restricted national space, but mostly through the lives of characters related to the three families. The title sequence of the series clearly illustrates this: we see a child playing on a beach with a sandcastle and Union Jack at the top, but on the horizon an encroaching tide is getting closer. It is the image of a beleaguered nation, seemingly isolated in a Europe soon engulfed by Germany. The slow pace of the narrative, despite the quite dramatic historical situation it describes, can be seen in its use of four episodes before war is

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declared, and even more by the almost total dominance throughout the 52 episodes of family scenes shifting between the three families. It was John Finch who wrote almost all episodes single-handed, and he has revealed that it was partly autobiographical and that he was inspired by the big nineteenth-century British realist novel. This apparently was also the basis of its popularity, not just in Britain, but in other European countries, at least according to Lez Cooke: Finch’s literary influences, especially that of Dickens, are revealing, and A Family at War, with its pantheon of characters and epic narrative sweep, is, thematically and structurally, firmly within the tradition of the nineteenthcentury realist novel. At the time, it was the most expensive drama Granada had produced and the investment paid off because it proved to be very popular, not just in Britain, but also abroad [it] showed that a British drama serial, taking a provincial Northern family as its subject, could succeed both at home and overseas, although the historical context of the Second World War undoubtedly broadened its appeal. (Cooke 2012: 103)

The Ashton family, who have five children and have moved up socially from their working-class roots, is the most central family; the Briggs family own the printing company Edward Ashton works in; and finally there is the Porter family. The families are connected socially, by working relations, marriage relations and other kinds of relations, and it is these family and social relations that dominate the narrative. Of course, the war gradually takes up more space in their lives and in the narrative. The men go to war in Europe, some are seriously wounded, and the bombings of Liverpool are central to the story. Radio plays an important role, giving us a taste of the period: in episode 4 we hear Chamberlain declare war on Germany; in episode 5, King George VI speaks to the nation: “Go out into the darkness, and put your hand in the hand of God”; and in episode 6 the families listen to a radio report on the evacuation of Dunkirk. The war is directly represented as visual narrative in several episodes: in episode 6, “A Breach in the Dyke”, John Porter (married to Margaret Ashton) is caught behind the lines in France, wounded and reported missing (much later he comes back alive); there are military scenes from Guernsey (episode 8); from heavy bombing of Liverpool (episode 9); from an RAF bombing of Magdeburg, Germany; from the desert war in Egypt (episodes 16 and 24); and in several episodes there are longer or shorter incidents from the heavy naval war in the North Sea.

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However, even though we move around Britain and places in the world where war was fought, and even though we are in bomb shelters, in military hospitals, in munitions factories, in places in other parts of England where children have been sent for safety, it is still family and social relations between people that are at the centre of the story. The war is told from the perspective of ordinary people, who even during the war and all the hardships try to keep up as normal a life as possible. As one of the nurses says when Margaret gives birth to a boy in the middle of heavy bombing of the neighbourhood: “Poor little fellow. Only born today, and he is already at war” (episode 9). It is the will to live that keeps people going. This is also very clear in the last episodes (47–52) taking place in 1945 at the end of the war. Politics is never very present in the series, but in episode 47, “Under New Management”, we suddenly follow the Labour government while the families are reunited, and the two last episodes are simply joined by two titles that form a sentence: “The Old Order Changeth” (51) “Yielding Place to New” (52). Historical change on a large scale is reflected through the small changes building up all the time in the way we live with each other. It is quite another reality and a not so ordinary life that we find in some of the other more war-focused series. The six-part series Piece of Cake (1988), for instance, was also produced for LWT and ITV by Holmes Associates, and here we follow an RAF squadron from the start of the war and through the toughest battles of 1940 known as the Battle of Britain. During the six parts most of the original pilots die, and gradually the quite nonchalant and rather arrogant belief in British superiority is replaced by realism and more combat collectivism. The series also describes the kind of everyday life and social tensions we find among military groups, but it is to a much greater extent than A Family at War a real war drama. One the most recent and very popular series dealing with war is Land Girls , but because it deals with the Women’s Land Army, which was not directly used for military purposes, the series has more similarity with a period drama than a real war drama. It deals with a group of women from very different class and social backgrounds who arrive in the countryside to take up work at Pasture Farm on the Hoxley Estate (in season 3 turned into a military hospital). The women do farm work to secure deliveries to both the home front and the army. There are in fact many quite dramatic military incidents, and occasionally the narrative moves away from the central locations. It is, however, primarily about the conflicts and relations between the girls and the men they fall in love with. The arrival

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of an American industrialist with dynamic ideas points towards the postwar reality. Produced by two men (Will Trotter and John Yorke) and two women (Erika Hossington and Ella Kelly) and conceptualized by Roland Moore, the idea was to create a female ensemble drama where class differences were a driving force (Moore 2009). So the aim for Moore was to tell a story about a part of the war most people have forgotten, but also to introduce a story of social character differences: I was surprised that the subject matter hadn’t already been tackled in a drama series. For myself, with an interest in ensemble dramas, the situation of a variety of characters working on a farm in wartime was irresistible. With a subject in mind, I set about devising the main characters. Sensible Annie has acted like a mother figure to her young sister for so long that she’s forgotten to live a life of her own. Bea is Annie’s sister, headstrong and naïve; a girl who doesn’t worry too much because Annie’s always done the worrying for her. Joyce seems straight-forward; a patriotic girl with a loving marriage – but her apparent blind faith in the war effort disguises a horrific past. Nancy is a spoilt, rich girl, conscripted against her will, who views the war as an inconvenience to her social life. (Moore 2009)

So again, we end up with human interaction in a war setting, where the ordinariness of life and the special historic circumstances create a dialogue. The series was a daytime programme, with a special appeal to women, but it went further and the three seasons indicate that unusual war period dramas can also attract a modern audience.

Memory, Guilt and German Docudramas Dunkirk was undoubtedly a point where World War II, seen from an Allied position, reached an emotional peak in an appeal to combative heroism. The images from Dunkirk stand out in newsreels, documentary film and television and in docudramas. England left alone on the beach but brought home by a tremendous effort also involving ordinary Englishmen boosted national morale. Dunkirk was a heroic low point in the main narrative of the Allied nations, and D-Day in 1944 was of course the high point in this narrative. The German narratives were different, they were the aggressors and the total war launched on Europe and other parts of the world was a blatant and deliberate act by an authoritarian leader and state, seemingly saluted by the German population. The German war did not lead to victory but to total defeat, guilt

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and very troublesome memories of what had happened and how it could have happened. In Kansteiner’s book on memory politics and mediated memory in post-1945 Germany he points to a development of “large scale personal and political guilt into collective symbolic guilt” (Kansteiner 2006: 4). He also stresses the fact that the terms collective guilt, and even collective memory, are problematic (Kansteiner 2006: 12f). Collective guilt cannot be defined in any precise legal way and coming to terms with such a collective guilt can really only happen in some form of symbolic politics and cultural memory work through the media. Collective memory is just as problematic a term as collective guilt; after all, we are all individuals and our memory primarily individual, although part of our memory can be shared or intersect with those of others. Nevertheless, German media, politics and cultural debate has since 1945 been heavily engaged in a project of coming to terms with a past involving a feeling of collective guilt. Of course, all Germans cannot be collectively guilty in the same way, and new post-war generations have clearly influenced the public debate about this issue. If collective memory and collective guilt are to make any sense, it is precisely because the memory of the past has been transmitted through a long-running public debate and has been mediated through schools and other public institutions, not least through the media. As Kansteiner has argued with reference to Nancy Wood’s book Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe (1999): If particular representations of the past have permeated the public domain, it is because they embody an intentionality – social, political, institutional and so on – that promotes or authorizes their entry … Still although collective memories have no organic basis and do not exist in any literal sense, and although they involve individual agency, the term collective memory is not simply a metaphorical expression. Collective memories originate from shared communication about the meaning of the past that are anchored in the life worlds of individuals who partake in the communal life of a social group. As such, collective memories are based in a society and its inventory of signs and symbols. (Kansteiner 2006: 19)

The battle over Germany’s troubled past and the associated feeling of guilt which Kansteiner analyzes and refers to is anchored in specific individuals, and there is a strong generational aspect too. It is strongest in those from the generation closest to World War II with its disasters

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and the Holocaust. But this generation was also a generation for whom it was very hard to speak openly about their memories and the things they had participated in. The battle for German World War II memory could therefore not be just an individual battle or a family matter, it had to result in debates in the public domain and in media representations. It gradually became a more open and inter-generational debate, as the sons and daughters of the war generation began to discuss the past from the mid-1960s onwards. This public debate was played out in the numerous documentaries, books and newspaper articles that tried to tell factual stories and give reasons for what had happened, but it was also to a greater and greater extent played out in mediated forms on film and television, where human stories, emotions and ethics were foregrounded. Between 1980 and 1990, when the greatest debates between historians over the German past took place, generating thousands of newspaper articles, a shift also took place in the television formats and narratives about World War II. The move towards narratives, both in documentaries and fiction, that integrate classical documentary methods with dramatized and more personal and everyday-oriented themes, follows the trend we also see in other European countries. In German television there are two figures who particularly stand out: Guido Knopp (1948–) who created a new documentary and docudrama tradition, and Nico Hofmann (1959–) who developed extremely popular fictional series about World War II. Their works have been discussed widely among historians and although they have reached a very big audience, they have also been criticized for making melodramatic and schematic entertainment. Guido Knopp has a doctorate in history and political science and has worked for several newspapers. As producer of a series of documentaries since 1998 about Hitler and his men and followers, he attracted a large audience in Germany and other parts of Europe, but also created public debate. Examples are Hitler – ein Bilanz (1995), which intensively follows Hitler’s rise to power through edited historical footage, or his documentary about the SS, Die SS: eine Warnung der Geschichte (2002). His focus in telling these stories, although told in a rather traditional documentary way, has often been criticized by historians for being ‘infotainment’, for focusing too much on persons or an edited emotional and moralizing form of history. According to Kansteiner, who has studied the development of documentary television programming in a longer historical perspective, the criticism of Guido Knopp has as much to do with the difference between

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intellectual, historical discourse and those many forms we find in a visual and narrative medium like television. Knopp’s way of showing the inner world of Nazism greatly increased ZDF’s viewer ratings. This meant that the Nazi period, their politics and war atrocities came into German living rooms much stronger than before. Kansteiner credits Knopp with being the first to directly take up documentaries about central Nazi figures, and for doing it in a way that is both factual and represents a new way of engaging the audience. Those journalists and critics that supported his approach saw him as a figure who had found “a recipe for interesting, visually and emotionally compelling historical documentaries that avoided discursive overload and had true mainstream appeal” (Kansteiner 2006: 161). To those who worried about superficial historical representation or the darker side of Nazi history, Kansteiner gives the following reply: To be sure, television still avoided particularly disturbing aspects of the historical record and failed to report accurately on the many intellectual battles of the 1980s. But judging by the programs and the ratings, it is difficult to imagine that many Germans walked away from their evening entertainment without a clear grasp of the exceptionally vicious crime committed by the German Government and the Nazi Party between 1933 and 1945. In fact, it is difficult not to conclude that the German mainstream media and culture of the 1980s mark an exceptional phase in the evolution of the nation’s collective memory of the Third Reich. (Kansteiner 2006: 152)

It is one of the main points in Kansteiner’s analysis of the historical development of post-war Germany that Guido Knopp paved the way for a sort of normalization of the past. It can be difficult, but in all national media cultures it should be important, that you can openly deal with and debate even the most critical aspects of the past. But this only gradually became possible on German television. It is as if debating this war and the Holocaust could take place in print, but became a problem when it took place on television—at least in some forms. According to Kansteiner, Knopp was the first to challenge and “explore the official limits of historical taste by inviting viewers’ temporary identification with the Nazi perpetrators” (Kansteiner 2006: 176). The reception, however, also showed that many historians and critics saw this as a problematic form of entertainment, without the necessary critical distance. Kansteiner also expresses some criticism, when he points out that Knopp’s documentaries in one way have more in common with Nazi

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propaganda than with modern documentary classics like for instance Alain Resnais’ Nuit et brouillard (Night and Fog) (1956), Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) or Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s Hitler—a film from Germany (1977), where there is a strong reflexive way of dealing with traumatic history and problematic historical figures. Kansteiner, and with him many German historians, who acknowledged Guido Knopp’s representation of World War II figures and dramatic events as a very powerful way of engaging a new generation in German’s traumatic history, were however also afraid of what they called “historical pornography” (Kansteiner 2006: 176f), of how the style of presentation might invite viewers to celebrate Nazi figures. His critics saw a danger in his relatively un-reflexive dramatic stories of what happened, the danger of a traumatic and problematic commercialization of history. However, if we want documentaries and fictional narratives to speak to our memory, emotions and identification with characters are inevitable. They represent an alternative way of letting us live through and not just learn about history.

A New Generation of German War Drama Wolfgang Petersen’s national and international success Das Boot (1985) was one of the first German TV dramas to break the ban on showing World War II realities as they were. It is based on a 1973 novel by LotharGünther Buchheim, and it is a sharp and realistic portrait of the men on the German submarine U-96 during the Battle of the Atlantic. The experience of war is described as a complete waste of human life and time. In the German tagline for the film version, Wolfgang Petersen calls it “Reise ans Ende des Verstanden (A journey beyond the edge of the mind)”. Especially in the long series version, this experience of time and tensions inside the U-boat, which in a sense becomes a symbol of all wars, Wolfgang Petersen has chosen a very unheroic perspective on war. The German soldiers on this U-boat are first and foremost humans and individuals; second, they are professionals. They do what they must do even though they often doubt the wisdom of their superiors and of the whole political project behind the war. In the opening part of the series before they sail out, they do what all soldiers do: drink their brains out, dance, make love—and in this case also make Hitler jokes. In episode 5, where they make a stopover in Vigo in Spain and meet some German officers with a very strong Nazi attitude greeting them as heroes, they react with contempt and call them “cardboard officers”. They are neither

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heroes nor saints, they are professionals and human beings, and on the boat, they think and dream of coming back to a normal life with their families. For most of them such dreams do not come true. After having survived vicious attacks on their trip to the Atlantic and back, the boat is sunk and most of the men killed in an Allied air attack minutes after they have docked in La Rochelle. It was a very big hit in Germany and internationally, and the reason for this is no doubt that both the film and the series show Germans the true face of war—an unheroic portrait of what war does to people and societies. In 2018 a new version of the series was made, in which the families of the soldiers and the home front play a central role in the narrative. Das Boot brings us into the hearts and minds of people who had to fight a war which at least not all of them had wanted. Ein Stück Himmel (A Piece of the Sky) (1982) shows another grim reality of the war from a Jewish family perspective. The series gives a pretty realistic picture of ghetto life, and the way German soldiers treated and executed Jews, a reality not often showed in fictional form at that time. Deutschlandlied (The Song of Germany) (1994) takes us into the fictional German town Königsbruch just as the war ends, but where Hitler-Jugend boys still fight, while the older Nazis are preparing for what must come. We follow very different types of people and families, and as the Americans arrive, we witness how difficult it is to establish a new local rule and to catch and punish all war criminals and top Nazis. Another series, Schicksalsjahre (2011) is based on a true story, where we follow one person, Sonja, through three types of society: the Nazi Reich from 1938 to 1945, the GDR because she ends up in the Russian zone, and finally West Germany. The story starts in 1957, and moves back and forth in time. It is a woman’s story, a woman who is a professional piano player, so we see the war and the other periods from a female and a cultural perspective: she must play for those in power. Even though these German war series represent the change, it is the producer at TeamWorx, Nico Hofmann, who has left the biggest mark in the process of change. He was born after the war and in his first directed film, Der Krieg meines Vaters (1984), he clearly positioned himself in relation to the war of his parents’ generation. Nico Hoffmann became a key person in the development of a new very successful form of historical drama on German television. Just as new forms of documentary television went further into dimensions of history that combined historical arguments and facts with a closer look at the historical characters,

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the new historical drama was both human and historical. It brought even the most controversial figures to the screen, and showed the way they acted on the political stage and behind the scenes. This so-called “event-drama” (Ebbrecht 2007: 36f) based its historical account on characters from everyday life or famous historical figures, and it continued to cause debate. Like Guido Knopp’s documentary programmes, these new dramas became a huge national and international success. Dresden (2005) reached 12.68 million viewers and was awarded the prize for Best TV drama in Germany in 2006. Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (Generation War) (2013, directed by Philipp Kadelbach), one of the most expensive war drama productions in Germany, has been shown in more than 150 countries, and won an Emmy in 2014. Both series are the culmination of a process started by the unification of Germany, where a normalization of German relations with the past took place (Kansteiner 2006: 326f). Series like this represent a new phase in German memory culture, a move towards a more normal way of relating to the past, even the darkest and almost unbelievably evil past. Dresden (2006), a film in two parts directed by Roland Richter and produced by Nico Hofmann and TeamWorx for ZDF, is an example of this. It describes a Germany forced onto the defensive in early 1945, pressured by the Soviet Army from the east and the Allied from the west, and with the focus on the massive bombing of Dresden in February 1945. The film is both a very dramatic, realistic war drama and a romantic love story. We especially follow the Mauth family, with the daughter Anna working as a nurse, her father Carl who is the director of the hospital, and her mother and a sister—the latter still loyal to Nazi Germany. The love story is a triangular plot between Anna’s supposed future husband Alexander Wenninger and a Royal Air Force pilot shot down and wounded. The crosscutting between events in Dresden and the Mauth family, and the Allied airfields and soldiers’ quarters at the beginning of the film shows how a normalization of the images of Germans has taken place: there is no demonizing of the ordinary Germans we follow, they just try to live their life during a “damned war”, much like other Europeans. Some of them may have been foolish and naïve followers—like Anna’s sister Eva, or the SS people—or tough, bad Germans, or they may have had no possibility of real resistance. Whatever their circumstances, they have the same hopes and dreams as others, and they even dance to American music. We do follow Allied military politics as they decide to bomb Dresden (a city without military importance, just to show off to Stalin), so Allied

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cynicism is obvious, and many of the officers condemn the decision. We also follow ordinary Germans trying to kill Allied pilots who have been shot down and should be protected by the Geneva Convention. The hatred and persecution of the Jews still left behind in Dresden’s neighbourhoods is also shown without any understatement. The realism of the film’s portrayal of warfare and people involved in war is quite direct. We are also—through the love story—confronted with a humanity that cuts across enemy lines. Banal it may be, but the important thing here is that such stories about the German past have become possible for the first time. When Anna at the end of the film looks out on a destroyed Dresden, we also learn that her love affair with Robert has been destroyed, she is pregnant and he is dead—reality also influences the romance. Such stories made an impression in Germany and beyond, just as Holocaust did (see p. 93f.). Dresden is a fine mainstream realist war drama that takes us inside German everyday life almost at the end of the war, a drama with a romantic twist and a humanity that unites both sides of a war. This type of war narrative was clearly developed from the 1990s onwards as a result of a change in public debates and narrative strategies on the main German public-service broadcasting channels. Such stories have helped adjust German memories of the past in ways that any nation should be entitled to—but which historians often won’t accept and or can’t understand.

Beneath a Frozen Past: Moral Complexities and the German War Generation Unsere Mütter, unsere Väter (Generation War) (2013) is a much deeper and more complex portrait of the war generation, and a portrait of very different types of Germans and their dreams, hopes, fears and ways of dealing with Nazism and the war. The series really captured the national attention in Germany, where each of the three 90-minute-long parts was seen by 7–8 million viewers (ZDF), and it has been shown on TV channels all over the world. It has been widely discussed in Germany, the UK, Poland and many of the around 100 other countries where it has been shown. The series was produced by TeamWorx (Nico Hofmann, Benjamin Benedict and Jürgen Schuster), and directed by Philip Kadelbach—another of the new German directors producing new war narratives. The fact that the series won both several German

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television awards (including best mini-series) and an Emmy for best miniseries, shows its national and European impact, despite the sometimes critical discussion of the series in both Germany and other countries. History is always difficult and controversial—not least German World War II history. In an interview in the German newspaper Die Zeit, just before the German premiere (Cammann and Soboczynski 2013), producer Nico Hofmann and the historian Götz Aly (who has researched Nazi German history intensively) discuss the series, especially the way it reflects history and how it may change memories of this part of German history. Both recognize the history of their own parents’ generation in the film, and Aly sees the series as a very positive contribution combining the broader historical reality with deeper stories of very different individual characters that embody different types of Germans. Aly also points to the fact that although there is no doubt about the German guilt and atrocities in this series, we also need stories that show us that war destroys everything and all humans: “that the borderlines between good and evil, between just and unjust war become more blurred”. Hoffmann describes the intention as “getting beyond and behind the dominant didactic look at this period, the very long guilt-atonement pedagogics, where the personal and emotional side of more personal German experiences were cut out”. It is necessary to follow that narrative path, say both Aly and Hofmann: we need to understand how so many Germans seemed of their own free will to follow an authoritarian leader and take part in such atrocities. To a certain degree, this is probably something you see in humans in general, not just Germans, but the mixture of social, psychological and moral issues needs a more direct treatment, the kind of treatment fictional narratives can create. Both Aly and Hofmann seem to agree that a dialogue between generations is necessary, and that German memory culture—despite the many documentaries and public debates—has left other dimensions of the past on ice, a kind of continued mass trauma and spiral of silence and repression. About this relation between the personal and the collective historical dimension Aly says: I myself do something that a more traditional German historian would never do: I sometimes tell stories from my own family. This never counts as objective, but nevertheless it touches upon a central problem in our way of dealing with memories of the past and a considerable part of our school books. Here war and Nazism are portrayed in very general terms reduced

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to Nazi deeds, SS-executioners or race-ideology. This is however something you might tend to negate as something you would find in your family. It easily becomes a sterile way of teaching history with maximum distance from perpetrators and a just as superficial identification with their victims. But in this way historians and teachers may prevent real learning and reflexion, they risk creating Anti-enlightenment in the name of Enlightenment and mystifying history. Hofmann’s film at least tries to give answers to the kind of questions my own daughter often asks. (Cammann and Soboczynski 2013, my translation)

Generation War starts in Berlin in 1941, when the war had not yet played a major role in Germany itself, something that changed with the German attack on the Soviet Union and the intensified Holocaust activities (Fig. 8.1). It ends in 1945 after the German defeat in a destroyed Berlin. The narrative follows five main characters with rather different social and psychological profiles. The main character, and the series’ narrator, is Wilhelm Winter (Volker Bruch), who at least from the outset

Fig. 8.1 Generation War is one of the most internationally popular German war dramas. It follows five very different characters from the start of World War II, here before it all starts. We get close to ordinary Germans without a moral filter, and we witness the war reality from very different perspectives (Screenshot by author)

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seems to be the ‘hero’—especially in the eyes of his father: “Germany’s honour and destiny depends on you”. He is an experienced soldier and seems to think it is an honour to serve his country. During the series he gets the Iron Cross and rises through the ranks, but we also see him involved in atrocities, especially in Poland and on the Eastern Front, where he becomes a member of a death squad operating behind the frontline. His younger brother Friedhelm (Tom Schilling) is very different. He is an intellectual, and when packing to leave for the Eastern Front, he takes a lot of books. He doesn’t especially care for being a soldier and being drafted, but the war gradually changes him, morally as well as physically, and he ends up being a tough warrior. He dies just before the war ends, appearing to walk directly to his death, just to save his men—a group of inexperienced Hitler-Jugend boys. The third man in the group, Viktor Goldstein (Ludwig Trepte) is Jewish, and the secret lover of one of the female characters, Greta Müller (Katharina Schüttler), who becomes a singer, not least through her contact with the Gestapo officer Martin Dorn, who is also her lover. Greta tries to use Dorn to get a visa for Viktor to the US, but he is arrested and sent to a concentration camp, miraculously escaping on the way and joining a group of Polish partisans. Greta’s affair with Dorn leads to her death by execution as she challenges him and threatens to tell his wife about their affair. The last person, Charlotte (Miriam Stein) is in love with Wilhelm, but it is an undeclared love until after the war when the three surviving characters (Wilhelm, Charlotte and Viktor) meet again. She is a nurse and goes through extremely traumatic experiences at a hospital near the Eastern Front. In many ways the cast of characters, not just the five main characters, seem to represent Germany in this period: from ardent Nazi supporters and more reluctant followers to two people caught in the middle and Jewish victims of persecution and potential extermination. The narrative structure of the whole series has some recurrent features. It is Wilhelm who delivers a voice-over that introduces and summarizes when the story takes a turn, and we are also alerted to month, date and year on screen several times in each episode. The series is founded in a documentary relation to fact and the development of the war; the fictional narratives gets an enhanced realism by referring directly to the historical reality. We also see this clearly at the beginning of each episode, where Wilhelm’s voice-over brings us up to date on what is happening in the fictional and factual war story. This is also underlined by the fact that the beginning of each episode uses authentic black-and-white

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images, which then at a certain point change to colour and the fictional universe. Another quite dominant feature is the shift between the individual storylines, often in a way that either creates a contrast or a similarity between the situations of the five main characters. Another central part of the narrative is the realism and cruelty of war scenes, and scenes which involved killing enemy soldiers and civilians—including Jews. This is truly a war narrative: we live through major battle scenes and we witness the most appalling forms of violence, torture and killing. The titles of the three episodes have a linguistic similarity: “A Different Time”, “A Different War” and “A Different Country”. This indicates one of the deep psychological and symbolic layers of the series: things do not turn out as expected, and everything moves from a cautious optimism (“The war will be over by Christmas”) to a disillusioned sense of being morally completely rotten. It did not become the time, the war and the country this group of young Germans had expected, something that of course speaks to their naivety and total lack of understanding—at least in the beginning—of the reality they were part of. In part 1 of the series, the five main characters meet at their usual bar. In Wilhelm’s words: “We were five friends saying goodbye before our paths separated. We had all grown up in the same neighbourhood, and we knew each other from childhood. We were all different, but stuck together. We were five friends and the world lay before us, we just had to take it. We were immortal. But we were soon going to learn something different.” Already in the opening scene, the situation changes: Gestapo officer Dorn comes in, because he has heard “Juden und neger musik”. Dorn becomes a kind of sixth group member, because of his relation to Greta and his double role with Viktor: he seems to be giving him a free pass to the US (Greta’s wish), but he really sends him to Auschwitz, from which he only just escapes. In the end he tries to use the fact that he did ‘try’ to help Viktor, in order to look better in the eyes of the Allied forces. He moves directly from being a high-ranking Gestapo officer to a central job as civilian administrator for the American forces. In the first episode (summer 1941–Christmas/New Year 1941) we see almost all the negative dimensions of the war and the Nazi regime. There are very strong images of battle, around a factory on the Russian front, where Russian prisoners are shot, although Wilhelm saves a few, and thus tries to follow Geneva Convention rules, but later is ordered to execute them. The SS commanding officer Hilmer gives this order with the words: “This is not a normal war, it is a philosophy and its name is Hitler”,

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to which Wilhelm and Friedhelm in different ways react with a feeling of being on the brink of “losing the world they once knew”. There are equally strong images around the hospital where Charlotte works desperately to save lives, but she too experiences a decrease in morale and does things she later very much regrets. She works with Lilija, who turns out to be a communist partisan and a Jew (stealing medicine for her comrades). Charlotte, later regretting this, tells the hospital, and when the Gestapo come to get Lilija and other Jews, she tries to warn her, but too late. This incident is one example of the complexity of the series’ characters: they are certainly neither heroes nor innocent, but there is a battle going on inside them between what they are either forced to do, or get killed, or feel they have to do, because they are in the Nazi system, where everyone is watching everyone. The moral complexity and decline continue in parts 2 and 3. Because of the development of the war, with the Germans starting to lose, the dilemmas and psychological tensions grow. In part 2 we are in 1943 (May–September), where a last, failed German offensive is launched. At the hospital this means that the Russian wounded are not treated, that Jews are not allowed and are immediately taken to concentration camps, that partisans or civilians acting against German interests are immediately killed, and that houses are burned with their inhabitants. For our main characters things are also getting hard. Viktor escapes Auschwitz, but goes through a challenging time with the Polish partisan group that accepts him, not knowing he is Jewish; meanwhile Greta’s career as a singer ends, she is imprisoned (on Dorn’s orders), Friedhelm is severely wounded but survives. However, his ideological fight with his brother becomes more bitter, and Friedhelm also starts being the hard, cynical soldier. Yet in this episode the attitudes of the two brothers also start converging. In their dialogues Wilhelm now says to Friedhelm: “You were right, the war brings out the worst in us” and Friedhelm joins in: “We are human livestock for the slaughter house. Today we are heroes, tomorrow we are pigs.” In a later comment Wilhelm sums up: “To start with on the battlefield you fight for your country. Later when doubt sets in you fight for your comrades. But what happens when you are alone and the only one you can deceive is yourself? What do you fight for then?” (Fig. 8.2) There is no heroism or glory in the way this series portrays war, and there is hardly much difference between the way the war is portrayed here and in other European series—only in this case it is the German aggressors and their soldiers we see. In part 3 (June 1944–May 1945), Wilhelm

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Fig. 8.2 Generation War: the reunion of the surviving characters after the war—a shattered world and two dead. One (Viktor by the piano) barely survived the concentration camps, Wilhelm (by the bar) destined as the German hero, has lost all illusions, and Charlotte, the humanitarian nurse, with the memory of death written all over her (Screenshot by author)

loses contact with his battalion during a big battle and he ends up in a deserted hut beside a lake. But a patrol finds him and he is accused of deserting and sentenced to death. However, he escapes the firing squad, and instead becomes a member of a death squad (Probation Unit 500) acting “to eradicate all forms of garbage” (Communists, Jews, partisans, hostile civilians, etc.). At the same time Friedhelm must act as bodyguard and driver for a diabolical SS officer. His degradation is complete, and this is the point at which Greta is executed and Friedhelm, completely disillusioned, decides to confront the Russians and thus make his young group of child soldiers surrender. Before that he also saves Viktor: they suddenly stand face to face in the woods. But instead of shooting as he is ordered to by his commanding officer, he shoots his officer. After the German surrender, the three survivors meet in the totally destroyed bar, in a totally destroyed Berlin. As a German war drama this series illustrates a narrative and thematic change: it combines an almost documentary realism with a very emotional and personal story of five very different main characters. The narrative

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does not in any way soften the images and sequences of war atrocities and the characters involved in them, but by adding a more nuanced psychological story to the war narrative we get deeper inside the minds of people living through that war and period. Identification and empathy—even with negative characters—is a condition for better understanding. This is not just a moral story of the evil German, it is a story that makes it possible for Germans to understand their troubled past better, and also makes it possible for other Europeans to see the human dimension of a war and how it is embedded in a Nazi reality. The nuanced gallery of characters, the shifts between the bigger events of war and social conflicts and the ordinary life of many people makes it easier to understand ordinary life under very extraordinary circumstances.

World War II as European War: Mediated Transnational Cultural Encounters and Memories The experience and memories of World War II were in many ways different for people living in different parts of Europe. World War II narratives are not expressions of one and the same story, one and the same kind of memory, there are important variations. There are similarities between wars across all national differences, but the specific forms and variations are also important. However, to talk about World War II as a European war still makes sense as it points to the fact that such narratives on television long after the war have increasingly developed into a result of co-production, transnational distribution. Even more importantly, a new kind of mediated cultural encounter (Bondebjerg et al. 2017) is also shared as national narratives and memories across Europe. European and American productions have made an impact on German public debate and culture, and German television and film have since the 1980s become a still more integrated part of European film and television culture. To speak openly about the past is not just important for Germany. It is also important that other Europeans are confronted with German versions of their own history. Mediated cultural encounters are important for breaking down primitive stereotypes and the lack of knowledge of other Europeans. English and American film and television narratives have set standards and influenced most of Europe. Since 2000, the growth of co-production networks has created a new balance, with Germany as the central co-producer, and with some of the smaller European countries in closer collaboration (see Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 89f). This means that

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mediated cultural encounters through co-production and distribution of television drama have changed the cultural map of Europe, and made the exchange of stories and memories more transnational. It means that German television drama, including World War II narratives, is no longer debated just in Germany, but in large parts of Europe. The reception and discussion of Unsere Mütter - Unsere Väter in Denmark, England and Germany shows that the series has influenced and changed the general perception of the war and the role of ordinary Germans and soldiers. The series has created a meeting between a more universal moral dilemma and the specific German experience and context. The moral and human dilemmas that individuals found themselves in under the Nazi regime reflect more general conflicts in our moral mentality and awareness. In his book The Righteous Mind: Why People Are Divided by Politics and Religion, Jonathan Haidt says that “our mind is designed to do morality”. However we are not just intrinsically moral, we are also intrinsically moralistic, critical and judgemental (Haidt 2012: xiii). Furthermore, he claims that our moral minds are one of the reasons humans can produce and live in large cooperative groups, nations, and so on, even though such groups are not based on close forms of kinship (Haidt 2012: xiv). So, we want to do good, we do want to live in peace within the family and the nation and with others, but history and everyday life shows that all forms of groups will from time to time be cursed with moral conflicts and moral dilemmas. Though we are moral and social beings, we also very often compete with other groups, and we are also as individuals fighting for ourselves and those closest to us. War is in many ways the ultimate test of human morality: what if our basic moral values are challenged and we are faced with doing what seems immoral or having to face death? This is what war narratives are often about, and in the German case the dilemmas are gigantic, given that we are talking about an authoritarian state that wanted to conquer the world and eliminate certain kinds of people in the process. In the European reception of Unsere Mütter - Unsere Väter, it is often pointed out that many of the new German films and series “focus on individual Germans, the choices they had to make and the consequences of those choices. It is about the moral dilemma constantly facing individuals under Nazism” (Agger 2013, my translation). In Germany there were numerous newspaper articles, not just reviews of the series, but reflections on the German memory culture about World War II, and panel debates on television and

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online. There were also debates between Nico Hofmann and representatives of the war and post-war generations. Debates were, however, also very widespread in England, and when The Guardian asked for responses, around 300 readers engaged in an often heated online debate. Here is a comment: I am Jewish, born in the UK in 1960, and have always had an emotional response to the Germans and their conduct in the second world war. Whilst I believe that there were a lot of evil people in Germany during the war, such that there was a kind of “collective guilt”, I have also believed that you cannot blame an entire nation, nor their children. With that in mind I watched this with great interest, I watched and was captivated by it. I think I even enjoyed it! (Groskop 2014)

The reception in most countries was very positive, although aspects of the series were discussed in some countries. This was for instance the case in Poland, where the portrait of the Polish partisans as anti-Jewish was attacked by official Polish representatives and many newspapers. This is an example of another aspect of World War II narratives: they often confront and challenge different national conceptions of the war. However, it also seems that this series established a new German and European look at the past. In Germany it is very much about the generational gaps in memory and the move away from an abstract, general collective guilt. In the English edition of Spiegel Online, Romain Leick (2013) talks about the emotional portrayal of five ordinary people “stripped of moral pretension” and establishing a “new multigenerational milestone in the country’s culture of remembrance”. He also refers to scriptwriter Stefan Colditz’s words: “you don’t get very far with this generation by merely applying the categories of good and evil. Our humanity lies precisely in the fundamental inconsistency of individuals.” Here we are back in Haidt’s concepts of morality: while German World War II history is a specific awful case of running beyond moral standards, moral dilemmas and having to live with individual and collective feelings of guilt is a very universal thing. In an article in Süddeutsche Zeitung Kia Vahland (2013) calls it a move from self-hate to self-reflexion. She sees the five characters as individuals that are not morally clean, and yet do not come out as bad human beings. They are individual human beings caught up in moral conflicts and actions that are in themselves highly immoral, but must be judged against living

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in one of the worst dictatorships in modern European history. Interestingly, one of the most positive reviews comes from Israel (Avnery 2014). Avnery concludes that the film is important because both Germans and Jews are traumatized by the events: “That is why the film is so important, not only for Germans, but for all people, including our own.” In the UK, reviews were also very positive, for instance in The Guardian (Wollaston 2014), where the series is called a powerful story of war, death and betrayal and “a gripping, moving drama about friendship and family, and what war can do to them, plus a rare look at it from a German perspective. At the same time, it is a drama, which isn’t afraid to confront the question of how normal, clever, educated, likeable people could somehow have been blinded by and swept up in such barbaric inhumanity.” It would hard to find a more direct example of what mediated cultural encounters mean: it means seeing something even very controversial and complicated from a different perspective, it means sharing and creating transnational memories of the past.

References Agger, G. (2013, June 5). Om Vores mødre, vores fædre. Den tyske hjerteknuser. Kommunikationsforum. https://www.kommunikationsforum. dk/…/om-vores-moedre-vores-faedre. Avnery, U. (2014). Our Mothers, Our Fathers: A Review. In International Policy Digest. Bondebjerg, I. et al. (2017). Transnational European Television Drama. Production, Genres and Audiences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cammann, A., & Soboczynski, A. (2013, March). Vereiste Vergangenheit. Die Zeit, nr. 12. Chapman, J. (2007). Representing War: British Television Drama-Documentary and the Second World War. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1), 13–33. Cooke, L. (2012). A Sense of Place: Regional British Television Drama 1956– 1982. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Ebbrecht, T. (2007). Docudramatizing History on TV: German and British Docudrama and Historical Event Television in the Memorial Year 2005. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 10(1), 35–55. Groskop, V. (2014, May 12). Generation War: What Did You Make of BBC2’s German Drama? The Guardian [with 300 answers and comments]. https:// www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/may/12/genera tion-war-bbc-nazi-germany.

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Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. London: Penguin Books. Kansteiner, W. (2006). In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics After Auschwitz. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. Kershaw, I. (2015). To Hell and Back Again. Europe 1914–1949. London: Penguin. Leick, R. (2013, March 28). Next Generation WW2 Atonement. Spiegel Online. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/zdf-tv-miniseries-reo pens-german-wounds-ofwwii-past-a-891332-druck.html. Moore, R. (2009). Mobilising Land Girls. Writer’s Guild of Great Britain. http://www.writersguild.org.uk/news-a-features/tv/65-land-girls. Vahland, K. (2013, March 20). Von Fragenstellen und Zuhören. Süddeutsche Zeitung. https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/2.220/unsere-muetter-uns ere-vaeter-im-zdf-vom-fragenstellen-und-zuhoeren-1.1628706. Wollaston, S. (2014, April 28). Generation War Review: Gripping Drama with the Confidence to Confront the Past. The Guardian. https://www.thegua rdian.com/tv-and-radio/2014/apr/28/generation-war-tv-review. Wood, N. (1999). Vectors of Memory: Legacies of Trauma in Postwar Europe. Oxford: Berg.

CHAPTER 9

Post-war Europe: A Social and Cultural Revolution

A few years after the end of World War II, Europe and most of the rest of the world entered a new kind of war, the Cold War. It was a very different, and in some ways very invisible kind of war, a war on ideologies, on armaments and a technological race on the ground and in space. The division of much of the world into communist and capitalist blocs, armed to the teeth with atomic weapons, and an iron curtain through Europe made it extremely difficult to interact and communicate across the frozen lines. This created a mentality of suspicion and stereotyping of people living on each side of the Wall. Instead of normal communication channels the metaphor for Cold War life became the covert and undercover world of the spy (Mazower 1998: 250). As many historians have pointed out (Mazower 1998: 252; Hobsbawm 1994: 263f; Judt 2007: 169f), the power balance also acted as a shelter for growth, expansion and change of post-war societies. The Cold War did not stop the dramatic improvement of people’s lives after 1945 on both sides of the Iron Curtain. However, it happened in two very different systems, and gradually the difference between a very central, controlled command system and a system based on free market forces, democracy and a developed welfare state became very clear. In the communist bloc there was a kind of “enlightened despotism” (Mazower 1998: 282) and even though there was in fact a huge effort © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_9

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towards cultural, educational and social reform, everything was controlled by the state and the Party. In Western Europe a transformation from a rural, agrarian society to a more urban, industrial and technological society took place. This miraculous growth and development greatly outnumbered the communist countries, and somehow media images floating from the West to the East have influenced how the latter viewed their own lives. Between 1945 and 1968 Western Europe, including a regenerated West Germany, experienced some of the biggest demographic, social and cultural changes in the twentieth century. This rise in material and cultural consumer goods coincided with the breakthrough of television from around 1947, contributing to a global revolution and to the spreading of visual narratives.

Better Times: Welfare Societies and Cultural Revolution While GDR and communist Europe fought a long fight for basic freedom and democracy, Western Europe moved towards different variations of welfare states, very fundamental structural changes towards a more united Europe, and a demographic and cultural revolution in the 1960s. The post-war baby-boom generation challenged the existing culture and institutions, but on a deeper level this was a sign of a change in family structures, norms and values, and of a beginning of the liberation of women on a much larger scale than seen before. This part of post-war Europe is dramatic, but it is a peaceful social and cultural revolution, although terror and aggression also played a role. Tony Judt calls this period “the end of old Europe” (Judt 2007: 235), but it took time to rebuild and reconstruct nations and societies in ruins, and the Cold War and division of Europe only formally ended in 1989. The post-war baby boom was part of huge demographic changes, a move from country to city. Strong economic growth until the 1970s, the forces of technology and a growing globalization helped this revolution along. This social revolution (Hobsbawm 1994: 257f) of course played out differently in the various nation states in Europe and in Eastern and Western Europe, but it affected all of Europe. It created a feeling of change and almost revolution in people’s way of life. The events around the youth rebellion of 1968 were a symbol of this, and a heavily mediatized event in many countries, but the student revolt was only a small part of the broader change that was taking place.

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Politics, maybe even revolution, did play a role, but changing norms and ways of life, in culture and family roles, were just as important. Historians like Tony Judt (2007) and Ian Kershaw (2018) both stress the political dimension of the more spectacular student revolt and lasting institutional change this created. However, they also warn against identifying the period with the most mediatized and symbolic parts of it. Judt attacks the 1968 generation for overestimating their own perspective on things as they happened and in retrospect. He points to a “self-congratulatory, iconoclastic impulse”, and stresses more important developments on a much deeper and broader level (Judt 2007: 390). It is worth remembering that the cultural and social revolution of the 1960s was not just a result of a revolt led by an elite. It was a much broader transformation of culture, norms and society, which influenced almost all aspect of everyday life for most people. The times were indeed changing in this period, but it was not the romantic and unrealistic dreams of a political revolution led by an elite that meant most. 1968 and the years after were very mediatized events, while the more invisible but much more profound changes in people’s lives in general were neglected. While most of Europe had been at war with each other before 1945, the post-war period represents the making of a new and more united Europe, through the gradual establishing of a European Union and after 1989. Historians like Kershaw, Judt and Hobsbawm tend to use similar metaphors when describing these developments: the golden years (Hobsbawm), the good times (Kershaw) and the age of affluence (Judt). Although some people in Europe benefitted more from the economic boom and the dramatic growth of the economy than others, consumption and everyday life circumstances, the economic miracle and the subsequent social and cultural revolution did affect the lives of all Europeans in many ways. The consumer society meant that economic growth and rapid technological development made products available for the average European: washing machines, refrigerators, cars, travel, telephone, radio, television, and so on. For the average European everyday life was made much easier, and new communication technologies made events within and outside the nation state more present. The new post-war Europe created a new public sphere which resonated more directly with people’s everyday life. The national and the global interacted in the media, where cultural trends were mixed and circulated, and where new forms of political engagement inspired people across national borders.

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The leap in consumerism, the new media and technologies, the massive growth in higher education for the new generation, the new popular mass culture, and changes in gender roles and family values created the social and cultural revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. There were also political revolutions, some rather loud and with less permanent effect, others more silent but more pervasive. Again, we find a striking agreement among historians. For Kershaw, Judt and Hobsbawm, the dominant political force in the 1950s and 1960s shifted towards the centre left in many European countries, and the more hard-core liberal ideologies seemed to run out of steam—at least for a time. This gave way to a consensus on the need for public–private cooperation, for a welfare state. In the words of Tony Judt: Throughout Western Europe, then, governments, employers and workers conspired to forge a virtuous circle: high government spending, progressive taxation and limited wage increases. As we have seen, these goals were already inscribed in the widespread consensus, forged during and after the war, on the need for planned economies and some form of ‘welfare state’. They were thus the product of government policies and collective intention. But the facilitating condition for their unprecedented success lay beyond the direct reach of government action. The trigger for the European economic miracle and the social and cultural upheaval that followed in its wake, was the rapid and sustained increase in Europe’s population. (Judt 2007: 330)

Strong demographic change was a driving force behind the economic miracle and the social and cultural revolution, which at times caused panic in the older generation and the established social and cultural institutions. Radical political and ideological attacks on the new welfare society were, however, mostly temporary currents in a consensus around the welfare society. It was not those aspects of radicalism that drove the development, it was the enormous growth in higher education, the globalization of the economy in Europe, the rise of the third sector of production connected with service and technology, and the fact that women finally started moving towards at least formal equality with men and took their place in education and work. Authorities and reality in general were exposed through the media, which meant that a more open and direct debate surrounded the established institutions, norms and values. In many ways, the new media were, at least in the beginning, best understood by the younger generation, just as the new wave of rock music underlined and

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expressed a social and cultural revolution against tradition and established norms. Most Europeans, including the younger generations, gladly embraced consumerism and the new media; they were not thinking about revolution or changing the world—apart from perhaps the stricter authoritarian norms and values in the traditional families and other institutions like school and universities. But it was perhaps also television and the rise of a more global culture that created a mental background for more radical ideological movements. The Vietnam War was the first globally transmitted war, and protests against it grew around the world, just as in the case of the anti-nuclear movement and later the environmental movement. One of the consequences of the new and much more global media society was that things that started in one or several European nations were seen and grew stronger by being exposed in a public sphere that combined national and global events and trends. But the historical development differed in East and West, in Britain and Germany.

Living on a Thin Line Between Germany East and West After 1989, German television and film on many levels started to deal with life behind the Wall, life in the GDR between 1945 and 1989. Until 1989 people in the GDR were living on the line between an Eastern reality of the Cold War and a Western world that had taken a leap into a welfare society and quickly moved past the scarcity and crisis after 1945. Post-war German society was a society where towns and families randomly ended up on different sides of the Iron Curtain. Those that could tried to flee from East to West—but the Wall gradually got thicker. Contrary to the view of life seen from Great Britain, East and West Germany were not two completely different worlds. Germans were living in two different systems, separated by a wall—but still Germans. There were many family connections across the historically temporary border, and loyalties to the two systems could be complex. Perhaps therefore a spy series like Deutschland ’83 and ’86 (2015–2018) was a quite broad international success, but completely flopped in Germany (Oltermann 2016). The main character, 24-year-old GDR soldier Martin Rauch, becomes a trusted spy who is to take his place close to a NATO general in the West. The problem is that family loyalties on both sides influence his work and judgement, and he discovers that the whole nuclear story has been invented by his GDR

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contacts. In Germany the series’ viewing figures dropped dramatically after the first episode, and the series did not receive much attention in the German press. The very stereotyped images of East and West did not appeal to a German audience already well into the unification process. Other series about this part of GDR history presented a more balanced history of the two Germanies. Even though spy themes were embedded in the story, they told a more detailed realistic family story on both sides of the Wall. This was for instance the case with Weissensee—a family drama in four seasons and 24 episodes (2010–2018) dealing with the period 1980–1990—and one of the most successful German series focusing on GDR history. The first season had a share of 18, and was seen by almost 6 million viewers on ARD, and what is more, it took a share of 8.4 among 14–19-year-olds (Krei 2010). Reaching out to both the former GDR and the rest of Germany, this series seems to have achieved success with bringing memories back for those living in the former GDR and giving West Germans a more nuanced picture of life behind the Wall and the people living there. The series was also a success in the US and UK and other European countries. The Guardian called it a “cold war Romeo and Juliet drama” (Conolly 2010), while the German newspapers also followed it with very positive reviews from the first to the last season (Kuhnert 2015; Kuzmany 2015; Claus 2015; Denk 2018). Die Zeit (Decker 2010) called the first season one of the best German series ever, and the reviewer made a special argument for the series as “the first to give people in the former GDR their dignity back”. It was also noted in the press that most of the characters in the series were mainly from GDR and had personal experience of both the good and the bad sides of living there. Director Friedemann Fromm and Annette Hess, with whom he wrote the script, are however both from the West. The narrative of the series’ four seasons deals with 1980 (1), 1987 (2), 1989–1990 (3) and 1990 (4), which means that the series shows not only life in the GDR, but also the fall of the Wall and the very early period of transition and trying to adapt to a new life in the united Germany. This historical development is shown through a powerful cast of two very different families and the other characters surrounding them that is both simple and complex. On the one side we have the Kupfer family, all seemingly well integrated into and supporting the GDR system, and on the other we have the Hausmann family, with the dissident singer Dunja and her grown-up daughter Julia. What on the surface looks like a simple dichotomy between system loyalty and critical opposition quickly

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becomes muddier and more complex as the links between the two families grow. The family stories follow and illustrate the social, cultural and political history of the last GDR decade, but the fictional story is also embedded in media references to real historical events and characters, mostly through authentic television broadcasts watched and commented on by the characters. The series gives us a profound insight into both the more ordinary aspects of everyday life in the GDR, specifically Berlin, where it takes place, and also the psychological terror routinely used by the Stasi, such as blackmailing people and forcing them to work as Stasi informers. In this story about social transformation from a so-called socialist system to a capitalist one, the series performs a historical analysis that is critical of both systems. The story of East and West in this series is a story painted not in black and white, but in many colours and nuances. That is the strength of the series, that is part of its realism and success with a German audience on both sides of the Wall. The difference between the two Germanies remained after 1989. There still is an invisible wall between two worlds that are moving closer to each other, but are still very different on many levels. Another realist and multi-faceted German period drama about the German post-war period, seen from both East and West, is Tannbach— Schicksal eines Dorfes (Tannbach—The Fate of a Village) (1–2, 2015– 2018), produced by ZDF and directed by Alexander Dierbach. Tannbach is a fictional village on the border between Bavaria and Thuringia, and towards the end of World War II, the village is taken over first by the Americans, then by the Soviet army, and finally divided into two parts: East and West Tannbach. Through this narrative of the fate of one small village divided between East and West, the series touches upon most of the main themes that on a larger scale dominated the Cold War. The two seasons each had three episodes of 90 minutes; the first season covers the period 1945–1952, the second covers 1960–1968. The series has quite a large cast of characters representing a typical provincial German village, with a clear social class structure and clearcut ideological differences, although one of the central elements of the narrative is to show how people try to accommodate and blend in with historical development and change. At the top we find the landowner Count Georg von Striesow, during the war an officer on the Eastern Front, but in 1945 a deserter, hiding in the vicinity of his home. His wife Caroline is shot in a dramatic scene in episode 1. She intervenes as

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an SS unit is searching for her husband and other deserters, and they take a group of refugees hostage and threaten to kill them. His daughter Anna witnesses the shooting, and the experience clearly influences her later development in the series, when she marries the devoted communist Friedrich Erler. They choose to stay in the East as central political leaders and administrators of the local party. Her father, on the other hand, is questioned and imprisoned for a year by the American forces, but unlike his daughter moves to the West and becomes established as a businessman while at the same time acting as an intelligence officer for the Americans. This is the story of a family completely changed by the dramatic events of war and post war, and by the division of a village leading to bitter personal and ideological conflict. Another central family is the Schobers, with Franz and Kathi Schober as the heads of a family of peasants. Franz and Kathi are strong supporters and members of the Nazi party to the bitter end—it is only as American troops enter the village that they hurry to hide portraits of the Führer and party members’ books and papers. Franz is also the person who denounces Georg Striesow, and his illegitimate son with Hilda Völcker, the SS officer Horst Völcker, is the man who shoots Caroline Striesow in cold blood, literally hours before the Americans liberate the town. Franz and Kathi’s two sons, Heinrich and Gustl, represent two different paths into the German post-war reality: Heinrich continues in his father’s footsteps as a farmer, while Gustl becomes a critical journalist. The Schober family seems to swim with the tide and always end up on the side of whoever is in power. They manage to cooperate with the Americans, later the Russians and in the end—due to the new line between East and West through the village—they adapt completely to the new West German reality. Between and around these two central families we find characters linked in different ways to them, but also representing other types of Germans. The series clearly describes how the idealism of the early days was gradually replaced by an authoritarian police state, especially in episodes 5 and 6, with the building of the Wall and the Russian invasion of Prague in spring 1968. In the last episode, this event is shown creating doubt and confusion among those living in the East. Anna, who has otherwise been one of the most fundamentalist of all the fundamentalists, begins to return to religion and develops a platonic relationship with the local priest, Wolfgang Herder. The series offer a realist, detailed narrative of what the Cold War looked like from a very local German

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perspective, but with strong references to what was happening in a wider historical perspective and how this affected daily life for people on both sides of the Cold War. One way of bringing broader perspectives into the story is the use of media: the death of Hitler is reported to the villagers through the original radio broadcast, the reality of the Holocaust is brought home to people through a film which is mandatory viewing for all, the Nurnberg trials against the Nazis are reported through newspapers, we see a Russian TV programme on the effect of nuclear war and propaganda for Soviet missiles, we witness GDR mobile propaganda through cars with loudspeakers, and we see TV images of the invasion of Prague. The narrative and the changes and hardships the characters go through on both sides—but especially in the East—tells a very realistic story of the Cold War period. The German newspaper Die Welt has done a fact check of the series (Kellerhoff 2015), which concludes that the series delivers a very precise image of the historical reality it presents. This is also the case with very dramatic events like the SS murder of Caroline we see at the beginning, and the hunt for deserters up to the very last hours of the war. Factual representation of history is also seen with Allied and Russian killings of civilians around the end of the war, the chaotic drawing of the East–West border resulting in sometimes random distribution of land and people, the big problems with the communist land reforms in GDR—among other historical facts on which the series builds. Thematically the series covers many central Cold War issues, first of all by simply confronting life under capitalism and the growing consumer society in the West with the still more massive problems the statecontrolled society and economy run into from the 1960s onwards. The conflict between communism and capitalism is not just illustrated through business structures and the problems with workers in the East protesting against their working condition or farmers protesting against land reforms. It is also linked to the question of consumerism and the consumer society. In the West the consumer society is on the rise, while people in the East, both privately and in relation to work, lack the most basic things—not just luxury consumer goods. The theme of personal, political and cultural freedom also runs through both seasons. The main character, Anna, is the most fundamentalist and ideologically correct communist and loyal Party servant. Her connection to the priest, however, shows her attitude beginning to soften, but at first she fights against this. However, when her son Felix starts deserting from Nationale Volksarmee (The People’s Army), she doesn’t

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hesitate to report him and get him sent back in the name of communism. But as her teenage daughters begin to rebel, reading cartoons and listening to the ‘wrong’ music, it becomes more and more difficult for her. Western and American youth culture seeps through the walls and the state control, and more than one in the East village is influenced by this. At the end of season 2 her defence breaks down, she starts defending her children and criticizing the party line, and she is demoted to manual labour. Anna’s story illustrates the question of democracy, freedom of speech and cultural values, but also the dilemmas of people living in GDR. It is no coincidence that the last episode, “Traum von Frühling ” (Dream of Spring), focuses on the time before and just after the Soviet invasion of Prague. Anna refuses to sign the Party petition defending the invasion, while her father states: “There is no spring in a dictatorship.” As a symbol of the still long way to the fall of the Wall and the end of the classic Cold War, the series ends with an exchange and an explosion on a bridge between East and West Berlin. Horst, the former SS, now an agent for the West, gets his mother out of a prison in the East, in exchange for confidential files on a secret NATO plan. However, after having secured his mother, Horst detonates a car bomb, killing the two top leaders of Stasi Berlin. The war continues internally and on a global scale. There is a rich variety of period dramas focused on GDR, most of them rather critical and with narratives where past and more present history interact. Ein Kapitel für sich (A Special Chapter) (1979) tells the story of a family in Rostock caught between East and West in 1945–1956. Der Turm (The Tower) (2012), which takes place in Dresden between 1982 and 1989, is a family conflict around a father heavily involved with the Stasi. Liebesau. Die andere Heimat (2002), about the small fictional village Liebesau from 1953 to 1989, was made by Peter Steinbach, who also worked with Edgar Reitz on his Heimat project. The bigger historical events are reflected in everyday life and events in this little village. The subtitle indicates that Steinbach had the intention of creating a GDR version of Reitz’s Heimat series, but although there are similarities in the local everyday focus through which large-scale history is mirrored, the series lacks the depth and reflexive symbolism in Reitz’s work.

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Dancing in Berlin: Mothers, Daughters and a New Way of Life In both Germany and England, the post-war generations created deep changes in the social, political and cultural structure of society. Probably one of the most far-reaching and profound changes was caused by the gender revolution, the liberation of women, new sexual norms and changes in family life in general. Even in series analyzed in previous chapters dealing with World War I, the inter-war period and World War II, we have seen how especially women emerged as new strong individuals demanding their rights and equality in society. In the post-war generations both sons and to an even greater extent daughters follow new paths. They break with traditional family trajectories and expectations, get education and jobs, and are more sexually active and independent than women (and men) in earlier generations. Women are also more politically organized, not just as women and feminists, but in general. The changing life of the young post-war generation started as a cultural revolution, with new forms of music and dance, a new more liberated and independent way of living. As the 1950s turned into the 1960s the new generation also became politically and morally engaged, and they reacted in a more global way to political and environmental issues. In his description of post-war Europe, the historian Tony Judt points to three new kinds of movements that have made a lasting impact on the social, cultural and political structure of Europe after 1960: the environmental movement, the peace movement and the women’s movement (Judt 2007: 487). He also points to the rise of the percentage of women with higher education and in the general labour force in the whole of Europe. By 1990 in all of Europe women were 40% of the total work force, an average figure that did of course vary between Southern and Northern Europe. However, it is worth noting that we see women’s movements all over Europe, also in Southern Europe, where gender and sexual norms were much more traditional. These movements changed sexual norms, and gradually caused new forms of birth control and abortion laws. Women took control of their own sexuality and body, as well as their life in general. This was of course not an easy fight to win, because men had dominated politics, social life and culture for decades. However, at least in some cases, it was also women who told the story of this post-war liberation of women, in both Germany and Britain (Fig. 9.1).

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Fig. 9.1 Ku’Damm 59 is one the most popular German generation period dramas. We follow a mother and her daughters from 1956, during the rebuilding of German society and the new generation. It is a women’s liberation story, and Monika (Sonja Gerhart) is the rebel of the family, very engaged in both politics and the new music culture (Screenshot by author)

In Germany, the 1950s was also the beginning of a new youth culture and the first steps towards a full consumer society. A big success—also internationally—was the German series Ku’damm ’56 (1–3, 2016) and Ku’damm ’59 (1–3, 2018) about an ambitious mother and her daughters in West Berlin. The scenography of the series clearly celebrates this new post-war reality with shops, cars, and new quarters and houses rising from the war ruins. Even a new UFA film culture is part of the film, a culture mixing old stereotypes and new youth culture. Behind this series we also find a strong, female creative dimension, as the series was written by Annika Hess and produced by ZDF’s head of production Heike Hempel. Behind the production we also find the successful producer Nico Hofmann. The series was a success in Germany with 6–8 million viewers and a share of around 20%, and the series has been shown in the US and many European countries. The series doesn’t directly focus on the more political, feminist parts of the new post-war generation. It is a series about the German Wirtschaftswunder, the economic and social

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recovery after the war, and in the words of ZDF’s head of production, Heike Hempel (2015): [it is] a story of conservative (single) mother and her three daughters ready to be married. [The series] is about family conflicts hidden behind a façade of perfection, and about women finding their way to a free sexuality and equality. (Hempel 2015, my translation)

The mother, Catarina, has raised three rather different daughters; two of them (Helga and Eva) are from the start chasing the man of their life in a quite traditional way, while Monika goes her own way and becomes the feminine icon of liberation, or at least the most daring and unconventional of the three daughters. Her mother runs a very traditional dancing school, but Monika soon connects with the new culture of rock ’n roll, and challenges the family and her sisters profoundly by showing them new ways of living as a woman. Though largely shot in the UFA studios, the series gives a very realistic and symbolic image of Germany in the 1950s, a period not much covered from this youth and female perspective. The music is an important part of the narrative and points to the new times that are coming. Although women’s liberation is at the centre of the story, broader social problems are also addressed: the difference between East and West Berlin, the old Nazi past still affecting both the perpetrators and the victims, the lack of acceptance of homosexuality, racism, class differences, prostitution and oppression of women. Through the story of a family of women, the series manages to tell a story of female emancipation and a German society on the move to a new post-war reality. There is, however, a long way to go to real equality and emancipation in the series. Monika’s breaking loose from the family and early experiences with sex also cost her dear; the eldest daughter Helga’s search for a secure and conventional marriage runs into trouble as her husband Wolfgang is homosexual; and Eva’s romantic dream of marrying a professor of medicine ends up in a violent marriage with a controlling man. Monika’s story is a story of rape by the man she loves (Joachim Frank) and at the end of season 2 finally marries. It is also the story of having a child with Freddy, her troubled rock ’n roll partner, and losing the right to look after the child because she is unmarried. The emerging new norms clearly continue to clash with existing and very traditional morals and role of women. The conflict between past and present is not just connected to gender roles and sexuality, there is also throughout the series a Nazi past

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that keeps appearing. Joachim’s father, the owner of the Franck Werke, has a very dubious past, and it also turns out that before the war the dancing school belonged to a Jewish family who were killed in a concentration camp. The male symbol of the new rock ’n roll culture, Freddy, also a Jew, suffers from nightmares from his time in a concentration camp, and especially from guilt for having survived while his brother died. It is obvious that German post-war dramas like this, trying to deal with a new social and cultural revolution, carry a heavy burden of the past as a central part of the narrative, a burden British series do not carry in the same way.

Leaving Heimat: Reitz’s Story of the Youth Revolution in Germany Compared to the German series we have analyzed so far, Reitz’s Heimat 2 is the most complex and experimental. We see it from the very beginning where Herman and his group of experimental artists have left their Heimat, and are now in Munich. The bird’s-eye view visualization of Munich at night with its towers and buildings glowing in a kind of magic light symbolizes and corresponds with their longing for a new life, a new culture. It is a series about the youth of the 1960s, their wild dreams and experiments with art, culture in general, love and ways of living together. It is also about the costs, and the tragedies that followed this radical break with the past. We have already seen how the relation to the past, and the taking back of the local in art and life play out in Heimat 1 (see Chapter 4). This interaction between past and present, between tradition and modernity and between local and global is even more intensified in Heimat 3 (see Chapter 10), which celebrates the post-1989 development towards a new millennium. Here Hermann and Clarissa (with the very symbolic name Lichtblau) physically move back to Hermann’s Heimat. In Heimat 2 the life Hermann left behind in anger is also present, something which underlines Reitz’s words: “The ability to go out in the world is acquired at home.” This is one of the main themes in not just this series, but also the others mentioned: we are formed by our past, by the experiences we bring with us from our family past. It is not a simple thing to connect past and present, especially if the break described here between Hermann and his young group of cultural rebels, and their families takes place after a deep conflict with complex layers of emotions and memories. It is therefore no wonder that the first episode in Heimat 2 takes us back to the scenes where Hermann’s family sent his first love,

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Klärchen, away, leading to his firm emotional break with the family. In the opening sequence we see her farewell letter on the kitchen table at his home in Schabbach, while the camera is circling round as Klärchen reads the letter off screen. The movement of the camera performs a symbolic farewell to his home. Then we hear Herrmann’s voice-over, while he is still symbolically placed in his old room and bed, declaring that his family chased his love away because she was a foreign refugee, without family and home—a kind of dig at the narrow-mindedness of his provincial family. As he opens the door to get out, the walls of the house literally collapse, leaving him in an open house. Here he declares he will never love again, never tell a woman he loves her; he will leave Schabbach and his mother forever, never to return even when he is famous; music will be his only home and love. The dramatic visual language in this break with home, together with the obvious hubris behind his words, indicates a break with family and the past which will haunt him later. The first episode, “The Time of the First Songs”, follows the final break with Schabbach and the family and as he leaves in September 1960 for Munich, he describes it as being born again, not from his mother, but out of his own head. He has chosen his own way, his new home and his new destiny. In a way a perfect symbol of what the new generation of the 1960s must have felt: they were free to choose their own life and the new freedom offered by the better times made this possible for many. In the series Reitz goes a long way to describe their search for freedom and a new life with some solidarity. However, he also shows the arrogance and hubris behind some of their utopian dreams. Is it at all possible to create a completely new language, culture and way of life without in some way building on and learning from the past? The series is filled with tragic and tragicomical incidents of people and characters from different generations, of people going all the way to try to liberate themselves. The title of the series, Die Zweite Heimat (The Second Heimat) is more than a reference to the series number, it also indicates that there is both a first and second Heimat, and that a reconciliation between the two will and must happen (Fig. 9.2). This is precisely what episode 12 (“The Time of Many Words”) and the last episode 13 (“Art and Life. Hermann and Clarissa”) is about. Hermann breaks two of his major promises to himself and God: he falls in love with Clarissa, and he returns home. Episode 12 is a very critical analysis of aspects of 1968, the most radical, political and collective

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Fig. 9.2 In Heimat II the youth rebellion of the 1960s is at the centre of the action. Hermann is caught between art and the politics of 1968. He is attracted to Helga Aufschrey (Noemi Steuer) for a short period, a part of his radical break with his family. But when terrorism sets in, he starts his slow return to and reconciliation with his past and his family (Screenshot by author)

moment of the 1960s. The meaning of the title is partly that the political left keeps on talking, using words so radicalized they are removed from reality. The radical ideology becomes fundamentalist and restraining in ways Hermann recognizes from his childhood. In a sense he is once more caught up in a world of constraints and moral cocksureness. It is a deep crisis in Hermann’s creative work and a crisis in his marriage and in relation to his own daughter (Lulu) that makes him choose to move into a commune of very radical people, leaving his art and his new family behind. But he is soon fed up with these collectivists, and leaves not just the commune but also his second home, Munich. He is reunited with his daughter and together they drive away back to the German province. In a key scene, where he is riding up Zugspitze with his daughter, he happens to read an article in the weekly magazine Stern by Katrin, one of

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the most radical commune leaders. It is about family as terror, and about suppressing those much bigger longings and dreams that modern man doesn’t seem to have words for. Men suppress women, women suppress their children, and so on, and all this creates a kind of fascism of the feelings. Although Hermann can identify with some elements of this analysis, the reading of this article brings back his own ambivalent feeling about both the radicalism of 1968 and the family he has left behind in Schabbach. Once again, the ambivalent Heimat, with its terrible historical background, and with his own personal ambivalence, comes back now as a new longing to revisit and confront what he left. The scenes in the commune in episode 12 are undoubtedly some of the most realistic and also psychedelic scenes ever made on TV to illustrate the spirit of the most radical groups of 1968: it is very radical political slogans and actions, it is free love and all kinds of transgressive sexual behaviour, it is drugs and hallucinations and it is rock and roll. But as Hermann leaves the place, he is filmed in long shot through a barred window: it is as though he is escaping from a new prison. This is underlined by a change from monochrome to colour, and as he gets nearer the top of Zugspitze an almost romantic dream landscape appears for him and the viewer, a landscape signalling his return to the first Heimat.

The Complicated Way Back Home: Negotiating the Past and a New Present It is perhaps in many ways very characteristic of the cultural revolution of the 1960s and the new youth culture that authorities and traditional families were fundamentally criticized, and were abandoned in favour other kinds of groups or collective forms of living together. Statistically this change from families to other collective ways of living was mostly a phenomenon for an educated elite in bigger cities, but there is no doubt that in the long run family structures and gender roles more broadly did change. The rise of new forms of living together among groups of young people in Europe in the 1960s was basically a result of better times, better economic conditions, greater mobility and education, which liberated the younger generation from being completely dependent on their family, and which also started setting both genders free in new ways (Hvidtfeldt 2019: 89). In his notes and ideas for the series, Reitz directly addressed this development from family stories to stories of groups based on choice:

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Groups like this appear in specific life situations. When we move to another city, start an education, or when we revolt or take flight. What makes this possible is that we are mobile and can take control over our own time … It is not the common goal that binds for ever but the shared origin. Groups have an element of ‘a second childhood’ … There are groups which are just as divided as some families, but they are also bound together by agreement and pursuit of happiness. It is good times for groups. It is a sort of replacement for the lost family, because it can work despite divisions, and it doesn’t cause as much harm as parents, who reject a member of the family. (Reitz 1993: 1820, my translation; see also Hvidtfeldt 2019: 89)

In Heimat 2 Hermann’s break with his family leads him to two groups (the Fuchsbau artists’ group in an old Munich house, and the radical political Berlin group), both of whom he leaves with just as strong emotional conflicts as when he left the family. There is, however, also his marriage with Schnüsschen—just after the break with the Fuchsbau group. This marriage is in many ways a form of regression to the traditional family, clearly underlined by the fact that this is the first time he invites his Schabbach family to Munich. The attempt to build a bridge between the two families is a disaster, however—but at the same time a sign of the deeper unification of past and present, both in family life and in his music (Hvidtfeldt 2019: 108). When Hermann leaves the radical political group and at the same time faces his artistic crisis and creative stagnation, it is significant that he takes his child Lulu with him. Lulu represents—as we see in Heimat 3 (see Chapter 10)—the next, new generation, and for Hermann it suddenly becomes important to reconcile his own family past and the family he has created, but also severely neglected. In the last episode of Heimat 2, “Kunst oder Leben (Art or Life)”, Hermann sets out on a final odyssey back to his past and his family, but also pursuing the true love in his life Clarissa, with whom he has lost contact. This journey back turns out to be confused and takes many unexpected turns, confronting him with many old friends and characters from his life. At one point he has the experience that his whole life and this journey is like a play where he and others have been puppets in a much bigger game. But the journey back to his home town, which he finally reaches alone in the final sequences, includes almost all the important themes of the series. It also leads to a deeper confrontation with the German past since 1940, the whole negative heritage of his father’s and mother’s generation. The Nazi heritage is of course a heavy burden

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to carry for Hermann’s generation, and this is recalled in several of the episodes of Heimat 3, in fact much more directly and more expanded than in Heimat 1. It is obvious in connection with Elisabeth Cerphal, whose father was a high-ranking Nazi with a lot on his conscience. He faces this very late (Hvidtfeldt 2019: 127f), having suppressed it for most of his life. It has also been absent from Elisabeth’s image of her father. The theme of the lack of trustworthy father figures from the war generation is reinforced with Kennedy, in the episode “Kennedys Kinder (Kennedy’s Children)”, as the American symbol of freedom, democracy and new values, which are missing from the previous German generation. Episode 13 opens with a strong theme dealing with the older generation and the Nazi past. Hermann and others in the artistic community have been involved with a film company called ISAR Film owned by Konsul Handschuh, whose past is very dubious. One of the important producers, Eberhard Zielke, was officer in the German propaganda company UFA Film, the main film propaganda arm of the Nazi regime. As the war ended, he managed to bring much of the company’s valuable equipment to ISA Film, which is thus directly using Nazi technology. The accountant responsible, Gerold Gattinger, is a former SS officer who has forgotten all about his past. In the opening scene of the episode, Hermann is at the gigantic Munich Oktoberfest with the whole company. The party is described as a vulgar expression of German culture, and it ends in a fight where some of the participants show Nazi flags. Hermann is openly disgusted by what he experiences, he several times puts his fingers in his ears to block out the sound, and there are numerous selfreflexive monologues. He obviously feels like a stranger in his own life, and this feeling is increased when both Handschuh and Zielke try to offer him huge sums to work with or even take over the company. Hermann later in this episode clearly rejects this: he wants to be free and independent. Artistically Hermann thus takes an artistic stand against the Nazi generation. In fact he is doubting his whole life and the dreams he used to have: “In May this year I reached the age of 30. Ten years had gone since I left my Hunsrücker village. Ten years which I did not feel like looking back on, because all that I wanted to do was still ahead of me; or had destiny already long time ago decided, that I should never reach the goal of my dreams?” (Reitz 1993: 903, my translation). On the way back to his home he also meets friends and family: in several sequences he meets old friends from the artistic group, and his wife and family, and the radical Berlin group also plays a central role. One

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of Hermann’s earlier girlfriends, Helga, joins the Rote Arme Fraktion, and we follow her and this terrorist group. It is, however, Clarissa and the search for love that really ignites his search for new goals in life and his re-evaluation of his own life and his family background. This search for Clarissa and for a new love relationship also triggers a much deeper theme very strongly represented in Heimat 2: the theme of mothers and daughters, the liberation of women (see also Hvidtfeldt 2019: 143f) (Fig. 9.3). Hermann’s search for Clarissa takes the form of a quest in which he always arrives too late, because she is travelling around Germany and other places in Europe with a feminist play (with music) called Hexenpassion (Witch Passion). Before he embarks on this search, he reflects on the fact that if he had been living in Schabbach and was looking for advice

Fig. 9.3 In Heimat II , Hermann’s long journey back to his roots is connected with his true love Clarissa and their avantgarde music. The episode “Life and Art” signals a new conflict, where art can no longer substitute for life and family, but where they have to be integrated (Screenshot by author)

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about life and his artistic career, he would have gone to his grandmother or mother. If they had known about the generous offer from ISAR Film, they would probably—so he thinks—have advised him not to turn down such an offer (Reitz 1993: 921). His reflections here illustrate a generational gap between the parent generation and the new generation: the former think more in terms of traditional hierarchies and norms, less in individual and personal aspirations and integrity. But it also becomes clear after his meeting with Clarissa in Amsterdam—where they make love and seem to re-establish their relationship—that it is not about advice, it is about finding the inner self-confidence to do want you want. In the final sequences of the episode, Clarissa shows her new feminist independence by leaving Hermann for another important engagement (a press conference), and he is made to wait so long that he gives up and finally goes back to Schabbach on his own, although he would have preferred to be reunited with Clarissa so they could both go back. But Hermann then shows that he has taken in the lesson of the feminists, reflecting: I think that people in former centuries were much better at waiting. If somebody left, he would take a long time to arrive. Seeing somebody again was quite uncertain. It was definitely the mothers that stayed at home and waited. For years, decades all their lives – like my mother in Hunsrück … It was the first time in my life I have had to wait. What was it I once said to Juan: waiting makes you more stupid? But I loved her, and have I not many times let women wait, beginning with my mother. (Reitz 1993: 956–957, my translation)

As we follow Hermann on the long road leading to Schabbach we know from Heimat 1 that Hermann gets his past and his family back, and that his creative production thrives on combining local stories, sounds and tunes with a modern and quite universal type of music. In Heimat 3 we also learn that it still takes a couple of decades for all the wounds from the past to heal, and for the divided Germany to reconcile with its own past. Heimat 2 is a very strong historical documentation and analysis of a decade and a generation that embodied the birth and change of a new society and a new culture, but also went so far in their radical ideas and in their break with the past that it turned against them.

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Social and Cultural Dynamics in British Post-war Period Dramas Compared to Germany, Britain came out of World War II two less damaged, and without the heavy burden of collective guilt. There was, however, still quite a long way to go to swinging London and the new culture of the 1960s. What dominated the 1950s after the initial stage of getting the country back on its feet, was perhaps more the feeling of waiting for the new times, and witnessing how the grand British Empire was gradually disappearing in the historic move towards national independence all over Europe. We have seen how this was a central theme in the first seasons of The Crown (see Chapter 5), and it is also quite visible in dramas dealing with this period. Dennis Potter illustrated the conflict between traditional society and the new consumer society, the clash between the older generation and the new in his series Lipstick on Your Collar (1993). We follow a group of young soldiers in the War Office in Whitehall, collecting data and analyzing Soviet military movements and potential atomic warfare. However, their minds are filled with women and desire, American films and rock ’n roll. Potter illustrates this by letting their dreams appear on screen, where characters jump into song and dance throughout the series. The still very traditional, class-divided and inward-looking national culture of 1950s Britain, the slow decline of a pompous and conservative empire meets a new and more global youth culture. In Lipstick on Your Collar, the focus is clearly turned from the past, from tradition, to a new mass culture and youth culture challenging the traditional culture. It is not yet the more political youth culture of the 1960s, it is more the cultural revolution of everyday life, cultural norms and hierarchies. In Lipstick on Your Collar, the central issue is the reality of British society and culture in the 1950s, where nothing has really changed fundamentally. The tensions between the older and the younger generations, between the traditional upper class, the rising middle class and the working class, and between a new national and global world order are, however, clear. The local cinemas play an important role as projections of a new life, of a coming consumer culture, and song and dance visualized in the minds of mostly the young speak a quite new language. It all takes place in the stiff and hierarchic office, where the external reality of the Suez Crisis is used in a very graphic way to illustrate the

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crisis of the British Empire; meanwhile the new global American capitalism looms in the background. It is however the new youth culture and consumer culture that is in focus, and through the entangled love relations of the young main characters we also see differences between Americanized popular culture and European high culture. Of the two male main characters, young language clerks in the office, Francis Francis represents a romantic idealism, while Mick Hopper is the masculine, sexually active rock ’n roll guy, an American in disguise. Among the main women characters, we find the same dichotomy: Sylvia the blonde sex bomb is associated with cinema and all the other new media, and American dark-haired Lisa is completely consumed by classical literature and theatre. The young characters represent different sides of the new and the more traditional cultures, but throughout the series their fantasies and often secret dreams tell a rather dramatic story of a period where things are still moving very slowly, although a new society and culture is clearly visible.

Tradition and Change: British Generational Period Drama The dynamics and conflicts around families and generations are common in historical dramas. The British dramas that deal with the post-1960 change of families, norms and values are no exception. They are stories of families, of very dramatic breaks with the traditional family, stories of moving away and looking for another life, often through networks of young people in specific groups. They are, however, also dramas of turning back, of reconciliation. Many of the series therefore also deal with the dilemmas experienced in breaking away from your family and culture, and the tragedies of radicalism and of losing your sense of place and direction. The two British series I deal with here, Our Friends in the North (1996) and the Welsh drama Pen Talar (2010) are both about breaking up and finding a way back. The theme of breaking away and coming back, of the past continuing to be part of the new present, was strong in Heimat, and we see the same pattern in the two British series, some of which also have a strong regional dimension in line with Heimat. They offer a quite broad and complex British story of different aspects of the social and cultural revolution of the 1960s onwards, including the strong gender revolution and the more problematic political aspects of this youth revolt.

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Our Friends in the North was written by Peter Flannery and produced by BBC2. The series is usually seen as a late continuation of the forms of realist, social-issue drama represented by for instance Ken Loach (see Chapter 7). However, as Lez Cooke has pointed out (Cooke 2003: 171f), even though the same social realism and theme of national and global politics is clearly central to the narrative, there is a stronger foregrounding of characters, their feelings and relations. Politics, social issues and the concerns of the world seem to move into the background of the story. This is underlined in an interview with Peter Flannery in 1998, where he comments on the breaking up and coming back theme: Originally it was much more about the politics than the personal. I belonged to that generation of writers and I began to question why it was people were so hostile and apathetic about the political process. By the time I wrote it for the third time I was in my forties and my concerns were different. There’s no loss of the political stuff … but there’s much more about growing to middle age, much more about fathers and children, mothers and children, because those became my concerns as I grew older. (Cooke: 2003: 171)

In many ways the German and British generational dramas we deal with here point towards the cognitive and social dimensions of this book. They seem to deal with the fact that ordinary, everyday life with its dimensions of growing up, seeking your own life and independence, perhaps radically defining your political position towards ‘the establishment’ and your family, is deeply complex because our embodied feeling of what we leave makes it impossible to quite delete our past. What happens with new generations can be a dramatic break with the past, which then leads to a present, reformed, changed reality in which the relation with the past is important and somehow integrated. Our Friends in the North was very well received by audience and critics alike. It won the Bafta Award for best drama in 1997, and it has remained a classic named by the BFI as one of the best 100 TV programmes of the twentieth century, and by The Guardian as the third-best TV drama of all time. The series tells a rather dramatic story of the post-war generation from a regional point of view, combining this with a more national and global context, often through authentic footage presented on the television screen in the narrative. The story follows four friends (Dominic ‘Nicky’ Hutchison, Mary Soulsby, George ‘Geordie’ Peacock and Terry

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‘Tosker’ Cox) from Newcastle upon Tyne in north-east England between 1964 and 1995. The individual stories of the four characters take place in the period of Labour under Harold Wilson from 1964, the period of Thatcher (from 1979) and her war against the unions, especially the big miners’ strike in 1984, and the general change of culture and lifestyle in this period. The sexual and gender revolution is seen in the complicated relationship between Mary, Dominic and Terry, and the rough side of Soho night clubs and sex shops in which George is involved for a time. Dreams typical of the period relate to the three friends forming a pop group and politics. Dominic is first involved with a local politician and later joins a violent anarchist group, only to return to the more established parties, in this case Labour. The four original friends end up representing very different roles in society, and thus the series underlines the theme of coming back: Dominic becomes a photographer, and after an on-off relationship he finally marries Mary, who in the meantime has become a successful councillor and later a Labour Member of Parliament; George hits rock bottom at the end of the series, homeless, drunk and sentenced to jail, in the last chapter disappearing in the distance; Terry, on the other hand, tries a lot of different ways of getting rich and building a business, in the last episode, maybe successfully. The last three episodes are particularly powerful in terms of covering central aspects of social and political developments in Britain. “1984” focuses on the miners’ strike and the rise of Thatcher’s conservative politics. Nicky has developed into a critical photographer: he has been to El Salvador and he portrays working-class life and those at the bottom of society. He is reunited with Mary, who is now working for the local council helping where she can. In the series they represent the critical social consciousness of 1960s youth. Terry, on the other hand, represents greedy capitalism: buying up public rented housing intended for the poor and selling it to make a profit for the rich. Eddie, the local Labour MP and best friend of Mary and Nicky, is fighting against the Conservatives in parliament. But the theme of homecoming is not just dealt with in the reunion of Nicky and Mary. When Nicky’s father develops Alzheimer’s, he starts dealing more with his family past. In the “1987” episode he tells Mary he regrets he has not talked more with his family. He starts talking to his father about his past and about his childhood. This theme of looking back is also boosted by his chance encounter with George, sleeping with all the homeless in a terrible state.

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The homecoming theme culminates in the last episode, “1995”, where the opening scene is Nicky playing the piano in his home after the death of his mother. He reads her last letter to him, in which she begs him to return to Mary—the relationship has once more broken down—and she finishes the letter with the words: “Don’t be afraid of going back”, a sentence with a deeper meaning. He visits his father several times and tries to get him to talk about the past and the working-class marches he took part in in his youth. He refers to a local lady who saw him then and heard him say: “It made you realise you had a choice in life. That you could stand up for yourself.” It is obvious that the last part creates a stronger link between the father’s and son’s generations, a link that was to a certain degree broken when the 1960s changed everything. The reunion of the four main characters on Terry’s new project, a floating nightclub, is also very mixed; only Nicky and Mary’s reunion once again is a sign of happy closure. However, as the camera moves back from the boat, we hear the rock group Oasis playing “We don’t look back in anger,” a sign of coming back and accepting the past and the present. In Jeffrey Richard’s review in The Independent after the last episode, he pointed to the series’ ability to combine the social and political with characters and lives in emotional detail: “The serial captivated much of the country, sketching a panoramic view of Britain from the sixties to the nineties … At once sweeping and intimate, both moving and angry, simultaneously historical and contemporary” (Richards 1996). It is, according to most reviews, a series that manages to combine a very critical story of political differences, class differences and radicalization with a sense of human emotions and the fundamental aspects of family life. Even though Pen Talar (2010) is a Welsh-language drama produced by the regional Welsh channel S4C and has a strong Welsh independence agenda, the themes and narrative structure have many similarities to Our Friends in the North. We follow three Welsh childhood friends from 1962 to 2010, and the social realism is combined with a regional dimension which both visually and ideologically pays homage to Welsh patriotism and the search for independence. The narrative of the series reflects a desire for political autonomy, protecting the Welsh language, heritage and culture and is in line with what Robert Burgoyne defines as a general element of historical drama: it aims to “create subjective connections to the national past, to call forth the sense of ‘I’ and ‘we’ that makes the national narrative compelling and meaningful” (Burgoyne 1997: 107). To support this effort of creating a regional, historical memory, S4C

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produced a series of short films during the transmission of the series, where people from Wales talked about significant events and memories from the past 50 years. Welsh fans of the series also established a Facebook page (in Welsh, English and German), just as there was a community Twitter area, and finally also a special sub-site of the well-known Welsh website maes-e.com (Jones and Woodward 2011: 103). The series thus interacted with several new media formats to create a memory of recent Welsh history. The series’ three main characters—Defi Lewis, his sister Sian Lewis and their friend Doug Green—are each in their way related to the regional project of creating a more independent Wales, and their personal story and life reflect aspects of actual historical events. The personal, the social and the political are interwoven and the three main characters represent different ideological positions that mirror the actual political tensions in Wales. Defi is the son of a local teacher, and he represents the middle-class nationalist project—although he is also attracted to more radical political positions in the 1960s. Doug is the son of a miner and thus a traditional Labour person. The title of the series points directly to an iconic political Welsh nationalist (Gwynfor Ewans) whose family home was ‘Talar Wen’. According to Jones and Woodward (2011: 106), “[the series] is firmly rooted in a verdant, Welsh speaking Camarthenshire, which moulded his nationalism and was considered by him to be ‘the real Wales’”. The series as such marks the nationalist position very strongly, but the narrative shows a tension between the two political tendencies represented by the two male characters. The regional perspective to a large degree dominates the series— although there are other themes and narrative threads linked to the more general historical perspective of post-war youth history. The broader social, political and cultural context in which the story of the three characters takes place includes global events like the shooting of John F. Kennedy, the new South Africa under way after the release of Nelson Mandela, Thatcher’s conservative revolution, the new youth culture and music. According to Jones and Woodward (2011: 110), the series uses Welsh themes, landscapes and historical events to create an “uncompromisingly nationalistic” narrative, which was, however, accepted by the various political groups in Wales. In the episode beginning in 1969 almost all the themes connected with the 1968 generation are dealt with. In the opening shots we hear the radio in the background talking about the Vietnam War and American imperialism, and Defi sitting at his desk

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is collecting press evidence and political material. He has developed a more radical, socialist position, taking him away from his father’s Welsh nationalism. Defi’s ideological position is anti-UK establishment, leaning dangerously towards a regional terror movement, Movement for Defence of Wales (MAC). Defi is not directly involved, but is sympathetic towards it. Doug mocks him and is clearly more interested in pubs, parties and girls. In this way, the blood brothers are divided. Radical politics also bordering on the use of terror remains a theme in Defi’s case, but especially in episode 4, the rejection of violence becomes clear. In episode 5 (1984), he becomes a teacher whose very progressive methods get him into trouble, but he is walking back in the footsteps of his father. This is also clearly underlined by his love story with two girls representing the opposite positions he is carrying inside. A local girl, Awen, becomes the love of his life and he eventually marries her in the last episode. The meeting with her is visually underlined as a romantic vision, and underlined in a following scene, where Defi’s father, John, takes him to the mountain top overlooking the local valley, a place that recurs with symbolic strength throughout the series. His father plants a Welsh flag on the top: “This is how you protest, not with bombs.” Politically and in many other ways, the rest of the series is about homecoming, about finding a new place in the traditional world against which they have all been rebelling in some way or another. There is an air of both nostalgia and new optimism in the closing episode, very much focusing on healing old wounds and conflicts, on reconciling with the darker sides of the past. As a story of the new generation after the war and the whole expectation of a new society and a new culture, Pen Talar has a clear recourse to more traditional values, perhaps hoping to combine the ideas and hopes of a new generation with reality. Yet it is the more existential and universal values and norms that end up having the upper hand, especially in politics where centre-left positions and caring for the local become more central than the broader global issues. Tradition rules—albeit a reformed tradition.

The Changing World of Women: Call the Midwife and the Post-war Social Revolution The female body is a complex thing, at once fragile and formidable, vulnerable and brave. It carries the seed of our hopes and glow of our youth and

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the weight of our years. It can nurture and tremble, inspire and terrify. It oppresses and protects us, holding within it all what we are, projecting less than we wish to be. It is our enemy and friend, the very vessel of our being. What the body takes it also gives, and what it costs, we never question. (opening voice-over of season 5, episode 3)

These words spoken by Vanessa Redgrave, the voice-over of Jenny Lee (Jessica Raine) opens episode 1 in season 5 of Call the Midwife (2012–). Like all the episodes, this takes place in Nonnatus House, a nursing convent, and in flats, shops and other places in Poplar, one the poorest working-class neighbourhoods in the East End of London. This episode takes place in 1961, but the whole series covers the years 1957 to the end of the 1960s, so it is indeed a transformative period in British and local history. On the visual side we see a women’s gym class, a new phenomenon, and scenes from a maternity ward of a woman giving birth. It would probably be wrong to describe the series as feminist historical realism, but it is most certainly, as the opening voice-over points out, about female life in this period, and about how the nuns and the nurses work tirelessly to improve women’s lives and health. The series celebrates female compassion and power, and we clearly see a development from very traditional family and gender roles towards more modern times and norms. It is a series which from a perhaps somewhat unusual starting point takes us into women’s and working-class life at the bottom of society, just before the big changes of the late 1960s. It is everyday realism and human compassion, the tragic, comic and positive sides of life, through which we see bigger historical changes coming. The series is based on the memoirs of Jenifer Worth, and was almost from the start a major hit in Britain and in many other countries in Europe. Each episode had about 9–11 million viewers, easily matching Downton Abbey, and the first series was the most watched new drama series in BBC history. There are also considerable female creative forces behind the drama, apart from the fact that it is based on female memoirs and takes place in a very female-dominated universe. Most of the episodes are written by Heidi Thomas, Harriet Warner and a few other women (and men) and most of the episodes are also directed by women, mostly by Philippa Lowthorpe, Thea Sharrock and Juliet May. Men are certainly not banned from the creative side of the series, nor from the fictional universe. There are benevolent men in the series, men that behave decently towards their family and women in general, men who help. There

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is however a lot of male abuse in the series: the men go to work in the docks or elsewhere, and they tend not to spend too much time with their families, and to spend their money in bars and brothels. There is also direct physical abuse and violence in many of the families that the nuns and nurses attend, besides all the other family and health issues. In Vanessa Redgrave’s words cited above, the celebration of women is just as clear. It is therefore not totally without cause that The Guardian’s Sam Wollaston (Wollaston 2013) was slightly offended on behalf of his sex and what he called “a painfully slow delivery of naive moral superiority”. On the other hand, to call the series “a radical feminist polemic” or “the most radical piece of Marxist-feminist dialectic to ever be broadcast on primetime television” as The Times reviewer Caitlin Moran did (Moran 2013), is perhaps overdoing it a bit. The series is a strong piece of historical drama about the long journey from a post-war class society with women in an inferior position to the more balanced welfare society. It is no doubt a series that celebrates women as “the seed of our hope”, as the strength that carries families through difficult times, and it is a series dealing very critically with the kind of patriarchy still solidly dominating post-war British society, despite democratic and welfare progress. Still, it must be said that the male dominance and abuse of women is not the only theme where tradition and modernity clash. The world of the nuns and of religion is also a world full of norms and rules aimed at keeping the young within a confined space of what is allowed and morally expected. This tension is also from the start strong in the series, and some of the young women protest or simply leave. In the episode already mentioned, there are two such incidents: a young girl from Wales (Delia) wants to join as a nurse, but her mother is strongly against it, and she is not allowed to leave her family for dangerous London. Here the prioress intervenes and makes the mother change her mind. However, the same prioress is also quite upset when some photos in the local press show one of the midwives (Beatrice, nickname Trixie) in a gym suit performing in their gym. Here rules and traditions on how to behave become restrictive. However, Beatrice argues passionately about how much this means for women’s contact with their body, with reference to the words of Vanessa Redgrave in the opening of the episode. The battle between tradition and modernity is also fought between women of different ages and different positions. The story told in the series is on the one hand a story of intimate female situations, where all sorts of sicknesses and forms of miscarriage are dealt with. At times it could seem like a medical show, but the

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female stories of birth and sickness are part of a bigger story, where progress is gradually defeating these sicknesses and bodily problems. Science, new medicine, new methods of contraception and protection against unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases, all this— together with improvement of the underlying social problems—is a core theme in the series as a historical narrative. Between 1957 and 1965, when season 9 takes place, social life, norms and culture in general change the role of men and women in this special London community. Because of the focus on intimate relations and families, the scenography of the series and the thematic universe is very much linked to indoor scenes and to problems arising from this universe. However, the local scenes are throughout the series opened towards a bigger national and global world: we are in the streets, shops, community houses, workplaces, etc., and at the same time national and global events have a direct impact on the reality of the series. Prostitution, homosexuality, anti-abortion laws, the late development of contraception, all play a role in everyday life. So does latent or explicit racism, especially in a country with an empire that shapes the ethnic diversity of the community. Nonnatus House is twice demolished, and a new tendency towards hospital birth is seen, a sign perhaps of new social policies and of the renovation of living conditions in the East End—the development of a new welfare state. There are global events like the Cuban missile crisis and the assassination of Kennedy, just as the past reappears through the stories of individuals, for instance World War II, the situation in South Africa, or the suffragette movement (surfacing in season 8, episode 1 as a tragic side story). What the series provides is an intense story of local everyday life, centred round a wide diversity of women, but a women’s story situated in a wider social, cultural and historical context with national and global dimensions. As a genre, this is everyday period drama in an almost pure and prototypical form. Starting with six episodes and a Christmas special in season 1 (2012) and continuing with eight episodes and a special in all following eight seasons (two more to come), the narrative gets very close to condensing the everyday duration of a month into each episode. Only soap narratives do this in a more intensive way. What we get is the endless repetition of daily routines, the intensive unfolding of the structures underpinning and defining everyday life in private families, institutions and neighbourhoods, and especially in women’s lives. What the series underlines is how slowly history and society changes when seen from this perspective. The larger historical events do reach the citizens

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of Poplar, but only as somewhat distant media events, or as concrete improvements and inventions that directly affect daily life. We do, for instance, see people react to Churchill’s death and funeral in January 1965 (episode 9:1), but the nurses and doctor Patrick, although they recognize his historical importance, point to the social welfare development as the most important. The changes that really matter and carry weight in the series are social, medical and technological changes that make life easier, as well as the modernization of the neighbourhood. There is a whole array of medical discoveries, including the contraceptive pill, which really improve women’s—and families’—situation. The bigger changes that really matter appear in everyday life, but there are also the more cultural and ideological changes in norms and values. It is no coincidence that the arrival of new forms of music and dance throughout the series function as a kind of signal of the change of times and ways of life (Fig. 9.4).

Fig. 9.4 Call the Midwife is a story about women’s world and the change in the post-war British class society. In the last season to date (two more have been announced) Nonnatus House is threatened by budget cuts. However, the local community and the nurses and nuns unite to fight the council—a very maledominated group. Nurse Franklin (Helen George) speaks out on behalf of the whole community, and they win the battle for welfare and humanity (Screenshot by author)

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Even though the series in many ways is a local, everyday period drama, with special focus on women and the lower social classes, there is also throughout the series a broader attempt to integrate characters symbolizing the British Empire: many ethnicities are included and narrative episodes include visits to more remote parts of the UK (such as the Outer Hebrides). There is a wider attempt at social inclusion, which adds to the series’ celebration of the ideals of a social welfare state, and a humanitarian ideology in general. The series is only indirectly political, however in some episodes the characters get together to oppose what in episode 9:8 is called “this phalanx of men”—meaning the local council. This is a time when the politicians want to cut welfare in the neighbourhood, but after nurse Franklin’s speech presenting the human beings behind the statistics, they at least temporarily hesitate. Throughout the series the narrator at the opening and close of each episode is the one to express the humanitarian welfare ideology behind the whole series. The ending of season 9 is particularly clear, spoken with sparks from Bonfire Night in the background: Love is the constant, whereby we endure all winters and storms. It is the climate in which all things can thrive. Welcome the darkness. Embrace it as a canopy from which the starts can hang, for there are always stars when we are where we ought to be, among the faces we love best, each with our place, each with our purpose, as fixed and familiar as the constellations. The darkness is beautiful, for how else can we shine?

A Changing Europe? Dreams and Realities ‘Sous les pavées la plage (beneath the cobbles the beach)’ was one of the more metaphorical slogans during the French 1968 student revolt. The words seemed to indicate that the 1968 movement and revolt could lead to a softer and better society, a break with a society set in stones of suppressing power. There are, however, also strong element of hubris, and unfortunately, cobbles were not just removed to find the beach, but also in a battle against democratic societies, which in some parts of Europe led to terror. Most historians and political thinkers recognize the positive changes brought about by the young generation of the 1960s, not least the women’s movement, the peace movement and the environmental movement, all of them having a lasting impact on the political, social and cultural institutions of European societies. There was no doubt also a

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lasting influence on the concept of authority in the family and in institutional life in general. But Tony Judt is direct in his evaluation of the 1960s: The sixties ended badly everywhere. The closing of the long post-war circle of growth and prosperity dispelled the rhetoric and the projects of the New Left; the optimistic emphasis on post-industrial alienation and the soulless quality of modern life would soon be replaced by a renewed attention to jobs and wages. In the East the message of the Sixties was that you could no longer work within ‘the system’; in the West there appeared no better choice. On both sides of the Iron Curtain illusions were swept aside. Only the truly radical stuck with their determination to remain outside the political consensus – a commitment which in Germany and Italy, as in the US and Latin America, led them into clandestinity, violence and crime. (Judt 2007: 447)

The series analyzed in this chapter seem to confirm this evaluation of the generation of the 1960s, those born after the war, and their dreams and political aspirations. The narratives unfolded in German and British series tell the same story with variations. They show us a society where traditional family values and norms are gradually shifted from more formal, stable expectations of what parents and children were, of new roles for men and women, a new kind of sexuality, and a break with trajectories of life set out from the beginning, based on traditional norms, roles and expectations. They tell us about social institutions that are reformed and where traditional, hierarchical structures change in fundamental ways. But they also tell us about radical political ideas and attacks on the basic dimensions of democracy that fail miserably and lead to catastrophic events that threaten basic human values. In the narratives dealing with life behind the Iron Curtain, this democracy is absent and revolt against the system quite dangerous. However, despite even radical attempts to change society, it was the social welfare states and the traditional forms of democracy that prevailed—but in many ways reformed. All the narratives therefore waver between more radical, ideological positions and the return to a reformed concept of family life and democracy—not a revolution and dramatic change. One of the most profound and lasting legacies of the 1960s is the liberation of women, and all that it involved for families, workplaces and institutions. A political thinker like Jan-Werner Müller has a more positive view than Tony Judt of the younger generation of the 1960s and what they meant

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for established democratic society. His verdict is that not all their ideas had a positive effect in comparison to the two major developments of the post-war era: the democratic welfare state and the European community. Both these institutional developments have proved stronger, despite challenges from neoliberalism, global capitalism and the populist right. In Müller’s final verdict, he says that 1968 left the political institutions largely unchanged, however there was an effect on other levels, making the effect of the post-war generation largely social and cultural: In the long run the aftermath of ’68 proved that the constitutional settlement was compatible with profound social, moral and ultimately also political changes: the end of cultures of deference and hierarchy, whether in families and universities, and, above all, women (and gays) acquiring power over their own bodies. (Müller 2011: 6)

Looking back on the changes in European societies after 1960 it becomes clear that it was not the radical ideologies and dramatic movements leaning towards revolution and terror that were important—they were mostly just elite manifestations of much deeper structural changes. In the words of Jan-Werner Müller, it was less of a political revolution, more of a revolution in cultures and values (Müller 2011: 198), and one could add also a social revolution changing everyday life, families and the fundamental demographics of Europe. It is no wonder that of all the radical movements from that period it was clearly the women’s liberation movement that helped push the concept and reality of gender equality. Deference for authority changed fundamentally and a new understanding of participation and action through civil society was part of the legacy of 1968. In the words of Umberto Eco: “Even though all the visible traces of 1968 are gone, it profoundly changed the way all of us, at least in Europe, behave and relate to one another, relations between bosses and workers, students and teachers, even children and parents, have opened up. They’ll never be the same again” (Eco, quoted in Müller 2011: 200). The series analyzed in this chapter follow the historical trends: they all refer to quite radical visions, movements and ideas that border on revolution and terror; they all end up describing a broader and deeper social and cultural revolution that changes society, families, culture and to a certain degree also political institutions and forms of representation. They also show the media revolution and the impact of globalization. Media are part of a change in the public sphere of nations, and since they refer not just

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to national but also to global events, the series show us a world of mediatization, where our mentality is shaped by a closer interaction between regional, national and global events. The symbolic and iconic events of 1968 were shaped not least by being broadcast live across borders, and the mentality behind much of 1968 was also that global events far from home mattered. The Vietnam War was the first globally televised war, and it created a strong anti-war movement. The same could be said about the anti-nuclear movement leading up to a future much stronger feeling of responsibility for the globe we inhabit. The cultural revolution in our way of life, in media and communications and perhaps not least in our family structure and the relation between generations and the sexes is the most striking transformation of Europe after 1960. In communist Germany things were different, but even here, after the need for democracy it is the cultural revolution and the basic changes in the way families, generations and men and women live together that seem most important. The welfare state was the other remaining revolution of post-war Europe, together with the understanding of the importance of Europe as a collaborative project.

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Hvidtfeldt, K. (2019). Det er den samme film. Edgar Reitz: Heimat, Die Zweite Heimat, Heimat 3, Heimat-Fragmente og Die Andere Heimat. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag. Jones, E. H., & Woodward, K. (2011). Pen Talar: On-Screen and Off-Screen Narratives of Nation in a Welsh Context. Critical Studies in Television, 6(2), 100–113. Judt, T. (2007 [2005]). Post-War: A History of Europe Since 1945. London: Pimlico. Kellerhoff, S. F. (2015, January 6). So war es wirklich - Tannbach im Faktencheck. Die Welt. Kershaw, I. (2018). Roller-Coaster. Europe 1950–2017 . London: Penguin Books. Krei, A. (2010). Neue ARD-Serie Weissensee mit starkem Auftakt. https://www. dwdl.de/zahlenzentrale/27892/neue_ardserie_weissensee_mit_starken_auft akt/. Kuhnert, H. (2015, September 29). Das Herz will nicht mehr. Die Zeit. Kuzmany, S. (2015, September 28). Die Lezten Privatheimgenisse der Stasi. Der Speigel. Mazower, M. (1998). Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century. London: Penguin Books. Moran, C. (2013, January 26). Call the Midwife Looks Cosy, but It’s Actually a Radical Feminist Polemic. The Guardian. Müller, J.-W. (2011). Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Oltermann, P. (2016, February 17). Deutschland 83 Has Wowed the World— Pity the Germans Don’t Like It. The Guardian. Reitz, E. (1993). Die Zweite Heimat. Chronik einer Jugend [Manuscript of TVSeries]. München: Goldmann Verlag. Richards, J. (1996, March 13). The BBC’s Voice of Two Nations. The Independent. Wollaston, S. (2013, January 21). Call the Midwife: A Painfully Slow Delivery of Naive Moral Superiority. The Guardian.

CHAPTER 10

Europe 1989 and Beyond: Towards a New Millennium

Twentieth-century European history is full of empires collapsing and new nation states arising. But the collapse of the Soviet empire with its Eastern European vassal states happened—measured in historical terms— overnight. The rise and change of new Eastern states, some of which also changed themselves (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and USSR), came surprisingly fast, just like the unification of Germany in 1990. Very few people could have foreseen what happened in Berlin on 9 November 1989, when people streamed through a border that suddenly opened, and Germans from both sides mixed and cheered each other while the border guards and Stasi agents looked perplexed. As Tony Judt remarks: The disappearance of the Soviet Union was a remarkable affair, unparalleled in modern history. There was no foreign war, no bloody revolution, no natural catastrophe. A large industrial state – a military superpower – simply collapsed: its authority drained away, its institutions evaporated. (Judt 2007: 657)

German unification did not come without problems. The unification and modernization of the former GDR were costly. By the end of 2003 the estimated cost was e1, 200 billion (Judt 2007: 643). Money is not everything, and by the end of the century, there was still a very visible cultural, social and political split between East and West. Despite gaining freedom © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7_10

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and democracy, and over time also a considerably better life, the former GDR citizens in some parts of the country felt treated like second-class citizens. The 1989 European revolution was quite remarkable in yet another sense: it happened without civil war and casualties. However, in post-1989 Europe we see a clear split between transnational unification in the EU, a Europe taking a new place in the global power sphere, and at the same time a new tendency towards stronger national and regional claims of sovereignty, for instance in Yugoslavia. Regional conflicts in, for instance, Spain, Belgium and the UK, Brexit and even strong populist, nationalist tendencies within EU nations are—according to Tony Judt—a sign of old national tendencies in Europe behind a new transnational unity: The burgeoning multiplicity of Europe at the end of the twentieth century: the variable geometry of its regions, countries and Union; the contrasting prospects and moods of Christianity and Islam. The continent’s two major religions; the unprecedented speed of communications and exchange within Europe’s borders and beyond them; the multiplicity of fault lines that blur what had once been clear-cut national or social divisions; uncertainties about past and future alike; all this make it harder to discern a shape to the collective experience. The end of the twentieth century in Europe lacs the homogeneity implicit in confident descriptions of the previous fin-de-siècle. (Judt 2007: 777)

Post-1989 Europe is thus on the one hand a positive story of a more unified Germany and Europe, of a wave of democracy sweeping through former authoritarian, communist nations. It is also a story of a globalization in a much wider sense through the rise of digital technologies and networks. But the new challenges behind this global development and Europe’s role go beyond the scope of this book.

Coming to Terms with the Post-1989 German Past: Memories and Realities The fall of communism and the unification of Germany in 1989 is an event with deep European implications. It is however also in many ways a German historical event, and German television after 1989 has dealt with it in much more detail than Great Britain and other European nations—except for the other Eastern European states. In Charles S. Maier’s excellent book Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End

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of East Germany (1997), he deals with the unification of the two Germanies from a memory perspective. As he points out, for a long time after formal unification, Germany was no longer two nations, but socially and culturally they were not one nation either. What once might have been a troublesome and even hated homeland suddenly became a lost homeland, and many did not culturally belong anywhere—a feeling of loss and melancholy. Pieces from the Wall became commercial memories for European and American tourists, packed in a special commemorative box, complete with a pamphlet: “The wall is gone and from this rubble rose a new symbol for tomorrow, an icon for future generations … History is a look backward, a reconciliation of times and lives gone by. Now we are faced with the glowing view before us. It is the stuff of dreams” (Maier 1997: 285). But the problem is that history never disappears that fast, and that the division of Germany and Europe as a whole is still unfinished business and part of our memory. In German film and TV culture the change still lingers on and is a powerful theme in film and television by both former West and East directors. In his book, Representing East Germany since Unification (2005), Paul Cooke talks about ‘ostalgie’ and about GDR culture being a kind of cultural kitsch in German media. However, many more serious television programmes were also made. One example is the documentary series 1989 – Aufbruch ins Ungewisse (1989 – Departure into Uncertainty) (2009) directed by Christian Schulz, a story told with strong emphasis on authentic footage. The series deals with the 1989 revolution as it unfolded in GDR and several other countries in communist Europe. The programme connects the structural political events with memories and stories of people who were part of the events of 1989. We see things both from the perspective of ordinary people and through people related to the system on different levels. The authentic footage is combined with interviews with people about their role and experience. A somewhat similar German mini-series is Deutschlandspiel. Here the historic figures (for instance Mikhail Gorbachev, Erich Honecker, Egon Krenz, Francois Mitterand, Margaret Thatcher, George Bush and Helmuth Kohl) are played by actors, but they often speak and act documented words and actions. The docudrama deals with the rise of opposition in the streets of GDR and in the Politbureau, and the way in which foreign influence gradually changes the conflict between hardliners and those ready for reform.

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Other series focus more specifically on the 1989 event, on what went on just before 1989 and the consequences it had for people inside and outside. Frank Breyer’s mini-series Nikolaikirche (Nikolai Church) (1995) is an inside story from GDR taking place in Leipzig between 1986 and 1989. We follow a family where some members believe in the system and actively work for Stasi, whereas others belong to the opposition. Some of these series follow a more complex narrative involving a play on past and post-1989 episodes, or even taking a more global approach to the 1989 event as it unfolds in several countries. This is the case in the 2016 TV film Jenseits der Mauer (Beyond the Wall), where we follow a couple in GDR in 1974 trying to send their two children to West Germany. Something goes wrong, and they are only allowed to go there themselves with their son if they give permission for their daughter to be left in GDR and adopted. After 1989 the story returns to the daughter and her GDR family and the narrative develops into a complex and emotional story of reunification that acts as a symbol for the whole unification of the two Germanies. One of the most ambitious of these series is the German-European co-production Preis der Freiheit (The Wall) (2019), a very dramatic and emotional story in three parts following three very different sisters and their family from 1987 to 1990 during the last dramatic years of GDR and the early years of unification. We follow three generations of a family almost ripped apart by the development. The father (Pauls Spindler, manager of a factory) is ideologically rather pragmatic, the mother (Else Bohla) is a real ideological hardliner and communist. Their three daughters: Margot is a high-ranking bureaucrat in GDC, the finance ministry; Lotte is very active in the GDR opposition movement; and finally the dissident and West defector Silvia, believed to be dead, but living under a new name in Berlin, and a high-ranking person in the BRD finance ministry, and dealing directly with the reunification process. The series combines the public story of chaos, corruption and deceit, of competing, ideological forces within GDR and BRD, with a parallel development in the family story. The father, Paul, after a long battle for his factory, loses, and he commits suicide. Margot, on the other hand, survives everything, and becomes a trusted and tough leader of a new company negotiating the takeover of East companies by people from the West. As the narrator comments: what is really the big difference between socialism and capitalism?—Margot was always the person that could play the game in both systems. On the more positive side, Lotte and Silvia

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and the children are united, and though a form of democratic socialism is history, they look forward to a better life. However, the disillusioned narrator’s conclusion is that corruption is dominant on both sides of the Wall. There is a line from this to the ‘ostalgie’ mentioned earlier: If somehow, we feel pushed aside by the new culture and society we live in, the past can kick in and turn memories into nostalgic memories that keep us fixed to the past. In the worst case such feelings can turn into strong nationalist, anti-immigrant and right-wing positions.

Reitz’s Heimat 3: A Chronicle About the Change of a Century As is the case with all the parts of Edgar Reitz’s monumental Heimat 1–3, Heimat 3 gives us a very complex and reflexive version of Germany between 1989 and 2000. It tells the story of Germany from 9 November 1989 to the last evening of the twentieth century, but it does so by constantly moving between past and the present time of the story. It tells the story of the last 11 years of the twentieth century in six episodes. The first episode opens on the late evening of 9 November 1989, on the very night the Wall falls. But this unexpected world event is seen from the perspective of a just as unexpected meeting between Hermann (Maria’s son from Heimat 1) who is now a world-famous composer, and Clarissa, a famous singer and his great love from Heimat 2. He has been conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and is on his way home to his hotel near the Brandenburg Gate when he feels the change in the air, the distant noise of happy crowds: “When I walked to my hotel, I felt the enthusiasm, it came more and more close, and I knew that from this moment our life in Germany would change” (Reitz 2004: 15, my translation). Shortly after this he sees Clarissa for the first time in many years, with flowers. She has just performed Schubert, just as he has conducted Schubert. A meeting made in heaven, destiny fulfilled and they spent the night together in Clarissa’s room, and in between making love watch the events on television. The meeting and the events result in Hermann’s personal and general reflections on their life so far, a life lived in international airports and hotels, always on the way somewhere far from home. In Hermann’s voice-over in the first episode we experience the events from this perspective, events which at the same time are coloured by the fact that Clarissa has bought a huge old house not far from Hermann’s home

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town. World events of a new future are combined with personal memories of the past: In this night, in which world history held its breath, I saw Clarissa again. As we were studying, we were lovers, but in the wild 1970s we lost our mix of longing and disagreement. For years we went our separate ways, each of us chasing a career of our own, establishing families and breaking up from families, found friends and lost them again. We lived in hotel rooms, in airports, and we were more confident with this international world than with our own homes … The television pictures of the fall of the Wall, our kisses and hugging in this room, the joyful sounds from Kurfürstendamm – all this came together melted into an image of our retrieved love. (Reitz 2004: 17, my translation)

In the scenes that follow, they drive down to see Clarissa’s new house, and thus in fact also back in time and memory to the Heimat of Hermann. This travelling back in memory is at the same time linked to a more contemporary, historical theme: the unification of Germany and the place of the new nation in a more global context. The house needs to be completely rebuilt, work undertaken by two people from the former GDR, and their story is added to the other stories. The theme of globalization also runs through the whole of Heimat 3, seen from a local, a national and broader European perspective. Aesthetically the series continues in the style of Heimat 1 and 2, and the first six minutes of episode 1 are shot almost entirely in black and white, indicating the historical realism and authenticity of the event described. Images of the fall of the Wall on television with historical footage are combined with reconstructed scenes outside the hotel room. In the end, when they leave to go to the house, the scene suddenly changes to colour. As Clarissa and Hermann move closer to his Heimat spot the visual presentation of landscape and characters turn almost sublime, like paintings. But on Hermann’s first visit to his old village, we are back in monochrome, and a lively, almost documentary quality reveals a local community that is now also involved in global affairs, in this case nuclear sites in the vicinity and the American influence in Germany. The village people seem to be involved in a kind of environmental movement. Once more local and global, nostalgia and a more modern social agenda are mixed. Even though Hermann and Clarissa already in this part find each other and are building a new Heimat, their separate life around Europe continues. We shift between Berlin, Munich, Leipzig, Paris, Amsterdam

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and Zürich—just to mention a few of the places—and in fact their life together happens through letters hastily sent on the way from one place to another. It is quite symbolic of the post-1989 mood in Germany that Clarissa finds the craftsmen to rebuild her house in GDR. She is in Leipzig, and during a concert cancelled due to the continued Monday demonstrations for freedom and democracy she meets Gunnar and Udo, who apart from building the house, also become good friends with Hermann and Clarissa. They seem to have a solidity that is different from the strongly commercialized West, and they and others of their friends simply move down to Günderrode and start transforming the old house. It is a symbol of a coming integration between the two parts of Germany, and the scenes where they lift the old house from its foundations to give it a new life that can last for another 200 years are celebrated almost as much as the fall of the Wall and unification. In one very significant scene we crosscut between Hermann conducting Beethoven in Zürich and the lifting of the house till it floats. The letters between Herman and Clarissa deal with the fact that they cannot continue living as they do; they must have a home and foundations. Furthermore, they both have children they have neglected and left behind (Hermann’s Lulu and Clarissa’s Arnold). As Hermann says, after he has once again missed seeing his daughter: Dear Clarissa! I slowly begin to understand why we haven’t met in the many years since we were together. This form of musician life leaves too little room for meeting and for our dreams of love and being together. The recognition that our Heimat is at one and the same time something I dream of and something absurd in my life, makes me sad … When I think about our dream house, I ask myself how much has to change before we can find happiness there. (Reitz 2004: 69–70, my translation)

They do not really return until they are united in Hermann’s old flat in Munich as Clarissa returns sick from a concert. There are also many changes going on between other characters, where old relationships break up and new are established. However, this first episode ends on a festive note as the new year 1990—the first year in a new Germany—is celebrated from the house in Günderrode to Berlin, and before that in a regional peace demonstration where people hold hands and form a long line for peace and democracy along the whole horizon.

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Dreams and Realities of Unification The title of episode 2, “The World Champions”, seems to indicate victory on all levels in the new Germany, but in fact this episode, like all episodes in Heimat 3, focuses on the cracks in the wall, the huge social and cultural differences behind the two sides of Germany (Fig. 10.1). It starts already in the first episode, where the fat and self-satisfied halfbrother of Hermann, Anton, treats the GDR workers Gunnar, Udi and later Tobi as refugees at the big German table. It continues in many ways in the second episode where the other half-brother Ernst now includes the former GDR in his buying up of things he can make money on, in this case paintings, but also a huge Lenin statue. The statue plays a central role as a symbol of the dismantling of the GDR past, and we follow it on the way to Ernst’s house mounted on a truck. We even see it as the last image of episode 2, after the jubilant scenes from places around both

Fig. 10.1 Heimat III deals with the time from the fall of the Wall in 1989 till New Year’s Eve 1999—with many memory flashbacks. Episode 2, “The World Champions”, celebrates this and the German soccer team winning the World Cup in 1990. Here one of the East German characters, Gunnar Brehme (Uwe Steimle) is thrown into the air for joy, while he is cutting pieces of the Wall, a new commercial memory business

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Germanies as Germany become world champions in football. In Berlin Gunnar is working on getting pieces of the Wall he can sell, still wearing his football shirt with Brehme’s name, as happy GDR people come by and throw him up and down in the air for joy. The GDR characters are asking themselves, are we now all Germans and on top of the world? There is however another side to this story. Hermann and Clarissa’s new house is finished and this is marked by a big party. This however also means that Gunnar, Udo and Tobi start looking ahead and making new plans for their life. Large sequences in part 2 are dedicated to revisiting the former GDR, and the three characters, like other former GDR citizens, are developing new plans. Tobi and Ernst visit a GDR military site under deconstruction, and we are in East Berlin, Leipzig and Dresden. Stressing the realities, decay and dilapidation of these places, those sequences are all shot in monochrome. But just as many other former GDR people are starting up small private businesses, Gunnar becomes a symbol of how small local business and large global business can combine. Together with Warner Brothers in Berlin, Gunnar develops a model for selling very small parts of the Wall in special boxes bearing the slogan “A piece of world history from Warner Brothers”. Even though the transformation of GDR is not in itself criticized in the series, the irony is of course that it is big business in the end taking over everything, also their memories and stories. Walking in Dresden, Tobi is reflecting on this: “People like us make things go wrong ourselves, just to prove in general how we are treated unfair in this world … We were on the right side, and yet we completely lost the elections. Now we are once more having illusions” (Reitz 2004: 191, my translation). The tendency to inscribe the local story of the new house in a much broader post-1989 reality is not just visible in the two episodes already mentioned—it continues through all episodes of Heimat 3. In episode 3, “The Russians are Coming”, this is among other things illustrated by Ernst, who has been in prison for two years in Russia for a protest flight over Russian space. As he returns in 1992, all the press are present in Frankfurt, but Ernst refers not to himself and what he has gone through, but to what people in the East have been through for decades. So, this episode begins with a political, global statement, and the theme of US– Russian presence before and now runs through the whole episode. Ernst brings German-Russian families with him to install them in their old house. This is what the title means: the Russians coming are Germans

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who have been caught in the Soviet Union, but are now coming back to their original homeland. The local and the global meet again. This also happens through the peace movement, this time protesting against 50 years of American presence in Hunsrück, Germany, with a military airbase and nuclear weapons. In a poetic series of images, we see the line of people holding hands stretching along the horizon outside the fields and mountains around Clarissa and Hermann’s house. The East– West symbolism is also very thick when Tobi helps a GDR artist to create a huge installation over a bridge in Dresden with a golden bow and four dangling Trabis. The critical dimension increases in a very strong scene, where Hermann meets a German representative of an American-owned company who have made it their special task to liquidate former GDR factories: first they lend them money and make them expand, but as they cannot survive the competition in the new capitalist market, they buy them up cheap, sack the employees and sell what is valuable to competitors. It is a rough inhumane world and takeover. In Leipzig, Hermann meets the other side of this, embodied by Udo, who is now prospering as an estate agent with his own firm, Restauration East. It is a complex, realistic and rather bleak image of the unification: East workers are building a nostalgic Heimat for Hermann and Clarissa in the West, while the East in many ways is left to the wolves of capitalism.

A Unification Symphony in Many Parts and with Many Voices Far into part 3 of the series, it is the East–West unification that dominates, and the broader local, national and global issues connected to that. Plot lines for explosive developments in the heritage and family stories are also clearly there, in the older, middle and younger generations of the Simon family. But in the last part of episode 3 and episodes 4, 5 and 6, the political and social themes move more into the background, and family relations, family feuds, love and betrayal take centre stage. Hermann tries to make contact with his daughter Lulu, there is a crisis in Hermann and Clarissa’s relationship, and Hermann’s creative energy seems to have dried up. The last part of episode 3 ends in drama and tragedy: Lulu, some friends and her boyfriend Lutz (father of the child she is expecting) are in a car crash that kills Lutz. But worse, at a party after the baptism of his son Hartmut, expected to be the heir to the Simon Optics company, Anton declares war on everybody by telling them that this child is to have

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his whole estate and fortune, giving the mother legal rights till he comes of age. Hartmut is thus punished for wanting to start his own company, and for leaving his wife for the Russian-born Galina. The scene is set for a family feud, a feud acquiring a new dimension as Anton suddenly dies at the beginning of episode 4. This of course—for better or worse—forces the family together. But first relationships go from bad to worse, in Hermann and Clarissa’s case with a de facto break, because she wants to live out her career again, and because this is connected to a love affair with an American musician. In most of episode 4 we are therefore back to episode 1’s travelling around and letters as sporadic communication. In a strong symbolic scene, Hermann is caught in a fox trap near the house when she has left him, and back in the house, an earthquake makes the whole house tremble. Awakening—in also a deeper existential sense—Hermann has suddenly regained his creative powers, and in two sweeping days he finishes his “Unification” symphony and his Günderrode Lieder cycle. Immediately after that, he revisits Schabbach and all the familiar places from his childhood—a sort of reconciliation with his troubled past. This includes a visit to his brother Ernst’s collection of paintings, stored deep in a mountain cave—a scene that immediately activates the symbolic end of Heimat 1, in which Hermann performs and broadcasts his symphony in a similar cave (Chapter 4). The family conflict around Anton and the family factory is solved later in this episode. Hartmut declares he will take over and lead the company into the future. But perhaps more important, Clarissa and Hermann find each other again. It happens over a series of sequences where they are separated in time and space but seem to communicate mentally: in Berlin Clarissa cries in the night outside a bar, because she seems to have lost both her men; meanwhile on his way back from Berlin Hermann is also crying as he listens to Schumann’s Dichterliebe—tears of separation, and hopes of reunification. However, as Hermann later comes home to his house after the burial of Anton, he finds Clarissa back with the words: “I am sick, Hermann. Maybe I will never sing again.” With this ending of episode 4, “Everyone is Doing Well”, the title may be a bit ironic, but not quite. In contrast, episode 5, “The Heirs”, which takes place in 1997, is filled with tragic deaths, not just among the older generation, but also the younger generation, since the narrative in this episode definitely focuses on the children and grandchildren. Clarissa barely survives cancer,

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Ernst commits suicide spectacularly, flying his plane directly into a cliff just outside Schabbach, and this starts a second battle over his fortune. “This is the end of an era,” says the owner of the local inn, after criticizing his fellow locals for their lack of ideological stamina: First they say yes to Hitler, then no, then yes to the Americans, then no, then yes to the Russians, then no—and now they should have said yes to Ernst’s donation of his paintings to a new grand museum, which would have put Schabbach on the map—but they said no! An uppercut to the populistic following the tide. The episode opens with pomp and circumstance to celebrate what is then rejected, hence Ernst’s suicide. But this is not all. Hartmut finally manages to lead Simon Optics to bankruptcy, led by the devil’s advocate Böckle, the specialist in liquidating firms for the Americans and eating the flesh off the bones. To end a tragic story, young Matko, a Yugoslavian refugee, whose mother is still in his home country, and who could be Ernst’s son and thus heir to all his fortune, stubbornly refuses to accept this identity, and commits suicide on the very spot where Ernst did.

The New Millennium: Symbolism and the Dialectic of Past and Present There is a strong everyday realism in all of Reitz’s Heimat series, a careful focus on details, landscapes, places and the relations and psychological dimension of people. But many deeper symbolic layers appear beneath the realistic surface or in the montage of sequences and images that create tensions between what seems to be real, but also has a dimension of poetry and mythology. It is obvious in Reitz’s use of monochrome and colour, where he shifts between images and sequences or just uses colour for specific elements in an otherwise monochrome sequence, creating intensities of meaning. The use of monochrome often signals everyday realism and the past, whereas colours signal the present. However, colours in general also create symbolic and emotional effects, and thus visualize subconscious, utopian, collective and individual memories and experiences (Bondebjerg 1993: 343f, see also Hvidtfeldt 2019: 25). Already in the first episode of Heimat 3, after the arrival at the house, Hermann takes a walk outside, and there in the early morning haze a man in ancient Roman military dress crosses the field on a white horse. A strong connection is made here between the deep historical past and the present.

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The Günderrode house, furthermore, overlooks the Rhine, very close to the Lorelei Cliff. The Lorelei myth is about a woman who by singing attracts men so that they crash into the cliff, referring to both romanticism and tragic drama. Ernst kills himself flying into a cliff just by the river, and it is also the scene of Matko’s suicide, and there are plenty of dramatic love stories which reference the myth (Hartmut and Galina, Lulu and Lutz, for instance; see Hvidtfeldt 2019: 191f). In the visual and narrative dimensions of the series, past and present interact with strong symbolic effect, but this symbolic dimension is also connected with Hermann’s musical compositions, with modern forms often using old texts or forms of music. This is also the case with Clarissa, and apart from that, German romantic music is often used to underline present events. Even though Heimat 3 is about a more global world, about the fall of the Wall between communist and capitalist Europe, the process of healing and unification, and the very strategy for surviving in such a world, it also seems to be about being rooted in a deeper local past and present. The last episode, “A Farewell to Schabbach”, underlines this emotional and necessary link between local and global. The coming of the new millennium seems to create a special reflexive and symbolic dimension, where past and present meet a new future. It is signalled in a strange meeting Hermann has with a 94-year-old man in episode 4, apparently originally from Russia, shortly after the earthquake that jolts Hermann’s creative powers alive again. He looks at the flow of the Rhine, which just like the Volga represents the flow of time that always cleans up the dirt humans create. He comments on the new millennium: “Right now (1995) we are 40,000 hours from the next millennium … This is a cosmic moment … What could happen in those four years? Maybe a world catastrophe we have feared since 1945. For now, it is calm, I pray it stays like that [quoting a Lied by Schubert]: Die Erde is gewaltig schön, doch sicher ist sie nicht (The earth is very beautiful, but it is not safe)” (Reitz 2004: 348f, my translation). What we see here is a very clear example of how deeper symbolic layers of past and present appear in a (monochrome) and apparently also completely realistic setting. This continues throughout the last episode, which opens on 11 August 1999 in Munich during an eclipse of the sun, and thus again combines a cosmic event with down-to-earth events. In this case Gunnar is seeking his ex-wife and children in their new fancy flat, but here he also runs into a lot of people from Schabbach who have now formed the national Schabbach Theatre Group. So local culture from

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Schabbach is now also going national, and on top of that Hermann and Clarissa are also there to perform his Günderrode songs, which means that local is not just national but also international. Central to this episode and to the whole series is also Hermann’s long dream on his way to Rudi Molz’s (the local innkeeper) funeral. Here all the dead come alive and he relives scenes from his own past, such as his mother’s funeral. In a very intense way, past, present and future come alive, linked to Hermann’s personal experience with Schabbach. But there are still very dramatic and symbolic events to come. In Hermann’s dream Rudy talks about Ernst’s Nibelungen treasure, his valuable collection of paintings, buried deep in the mountains in a safe box. Construction of the museum Ernst dreamt about, now supervised by Lulu, continues. But at the end of Rudi’s funeral, loud sounds of an explosion are heard, and all rush to the site, where a big hole can be seen with water coming out and everything inside the mountain seems to collapse. As with Wagner’s Nibelungen, Ernst’s treasure is buried in a closed vault made by nature. As Lulu says, the mountain has taken the paintings back. This is like a sarcophagus of Schabbach, and thus the museum cannot be made. This is one of the dramas, the other is Gunnar’s New Year reunion party, where everyone except Gunnar turns up, because he is in prison for a minor offence. It is symbolic that it is a GDR person who organizes the party, and that all living people turn up. Clarissa speaks of all the memories and dreams they have together. The party reflects the past, but also the national and global diversity gathered here round the Günderrode house (Fig. 10.2). This local–global way of life is what runs through Hermann’s mind as he approaches Schabbach earlier in the episode, where motorways represent connections to all parts of Germany and surrounding countries. However, it is approaching his own Heimat that evokes a more mellow and nostalgic mood: “And there is a rip in my soul: the well-known contours of the Hunsrücker mountains appear in the horizon. Familiar places, family names, road names, the forests, houses and vantage points. You are like a dog remembering with the nose. Stories buried underground, name of dead people.” (Reitz 2004: 542–543, my translation). The feeling of a new beginning has a touch of nostalgia and the importance of being rooted, just like the new opportunities, a new beginning, a stronger unification of the once divided Germany and Europe is being celebrated. The last image in the series is an extreme close-up of Lulu,

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Fig. 10.2 This is the very last shot of Heimat III, in which Hermann’s only daughter Lulu (Nicola Schössler) is looking with sorrow out on the new world on New Year’s Day 2000. A symbolic farewell to an extreme and dramatic century— sorrow for the past and anxiety for the future, but a new generation is taking over (Screenshot by author)

the new generation looking out of the window with tears in her eyes: we also lost a lot, what will the future bring, her face seems to say.

Rough Realism and Dystopian Narratives: British Post-1989 Narratives 1989 and the political and cultural integration of East and West that followed was a historical event of European and global importance. It is however mostly in Germany and the former Eastern European countries that this event dominated post-1989 television narratives. British TV series dealing with the last decades of the twentieth century did not reflect on 1989 as such. Instead they continued the strong realist tradition from the 1960s but bleaker than ever, reflecting the post-Thatcher era with its severe attacks on the welfare state. On top of that, the last

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decade of the twentieth century created television series with a futuristic, dystopian perspective, questioning the positive 1989 moment and the general feeling of euphoria over European unification and the end of the Cold War. Shane Meadows‘ much celebrated trilogy This is England 1986–1988– 1990 (2010–2012, Channel 4, three seasons each of four episodes) is the clearest example of this bleak social realism. It paints a dark picture of deep class differences in Thatcher and post-Thatcher England. It is violent, loud and outspoken, and it shows an England where the line between subcultures like skinheads and rave, drug abuse, sexual abuse, criminal activity, rough nationalism and racism is very thin. It is a partly autobiographical story from the Midlands—another example of regional British drama—about a group of youngsters and their hard fight to find an education, a job, love and a life. Unlike some of the other historical dramas showing us developments of everyday life over time, the political and social context is not strongly present. The series does use opening montage scenes in which there is direct reference to national UK events, and for one of the main characters Shaun, his father’s death in the Falklands War is defining for his life. But the historical atmosphere is shown through the lives of the characters, and the music signalling trends in youth culture. However, Shane Meadows describes his own and his characters’ relation to politics (Fig. 10.3): Politics affected me, and politics has an effect on what some of the people are doing [in the drama], but no one moans about it. I’ve thought about this long and hard. I think everything I’m doing is about making the best of things, and not trying to blame it on one person. I’m much more interested in the landscapes with the people in them, than what put them there. I’m just not politically driven. (Shane Meadows in Harvey 2015)

In that sense, Meadows distances himself from the British tradition of more direct social and political realism, but of course, as the journalist interviewing him points out, the result is nevertheless inescapably political. He puts characters into drama that you do not often see outside soap operas, and the kind of people, the type of neighbourhoods he portrays expose the inner structures of the post-Thatcher class society in its grimmest form. It shows people that are pressed hard on all basic levels, who lack self-confidence, who often take to violence, drugs, heavy drinking or abusive behaviour. Some of them are caught up in the

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Fig. 10.3 Shane Meadows’ partly autobiographical series This is England (1986, 1988 and 1990) is bleak realism and social critique in a working-class region of England, where youth cultures without hope for the future end up in crime and right-wing nationalism. In the 1990 series there is a tiny hope of better times shining at the end of the tunnel. As the image here illustrates, it is still worn-down reality to start with (Screenshot by author)

National Front movement with its aggressive nationalism and racism. But despite all this, there is also a very strong solidarity between the characters, and the many scenes with music, dancing and dreams of another life point to the human potential hidden in this group. Most of the time the rough realism dominates, but Meadows uses lyrical moments, where the music creates an emotional ‘time out’ for the characters. In the last episode of This is England ‘90, this happens more often than anything else, signifying an attempt to sum up: the wedding of Lol and Woody brings everyone together, even the drug addict Kelly, who seems to recover, and they also celebrate the dead and missing. But not all is well: the ending is very open, with a lot of flashbacks to the past. There is not much in the way of hope and utopian dreams in Meadows‘ ice-cold portrait of an almost lost generation. There is not even a feeling of real belonging and a future. The mixed emotions in Reitz’s narrative are at least founded in a deeper historical continuity, an emotional, real

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and symbolic dealing with a past and present—and with a new beginning. In Meadows‘ world, the sharp realism and critical exposure of everyday life on the brink of destruction leave the characters and the viewers with very little hope for the future. This gloomy feeling of life in a specific English region is expanded to a national crisis with global dimensions in political and science fiction like a series of a threatening future. Peter Kosminsky’s Britz (2007, 1–2, Channel 4) tells another but just as problematic story of a divided country. This time it is about immigrants, a Pakistani brother who joins the secret police to fight the terrorism his sister is eventually involved in—and in which they both die in a major terror attack in London. This is partly a contemporary, partly a future-oriented story. In Dennis Kelly’s thriller Utopia (2013–2014, 1– 6, Channel 4), the dystopian future dimension is very strong. The story is about a global company trying to dominate a world hit by massive climate, health and over-population problems. This tendency to deal with national and global present-day issues and by doing that use the future as a magnifying glass of present-day events has found a new and interesting form in the series Years and Years (2019, 1–6, Red Productions, BBC and HBO). Here we follow a family from 2019 to 2024, where events and tendencies rooted in the late twentieth century are seen in the future of European societies. As one critic wrote: Using the Lyons family as a magnifying glass for current events gives Years and Years a shocking immediacy. Over the course of six episodes, it builds up horror about what may come in the next 15 years. But it also brings in inklings of wonder and hope, taking a positive view about what humanity is capable of even in the darkest times. (Miller 2011)

The Lyons family, through whom we experience it all, is a typical multicultural family, with grandmother Muriel as a forceful centre figure. The plot is on the one side about a UK that has left the EU, and a populist prime minister, Vivienne Rook (Emma Thompson), who doesn’t give “a fuck” about international politics, only the local and national, but who is eventually jailed for corruption and fraud. The UK in general seems in complete disorder, but the global situation is not much better: the EU seems to have problems, Trump is re-elected, there is a trade war with China, the US actually drops an A-bomb to scare them, the conflict around Ukraine gets worse, the refugee crisis is escalating, and climate conflicts cause severe problems. On the one hand a highly dystopian

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science-fiction series, on the other hand also a series with a human perspective. In the end people in the family together with others take action against the problems and the dysfunctionality of the system. In a way, this series is a continuation of Dennis Potter’s large-scale farewell to the twentieth century.

Reality or Nothing: Dennis Potter’s Dystopian Far Future Look at the Past At the beginning of 1994 Dennis Potter was diagnosed with a cancer that he knew would kill him not so long after. When he received this death sentence, he was already involved in a project for BBC and Channel 4, a project which in 1996—two years after his death in 1994—became two intimately connected series Karaoke and Cold Lazarus , each of four episodes. It is often seen as Potter’s last will or memorial (Creeber 1998: 190f), and it is true that both series have a clear political and cultural message, and that Potter managed to convince the two public-service broadcasters to show the series on both channels. Potter wanted it to be a manifestation of the power of public-service broadcasting in a time of what he saw as an increasing global competition between big commercial players. The creative team was the same for both plays and they were shot simultaneously as co-productions between BBC and Channel 4. In Cold Lazarus , the second of the two series, visual quotes from Karaoke appear, linking the narrative time in the first with the future time of the second. In Karaoke, Potter plays with fiction and reality in a story where the writer Daniel Feeld is working on a play (Karaoke), which involves a girl, Sandra, her boyfriend Peter and the karaoke bar she works in, owned by gangster type Arthur Pig Maillion. The figures exist both in his fiction and in reality: two different but parallel worlds that seem to mingle in the mind of the writer. Daniel Feeld dies in Karaoke, but before his death he donates his body to a cryogenics lab, shoots Arthur Pig Maillion and donates his fortune to Sandra and her mother, who has had her face ruined by gangsters. In Cold Lazarus much of this play between fiction and reality appears as memories of the dead Daniel Feeld, whose head is now installed in a cryogenic lab 400 years later. In this future world huge global commercial companies control people’s lives and minds and are looking for more material, preferably stories from real life. This theme of control and commercial exploitation of people is already introduced

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in Karaoke, a word that could be a metaphor for using people’s words and feelings for entertainment, or for just repeating the same old popular tunes. But in Cold Lazarus , this theme is expanded to a much more global theme of media exploitation and of ideological control of society. In Cold Lazarus shootings also take place, but now it is a revolutionary organization RON (Reality or Nothing) that is trying to undermine the power and dominance of the big global organizations. In this more and more intense fight Daniel Feeld’s mind and memories become a bomb of reality. He gets caught between those defending past realities and changing their cold, plastic, high-tech society, and those that want to exploit his life’s memories for commercial purposes (Fig. 10.4).

Fig. 10.4 Karaoke is Dennis Potter’s last series, and clearly a testament. We are in the twenty-fourth century, where the writer, Daniel Feeld (Albert Finney, and clearly Potter’s alter ego) is dead, but his head is captured in a lab. Future society, an authoritarian Orwellian kind of society, is short of real memories and stories, and they tap Daniel’s memory. In the end a rebel releases him and at the same time blows the lab to pieces. A powerful message about the importance of memories and reality from Potter—and a dimension of hope (Screenshot by author)

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In this twenty-fourth-century England, the old world is in ruins, and those in power are living in artificial worlds, making money by feeding the masses with entertainment. In the advanced cryogenic lab, led by Emma Porlock (Frances de la Tour) and owned by the decadent Martina Masdon (Diane Ladd), they work intensively to recover Daniel Feeld’s memories. On the huge screen of the lab, they do indeed seem to come more and more alive. As viewers of the series, we constantly shift between scenes taking place in this future dystopia, and Feeld’s memories going all the way back to 1935–1994, the period of Potter’s own life. The reality of the twentieth century and the creative mind and memories of Daniel Feeld/Dennis Potter gather more and more momentum in the series and create aspects of a moving life drama. But it also becomes more and more clear that Feeld is aware of what is going on and is trying to convey the message to the lab team that he wants to be released and die. This wish and the conflicts it potentially creates inside the lab team in relation to Martina Masdon becomes much more explosive when the media mogul David Siltz (Henry Goodman)—owner of UTE (Universal Total Entertainment)—seeks to steal Feeld’s recovered memories from Masdon for use in his television empire. This conflict is intensified when a member of the lab team, Fyodor Glazunov (Ciaran Hinds), who is one of the leaders of the RON movement, decides to intervene. After getting a direct message from the past from Daniel Feeld: “Let me go”, Fyodor systematically smashes the lab and a direct shot to the head of Feeld in his cryonic aquarium makes everything explode. Feeld’s life and memories escape in a gigantic whirling stream of images ending in a bright light as if in heaven. By combining Karaoke and the future-oriented Cold Lazarus , and by even after his death making BBC and Channel 4 work together in the production and broadcasting, Potter was trying to send a strong political message to media institutions in the late twentieth century. It is a strong message wrapped in a complicated meta-narrative, but a message that is hard to miss. It is the same message he conveyed in many of his other series on the importance of reality, memories and independent media strong enough to allow creative freedom. Just a little over a year before he died, he delivered the same message at the prestigious James MacTaggart Memorial Lecture in 1993: I first saw television in my late teens. It made my heart pound. Here was a new medium of great power, of potentially wondrous delights, that could slice through all the tedious hierarchies of the printed word and help to

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emancipate us from many of the stifling tyrannies of class and status and gutter-press ignorance. We are privileged if we can work in this, the most entrancing of all the palaces of varieties. Switch on, tune in and grow. (Potter 1994: 55)

Potter belonged to a generation that was perhaps at first very sceptical towards the new forms of popular culture emerging in post-war Europe, and the global forms of commercialization. He later learned to use television and other new media to address audiences across social and cultural barriers and to use popular culture to understand the realities and dreams of ordinary people. Cold Lazarus is a strange kind of dystopic, historical drama, in which Potter’s worst nightmare has come through, but where the past in the end seems to strike back and undermine a future scenario of evil, commercial media empires. The scenes in the lab, where Feeld’s memories make a stronger and stronger emotional impact on the watching lab team, indicate that maybe after all, authentic and real stories cannot be replaced by commercial speculation. A lesson from the late twentieth century is transported 400 years ahead in time and shows remarkable resistance and robustness. The story of a life, the memories and emotions of our own past and the past in general holds a strong place in the life of all of us. Childhood, family, the dark experiences of abuse and degradation, love, class and social differences, everyday life and war are the stuff stories are made of, and they cannot be made by artificial labs and commercial media institutions. That is the positive and optimistic message Potter sends to us from the other side of the grave: this is a heritage from a twentieth century marred by deep catastrophes and marvellous progress that Potter wants us to take care of.

Between Utopia and Dystopia: Post-1989 Europe Writing this in spring 2020, we are not just looking back at the 30 years since the fall of the Wall, but also the 80 years since the start of World War II, and in 2018 it was 100 years since the end of World War I. The media all over Europe have been in memory mode, trying to look back at two of the most catastrophic wars in modern European history, and one of the most surprising positive events that ended the Cold War and the division of Europe. The very different TV series and documentaries we have dealt with in this chapter add to the feeling that history never really dies, not in our media, not in our public debate and not in our own life. Maybe

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not all historical events matter equally to us as Europeans. Narratives past and present tend to catch national and transnational audiences according to how important historical events are to us in our present-day life. It is obvious that there are many more and much more detailed German and Eastern European television series dealing with the post1989 situation than Western European. On the other hand, some of the German and Eastern European series have reached screens in most of Europe. 1989 was at the same time one of the first really ground-breaking examples of a historic event that played out on global screens. We may not have been there ourselves, but the television images are certainly part of our historic memory bank. We were almost there on television, it was so intensely covered by the media that we could almost feel it. In many ways, this transnational and almost instant mediatization of, for instance, 1989 has helped create a European public sphere, although through our national screens. This is in a way also true for other events from the twentieth century: World War I, the interwar period and World War II are constantly being re-mediated in fiction and new documentaries, they are celebrated and commemorated by new television programmes and by events where leaders from Europe and other parts of the world get together. The mediatization of history makes history come alive, history is negotiated and narrated again and again. As such, history also changes, or rather our view of the past is updated and renewed, partly because you can continue picking up new dimensions and sources on a specific event, partly because the long-term effects of historical events can change. In September 2019, the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the American vice-president Mike Pence and the Polish president Andrzej Duda met in Poland to pay tribute to all the Poles killed by Germany. Steinmeier clearly demonstrated the mentality of Germany concerning its past: “We will never forget; the past is not over. On the contrary, the longer back in time the war is, the more important our memory of it is … Europe is our responsibility. A united Europe will save us. That is the lesson for a century of war, destruction, enmity and hatred.” (Heinskou 2019). What we witness here is a clear shift in political positions and alliances, a potentially new world order directly related to past and present history. The series taken up in this chapter reflect the same dialectic relation between past and present, when it comes to 1989. Reitz’s Heimat 3 is by far the most complex and reflexive of the fictional series dealt with. It

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goes very deep into the past of all its characters, it deals with the history and development of people from GDR and other parts of the communist East, and it takes a very sharp look at generations, classes and gender. There is a certain nostalgia in its way of dealing with the small rural town in Germany and the more national and global modernity, but those dominating the local scene are not all described as good; here also greed and lack of fundamental human ethos is obvious. On the other hand, the local rural culture and history, its stories and songs, are directly used in the very modern, creative work of Hermann and Clarissa, just as the local theatre group goes national. When it comes to the unification, the jubilation and the feeling of freedom in the beginning is later challenged by a feeling of loss and anxiety about the future. Unification at a deeper level takes time, and there are winners and losers. This is in many ways the same story we find in German series dealing with life on both sides of the Wall—very concrete and later just invisible. You cannot just abandon what happened in the past, you cannot just wipe out memories of a childhood, a youth in another country under a completely different system. Dystopian ideas can be found in our post-1989 reality, where even very old historical ideologies resurface, but still not as strongly as in the 1930s. This is England sticks to a strong, traditional realism in a story of a regional society from 1986–1990 massively hit by Thatcher’s conservative revolution. Here a violent racist tendency appears, but the series tell a story of the lower classes trying to survive in the late twentieth century. In some of the future-oriented British series there are huge concerns over climate change and the migration crisis. There is a string of very rough realism and dystopian message of a near or very distant future telling us about the present. This reversing of historical series about the past sending a message to the present is also what Potter in Cold Lazarus is doing. In quite a strong way, he lets memories of a dead TV series writer survive for 400 years and reappear long after his death. But even though he paints an image of a completely dystopian society with total technological control of people, the series is not just dystopian. It is the past that wins, it is a human, a creative mind that prevails and smashes the system, even after 400 years in a deep freezer.

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References Bondebjerg, I. ([1993] 2018). Elektroniske fiktioner. TV som fortællende medie (Electronic Fictions. Television as a Narrative Medium). Copenhagen: Borgen. Republished 2018 as ebook by Lindhart & Ringhoff. https://www.lrdigital.dk/Elektroniske-fiktioner-TV-som-fort%C3% A6llende-medie-9788711965153. Cooke, P. (2005). Representing East Germany since Unification. Oxford: Berg. Creeber, G. (1998). Dennis Potter Between Two Worlds: A Critical Reassessment. London: Macmillan Press. Harvey, C. (2015, September 13). This Is England: Shane Meadows on His Era Defining Drama. The Telegraph. Heinskou, N. (2019, September 8). Fortiden er under stadig forandring. Politiken. Hvidtfeldt, K. (2019). Det er den samme film. Edgar Reitz: Heimat, Die Zweite Heimat, Heimat 3, Heimat-Fragmente og Die Andere Heimat. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag. Judt, T. ([2005] 2007). Post-War: A History of Europe Since 1945. London: Pimlico. Kershaw, I. (2018). Roller-Coaster: Europe 1950–2017 . London: Penguin. Maier, C. (1997). Dissolution: The Crisis of Communism and the End of East Germany. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Miller, L. (2011). Rusell T. Davies’ Years and years is Black Mirror with a heart. The Verge, June 2019. Potter, D. (1994). Seeing the Blossom. London: Faber & Faber. Reitz, E. (2004). Heimat 3. Chronik einer Zeitenwende [Original manuscript]. München: Albrecht Knaus Verlag.

CHAPTER 11

Conclusion: History on Our Minds and the Forms of Mediated History

In his impressive, detailed and in-depth report from Europe, In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century (2007), the Dutch journalist Gert Mak tries the almost impossible: to show us both the incredible diversity of Europe and its successful unification. His main historical narrative is the story of a continent where empires, nation states and regions have been involved in disastrous wars and split by ideological systems. But it is also a miraculous story of a healing, of a Europe coming together as “the most successful experiment in the field of international political institutions since the Second World War” (Mak 2007: 822). Looking at this daring political experiment and Europe’s dark historical heritage, the extensive political, economic, social and increasingly also cultural integration is impressive, and it has placed the whole of Europe in a stronger position in a more and more global world. Globalization is not a new phenomenon, as Mak points out, quoting German writer Heinrich Böll and his reflections on the river Rhine as a carrier of European historical influences (Celtic, Roman, French, German, etc.). The collective and increasingly deeper integration of 28—after Brexit, 27—European nations into a stronger unity than ever seen before, is one of the strongest legacies of twentieth-century Europe—despite Brexit and populist scepticism in some countries.

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This book has traced twentieth-century European history through fictional and documentary television series in especially Germany and Great Britain. The deeper analysis of historical genres in Germany and Great Britain and the sketchier analysis of the broader European contexts shows that there are clear similarities in genres and in narrative and thematic structures, even though the cultural and national diversities are just as important and obvious. National history is different and clearly influences the stories told and the way they are told. It is obvious that the production of European historical drama about the twentieth century increases from 1960 onwards. It is also clear that historical series after 1990 are often produced as transnational, European co-productions, even though they still reflect national memories of the past. This historical development indicates a rise in what I have called mediated cultural encounters in Europe. There is a growing creative collaboration in Europe, with audiences in Europe watching more television from other European countries. The conclusion of this book is in many ways aligned with Mak’s experience of travelling through a Europe with distinct national imaginations and understandings of the world. As Europeans we are united in/despite diversity. This lack of a common cultural imaginary is one of the paradoxes and maybe also weaknesses of Europe. The argument I put forward is that this national and cultural diversity is a potential creative strength, if we can bring it to work on a larger European scale. Mak is right in saying that: “the view Europeans have of Europe is very often a projection of the view they have of their own country”, and that this has to do with the fact that “there is no single, all-embracing community of culture and traditions that binds us together” (Mak 2007: 828). He exemplifies this with the very different accounts he heard around Europe, when people tried to explain, for instance, how World War II could happen. What Mak’s observations in Europe on how people have experienced and tell about the twentieth century is: “The individual nation, with its common language and shared imagery, can always forge the personal experiences into one great, cohesive history. But Europe cannot do that” (Mak 2007: 829). In this book, I have tried to demonstrate that even though there is much truth in this often stated lamentation of the lack of a common European culture, new forms of transnational public spheres are under

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development. The new transnational reality of European film and television production and the digital globalization of all forms of communication are creating stronger networks of co-production, which again lead to broader transnational distribution (Bondebjerg et al. 2017). Social media and digital communication, digital distribution and transnational streaming services have already moved way beyond the traditional national public spheres. What this book demonstrates is that even though the national public sphere is still the most central platform for people living in Europe, a European political, social and cultural agenda plays a stronger role across national media. The same is the case with watching and discussing European film and television across national spaces. Few television series have a broad transnational narrative, although this book has many interesting cases of that. However, national narratives, often coproduced transnationally and seen by audiences across Europe, do create a new kind of European audience and mediated public cultural sphere. Mediated cultural encounters through different national stories, including historical dramas, create a better mutual understanding of Europe in a wider sense. All types of media today are born digital, even our media heritage is being transformed, and with the transnational development of production and distribution our possibilities for mediated cultural encounters (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 23ff) have increased tremendously. The focus in this book has been on historical television drama, and television became one of the most central media after 1960. Television has been one of the most important media for both our individual and collective memory, and although born in a national context, it has also increased the spread of non-national and transnational narrative experiences. Today it is much more important to understand how this new more transnational public sphere is in the making. In this process, our common history and heritage, national and transnational, plays an important role, as this book has tried to demonstrate. History and our past experiences are important if we want to understand our society and culture today. It is important not just to understand our own local and national history, but also to relate to memories and historical narratives from other European countries. History in Europe in the twentieth century is a story of deep political, social and cultural interactions between nations—both destructive, positive and creative. Working through our different and common memories is vital for the future of Europe.

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Mediated Cultural Encounters, History and Memory Social cognition (Hinton 2016; Fiske and Taylor 1996; Zerubavel 1997) tells us that humans in general see and experience the world from an individual and group perspective. This perspective is constructed from the social circles and contacts that define our everyday life, which to a large degree is primarily based on connections to family, friends, work, local neighbourhood and secondly to broader national networks. Transnational networks play an increasing role, but in real life transnational experiences are for most people only related to travel and vacation, although cosmopolitan elites also have work-related networks. Such real-life circles and perspectives of experience are however increasingly influenced by mediated experiences: not just television with its new streaming services, but also smartphones are constantly hooked up for transnational contacts and forms of communication. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Neflix, HBO—to name just a few— are at one and the same time national and transnational. We use them in a specific national context, and probably connect mostly with those social connections we already have, but they extend further than that. Even though our knowledge of people in our national and transnational context may be limited, media provide us with not just factual knowledge (news, documentaries) but also fictional narratives that create mediated cultural encounters. Mediated cultural encounters expand your knowledge of others, other kinds of people, other kinds of cultures, history seen from other points of view. As pointed out numerous times in this book, a fundamental condition for such mediated cultural encounters to happen is that all humans—despite individual or group-specific profiles—also to a large degree feel and think with a universal brain. We are not just all very different, following our different individual and collective experiences, we are also at a deep basic level very much alike. The transnationalization of media production and distribution, the fact that there is an increasing number of national/local or even truly transnational European stories which are co-produced and getting a much wider European audience may in the long run influence our mostly localnational mind. If we are offered not only national series on World War II, or American ones, but also a wide selection of series from other countries, this contributes to a building of a more European understanding of history. Just as social cognition makes a distinction between individual

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cognition, social/group cognition and universal cognition (Zerubavel 1997: 20), our memory is also complex. As argued in this book (see Chapter 2), our individual memory is multi-layered and complex: semantic memory is a kind of factual, learned memory, episodic memory is more personal and related to specific events with high emotional, personal importance, while autobiographical memory is the more coherent life story we somehow take with us through life, and which seems to define who we are and how we see ourselves. Our memory is composed of factual, historical knowledge of the past, and more personal memories, all of it based on real-life experience and mediated forms of experience. In this book, I have dealt with traditional historical documentaries, docudrama, and with the most central fictional, historical narratives. The argument throughout the book has been that traditional, factual and authoritative documentaries are important, but that it is docudramas and fictional narratives that have the biggest emotional impact, and hence are also those that make us more interested in history. The argument is that fictional stories also feed into the factual interest in history. Humans are narrative creatures, and narrative is a way of both constructing and understanding reality in a more coherent way. This involves identification on many levels with central characters and through that different types and groups of people, and it involves recreating a historical world that you can look directly into. Memory is basically individual, it is individuals who have experiences that lead to memories, and mediated memories and cultural encounters are consequently also primarily individual (Barash 2016: 40). Yet, we often talk about collective memories and mediated experiences that contribute to an experience of being a member of a community. Europeans watching the same programme simultaneously in a national context may create a stronger communal feeling, although it can also at the same time create debate and point to ideological differences. Still, mediated experiences such as watching historical series within a similar time frame create common reference points and frames of discussion. When this kind of collective experience takes place outside a national space, and thus becomes a transnational cultural encounter, the same effect can be seen. In this book we clearly see such mediated, transnational encounters, for instance when German series are shown in Britain or in other parts of Europe. It is often said that history is written by the victors, but in the latter part of the twentieth century Germany has tried to tell its own story in ways that have also influenced the rest of Europe. In doing

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so, German film and television culture has not just changed public attitudes and debates about the past in Germany, but also in Europe. In the same way, a broader, mediated cultural encounter in Europe with perspectives from a much broader variety of nations can potentially change our understanding of Europe and European history.

Historical Genres and Twentieth-Century History In this book I have tried to combine cognitive theories of media and memory with analysis of fundamental historical genres and the social and cultural context that influence them. Like many other researchers dealing with historical genres in contemporary media culture (for instance Gray and Bell 2010, 2013; de Groot 2009, 2016), I argue for a growing and more consistent interest in historical genres, not least on television, and for a broader and more transnational input to the mediation of the European past. Traditional, authoritative documentaries are still very popular and have been renewed by including various forms of dramatic, narrative reconstructions. They often also include a broader view of history with everyday life more in focus. The renewal of historical documentary genres also includes a very strong trend in historical docudramas combining dramatized individual storytelling with more traditional, structural history narratives. New trends are also found in historical reality TV, where personal search for the past or forms of reliving the past in a staged setting have been extremely popular across Europe. This documentary development shows a move away from more traditional forms of mediating history. Key words seem to be identification and personification, a more experience-based and narrative approach to the past. The importance of character identification, of narrative and of the emotional of course points directly towards fictional historical genres. In this book I have analyzed and compared rather different fictional historical genres such as biopics, period drama, topical drama, war drama and more hybrid-reflexive series. As I argue throughout the book, there are two main narrative paradigms of historical drama: history from above and history from below. These two different ways of narrating history in principle provide a fundamentally different perspective on history, and even though they are not equally represented in all genres, they tend to cut across genres. Period dramas like the German Heimat 1 and the British The Village deliberately take an everyday and very local position when telling national and European history. They both want to point to the importance of everyday

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history, of seeing how local history is the foundation of individual history, but also how this everyday history is influenced by larger historical developments and structures. As I demonstrate in the analysis, the directors and screen writers behind those two series have explicitly declared their works to be a reaction against historical narratives where the perspective from above dominates. It is important to note that this perspective from below does not exclude the integration of a broader dimension of structural historical events, nor does it confine the narrative around a very small group of people. A different approach to historic reality is found in biopics: here we are in most cases faced with historical developments seen through the life of a famous person. This person can be a royal person, belong to the cultural or the political elite, or it can be a businessman with great influence and power. The perspective from above in biopics and other historical genres is to a large degree about power, about influence in society and the public sphere, just as the perspective from below is about lack of power and influence. The Crown deals with British post-war history seen through Queen Elizabeth II and the role of monarchy in a changing modern world. Die Manns. Ein Jahrhundertroman deals with cultural power in the shape of the author Thomas Mann’s life and work. As the analysis shows, biopics can also narratively and aesthetically be quite complex, not least by contrasting perspectives and use of documentary material. Television genres dealing with twentieth-century Europe have given rise to a widespread tradition of war narratives, but other forms of period drama are also quite dominant. War narratives in Germany and Great Britain—and in other European countries—have many similarities, and the horrors of war clearly beat a more heroic dimension when it comes to both World War I and World War II. There are at the same time differences between English war dramas and broader period dramas around this historical moment and the German ones. In British series like Parade’s End, the decline of an empire and a whole traditional way of life is almost a stronger theme than the war experience itself. German series tend to use a more naked realism (for instance in Das Boot and Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter/Generation War), and a clear anti-heroic approach. German memories of these two wars differ from the British: there is a heavy burden of guilt and many traumas as perpetrator nation to be dealt with, and as I have demonstrated, this piece of historical memory work took a long time to reach a situation where it became possible to tell more direct stories of German history in those years.

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Looking back on the series dealt with, it seems that period drama is the dominant format, and here we find history from above and history from below and many different variations of that. Some period dramas cover a long historical time, others look more closely at a shorter span of time. A tendency towards everyday history seems to be visible in most of the series analyzed. It is also the case with documentaries and docudrama, especially in some of the remarkable transnational, European docudrama series, but we also find it in purely national productions. However, among the most innovative series analyzed are the ARTE-initiated transnational European docudrama series Tagebücher des ersten Weltkriegs/Diaries of the First World War and the very similar Krieg der Träume/Clash of Futures , dealing with the period 1919–1939. Here we see a combination of authoritative, documentary history narration with the reconstructed life stories of people that have lived through this period, life stories based on letters, diaries and other material. ‘Unity in Diversity’ is the motto of the EU and its cultural programmes: the different historical genres I have analyzed in this book clearly show this. National differences and variations appear in historical genres, but at a deeper level they point to many of the same basic human, social and cultural problems, conflicts and experiences. Twentieth-century Europe on television is not just about war, crisis, conflict and traumas, though this take up a lot of space in both documentary and fictional series. This book also deals with series about the gigantic leap towards a better future that Europe took after 1945, and especially after 1960. The period from 1945 to 1989 was of course very different seen from a German and East European perspective, and many German series after 1989 deal with how the Cold War influenced life on both sides of the Wall. However, in most of Europe welfare states and a cultural revolution took place that changed family norms, the demographic image of Europe, the relation between generations and perhaps most important, started a fundamental liberation of women. Somehow, historical series about the period 1989–2000 seem to go into a critical and sometimes dystopian mode: what will Europe’s future be? It is perhaps natural to take stock of the events of a past century and to look ahead, but especially British series seem to indulge in stories of potentially dark futures.

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The Past in the Present Our past is always present in our mind, and it keeps influencing the way we think about our life and our future. Mediated history is an important part of this, it enhances and challenges our individual memory. Historical genres of course deal with the past from a present perspective, and the relation between the past and our present mediation of it is part of the DNA of mediated history. As we have seen, historical drama often builds on documentary material and tries to base narrative, fictional stories on documented historical facts. However, fiction is also an interpretation of a past reality, and in the series described here from 1960 to 2020, we see many innovative forms of historical drama: a greater and more daring form of realism and a tendency to include ordinary people and social, everyday history in the narrative. We see this tendency across Europe, and in both British and German historical drama. However, the German development is probably the most spectacular, since it represents a break with a long tradition, especially in fictional drama, of not dealing too directly with a very traumatic past. From the mid-1980s we do see a much more direct dealing with all aspects of the traumatic German history. As already pointed out, we do not see quite the same change in British series, although the everyday perspective clearly becomes stronger, and with it also a stronger social class perspective. This perspective was also strong in some forms of British historical drama in the 1970s—history never develops in a linear way. It is worth mentioning once again the relation between the more universal dimensions of humankind which we find between the social and cultural diversity as it comes to life in our historical reality and between national cultures. Tendencies we believed were things of the past, because we thought people had learned from history, keep surfacing in Europe. Progress and development are never secured, it seems, when it comes to human nature. In May–July 2020 a story broke in many European media on the elite German military unit Kommando Spezialkräfte (see for instance Hybel 2020). Apparently, parts of this unit had developed an extreme right-wing culture, directly inspired by Nazi ideology. This is not just a German phenomenon, and it is not just the military: extreme right-wing parties with a strong populist national and anti-immigration ideology have developed in many European countries. Have we not learned from the twentieth century, one could ask? Do all the historical documentaries and fictional dramas not matter?

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If you ask evolutionary biologist and those dealing with cognitive sociology (Harari 2011), humans are not by nature evil; on the contrary, we have been extremely clever in building societies over centuries. However, we also fight each other all the time. There seems to be a so far neverending battle between a kind of territorial instinct and a broader social instinct. If we look at the twentieth century, the first half was used by Europeans to try to conquer and destroy each other on a vast scale. The second half has been used to build a European union and to secure peace and collaboration. As this book has argued, if we want to get a deeper understanding of human history, we should pursue both a cognitive, universal path, and a social and cultural path. The historical series analyzed in this book all show how important it is to keep the past present, to learn from the past, and to keep history alive by constantly reinterpreting it. They also show how this process of keeping the past alive must pay attention not just to what we know about the social and cultural dimension but also, by digging deeper into the nature of man, to a much larger historical past. The way this has been done in TV series about the twentieth century is clearly to make the everyday reality much more important, to show us humans in history, but as humans with certain fundamental dimensions not easily changed by the historical development. The circumstances in which they live constantly change and make life easier. By seeing historical drama from different European countries, we are able to discover and experience both the similarities across national borders and time, and the changes and differences. We are, so to speak, tested on our territorial and national tendency to see differences rather than similarities, when both are in fact important.

Quo Vadis Europe? the Twentieth Century and Beyond In the introduction to this book I compared the way newspapers in Germany, France, England and Denmark saw the new twentieth century. It was obvious that conservative and more progressive voices differed, but also that national differences played a role. The general tone was optimistic: progress and general positive development socially, technologically and culturally. None of the newspapers had any idea of the catastrophes lying in wait, and although a Danish socialist newspaper talked about the growing danger of militarism, they also predicted that socialism would be a reality in the twentieth century. It is very hard to predict the future,

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to look one hundred years ahead. This is probably also the case for those editorials around Europe around 2000 greeting the new millennium, a new millennium that came just 10 years after the breakdown of communism and the global breakthrough of digital communication technology. In the Danish newspaper Politiken (31 December 1999) this was the main theme: “During the 1990s information technology and globalization made it relevant to talk about the new global information society … We have witnessed a change which in scale and importance can be compared with the shift from an agricultural society to an industrial society.” Trying to judge whether this will lead to a positive social and cultural development, Politiken points to a doubleness: for the cosmopolitan elites this will be positive, but globalization and technological development can also lead to a decoupling of ordinary people. The newspaper points to the necessity of a political, transnational project that can embrace both groups on a national and European level. This theme is also taken up by the German newspaper Die Zeit, which published a whole issue on the new millennium on 29 December 1999. In the main editorial (Zank 1999) “Der Jahrhundert der Konvergenz (The Century of Convergence)”, the main point is that capitalism globally has been successful, but only to the degree that the welfare state has kept it on a tight leash. Looking at the development in the twentieth century, the forming of the EU and the advent of the euro are seen as signs of this trend towards national and transnational collaboration to control capitalism. The editorial thus rejects neoliberalism and those criticizing globalization as just a capitalist enterprise. This optimism on behalf of the twentieth and the twenty-first century is challenged in other articles, for instance in Otto Kallscheuer’s interview with philosopher Noberto Bobbio (Kallscheuer 2000). Bobbio defends individualism and cosmopolitanism, but is afraid of how humans and societies forget the past and the role of violence and the authoritarian state. The British newspaper The Guardian (31 December 1999) also dedicates a whole issue to the new millennium, and here the perspective is generally more concerned about the future, focusing more on challenges and threats: the bad sides of global communication technologies, the refugee problem, terrorism and fundamentalist Islam, the global battle between the US and other rising super-powers, to name but a few—the coming UK Brexit is not among those mentioned. In this book I have followed one of the most dramatic centuries in modern European history, and one conclusion is that human beings do

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indeed have an unfortunate ability to fight and destroy, but also a more fortunate ability to survive and rebuild. The development of Europe after two wars, with a Europe for decades divided by an iron curtain, made us build a closer European union and bury the hatchet of nationalism and hatred. We have followed this development mainly through series made in Germany and Britain, two of the opposing powers in the past century. Where Germany was earlier a divider in Europe, it is now a major force behind European integration, as well as one of the key players behind the new creative, transnational European production and distribution of television series and films (Bondebjerg et al. 2017: 79f). It seems that Germany has learned from its past, and the German series analyzed demonstrate how dealing with a very traumatic past, how confronting complicated memories, can shape and change not just a national public, but also a broader European one. The UK, on the other hand, seem to be facing a national crisis and a divided public, and this is visible in the many future-oriented dystopian series they have produced in recent years. The UK has always made quality series that travel well around Europe, and in that sense, they are an important creative media power in Europe. But the UK has always been and still is much less actively involved in European co-production, looking more often to the US. As I write this conclusion, it is still uncertain what the Brexit Britain voted for will be like, but it is obvious that a small political majority do not see the UK as an EU nation, and we do see similar tendencies in other parts of Europe and the world. Maybe this book and the story told by European series is a historical warning against aggressive and isolationist nationalism. The national is not in opposition to transnational collaboration—on the contrary.

References Barash, J. A. (2016). Collective Memory & the Historical Past. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bell, E., & Gray, A. (Eds.). (2010). Televising History: Mediating the Past in Postwar Europe. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bondebjerg, I., et al. (2017). Transnational European Television Drama. Production, Genres and Audiences. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. de Groot, J. (2009). Consuming History: Historians and Heritage in Contemporary Culture. London: Routledge.

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de Groot, J. (2016). Remaking History: The Past in Contemporary Historical Fiction. London: Routledge. Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1996). Social Cognition. New York: McGraw Hill. Gray, A., & Bell, E. (2013). History on Television. London: Routledge. The Guardian. (1999, December 31). Whole Issue. Harari, Y. N. (2011). Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. New York: Vintage Books. Hinton, P. R. (2016). The Perception of People: Integration Cognition and Culture. London: Routledge. Hybel, K. (2020). Den heilende elitesoldat. Politiken, Sonday 12. Kallscheuer, O. (2000). Wir wissen immer weniger. Die Zeit, December 1999. Mak, G. (2007). In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century. London: Vintage Books. Politiken. (1999, December 31). Whole Issue. Zank, W. (1999, December 29). Das Jahrhundert der Konvergenz. Die Zeit. Zerubavel, E. (1997). Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Index

0–9 14 de abril, La Republica, 61 23F: El dia mas dificil del Rey, 60 1864, 25, 35, 64 1900 House, 49 1983, 55 1989 – Aufbruch ins Ungewisse, 273 1992, 56 1993, 56 1994, 56

A Abbiss, Will, 109, 110, 124, 134 A Family at War, 210–212 Agger, Gunhild, 228 Akbar, Arifa, 102 Aly, Götz, 221 Amar en tiempos revueltos , 61 Arendt, Hannah, 17, 74 Arndt, Stefan, 178, 179 Assunta Spina, 58 Astaire, Fred, 198

Atlee, Clement, 130 Avnery, Uri, 230

B Babylon Berlin, 18, 177–180, 183, 192, 194, 198–200 Back in Time for the Corner Shop, 171 Bampfield, Andrew, 152 Barash, Jeffrey, 17, 100, 301 Barlach, Ernst, 142, 143 Barthas, Louis, 152 Barton, Joe, 148 Battle of the Somme, 145, 148, 156 Bauern, Bonzen und Bomben, 176 Beimler, Hans, 173–175 Bell, Erin, 13, 49, 68, 302 Benedict, Benjamin, 220 Bennhold, Katrin, 141 Berlin Alexanderplatz (TV series), 170, 177 Bigert, Martina, 66 Birdsong , 155

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 I. Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe, Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60496-7

311

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INDEX

Birgel, Franz, 83, 84, 89, 90 Bleak House, 156 Blitz: London’s Firestorm, 208 Blom, Paul, 168 Bluck, Susan, 32 Boardwalk Empire, 190 Bobbio, Norberto, 307 Böll, Heinrich, 297 Bondebjerg, Ib, 2, 11, 13, 15, 25–27, 48, 49, 61–63, 178, 189, 191, 192, 227, 282, 299, 308 Borries, Achim von, 179 Brandt, Willy, 113 Brecht, Bertolt, 113 Breloer, Heinrich, 113, 115, 118 Breyer, Frank, 274 Brideshead Revisited, 191 Britz, 288 Brockmeier, Jens, 39 Brown, Malcolm, 145 Bruner, Jerome, 28, 79 Brunsvig, Hans, 207 Buchheim, Lothar-Günther, 217 Buonanno, Milly, 56, 57 Burgoyne, Robert, 13, 46, 109, 116, 258 Bush, George, 273 Byl jednou jeden dum, 54 Byrne, Katherine, 94, 97, 103, 138, 139, 159

C Cadieux, Paul, 152 Cajueiro, Maria, 62 Call the Midwife, 19, 75, 101, 103, 160, 261, 264 Cammann, Alexander, 221, 222 Ceux de 14, 62 Chamberlain, Neville, 175, 211 Chaniac, Regine, 62 Chapman, Jane, 206

Charité, 140 Charles, Prince, 126 Chernobyl , 55 Churchill, Winston, 122, 125, 127–131, 208, 264 Claus, Peter, 238 Coëgnarts, Maarten, 37 Colditz, 210 Colditz, Stefan, 229 Cold Lazarus , 19, 289–292, 294 Congar, Yves, 153 Conolly, Kate, 238 Cooke, Lez, 189, 210, 211, 256 Cooke, Paul, 11, 273 Cook, John, 192, 193 Cooper, Caroline E., 152 Cornély, Jules, 8, 9 Coronation Street , 189 Creeber, Glen, 191, 192, 289 Crespi, Silvio, 174 Crimson Fields, The, 155 Crónicas de un pueblo, 59 Crosby, Bing, 207 Crown, The, 17, 109, 110, 121–124, 126, 129, 130, 132, 134, 254, 303 Cuéntame cómo pasó, 59, 60

D Dallas , 82 D’Aloia, Adriano, 29 Damasio, Antonio, 14, 29, 36, 38, 79 Danger UXB, 210 D’Aquila, Vincenco, 153 Das Adlon. Eine Familiensaga, 139, 162 Das Boot , 75, 217, 218, 303 Days of Hope, 189 D-Day to Berlin, 208 Decker, Kerstin, 238 Dedio, Gunnar, 152, 172

INDEX

313

Edda, 57 Eden, Anthony, 122, 127–129, 208 Edward VIII, King/Duke of Windsor, 125–127 Ein Kapitel für sich, 242 Ein Mann will nach Oben, 177 Ein Stück Himmel , 218 Elizabeth I , 29 Elsaesser, Thomas, 77, 80, 82 Erll, Astrid, 14, 28, 31, 38, 39

Dehaene, Stanislas, 37 Denk, David, 238 Der Krieg Meines Vaters , 218 Der Turm, 242 Der Untergang , 112, 115 De smaak van der Keyser, 63 Deutschland 83, 237 Deutschlandlied, 218 Dhoest, Alexander, 63 Diana, Princess, 126 Diary of Anne Frank, The, 93 Dickens, Charles, 211 Die Andere Heimat , 76, 83, 84 Die Manns. Ein Jahrhundertroman, 17, 109, 110, 116, 118, 119, 121, 124, 134, 303 Die Neue Zeit , 177 Dierbach, Alexander, 239 Die SS: Eine Warnung der Geschichte, 215 Dijck, José van, 14, 31–33, 79 Dillon, Robert, 144 Döblin, Alfred, 170, 177 Dönhoff, Marion, 79 Dönitz, Karl, 111 Dotzer, Ulrike, 152 Downton Abbey, 25, 26, 68, 101, 138, 160, 261 Dresden, 219, 220 Duda, Andrzej, 293 Duin, Maarten van der, 152 Dunkirk, 18, 206, 208, 209, 211, 213 Duret, Laurtent, 152 Dvoráková, Tereza, 54 Dynasty, 82

F Fallada, Hans, 170, 176, 177 Fassbinder, Rainer Werner, 69, 177 Ferrante, Else, 58 Finn, Elizabeth, 207 First World War, 3, 9, 26, 52, 62–64, 66, 67, 84, 98, 101, 137–146, 148–152, 155, 158, 161, 162, 167, 168, 171, 176, 183, 188, 194, 203, 204, 243, 292, 293, 303 First World War. An Historical insight , 145 Fiske, Susan, 300 Flannery, Peter, 256 Flügge, Manfred, 120 Ford, Ford Maddox, 156, 160 Formby, George, 207 Forsyte Saga, The, 68, 138 Fortunata y Jacinta, 60 Foy, Claire, 122, 123, 129 Franco, Francesco, 56, 59, 60 Fromm, Friedemann, 238 Frost/Nixon, 123 Fuller, Graham, 193

E Ebbrecht, Tobias, 17, 115, 116, 205, 219 Eco, Umberto, 267

G Galperin, Leonid, 208 Geisler, Michael E., 104, 105 Geyer, Michael, 66, 67

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INDEX

Giacomo, Salvatore di, 58 Gilbert, 76, 100 Giordana, Marco Tullio, 59 Godzic, Wieslaw, 53 Goebbels, Joseph, 111 Goffman, Erwin, 74 Goldfarb, Jeffrey, 17, 73, 74 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 273 Göring, Hermann, 111, 150 Gottschall, Jonathan, 28, 29, 31, 32, 79 Gottwald, 54 Goupil, Frederic, 171 Gray, Ann, 13, 49, 68, 302 Great War, The, 144, 145 Grodal, Torben, 28 Groot, Jerome, 13, 51, 302 Groskop, Viv, 229

H Haidt, Jonathan, 228, 229 Handloegten, Henk, 179 Hanna, Emma, 144, 145 Hansen, Kim Toft, 35, 65, 104 Hansen, Miriam, 104 Harari, Y.N., 306 Hart, Basil L., 144 Harvey, Chris, 286 Harvey, P.J., 148 Hauge, Hans, 160 Heimat 1, 17, 76, 77, 80–82, 84–91, 93, 103, 105, 246, 251, 253, 275, 276, 281, 302 Heimat 2, 18, 76, 246, 250, 252, 253, 275, 276 Heimat 3, 19, 246, 250, 251, 253, 275, 276, 278, 279, 282, 283, 293 Heinskou, Nilas, 293 Hempel, Heike, 244, 245 Hess, Annette, 238

Hess, Annika, 244 Hess, Rudolph, 111 Hickethier, Knut, 69, 162 Hiersbiegel, Oliver, 112 Highmore, Ben, 17, 74 Higson, Andrew, 110, 134 Himmler, Heinrich, 111 Hindenburg, Paul van, 179 Hinton, Perry R., 300 Hirst, William, 33 History of Britain, A, 29, 49 Hitler – a film from Germany, 217 Hitler – Eine Bilanz, 110 Hitler’s Henchmen, 111 Hitler, Adolf, 114, 150, 224 Hjort, Anne, 66 Hobsbawm, Eric, 3, 4, 9–11, 167, 170, 233–236 Hofmann, Nico, 215, 218–221, 244 Höhne, Heinz, 79 Holmes, Alex, 208, 209 Holocaust, 27, 66, 78, 89, 103, 100, 114, 116, 205, 215, 216, 222, 241 Holocaust (TV series), 27, 77–82, 93, 103, 205, 220 Honecker, Erich, 142, 273 Höss, Rudolf, 173–175 Humle, Kristina, 66 Hvidtfeldt, Karen, 249–252, 282, 283 I Infante, Francesca, 101 In Vlaamse Velden, 63 Isaacs, Jeremy, 145, 151 J Jackson, Peter, 146, 147 Jamet, Marcel, 174, 175 Jane Eyre, 156 Jarausch, Konrad, 66, 67

INDEX

315

Jarecka, Ursula, 53 Jeffrey Richard, 258 Jenseits der Mauer, 274 Jézéquel, Jean Pierre, 62 Jones, Elin H., 149, 259 Jones, Ellen E., 148 Judt, Tony, 11, 12, 233–236, 243, 266, 271, 272 Jünger, Ernst, 153

Krieg der Träume/Clash of Futures , 18, 151, 199, 200, 304 Krigsdøtre, 65, 66 Ku’Damnm 56/59, 244 Kuhnert, Heike, 238 Kuhr, Elfriede A., 153 Kurzke, Hermann, 116 Kutscher, Volker, 178 Kuzmany, Stefan, 238

K Kadelbach, Philipp, 219, 220 Kaes, Anton, 27, 78–80, 103–105 Kallscheuer, Otto, 307 Kampfname: Willy Brandt , 113 Kansteiner, Wulf, 17, 27, 80, 81, 93, 110, 111, 143, 205, 214–217, 219 Karaoke, 19, 289–291 Kasser, Karl, 153 Kellerhoff, Sven, 241 Kelly, Dennis, 213, 288 Kennedy, John F., 129, 251, 259, 263 Kermode, Mark, 147 Kershaw, Ian, 4, 11, 17, 149, 150, 161, 168, 203, 235, 236 Kieslowski, Krzystztof, 53 King George VI, 125, 211 Kiss, Miklos, 37 Kleiner Mann was nun, 170, 176 Knopp, Guido, 110, 149, 215–217, 219 Koch, Sebastian, 113, 119 Kohl, Helmuth, 142, 273 Kolbe, Georg, 142 Kollwitz, Käthe, 153 Kosminsky, Peter, 288 Krøniken, 25, 65 Krause, Tilman, 121 Kravanja, Peter, 37 Krei, Alexander, 238

L Lalou, Serge, 152 La Maison des bois , 62 La meglio gioventù, 59 Land Girls , 210, 212 Landsberg, Alison, 14, 27, 35, 50, 51 Langley, Jimmy, 208 Lanzmann, Claude, 217 La Piovra, 56 Last King of Scotland, The, 123 Lawrence, Ben, 102 Le Comte de Monte Cristo, 62 Leggott, James, 68, 76 Leick, Roman, 229 Leningrad, 208 Les feux de Saint Jean, 62 Liebesau. Die andere Heimat , 75, 242 Lietzmann, Sabina, 79 Lipstick on your Collar, 193, 254 Livingstone, Ken, 101 Loach, Ken, 189–191, 256 Long, Joshua, 55 Long, Paul, 190 Lowthorpe, Philippa, 261 M MacGregor, Neil, 142, 143, 170, 200 MacNally, Karin, 66 Macnaughtan, Sarah B., 152 Maier, Charles S., 272, 273 Mak, Gerd, 297, 298

316

INDEX

Mandela, Nelson, 259 Mangan, Lucy, 122, 123 Manier, David, 33 Mann, Erika, 119 Mann, Heinrich, 119, 120 Mann, Klaus, 113, 117, 119–121 Mann, Thomas, 17, 109, 113, 116–121, 133, 303 Marcela, 54 Margalit, Avishai, 17, 82, 83 Margaret, Princess, 122, 126 Mary, Queen, 258 Matador, 25, 34, 35, 65 Matus, Ksenia, 208 May, Juliet, 261 Mazower, Mark, 9–11, 165–167, 233 Meadows, Shane, 19, 286–288 Meck, Mandy, 110 Michaelis, Bo Tao, 160 Miller, Lis S., 288 Mirren, Helen, 29 Mitford, Unity, 173, 175 Mitterand, François, 273 Model, Walther, 150 Moffat, Peter, 17, 76, 94, 95, 101–103, 106 Moïsi, Dominique, 142 Molkte, Johannes von, 78 Monk, Claire, 110 Monk, Egon, 69, 176 Montague, Charles E., 153 Moore, Roland, 213 Moran, Caitlin, 262 Morgan, Peter, 122, 123 Mr. Selfridge, 139 Müller, Jan-Werner, 266, 267 Musial, Maciej, 55 Mussolini, Benito, 57, 174, 194 My Brilliant Friend, 58 N Nasser, Gamel A., 128, 129

Negri, Pola, 173, 174 Nichols, Bill, 48 Nikolaikirche, 274 Nuit et brouillard, 217 Nybyggarna, 65 O Oltermann, Philip, 237 Ottesen, Eline, 173, 174 Our Friends in the North, 19, 255, 256, 258 Our World War. Real Lives, Real War, 147 P Palmer, Jerry, 11, 143, 144, 161 Parade’s End, 17, 156, 303 Passing Bells, The, 155 Pastor-Gonzáles, Victoria, 60, 61 Patton, George, 150 Peaky Blinders , 190 Pence, Mike, 293 Pennies From Heaven, 18, 191–193, 195, 196, 198–200 Pen Talar, 255, 258, 260 People’s Century, 146, 207 Perlasca un eroe italiano, 57 Peter, Jan, 152, 171, 173 Petersen, Wolfgang, 217 Pham, Annika, 66 Phelps, Sarah, 155 Philip, Prince, 129 Picqueray, May, 174 Piece of Cake, 210, 212 Pilarczyk, Hannah, 154 Pireaud, Marie, 153 Pireaud, Paul, 153 Podlubny, Stepan, 175 Potter, Dennis, 18, 19, 69, 191–196, 198–200, 254, 289–292, 294 Preis der Freiheit , 274

INDEX

Q Queen Elizabeth II, 17, 109, 122, 129, 133, 303 Queen, The, 123 Quoc, Nguyen Ai (Ho Chi Minh), 174 R Rasmussen, Anita Brask, 115 Read, Donald, 5 Redgrave, Vanessa, 261, 262 Redvall, Eva N., 25 Reitz, Edgar, 16, 18, 19, 27, 69, 76–85, 87–94, 103–106, 191, 242, 246, 247, 249–251, 253, 275–277, 279, 282–284, 287, 293 Resistance, 62 Resnais, Alain, 217 Richter, Roland, 219 Rippert, Ulrich, 121 Rogers, Ginger, 198 Rohrbach, Günther, 79 Rollins, Peter C., 13 Rondas, Pierre, 207 Rosenstone, Robert, 11, 13, 30, 45 Rowbotham, Sheila, 141 Roxborough, Scott, 178 S Salamander, 63 Salkeld, Luke, 101 Saving Private Ryan, 209 Schacter, Daniel, 14, 38 Schama, Simon, 29, 49 Schindler’s List , 93, 116 Schlesser, Jean-Louis, 171 Schmidt, Thomas E., 188 Scholl, Sophie, 112 Schönpflug, Daniel, 142, 169 Schubert, Franz, 283

317

Schulz, Christian, 273 Schumann, Robert, 281 Schuster, Jürgen, 220 Schwendemann, Heinrich, 114 Second World War, 62, 67, 89, 113, 141, 142, 150, 155, 162, 171, 173, 191, 203–211, 213, 215, 217, 222, 227–229, 233, 239, 243, 263, 292, 293, 297, 298, 300, 303 Secret Army, 210 Sensacje XX wieku, 53 Sharrock, thea, 261 Shoah, 217 Shostakovich, Dimitrij, 208 Sichterman, Barbara, 205 Sims, David, 132 Singing Detective, The, 191, 192 Smith, Harry L., 132, 133 Smith, Paul Julian, 59, 60 Smith, Rupert, 114 Soboczynski, Adam, 221, 222 Sophie Scholl: Die letzen Tage, 112 Soukromé stoleti, 54 Speer, Albert, 111, 113–115 Speer und Er, 114 Spoils of War, The, 210 Stawka wiekszu niz zycie, 53 Steemers, Jeanette, 26, 68 Steinbach, Peter, 75, 92, 242 Steinberg, Stefan, 121 Steinmeier, Frank-Walter, 293 Stevens, C., 101 Stone, Rob, 11 Stoppard, Tom, 69, 156, 159 Streep, Meryl, 78 Stresemann, Gustav, 179 Ströbele, Carolin, 172 Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen, 217 Systrar, 66

318

INDEX

T Taddeo, Julie Anne, 68, 76 Tagebücher des ersten Weltkriegs/Diaries of the First World War, 149, 151, 162, 172, 304 Tannbach – Schicksal eines Dorfes , 239 Taramkliva, Elena, 208 Taylor, Shelley E., 300 Thatcher, Margaret, 257, 259, 273, 285, 286, 294 They shall not grow old, 146 This is England 86/88/89, 19, 286, 294 Thomas, Heidi, 261 Thulin, Maria, 66 Todesspiel , 113 Townsend, Peter, 122 Trestiková, Helena, 54 Tricet priapadu majora Zerman, 54 Troell, Jan, 65 Trump, Donald, 288 Tykwer, Tom, 69, 179 U Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter, 18, 219, 220, 228, 303 Un village français , 62 Upstairs, Downstairs, 26, 68, 87, 94, 188 Utopia, 288 Utvandrarna, 65 V Vahland, Kia, 229 Vår tid er nu, 65 Vickers, Hugo, 123 Village, The, 17, 94, 96–98, 101–103, 106, 188, 302 Vyprávej , 54

W Wagner, Richard, 284 Warner, Harriet, 261 Warship, 210 Waugh, Evelyn, 191 Weissensee, 18, 238 Weissmann, Elke, 68 Weltenbrand, 149, 162 West, Gabrielle, 153 Westphal, Horst, 207 Weyand, Armin, 104 When the Boat Comes in, 189, 190 White Ribbon, The, 102 White, Susanna, 156 Who do you think you are?, 49 Wiesel, Eli, 78 Wiesenthal, Simon, 111 William, Jennifer M., 17, 111, 112 Winterberg, Youry, 152 Wire, The, 190 Witte, Karsten, 104 Wojchiekowski, Hannah, 29 Wollaston, Sam, 103, 148, 230, 262 Wood, Nancy, 214 Woodward, Kate, 259 World at War, the, 206 World War One: The People’s Story, 30 Worth, Jennifer, 261

Y Years and Years , 288 Yulova, Marina, 153

Z Zank, Wolfgang, 307 Zeffel, Margaret, 207 Zerubavel, Eviatar, 33, 34, 300, 301 Zhakarova, Lyubov, 208