German History and Film History, 1945-1963

German History and Film History, 1945-1963

A Brief Overview of Postwar German History, 1945-196330 April 1945Hitler commits suicide in his Berlin bunker.

9 May 1945

Unconditional surrender of the German Reich to the Allied

forces. Cease fire is declared.

1945-1946

Nuremberg war trials: Allied lawyers hold twenty-four Nazi

leaders responsible for war crimes. Further trials will

follow.

1949

The official establishment of two Germanies, one under

Allied control in the West, the Federal Republic of

Germany (Bundesrepublik Deutschland or BRD), the other

under Soviet aegis in the East, the German Democratic

Republic (Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR).

1949 - 1963

Konrad Adenauer, West German Chancellor, is the

dominant political figure. Under his government

West Germany will join the North Atlantic Treaty

Organization (NATO) in 1954. The BRD becomes a fully

sovereign state in 1955; it votes to rearm in 1956.

In response the Warsaw Pact is established in May

1956; the division of Europe into two power blocks is

complete.

West Germany will prosper in a remarkable recovery,

the so-called "economic miracle" (Wirtschaftswunder).

The Adenauer era is a period of Cold War (the Berlin

Wall is erected on 13 August 1961), intense anti-

Communism, of reconstruction (West Germany is rebuilt

quickly) and restoration.

Postwar German Film History1946 - 1949

Rubble films (Trmmerfilme). Characteristics:

--images of ruins from decimated German cities;

--realistic location shooting with some measure of Expressionism (esp. in The Murderers Are Among Us);

--an abiding fatalism: characters are victims of a larger destiny beyond their control. They are helpless cogs in the wheels of "the times" (cf. Helmut Kutner's In Those Days);

--shellshock and trauma (often dislosed in flashbacks);

--clear lines are drawn between the guilty few and the innocent many;

--a "Zero Hour" (Stunde Null) ideology: the belief that the past could be left behind and that Germany could begin anew;

--key titles:

Die Mrder sind unter uns/The Murderers Are Among Us (1946)

Irgendwo in Berlin/Somewhere in Berlin (1946)

In jenen Tagen/In Those Days (1947)

...und ber uns der Himmel/And the Sky Above Us (1947)

Ehe im Schatten/Marriage in the Shadows (1947)

Germania, anno zero/Germany in year Zero (1947)

Film ohne Titel/Film without a Title (1947)

Zwischen gestern und morgen/Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (1947)

Lang ist der Weg/The Long Road (1948)

Berliner Ballade/Berlin Ballad (1948)

Liebe 47/Love 47 (1949)

Der Ruf/The Appointment (1949)

Rotation (1949)

Nachtwache/Night Watch (1949).

1949 - 1963

Films of the Adenauer era. General characteristics:

--in the main popular productions for the German domestic market, genre fare with an escapist impulse (homeland films, period pieces, literary adaptations, movies with exotic foreign settings);

--the function of an older generation (most filmmakers worked under Goebbels during the Third Reich);

--there are no real international figures and there is a dearth of formal experiments, alternative perspectives and young talents;

--a cinema that affirms the status quo and rarely poses difficult questions;

--pursuit of a displaced dialogue with German history, a skirting of pressing issues.

West German films of the 1950s rarely concentrate on the present. We find few movies that confront contemporary realities like

--American occupation;

--the Nuremberg trials;

--the division of Germany;

--the persistence of the past:

--the way in which many prominent Nazis continued their careers in public life without interruption;

--the manner in which certain aspects of the German past continued in

the present.

Few films made during the Adenauer era directly address the Third Reich and pose questions regarding moral culpability and collective responsibility. Instead one finds:

--diversionary tactics;

--conciliation rather than indictment;

--an identification with innocent sufferers (who are invariably German);

--a lack of concrete historical and political analysis;

--anti-war films that in many cases serve to justify Germany's rearmament.

What is not to be found in the films of the Adenauer era?

--acknowledgment of Nazi anti-Semitism and the mass consensus that accompanied it;

--concentration camps and the Holocaust;

--recognition of Hitler's mass appeal;

--analyses of National Socialism's seductive powers and its enthusiastic followers;

--awareness that the Third Reich was a function of an entire nation and not just a demonic tyrant and his mad minions.