Skip to content
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL DOMESTIC ORDERS $35+
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL US ORDERS $35+
East German Film and the Holocaust - Paperback | Diverse Reads

East German Film and the Holocaust

Availability:
in stock, ready to be shipped
$34.95 - $34.95
$34.95
$47.99
$47.99 - $47.99
$47.99
East Germany’s ruling party never officially acknowledged responsibility for the crimes committed in Germany’s name during the Third Reich. Instead, it cast communists as both victims of and victors over National Socialist oppression while marginalizing discussions of Jewish suffering. Yet for the 1977 Academy Awards, the Ministry of Culture submitted Jakob der Lügner – a film focused exclusively on Jewish victimhood that would become the only East German film to ever be officially nominated. By combining close analyses of key films with extensive archival research, this book explores how GDR filmmakers depicted Jews and the Holocaust in a country where memories of Nazi persecution were highly prescribed, tightly controlled and invariably political.

ISBN-13: 9781805391456

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Berghahn Books

Publication Date: 01-05-2024

Pages: 264

Product Dimensions: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.55d

Series: Film Europa #22

Elizabeth Ward is a Lecturer in German Studies and specializes in German film. She is a lecturer at the Europa-Universityät Viadrina and a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions research fellow at the Universityät Leipzig. She has published on East German cinema, contemporary Holocaust film and twenty-first century German cinema. She is the co-editor of Entertaining German Culture Contemporary Transnational Television and Film (Berghahn Books, 2023).

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations and Acronyms

Introduction

Part I: 1945–1949

Chapter 1. Picking Up the Pieces. Kurt Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten

Part II: 1949–1961

Chapter 2. The German Democratic Republic’s Ambassador of Good Will. Konrad Wolf’s Sterne
Chapter 3. Reframing Victimhood. Konrad Wolf’s Professor Mamlock

Part III: 1961–1971

Chapter 4. Crimes of the Past and Politics of the Present. Wolfgang Luderer’s Lebende Ware
Chapter 5. ‘In Babelsberg, Nothing New’. Gottfried Kolditz’s Das Tal der sieben Monde

Part IV: 1971–1980

Chapter 6. New Encounters on Well-Worn Paths: Kurt Jung-Alsen’s Die Bilder des Zeugen Schattmann
Chapter 7. Returning to the Past: Frank Beyer’s Jakob der Lügner

Part V: 1980–1989

Chapter 8. Shifting Identities. Michael Kann’s Stielke, Heinz, fünfzehn
Chapter 9. Calendar-Based Shame? Siegfried Kühn’s Die Schauspielerin

Conclusion

Filmography
Bibliography
Index