We & Film
Part 5

3,190 words

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

There are only a few films directly about the National Socialist party – that is, about “the Nazis”. The first of these, SA Mann Brand (1933, dir. Franz Seitz), appeared in the spring after the seizure of power and, coming from a Munich director of light comedies, was a purely opportunistic endeavor that did not even appeal to members of the SA.

The second openly political film, Hitlerjugend Quex (1933, dir. Hans Steinhoff), subtitled “a film about the self-sacrifice of German youth,” hit theatres in September and was based on the true story of Herbert Norkus, a boy who was killed by communists in January 1932 while distributing leaflets. The main character comes from a working-class, communist background, but to his father’s horror, he is drawn to the Hitler Youth, which costs him his life. From a technical point of view, the film is still considered a success today. The dramaturgy oscillates between tension and emotion. The characters, including the communists, act ambivalently, and the tone avoids simplistic moralizing. Although one-dimensional, it is not at all superficial, unlike Seitz’s previous attempt. The social motif is handled credibly; the Hitler Youth are a clear alternative to the boy’s milieu, a way out to a nobler destiny, for which they choose a form according to their nature – namely, a uniform and a flag. [1] When, in one scene, the leader of the Communist Youth tells him that they are fighting for important things, “against hunger, poverty, and for justice,” the hero, now a member of the Hitler Youth, proudly replies, “So are we, but we also have a flag.” [1b] Indeed, the film’s marching song, with lyrics by Baldur von Schirach, which becomes the “battle hymn” of Hitler’s youth, sings: “Und die Fahne führt uns in die Ewigkeit!/Ja, die Fahne ist mehr als der Tod!” (The banner leads us to eternity, yes, the banner greater than death!). This sounds almost like a rediscovery of the original Aryan meaning of the Indian doctrine of karma. And the martyr’s death itself contributes to the founding, new myth—that is where its value and meaning lie (from the perspective of secular bourgeois individualism, of course, a meaningless, “useless” end). The film also shows the NSDAP as the “party of the young,” which it was at the time [2], and opens it up to stray communists in the spirit of bringing them closer together, and then, as much as possible, uniting the nation across social classes.

The third and final film of this kind, Hans Westmar (1933, directed by Franz Wenzler), premiered in December of the same year. This time, the main character is based on Horst Wessel, a militant SA member and author of the song Die Fahne hoch (later better known as the Horst-Wessel-Lied), who was killed by communists in 1930. Wessel, a failed law student, was intelligent, aggressive, and charismatic, whereas the film’s Westmar rustles paper[3]. After the preview, Minister Goebbels therefore ordered the film to be reworked. However, the reshooting of several scenes and the cutting of others did not particularly benefit the final result, and in the end, no one was completely satisfied with it. The film’s awkward tone probably had a significant influence on the fact that no other political works of this explicit nature were made in the genre of feature film in the Reich. After the SA was suppressed during the Night of the Long Knives, Westmar was not mentioned again, let alone Brand. In the democratic Federal Republic of Germany, however, all three remain on the index to this day—they may only be screened with “expert commentary” and followed by a “discussion” as so-called Vorbehaltfilm, i.e., films subject to a special “restricted” regime.

This naturally also applies to what is referred to as “anti-Semitic” film, which is now being presented as the main hallmark of “Nazi cinema.” This is definitely not a genre. Just like films “about Nazis,” there are only three feature films “about Jews” or “against Jews,” one of which has hints of a docudrama. These are: Die Rothschilds (1940, dir. Erich Waschneck), Jud Süss (1940, dir. Veit Harlan) and Der ewige Jude (1940, dir. Fritz Hippler).[4]

The first tells of the beginnings of the rise to power of a family that, from 1815 – after the final defeat of Napoleon, representative of the old-style “empire” – introduced a new trend in international banking. In just a decade, by 1825, more “securities” were issued than in the entire previous century, which is, in a way, undoubtedly a key factor in the birth of “our” modern era. [5] Perhaps it is also a reaction to the film The House of Rothschild (1934, dir. Alfred L. Werker), which was produced by D. F. Zanuck and J. Schenck’s 20th Century Pictures, which in turn was financed by Morgan and Rockefeller’s Chase National Bank (CNB) from 1933. The German version of the story is just as one-dimensional as the American one, but not offensively simplistic. Only the accompanying text explains that the descendants of the Rothschild family are now refugees, finally fleeing Europe, and that the fight against Britain continues. [6]

Jud Süss, a provocative adaptation of the novel by Jewish writer Lion Feuchtwanger, which is based on real events, also returns to the past. In the 18th century, the Duke of Württemberg appoints a Frankfurt Jew as his finance minister, opening up opportunities for other Jews to enrich themselves and plunder without restraint. The way in which the actors, under the director’s guidance, portray the Jewish characters and the scathing view of their actions is certainly not unbiased, but it is not really shocking either. Jud Süss hardly fulfills the Russian nationalist’s stereotypical image of “cunning Jews” any better than, for example, Forman’s similarly biased film The Firemen’s Ball fulfills the American liberal’s possible image of “backward Czechs”. [7] After 1945, the film was strictly banned in Europe [8] and Harlan was even prosecuted and tried for “crimes against humanity,” but he was acquitted. [9]

The third rare film depicting Jews from a confrontational perspective is certainly the most evocative, the most emotional, and, in the shots of animals being “koshered,” even shocking. F. Hippler, head of the film department at the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, conceived his film reportage almost as a sociological study. To European viewers, who perceive Jews mainly as civilized and respected bankers, politicians, doctors, professors, and artists of all kinds, Hippler also shows the original milieu: the spiritual, cultural, and social background from which these Jews came and in which, whether they like it or not, they have roots that are very far removed from “Europe.” In addition to authentic footage shot in places such as the Warsaw ghetto, the author also used excerpts from feature films (especially about the Rothschild family) and staged images, edited with dramatic skill and maximum clarity, including illustrative maps and graphs.[10]

Anti-Semitism was a consistent part of the National Socialist worldview, which permeated or at least influenced almost the entire society during the period under review. Allusions to or direct attacks against the activities of Jews, which are fundamentally at odds with this worldview, therefore appear in a number of other films of the time, regardless of genre (at least one by name: Riding for Germany 1941, dir. A. M. Rabenalt – it is actually a film biography of the lord Von Langen, who, severely wounded after World War I, found his home in ruins, but nevertheless wanted and ultimately won the Grand Prix in the steeplechase in Geneva “for Germany,” even though he had to face, among other things, Jewish speculators seeking to deprive him of his property). However, it does not do so more systematically – or “more totally” – than the ideology of multiculturalism or gender is present in contemporary films.

It is much more appropriate to consider films about the fate of German minorities after 1917-18 as a separate genre. Flüchtlinge (Refugees, 1933, dir. Gustav Ucicky) about the harrowing journey of Volga Germans through Manchuria back to their homeland, and Heimkehr (Homecoming, 1941, dir. Gustav Ucicky) about the oppression of Germans from Volhynia, Friesennot (Blood Storm, 1935, dir. Peter Hagen) about a picturesque Frisian village on the Volga River that is invaded by the Red Army, [11] Menschen ohne Vaterland (1937, dir. Herbert Maisch) about uprooted people from East Prussia, or Menschen im Sturm (1941, dir. Fritz Peter Buch) about Volksdeutsche from Yugoslavia.

With a grain of salt, we can also include the well-known The Golden City (1942, dir. Veit Harlan), only the second German feature-length color film with very high attendance throughout the new Europe (with 31 million viewers, it set a new record) – except in the Protectorate, where it was not screened. [12]The plot is based on the play Der Gigant (1937) by Austrian Richard Billing and takes place in the former Czechoslovakia: a peasant girl from the Sudetenland decides to leave her homeland in the absence of her conservative father and goes to Prague, where, to the strains of Smetana’s “The Bartered Bride”, she is first seduced and then abandoned by her roguish Czech cousin.

There is also Unter der schwarzen Sturmfahne (1933, dir. Rolf von Sonjevski-Jamrowski) about the hard struggle of East Prussian farmers for survival during the economic crisis of 1928-32. Finally, we can mention the story of German children evacuated from cities, Hände hoch (1942, dir. Alfred Weidenmann), which was filmed in close cooperation with Hitler Youth on a farm in the Slovak Republic.

Most German art was primarily intended to awaken or strengthen national pride. As in Italy, educational documentary films played a major role in this task: Blut und Boden (1933, dir. Walter Ruttmann) and Altgermanische Bauernkultur (1934, dir. Walter Ruttmann), which were commissioned by the Minister of Food and Agriculture Walter Darré as a celebration of the work and values of the peasantry, Ewiger Wald (1936, dir. Rolf von Sonjewski-Jamrowski), a reminiscence and interpretation of the significance of the forest for the ancient Germans, Geheimnis Tibet (1943, dir. H. A. Letow and Ernst Schäfer), a “report” on the largest expedition of the Ahnenerbe – the “Vikings of Science” – to the Himalayas, Josef Thorak: Werkstatt und Werk (1943, dir. Arnold Fanck) and Arno Breker (1944, dir. Arnold Fanck), medallions of two of the greatest modern German artists and sculptors.

Propaganda military and war documents were also considered part of the artistic sphere, and a considerable number of them were produced both for public viewing in cinemas (Deutsche Wochenschau) and for the educational army series Die Frontschau. [13] These include, for example: Tag der Freiheit – Unsere Wehrmacht (1935, directed by Leni Riefenstahl), Der Westwall (1939, dir. Fritz Hippler), Feldzug in Polen (1940, dir. Fritz Hippler), Deutsche Waffenschmieden (1940, dir. Walter Ruttmann), Deutsche Panzer (1940, dir. Walter Ruttmann), [14]Victory in the West (1941, collective), Russischer Stellungsbau (1941, directed by Fritz Hippler), Geländeschwierigkeiten im Osten (1942, dir. Fritz Hippler) Atlantik Wall (1944; Arnold Fanck) and others. However, the most significant works are summaries such as: Wort und Tat (1938, dir. Fritz Hippler, Gustav Ucicky, et al.), comparing capitalist Germany under the Weimar Republic with today’s Germany – National Socialist, or Der Führer und Sein Volk (1942, dir. Fritz Hippler), highlighting the advantages of the new social order for the nation and the state. At the very pinnacle of this work, already illuminated by the “light of ideas,” [15] stands the work of Leni Riefenstahl.

Monuments

Both of her classic films are more than commissioned documentaries, more than mere recordings of certain events. Triumph of the Will (1935) and Olympia (1938) have in common [16] a certain reality that is itself based on a certain idea of form. A perfect sense of the visual beauty of the image is combined with a clear and distinct political statement. [17] “I am fascinated by what is beautiful, strong, healthy, alive,” said the director long after the war was lost. The mission of a work of art as a transformation of reality into a model, an ideal, whether it be references to antiquity in the heroic epic of the Olympic Games or testimony to the power and might stemming from national and racial unity, is supremely fulfilled here – you simply sense that this is art, that all of this belongs to it. Finally, we should mention Leni Riefenstahl’s long-lost documentary debut film Victory of Faith (1933). The film was found in London in the early 1990s. It is a copy of the film that Leni screened here during her visit to England for a lecture on film techniques.[18]

Finally, we would like to highlight the feature film Ich Klage An (1941, dir. Wolfgang Liebeneiner), as it sensitively deals with a highly topical issue – euthanasia: the right of the terminally ill or otherwise disabled to die with dignity at the hands of a doctor. Active assistance in dying at one’s own request should become as commonplace in the future as going to the cinema: otherwise, an aging Europe risks becoming a kind of sanatorium—and that’s in the best-case scenario—where one half of the population cares for the other. In any case, our conscience goes beyond faith and the law.

Notes

[1] At the very beginning, we see a boy in a communist youth camp. He is clearly too young to feel comfortable there: the older participants behave in a pubertal, boorish manner, with alcohol, cards, and double entendres… When he comes across the Hj building their tents by a lake in the woods a little further on, beautifully arranged next to each other, and watches their camp life, he realizes that he belongs here, that he has just found his world…

[1b] Flags, banners, and standards on spears bearing some symbol have always characterized a particular leader and his subordinate military unit. The significance they had can still be sensed today in the otherwise difficult-to-understand “relic” of saluting the national flag or in stories about the self-sacrifice of warriors when this “piece of canvas” was in danger of falling into enemy hands. Even so, the boy’s sincere enthusiasm at being allowed to belong to the flag and wear the uniform – “those now empty fetishes” – will probably seem naive, stupid, even embarrassing to his peers today (with the honorable exception of some Boy Scouts, perhaps?).

[2] The average age of NSDAP members in 1933 was far below thirty.

[3] The Wessel family seems to have played a major role in this, preferring a “holy image” to a realistic portrayal. They were particularly bothered by their son’s relationship with a former prostitute, even though this actually fits into the image of a savior and martyr. The writer Hanns-Heinz Ewers, once called the “German Poe” for his “black novels” (Alraune being the most famous), complied with his relatives’ wishes and first wrote a hagiographic novel, Horst Wessel – A German Destiny (1932), and then a screenplay. He probably knew Wessel personally and joined the movement sincerely.

[4] However, no one has yet satisfactorily explained why these films were made so late and almost simultaneously. Among them is the somewhat belated short documentary Terezín, also known as The Führer Gives the Jews a City (1944, dir. Kurt Gerron, Karel Pečený): yes, football was indeed played in this fortress town, as were theater and music, and people studied and read, just as the footage shows. What the film does not show is the evacuation of the Jews to Auschwitz, which many of the performers did not survive.

[5] See Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern: World Society 1815-1830, 1991, p. 649.

[6] Theatre artists contributed to the Municipal Theater Na poříčí with a production of Wolfgang Möller’s play Rothschild Wins at Waterloo (1941).

[7] The first will receive confirmation that “these parasites are probably really capable of manipulating and exploiting entire nations for thousands of years,” while the second will probably get the impression that these little idiots are probably still capable of “primitive prejudices” – tribal xenophobia, conservative homophobia, etc.

[8] However, in 1955, Jud Süss was translated into Arabic. It was distributed in Arab countries by the Soviet agency Sovexport.

[9] The daring director also encountered problems in the Reich, as real Jews appeared in the film, which led to official complications and subsequent criticism. These scenes were shot with Prague Jews in Prague, which, at least from a legal point of view, was considered abroad. Incidentally, the Prague premiere took place at the Na Příkopech cinema with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karel Šejna, which performed the overture from Beethoven’s Egmont before the film.

[10] Fritz Hippler, who directed a whole series of “short films,” returned to this theme once again in Juden in Dombrova (1943).

[11] At the time of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the film had already been withdrawn from distribution…

[12] Today, it is perhaps the only representative title from the German “Twelve Years” that Czech viewers have the opportunity to see “officially,” thanks to its recent release by Levné knihy, a. s.

[13] Despite the flood of various war documentaries on all kinds of television stations, German film newsreels remain an under-appreciated visual source. When excerpts are selected, little consideration is usually given to the fact that, in addition to military and war events, they also richly illustrate political and cultural events.

[14] Walter Ruttmann is, among other things, the author of two of the oldest surviving abstract films in the world: Light Play Opus 1 (1919) and Light Play Opus 3 (1924). Restored copies premiered in Germany in 2006-2007. Also available on DVD is Melodie der Welt (1929), the first German feature-length sound documentary film, admired by cinephiles around the world for its audio-visual montage. However, he later embraced National Socialism, and his later films are not released today. It is little known that he collaborated anonymously with L. Riefenstahl on Olympia. Ruttmann died in one of the first bombings of Berlin…

[15] Zdeněk Neubauer writes about the “light of ideas” as “the order of totality that allows finite, inner-worldly beings to relate to themselves, to their nature, to their existence in the world, both from the perspective of the overall world order and in the light of ideas. This also enables real beings – i.e., living, corporeal beings – to know and control their own nature. This self-relation is characterized by generic, species, and individual ‘specificity,’ i.e., the ability to realize, reveal, and express their species in a unique way.” (O Přírodě a přirozenosti věcí, Malvern, Praha, s. 51-52)

[16] More than anywhere else, beware of different distribution versions, where some passages are shortened or disappear completely.

[17] This is one of the pinnacles of the aestheticization of politics and, together with Lang’s Nibelungen, a successful attempt to bring the world of myth, the spiritual sanctity of nations, to the twentieth century—and to do so in the most modern and “most popular” of all the arts. What Wagner did with the language of opera, is done here with the language of film.

[18] Riefenstahl undoubtedly owes a lot to Fancke: not only did he cast her in leading roles in his films, but she also developed what she learned from him in her own work (capturing movement—e.g., clouds in flight, attention to lighting and image composition, emphasis on backlighting, meticulous choice of shots, editing, technical and methodological innovations, etc.). It was certainly no coincidence that she was chosen to direct the first short film about a party congress, Victory of Faith (1933). The Führer was familiar with Fancke’s mountain films and liked them, and he also got along well with the director on a personal level. Together with Winifred Wagner, Professor Gerda Troost, and the leader of the National Socialist women, G. Scholtz-Klink, she soon became part of his circle of “exemplary women.”