Screening Art: Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema 9781785339684

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Screening Art

Film Europa: German Cinema in an International Context Series Editors: Hans-Michael Bock (CineGraph Hamburg); Tim Bergfelder (University of Southampton); Barbara Mennel (University of Florida) German cinema is normally seen as a distinct form, but this series emphasizes connections, influences, and exchanges of German cinema across national borders, as well as its links with other media and art forms. Individual titles present traditional historical research (archival work, industry studies) as well as new critical approaches in film and media studies (theories of the transnational), with a special emphasis on the continuities associated with popular traditions and local perspectives. Recent volumes: Volume 20 Screening Art: Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema Seán Allan

Volume 15 Homemade Men in Postwar Austrian Cinema: Nationhood, Genre and Masculinity Maria Fritsche

Volume 19 German Television: Historical and Theoretical Pespectives Edited by Larson Powell and Robert R. Shandley

Volume 14 Postwall German Cinema: History, Film History and Cinephilia Mattias Frey

Volume 18 Cinema in Service of the State: Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945–1960 Edited by Lars Karl and Pavel Skopal

Volume 13 Turkish Cinema in the New Millennium: Sites, Sounds, and Screens Edited by Sabine Hake and Barbara Mennel

Volume 17 Imperial Projections: Screening the German Colonies Wolfgang Fuhrmann Volume 16 The Emergence of Film Culture: Knowledge Production, Institution Building, and the Fate of the AvantGarde in Europe, 1919–1945 Edited by Malte Hagener

Volume 12 Peter Lorre: Face Maker Constructing Stardom and Performance in Hollywood and Europe Sarah Thomas Volume 11 Screening the East: Heimat, Memory and Nostalgia in German Film since 1989 Nick Hodgin

For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website: http://www.berghahnbooks.com/series/film-europa

Screening Art

Modernist Aesthetics and the Socialist Imaginary in East German Cinema

Seán Allan

berghahn NEW YORK • OXFORD www.berghahnbooks.com

First published in 2019 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2019, 2022 Seán Allan First paperback edition published in 2022 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Allan, Seán, author. Title: Screening art : modernist aesthetics and the socialist imaginary in East German cinema / Seán Allan. Description: New York : Berghahn Books, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Includes filmography. Identifiers: LCCN 2018053516 (print) | LCCN 2018060646 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785339684 (ebook) | ISBN 9781785339677 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Socialist realism in motion pictures. | Motion pictures–Germany (East)–Aesthetics. | Socialism and motion pictures–Germany (East). | Motion pictures–Germany (East)– History and criticism. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.S63 (ebook) | LCC PN1995.9.S63 A44 2019 (print) | DDC 791.430943/109045--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018053516 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1-78533-967-7 hardback ISBN 978-1-80073-204-9 paperback ISBN 978-1-78533-968-4 ebook

Contents

List of Figuresvi Acknowledgementsvii Introduction. Texts and Contexts

1

Chapter 1. German Classical Humanism and the Sovietisation of Culture29 Chapter 2. Cosmopolitanism, Formalism and Fantasies of National Culture

60

Chapter 3. Experiments in Modernism I: From Bitterfeld to Barlach87 Chapter 4. Experiments in Modernism II: Responses to the Eleventh Plenum

139

Chapter 5. New Ways of Seeing: Jürgen Böttcher and the Transformation of Tradition

175

Chapter 6. The Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Romantic Turn

199

Epilogue. Art, Exile and the Socialist Imaginary

239

Filmography263 Bibliography267 Index283

Figures

1.1 Romantic Liebestod in Ehe im Schatten.  31 1.2 Kurt Maetzig on the set of Ehe im Schatten.33 1.3 Quo vadis? Culture in the Cold War in Roman einer jungen Ehe.42 1.4 ‘My party is art’. Roman einer jungen Ehe.45 2.1 The Red Army rescues masterpieces from Dresden in Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte.81 3.1 Peter Makolies and the collision of modernity and tradition in Drei von vielen.97 3.2 Kafkaesque modernism in Drei von vielen.100 3.3 Barlach in dialogue with Die gefesselte Hexe and Der Zweifler in Der verlorene Engel.119 3.4 Marxist and Christian iconography in Der verlorene Engel.122 4.1 ‘In my opinion you experiment too much’. Back to the 1950s in Goya.147 4.2 ‘You only paint what they allow you to’. Breaking with tradition in Goya.149 4.3 Studies in masculinity in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz.165 4.4 The art of seeing. Hannes and the artist Kemmel in dialogue in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz.167 5.1 The artist Peter Makolies at work in Im Lohmgrund.180 5.2 The artist Hermann Glöckner in his studio in Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner.185 5.3 Venus after Giorgione after Böttcher (Venus nach Giorgione).193 6.1 Beethoven and the GDR (Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben).214 6.2 Artists in the GDR? Hölderlin and Hälfte des Lebens.227 7.1 Jutta Wachowiak prepares her role in Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens.242 7.2 ‘Regentränen’ in Konzert im Freien.252

Acknowledgements

Many people contributed to the writing of this volume. I would particularly like to thank the following: the DEFA-Stiftung, the DEFA Film-Library, Ute Klawitter (Bundesfilmarchiv, Berlin), Birgit Scholz (Filmmuseum, Potsdam), Tim Storch (Bundesarchiv Berlin), Nicky Rittmeyer (Akademie der Künste) and Renate Göthe (Filmuniversität Konrad Wolf, Babelsberg). Hiltrud Schulz, Skyler Arndt-Briggs, Dieter Wolf, Rudi Jürschik, Barton Byg, April Eisman, Barbara Barlet, and Birgit Röder all helped in innumerable ways. I would also like to thank the organisers and participants at the NEH Summer Institute on ‘Culture in the Cold War: East German Art, Music and Film’ at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (June 2018), who left their own indelible imprint on the writing of this book. I would also acknowledge the help of the editorial team at Berghahn Books, and in particular Chris Chappell, Caroline Kuhtz and Jon Lloyd. Chapter 1 is a revised and expanded version of an article originally published in German Life and Letters under the title ‘“Sagt, wie soll man Stalin danken?” Kurt Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten (1947), Roman einer jungen Ehe (1952) and the Cultural Politics of Post-war Germany’, German Life and Letters 64(2) (2011), 255–71. I am grateful to the editors of German Life and Letters for permission to reproduce material from that article here. Unless otherwise stated, all translations from original German sources are my own. This project would have been impossible without the generous support of the Leverhulme Trust, which provided me with a Research Fellowship to complete the writing up of this material.

Introduction Texts and Contexts

‘When people lose touch with art, kitsch flourishes. Those who feel the need to hang pictures on their walls, but who lack any understanding of beauty and aesthetic value, just put up whatever they come across. Sometimes just because it has a fancy gilt frame.’1 In an article published in March 1949, the popular magazine Neue Filmwelt advised its readers that film could, and should, play a key role in educating postwar Germans in matters of artistic taste. In the East in particular, film­makers eagerly set about the task, and DEFA’s Künstlerfilme – films about artists both real and imaginary  – offer film historians a unique insight into the changing sociopolitical agendas of the GDR’s production studio during almost every phase of its existence. As we shall see, in the late 1940s, these Künstlerfilme reflected the efforts of filmmakers in the East to engage with the legacy (and limitations) of German classical humanism. In the 1950s, they were mobilised to promote a concept of a united socialist Germany by portraying the GDR as the true guardian of the nation’s cultural heritage and, in particular, as the embodiment of a society based on the principles of the Enlightenment. In the 1960s, they were exploited as a discursive space in which questions of modernist aesthetics and the role of art and the artist in contemporary socialist society could be debated. And during the 1970s and early 1980s, they played a key role in internationalising East German cinema by positioning it in dialogue with a series of films that had started to emerge from the art-house cinemas of both Eastern and Western Europe from the late 1960s onwards.

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In this study of DEFA’s Künstlerfilme, the terms ‘art’ (Kunst) and ‘artist’ (Künstler) have a wider than usual resonance and embrace not only painting and the visual/plastic arts, but also drama, literature and music.2 Many of the performers, sculptors and painters featured in the films discussed below such as Agnes Sailer in Roman einer jungen Ehe [Story of a Young Couple, 1952] or Herbert Kemmel in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz [The Naked Man on the Playing Field, 1974] are imaginary figures, although in some cases – Hans and Elisabeth Wieland in Ehe im Schatten [Marriage in the Shadows, 1947] are obvious examples  – these fictional characters are modelled on well-known historical referents. By the same token, some of the films that are ostensibly ‘about’ canonical artist-figures such as Barlach, Goya and Beethoven – Der verlorene Engel [The Lost Angel, 1966/71], Goya (1971) and Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben [Beethoven – Days from a Life, 1976] – are not straightforward biographies in any conventional sense of the term and, in most cases, treat the central protagonist as a fictionalised construct and as a springboard for an extended discussion of aesthetics and the role of art in socialist society. Alongside the feature films selected for close analysis, my study also draws on newsreels produced for Der Augenzeuge as well as conventional documentaries, two genres that played a key role in the GDR’s distinctive contribution to the construction of a new canon of socialist art. This reworking of cultural history took essentially two forms: first, a rediscovery of those prewar artists whose work had been marginalised or forgotten because of its oppositional character; and, second, a critical analysis of bourgeois culture that sought to expose its shortcomings as a model for new and progressive works of art in a future socialist society. Examples of Künstlerfilme can, of course, be found in all national cinemas, and the desire of national governments to promote concepts of heritage and cultural identity has, for many decades now, been a key factor in securing funding for independent film production in a range European countries. In the New German Cinema of the Federal Republic, the large number of films featuring literary authors and adaptations of their work made in the 1970s and early 1980s can, at least in part, be explained in terms of such funding models. However, as the very difficulty of rendering the term Künstlerfilm (‘artist-film’) adequately in English suggests, whether released in the East or the West, these films were seldom simply biopics of individual artists, but engaged with wider ranging questions of artistic creativity and the place of art in contemporary society. Moreover, although most of the  films focus on one particular aspect of the arts, in almost all cases, the scope of reference is not confined to one particular genre, but embraces the arts

 Introduction

3

generally. Indeed, the cinematic genre of the Künstlerfilm has a number of obvious affinities with the Romantic Künstlernovelle, a self-reflective literary genre in which, albeit almost 150 years earlier, the role of art and the imagination within an increasingly utilitarian social reality was hotly debated. The rise of this literary genre can be seen as a response to an over-emphasis on the rationality of the Enlightenment, and to the attempt on the part of bourgeois society to marginalise art as a mode of cognition in its own right. Like the Künstlernovellen of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Künstlerfilme of the postwar period also function as a discursive space in which not only questions of aesthetics, but also human subjectivity (as embodied in the form of the creative artist) could be debated. In the context of the GDR, the revival of interest in Romantic subjectivities across a wide range of art forms during the 1970s and early 1980s was part of a general critique of instrumental reason and the related concept of ‘real existing socialism’ that many saw as responsible for the alienation of the individual and the marginalisation of art in mainstream East German society. Precisely because of their internationalist subject matter and often wide-ranging historical perspective, East German Künstlerfilme became hotly contested spaces in which filmmakers looked beyond the GDR and debated the impact of contemporary cultural policy on the reception of the prewar cultural heritage, and the development of new paradigms of socialist art in postwar Europe. While increasingly the humanist legacy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German art and literature came to be challenged by the ‘Sovietisation’ of DEFA during the early 1950s (and the corresponding rise of socialist realism), during the 1960s and 1970s many East German directors turned to the Classical and Romantic periods of European art in an attempt to mobilise alternative concepts of realism and thereby open up GDR filmmaking to contemporary developments in new wave cinema (in both Eastern and Western Europe). As I shall argue, it is precisely DEFA’s attempt to revisualise existing political agendas in terms of a new concept of modernist aesthetics that makes DEFA’s distinctive contribution to the socialist imaginary not simply a local issue specific to the GDR, but part of a wider transnational phenomenon.

The Socialist Imaginary In writing a cultural history of the DEFA Künstlerfilm – a genre that has received little or no scholarly attention to date – my aim is to explore

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the way in which the genre changed and developed over the course of the history of the GDR. As we shall see, these films were shaped not only by shifts in cultural policy, but also by transformations in the genre that took place not just in the Federal Republic, but also in Eastern and Western Europe. In addition, my study considers the contribution made by these films to what, drawing on the work of Charles Taylor, I shall term the socialist imaginary.3 In his pioneering work Modern Social Imaginaries, Taylor uses the concept of the social imaginary to refer to ‘the ways people “imagine” their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations’.4 While Taylor’s book focuses primarily on the social imaginary in the context of Western capitalist nations, it nonetheless lends itself to analysis of those states in the postwar period that saw themselves as offering an different interpretation of modernity in the context of socialism. However, what makes the concept of the imaginary so helpful in the context of a discussion of East German culture generally, and cinema in particular, is the way in which it offers an alternative to approaches rooted in social/socialist theory. There was, of course, almost no area of East German society that was not subjected to an analysis based on Marxist-Leninist theory; however, as Taylor notes, social theory is, more often than not the preserve of a minority group of experts, whereas the social imaginary is something shared by much larger groups of people. Accordingly, I shall use the term ‘socialist imaginary’ to focus on the way in which ordinary people ‘imagine’ socialist society and seek to articulate this not in theoretical documents, but rather in terms of a set of images, stories, legends and other cultural products, including, above all, film. As I shall argue, at various junctures in the history of prewar and postwar cinema, shifting paradigms in the fields of art and aesthetics impacted upon the socialist imaginary in the GDR, and the role of the DEFA Künstlerfilm in both mediating and articulating such transformations is the subject of this study. The concept of the social/socialist imaginary is, of course, closely related to Benedict Anderson’s concept of the nation as an ‘imagined community’.5 Following the collapse of Nazi Germany, the GDR looked to the concept of the political nation or Staatsnation in which the members of that nation inhabit a given geographical territory and subscribe to a shared ideology in order to legitimise itself in the eyes of the postwar community of nations. The Federal Republic, by contrast, embraced the essentially nineteenth-century notion of a Kulturnation, a

 Introduction

5

concept that Marc Silberman has defined as ‘meaning variously a cultured nation and a nation unified through its cultural achievements’.6 In part, the concept of the Kulturnation was designed as a means of presenting the postwar division of Germany as a provisional set of  arrangements while at the same time holding out for the possibility of reunification at some point in the future. It was not until 1974 and the endorsement of a revised version of the East German constitution by the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) that the GDR redefined itself as ‘a socialist state’ that was complete in itself and not part of any larger entity. The issue of national identity lay at the heart of many of the early Künstlerfilme in the 1950s as the GDR strove for political recognition, and both it and the Federal Republic claimed to be the true guardian of the prewar cultural legacy embodied in such figures as Goethe, Beethoven, Dürer, Cranach and Riemenschneider. Nonetheless, as Hans Joachim Meurer has emphasised in his important study Cinema and National Identity in a Divided Germany 1979–1989: The Split Screen, we should not allow attempts by some scholars to maintain the internal coherence of film cultures within the two states to obscure the fact that ‘national cinemas are not confined, but hybrid and in interaction with multiple external influences’.7 Increasingly scholarship has demonstrated that such networks of influence were not simply confined to the film cultures of the two postwar German states, but extended to other European states and indeed to the traditions of both Soviet cinema and Hollywood. Just as films like Horst Seemann’s Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben challenged the concept of the daemonic artist that we find in both prewar and postwar Künstlerfilme from Germany and the United States, so too, films such as Konrad Wolf’s Goya (1971) and Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (1974) can be seen as works in dialogue with Soviet Künstlerfilme such as Andrey Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev (1969/71) and Giorgi Shengelaia’s Pirosmani (1968). Accordingly, part of what this study of DEFA Künstlerfilme sets out to demonstrate is that precisely because of their transnational subject matter, they cannot be contained within an essentialised notion of national cinema.

Ruptures and Continuities: Prewar and Postwar Debates ‘Realism’, as Raymond Williams notes, ‘is a difficult word’,8 and throughout DEFA’s existence, the question of how the studio should engage with

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contrasting concepts of realism was one that was intensively explored over several decades in a range of Künstlerfilme. These debates (which embraced almost all fields of artistic activity in the GDR) pre-dated the founding of the state in 1949 and, in many cases, their origins can be traced back to the early years of the Soviet Union, where the question of what it meant to be a progressive political artist was being posed with increasing urgency. Two debates in particular were of particular importance in the formulation of cultural policy in the fledgling GDR: first, the discussions surrounding the place of formalist aesthetics in the development of a canon of socialist art and literature that took place around 1916/17 and that resulted in the dominance of a dogmatic notion of socialist realism in the Soviet Union during the early 1930s; and, second, the so-called ‘Expressionism Debate’ conducted in exile during the late 1930s by, amongst others, the Marxist theoreticians Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht and Walter Benjamin, in which the political implications of avant-garde modernist aesthetics were hotly contested. In stark contrast to their Western counterparts, during the early part of the postwar period, few East German cultural theorists sought to endorse a view of art as an essentially autonomous phenomenon, and instead regarded the very concept of transcendent art as a bourgeois fiction designed to conceal the historically contingent aspect of all artistic activity. Nonetheless, the aesthetic debates that took place between 1945 and 1949 and during the founding decade of the GDR’s existence revolved around often pronounced differences in opinion regarding the relationship between ideology, form and content, and how, even within the context of Marxist aesthetics, the term ‘realism’ should be defined. As Williams argues, realism has usually been understood as connoting the very opposite of the nineteenth-century Romantics’ fascination with mythical and imaginary objects. Nonetheless, as theorists and practitioners like Brecht were quick to point out, a rejection of Romanticism did not simply entail embracing the surface realism of naturalist aesthetics, but meant adopting an approach that sought to analyse the social and political forces underpinning the material reality of the world we inhabit. The origins of this debate date back to Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, where the merits of two contrasting aesthetic responses (both of which were key to the development of cultural policy in the socialist states set up in the second half of the twentieth century to the challenge of modernity) were being weighed up. On the one hand, there was the avant-garde approach associated with the literary and visual creations of Vladimir Mayakovsky, the Russian Futurists,

 Introduction

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and the members of Bogdanov’s Proletkult, in which an emphasis on formal invention and the necessity of a radical break with past traditions were paramount; on the other hand, there was the insistence on a more conventional concept of socialist realism that drew on the legacy of nineteenth-century bourgeois realist fiction, while at the same time reframing this aesthetic in accordance with a conviction that all forms of artistic production were determined by class conflict and economic forces. Critics of a more formalist persuasion, such as Viktor Shklovsky, attempted to respond to the contemporary drive towards scientific positivism and the corresponding exclusion of phenomena that were not directly observable. Accordingly, he and other members of the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (OPOYAZ) sought to focus exclusively on the formal properties of a given work of art – notably syntax and metre – and to exclude discussion of supposedly ‘external’ factors, such as the psychology of the author and considerations of a historical or political kind. In positing literature as an essentially autonomous entity, the aim was to establish a scientific approach to the study of literature that would identify and define the formal qualities of ‘literary/ poetic language’ as opposed to ‘ordinary language’. For Shklovsky and his associates, the key quality of the former estrangement (ostraneye) and the disruption of routine modes of perception. Not surprisingly, however, because the avant-garde literary forms they prized broke so radically with conventional discursive forms (and as a result were often impenetrably obscure) both the Formalists’ approach to criticism and the products of Russian Futurism they championed were condemned in some quarters as elitist. Shklovsky’s claim that, as he put it, ‘art was always free of life, and its colour never reflected the colour of the flag which waved over the fortress of the city’, together with his insistence on the need to exclude psychological and sociohistorical factors and to focus instead primarily on the formal qualities of a work of art, stemmed from a desire to break with nineteenth-century models of literary and artistic criticism. Indeed, it is striking that although Trotsky, in his classic study Literature and Revolution (1924), goes out of his way to acknowledge Shklovsky’s achievements in establishing a more scientific approach to the analysis of works of art, he nonetheless highlights the failure to engage adequately with sociohistorical factors as a fatal flaw in such approaches. In particular, Trotsky rejects any notion of the autonomy of art and, in particular, the notion that form determines content. Instead, he suggests that, for all the apparent differences in their approach, both ‘pure art’ and ‘tendentious art’ are sociohistorical phenomena, and that each

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should be seen as a different type of response to essentially the same underlying historical forces. ‘Tendentiousness’, Trotsky argues, ‘was the banner of the intelligentsia which sought contact with the people’, while so-called ‘pure art’ was ‘the banner of the rising bourgeoisie’. 9 While he concedes that a work of art should, in the first instance, be judged by what he refers to as ‘the laws of art’, he is nonetheless quite convinced that ‘Marxism alone can explain why and how a given tendency in art has originated in a given period of history’.10 Accordingly, as his description of the Formalist school as ‘an abortive idealism applied to the questions of art’ suggests, the notion of art as an autonomous sphere of activity is essentially misguided and indeed itself a bourgeois fiction.11 This view of formalism was to resonate throughout many of the cultural debates in the GDR during the 1950s. As David Bathrick has argued in his pioneering study The Powers of Speech, ‘the artistic avant-garde has always had little respect for entrenched authority, even when that authority claims for itself revolutionary intention’.12 In the Soviet Union of the 1920s, it was only a matter of time before the avant-garde groupings centred around Mayakovsky, the Proletkult and the Left Futurists (LEF), all of which to a greater or lesser degree rejected conventional notions of realism in favour of formal experimentation, came to be condemned in the Soviet Union under Stalin’s leadership and were replaced by a more normative concept of socialist realism across all the arts. Stalin’s socalled ‘left-turn’ of 1929 and his attempt to unite the masses behind a process of industrialisation led to a growing intolerance of modernist aesthetics and cultural innovation. As cultural policy shifted towards an endorsement of nineteenth-century bourgeois realism (embodied in the works of, above all, Tolstoy, Balzac and Thomas Mann), the modernist aesthetics of Joyce and Kafka increasingly fell out of favour. This shift away from a concept of literature in which language and form were primary to a concept of realism in which writers succeeded to a greater or lesser extent in capturing the sociohistorical forces underpinning that reality reached its logical conclusion with Andrei Zhdanov’s ‘Definition of Socialist Realism’ at the 1934 Congress of Soviet Writers: Comrade Stalin has called our writers engineers of human souls. What does this mean? . . . In the first place, it means knowing life so as to be able to depict it truthfully in works of art, not to depict it in a dead, scholastic way, not simply as ‘objective reality’, but to depict reality in its revolutionary development.   In addition to this, the truthfulness and historical correctness of the artistic portrayal should be combined with the ideological remolding and

 Introduction

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education of the toiling people in the spirit of socialism. This method in belles lettres and literary criticism is what we call the method of ­socialist realism.13

Despite its name, socialist realism was anything but realistic; essentially, it was an idealist aesthetic underpinned by a simplistic system of ethics and a correspondingly reductive approach to character psychology. Negative depictions of the proletariat and representations of psychological complexity were both seen as incompatible with a utopian narrative of historical progress, in which positive socialist heroes led the working classes to a future in which class conflict would finally be overcome. One of the largest foreign delegations to attend the Congress of 1934 was made up of exiled German communists, and it is no coincidence that in Zhdanov’s dismissal of those traditional forms of Romanticism that, in his view, ‘depicted a non-existent life and non-existent heroes’ and led the reader ‘away from the antagonisms and oppression of real life into a world of the impossible, into a world of utopian dreams’, we can catch a glimpse of the anti-Romantic thrust that became so pronounced in aesthetic debates of the 1950s in the GDR.14 What Zhdanov’s new doctrine of socialist realism (or ‘revolutionary Romanticism’ as he sometimes referred to it) entailed in practice was the idealisation of proletarian figures coupled with a teleological narrative culminating in the triumph of socialism; as we shall see, this reductive concept of realism in which art and literature are seen simply as determined by a materialist concept of history was one to which DEFA would ­periodically return at various moments of crisis during its history.

The Expressionism Debate Much of the hostility to modernist aesthetics during the first decade of the GDR’s existence can be traced back to the legacy of the Expressionism Debate of the late 1930s. Part of the reason for this was the involvement of Alfred Kurella, who from 1955 to 1957 was director of the Leipzig Literaturinstitut before becoming head of the Kulturkommission on the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), where he played a key role in shaping cultural policy during the 1950s. Although Kurella was a vociferous critic of modernist aesthetics from the late 1930s onwards, he had originally been trained as a graphic artist at Munich’s Kunstgewerbeschule, a school for applied arts, and as a young artist

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his own style had been heavily influenced by Expressionism. However, following his denunciation during the Stalinist purges of 1934/35 and the crucial loss of support from his immediate superior, the Comintern leader Georgi Dimitrov, Kurella sought to rehabilitate himself by distancing himself from his earlier avant-garde compositions and enthusiastically embracing Stalinist cultural policy. As David Bathrick has noted, the impact of historical developments in the post-1933 period on the likes of Kurella and his intellectual mentor Georg Lukács can hardly be overstated and, in common with a number of exiled theorists, both needed a platform from which they could articulate their opposition to Hitler and Nazi Germany, even if this meant embracing the aesthetic theories associated with Stalinist political dogma.15 To do justice to the detail of this complex and wide-ranging debate that unfolded in the pages of the exile journal Das Wort during the late 1930s would require a volume in its own right; in what follows, I shall focus on those aspects of the Expressionism Debate that were of particular importance for the development of the postwar Künstlerfilm between the mid 1940s and the mid 1950s.16 Although the start of the debate proper more or less coincided with the exhibition of a large number of expressionist paintings and sculptures at the 1937 Munich exhibition Entartete Kunst [Degenerate Art], it is important to remember that the exchanges that took place were not confined to literature and painting, but also embraced drama, music and film. Indeed, very often the term ‘Expressionism’ was used in a loose sense to refer to a wide range of avant-garde works of art produced during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Accordingly, the debate was much more than just a debate about expressionist art; it was a debate about modernism generally and, in particular, the relationship between progressive left-wing politics and avant-garde art and literature. As increasing numbers of quasi-expressionist paintings and sculptures (many of them banned by the Nazi regime) came to be put on display in Germany in the late 1940s, it was almost inevitable that arguments from the late 1930s about the relationship between formalist and realist aesthetics would be revisited in the context of the culture wars of the postwar period. German expressionism was born from an antipathy towards the bourgeois character of Wilheminian art and society in Imperial Germany, and peaked around the time of the First World War. For some, the apocalyptic fantasies of violence produced by these artists and writers (in many cases fuelled by an enthusiasm for Nietzsche’s philosophy) reflected a desire for a complete break with the bourgeois

 Introduction

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traditions of the past. However, both Kurella and Lukács argued that it was precisely the irrationalist aspects of expressionist art and writing that rendered it compatible with fascist ideology. In his seminal essay of 1934, ‘Größe und Verfall des Expressionismus’ [‘Expressionism: Its Significance and Decline’], Lukács set out a comprehensive critique of Expressionism on the basis that it was symptomatic of a more general failure on the part of Wilheminian intellectuals to arrive at an objective analysis of the connections between ideology, politics and economics: As an opposition from a confused anarchistic and bohemian standpoint, Expressionism was naturally more or less vigorously directed against the political right . . . But however honest the subjective intention behind this may well have been in many cases, the abstract distortion of basic questions, and especially the abstract ‘anti-middle-classness’ was a tendency that, precisely because it separated the critique of middle-classness from both the economic understanding of the capitalist system and from adhesion to the liberation struggle of the proletariat, could easily collapse into its opposite extreme: into a critique of ‘middle-classness’ from the right, the same demagogic critique of capitalism to which fascism later owed at least part of its mass basis.17

Four years later in 1938, Alfred Kurella (writing under the pseudonym Bernhard Ziegler) was to rekindle the flames of this debate in the Moscow-based journal Das Wort with the publication of his essay ‘Nun ist dies Erbe zuende’ [‘Putting the Legacy of the Past Behind Us’]. In it he cites the case of the lyrical expressionist poet and Nazi sympathiser Gottfried Benn as evidence that German fascism was an intellectual offshoot of Expressionism.18 In place of formalism and a subjective aesthetic that he saw as elitist, fragmentary and irrational, Kurella argues instead for a reaffirmation of the aesthetic principles underpinning classical art and a greater emphasis on what he clearly regarded as the fundamental basic criteria of all true art, namely its accessibility (Volkstümlichkeit) and proximity to the concerns of ordinary people (Volksnähe). Not surprisingly, the reductive positions of Lukács and Kurella and their dismissal of an entire generation of writers and artists as precursors of fascism came under sustained attack from other left-wing exiles such as Ernst Bloch, Hanns Eisler and the theatre director Gustav von Wangenheim,19 all of whom embraced a more differentiated concept of Marxist aesthetics. In his defence of modernism, Bloch accused Lukács of failing to analyse any specific works of art in detail (especially from the fields of painting and music) and of focusing almost

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exclusively on what he regarded as the unrepresentative genres of late expressionist poetry and drama. In a similar vein, Bloch argued in his essay ‘Discussing Expressionism’ that Hitler’s hostility to the work of so many expressionist painters hardly appeared to bear out the truth of Ziegler’s claim that ‘Expressionism leads to fascism’.20 In addition, Bloch defended Expressionism on the grounds that it was a legitimate response to the immediate crisis of the First World War, which simply made use of the aesthetic tools at its disposal and that, precisely because of its iconoclastic character, could be seen as paving the way for new, revolutionary approach to art. What matters, he argued, is that ‘[Expressionism] undermined the schematic routines and academicism to which the “values of art” had been reduced. Instead of eternal “formal analyses” of art, it directed attention to human beings and their substance, in their quest for the most authentic expression possible’.21 Moreover, for all the pleasure the Expressionists took in supposedly barbaric art, their ultimate goal was humane. Last but not least, in response to the charge of elitism, Bloch notes that the Expressionists went back to popular art, and that the difficulty in understanding their work could be explained by the fact that many contemporary observers lacked both ‘the intuitive grasp typical of people deformed by education’ and ‘the open-mindedness which is indispensable for the ­appreciation of new art’.22 As the tenor of the debate suggests, what was at stake was not simply the alleged shortcomings of the subjective aesthetic of Expressionism, but also questions of cultural heritage and the relationship of the past to future aesthetic developments. On the one hand, there were those such as Lukács and Kurella who dismissed the avant-garde character of modernist art and literature as a misguided experiment that, far from articulating a genuinely revolutionary position, remained trapped within an abstract version of humanism that, as with all bourgeois art, merely reproduced the problems it was attempting to resolve. On the other hand, there were those like Bloch and Brecht who argued for the necessity of artistic experimentation and recognised that the value of an iconoclastic avant-garde movement such as Expressionism lay precisely in its capacity to sweep away obsolete aesthetic forms and usher in the new. What united Lukács’ opponents was their rejection of a narrowly defined concept of (socialist) realism, and their belief that art and culture were not simply determined by the prevailing conditions of production. Accordingly, the emphasis shifted increasingly to the role of art and artistic production. In his essay of 1934, ‘Der Autor als Produzent’ [‘The Author as Producer’], Walter Benjamin suggested:

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‘Rather than asking, “What is the attitude of a work to the relations of production of its time?” I would like to ask, “What is its position in them?”’23 Above all, Benjamin’s approach heralded a move away from the conventional dichotomy of form and content, and towards a consideration of the place of art within the wider of context of production generally. Seen from this perspective, realism was not something to be captured in terms of a fixed system of inflexible rules and principles as Lukács had maintained; instead, realism, as Bertolt Brecht would also argue, needed to be reconceptualised as a dynamic concept that was itself subject to change over time. Although Brecht’s responses to Lukács were composed during the late 1930s, they were not published until 1968. What they reveal, however, is Brecht’s disdain for the notion that the great European realist writers of the nineteenth century could serve as models for twentieth-century writers and artists. As Brecht pointed out in his essay of 1938, ‘Die Expressionismusdebatte’ [‘The Expressionism Debate’], there was something profoundly self-contradictory about Lukács’ attack on formalist aesthetics: [H]olding onto the old conventional forms, when confronted by the constantly new demands of the constantly changing social environment is also formalism.   . . .   Turning realism into a formal issue, linking it with one, only one form (and an old form at that) means: sterilising it. Realist writing is not a formal issue. All formal features that prevent us from getting to the bottom of social causality must go; all formal features that help us get to the bottom of social causality must be welcomed.24

Although Brecht was well aware of the limitations of certain factions of the expressionist avant garde, he recognised nonetheless that it was not possible merely to revert to the solutions of the past, and sought instead to characterise artistic creativity in terms of an empirical process of trial and error. Accordingly, in his essay ‘Über den formalistischen Charakter der Realismustheorie’ [‘On the Formalistic Character of the Theory of Realism’], he notes: In art there is the fact of failure, and the fact of partial success. Our metaphysicians must understand this. Works of art can fail so easily; it is so difficult for them to succeed . . . For me, Expressionism is not merely ‘an embarrassing business’, not merely a deviation . . . Realists who are willing to learn and look for the practical side of things could learn a great deal from it.25

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However, Brecht’s most important contribution to the debate is his rejection of a simplistic dichotomy between form and content or between ‘formalism’ and ‘contentism’. For, as he argues, the construction of a work of art is always bound up with considerations of form and it is too simplistic to use the term ‘formalism’ as a means of referring to anything that rendered a work of art unrealistic. Moreover, it is obvious that there are many works that did not elevate form over social content and yet could not be said to correspond to reality. Accordingly, like realism the accessibility of a work of art for the broad masses, its ‘Volkstümlichkeit’, is not something that can be defined simply in terms of certain predetermined formal criteria. What really matters, as he argues in his essay of 1938, ‘Volkstümlichkeit und Realismus’ [‘Popularity and Realism’] is ‘to compare the depiction of life in a work of art with the life itself that is being depicted, instead of comparing it with another depiction’.26

Artistic Re-education Kurella’s contributions to the Expressionism Debate of the late 1930s and his subsequent position of influence in the GDR underline the extent to which postwar German cultural policy – especially that of the GDR – was already being formulated in exile. In 1943, the Nationalkomitee Freies Deutschland (NKFD) was set up in the Soviet Union with the communist writer, Erich Weinert, as its president; the group comprised not only future political leaders of the GDR such as Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck, but also key figures from the arts, including Friedrich Wolf and Johannes R. Becher. It is hard to say just how advanced plans were at this stage for the Stalinisation of German culture that eventually took place in the GDR during the early 1950s, but it is important to remember that, following the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union had a more tolerant attitude towards cultural policy in Germany precisely because of the need to sustain the four-power agreement that it saw as essential to the overriding goal of bringing about unification, demilitarisation and a German state that was at least politically neutral.27 Such consensus as there was among the Allies revolved primarily around the need to combat the legacy of German fascism by means of a thorough overhaul of the German educational system and the close monitoring of all forms of mass media. In one of the earliest American Information Control documents of 18 July 1945, the report’s author

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reflected on the rapid renaissance of cultural life in the occupied capital, adding that: The present state of film, theatre and music activities in BERLIN is the result of a very definite Russian policy which has been vigorously implemented since the fall of the city, and also of certain characteristics of German cultural life which are typical for BERLIN. As for Russian policy, it has as its basis an almost fanatical reverence for art and artists, coupled with the belief that artistic creation is intrinsically good, and an urgent need of human beings in times of uncertainty and suffering.28

The report bears witness to the intensity of the Soviet Union’s efforts to shape the direction of cultural policy and the arts in postwar Germany, an undertaking in which the two Russian cultural officers Alexander Dymschitz and Sergei Tulpanov (both of whom spoke German and had an in-depth understanding of European culture) and the establishment on 27 July 1945 of the Deutsche Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung (DVV) under Paul Wandel’s leadership played key roles. In addition, on 25 June 1946, the Soviet Military Administration (SMAD) had licenced the Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands with the explicit aim of re-educating Germans by means of the ‘rediscovery and active promotion of those national traditions in which freedom and humanist values are genuinely enshrined’;29 these aims were encapsulated in a performance of classical works by Tchaikovsky and Beethoven (Egmont) given by the recently revived Berlin Philharmonic at a ceremony in the Haus des Berliner Rundfunks on 3 July with the intention of introducing the Kulturbund to a wider public.30 Although the Kulturbund’s influence was most pronounced in the Soviet-controlled areas, at least to begin with, it aspired to be an organisation spanning the whole of occupied Berlin, and in 1946 at least, the universalist categories of its rhetoric (and the corresponding lack of any explicit reference to socialist realism) was clearly designed to appeal to writers, artists and musicians on both sides of the political divide.31 Indeed, it was not until November 1947 that the Kulturbund came to be seen as too overtly ideological by the Western Allies, who subsequently prohibited its activities in their sectors of the city.32 The Kulturbund’s attempt to align existing notions of classical humanism with a new concept of German national identity would become a key aspect of cultural policy in the GDR during the state’s founding years. Even before the founding of the GDR in 1949, the enduring legacy of the Expressionism Debate of the 1930s was apparent in its rejection of high modernism and a return to the pre-1933 culture

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of the Weimar Republic. Writing in the organisation’s journal Aufbau in 1945, the then President of the Kulturbund, Johannes R. Becher, argued that ‘To look back to the past would be to return to a state of affairs where . . . intellectual exhaustion and the tolerance of reactionary and evil activities had made Hitler’s rise to power possible.’33 Likewise, Becher’s opening address, with its characterisation of Nazi ideology as a form of crude nihilism and his appeal for a renewal of faith in the values of objective truth and Enlightenment rationality, could not help but evoke memories of the debates of the late 1930s: We acknowledge the existence of genuinely objective truths such as are to be found in both the natural world and in human society. We demand a stable system of meaning and values as well as logical thinking . . . We recall Goethe’s observation that in human affairs all periods of decline have been marked by a tendency to subjectivism, whereas all periods of renewal and regeneration have been grounded in a shared belief in truth and objectivity.34

Becher’s reference to Goethe amounted to an appeal not only for a revival of the values of German classical humanism in postwar art and literature, but, in addition, a new concept of politics based on the ethical underpinnings of this traditional concept of aesthetics: From now on the rich legacy of German classical humanism, and that of the working class movement and its importance for the political and ethical attitudes of our nation needs to be articulated in a way that is unambiguous, compelling and illuminating. Our traditions of classical humanism have never been followed by a concept of politics grounded in the same. On the contrary, politically speaking, we have always acted in a manner that is diametrically opposed to the best aspects of our traditions and we have never succeeded in finding the correct political form in which to express our most outstanding achievements in the cultural sphere. We have to find a way out of the unresolvable conflict of intellect and power.35

Viewed from the Kulturbund’s perspective, the catastrophe of German fascism could be explained in terms of a contradiction between ‘Geist’ and ‘Macht’, and it was this failing of earlier generations that was to be made good through a renewal of German classical humanism in the postwar era. Indeed, in the writer Bernhard Kellermann’s remark that the role of the Kulturbund would be to act as ‘the spiritual and cultural parliament of our country’,36 there is more than just an echo of Friedrich Schiller’s notion of the stage as a moral forum. Nonetheless, although the Kulturbund’s vision was clearly rooted in a particular interpretation of canonical eighteenth-century German literature, it was one that,

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in shaping the future direction of postwar German cultural policy, sought to embrace all forms of artistic activity. The underlying aims of the Kulturbund were also echoed in the programming of Der Augenzeuge, the newsreel produced in the Soviet Occupation Zone, which almost always included at least one feature on the arts. Many of these features focused on attempts to revive Germany’s classical heritage and the return of exiles who were in some way associated with that humanist legacy. In February 1946, Der Augenzeuge carried a feature on the first meeting of the Zentrale Kulturtagung of the communist (KPD) party, during which the GDR’s first president in waiting, Wilhelm Pieck, offered the assembled delegates a guarantee of freedom of expression, but only on the condition that those who enjoyed ‘the freedom to take up research, teaching, and artistic creativity should not abuse their position by doing anything that might lead to a revival of fascism . . . and thereby sabotaging democracy’.37 Subsequent editions of Der Augenzeuge in 1946 included features on the manufacture of prints by Albrecht Dürer in the Berliner Staatsdruckerei (1946, No. 5), on the reopening of the Lucas Cranach house in Gotha (1946, No. 7) and on the exhibition of paintings at the 1. Deutsche Kunstaustellung in the Zeughaus on Unter den Linden (1946, No. 8). Despite focusing primarily on events taking place in the Soviet Occupation Zone, reports from the Western sectors such as that on young performers at the Schauspielschule in Berlin-Dahlem (1946, No. 6) were also designed to highlight pockets of ‘progressive’ activity taking place across the whole of Berlin. Once established, the Kulturbund quickly attempted to broaden its sphere of influence by setting up a number of subgroups overseeing different aspects of the arts. The Kommission Musik was founded in 1946 under the leadership of the composer Heinz Thiessen, and many of its members, including the critic Hans Heinz Stückenschmidt and the composers Max Butting and Paul Höffer, were closely associated with the promotion of the New Music. In addition, the concerts it organised (many of them held at the Club der Kulturschaffenden in the Soviet sector) featured not only works by the members of the Kommission, but also by other celebrated modernist composers such as Bartók, Eisler and Hindemith.38 In the Western zones of occupation, American jazz had been propagated (albeit indirectly) via radio stations designed to cater for military personnel, and in 1946, the American Information Control Division (ICD) started to challenge the dominance of European and German musical traditions by promoting concerts featuring modernist works by the likes of American composers such as Aaron

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Copland and Samuel Barber. One consequence of these policies, as Elizabeth Janik has noted, was that ‘little difference existed between the kinds of contemporary music performed by the city’s Eastern and Western ensembles in 1946–7’.39 To a certain extent, the New Music’s emphasis on formal experimentation meant that, like abstract expressionist painting, it too could be promoted as an ‘absolute art’ that, at least in the eyes of some, would be capable of transcending political ideology. However, it was only a matter of time before the Kommission Musik’s enthusiasm for formalist experimentation and ‘pure aesthetics’ came into conflict with the desire of the leaders of the Kulturbund for a more politically engaged type of music, and with the prohibition of the Kulturbund’s activities in the West from November 1947 onwards and the collapse of the Allied Four-Power Administration of Berlin the following year, the utopian vision of a people united by a transcendent notion of New Music all but disappeared from view. Following the establishment of the Kommission Musik in 1946, the Kulturbund set up a similar body for the visual and plastic arts, the Kommission Bildender Kunst. Its members included not only the art historian Will Grohmann, but also a number of artists such as Max Pechstein, Oskar Nehrlinger and Georg Tappert, whose reputations had been established in the prewar period and whose plans for future exhibitions included artists, many of whose works might be described as expressionist in the wider sense of the term. In May 1945, the first major exhibition, the 1. Deutsche Kunstausstellung in the Zeughaus on Unter den Linden, was organised under the auspices of the Deutsche Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung and featured works that, for the most part, had been created in the mid 1930s. While the Soviets wasted no time in opening a number of galleries in the East, in the Western sectors of Berlin, the French sought to exploit the high esteem in which artists and sculptors such as George Braque, Pablo Picasso, August Rodin and Constantin Brancusi were held, and staged three major exhibitions of French art between 1946 and 1947. However, the most important event to be staged in 1946 was arguably the Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstausstellung in Dresden that took place from 25 August to 29 October. As the opening statement in the exhibition catalogue by Präsident h.c. Friedrichs underlines, art was already coming to be seen as a key component in the preservation of German unity at this critical historical juncture: All of us are delighted that the works on display at this exhibition have been submitted not only by artists working in the Soviet zone, but from

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all the occupied zones in Germany. This will make it possible to have a much deeper exchange of ideas and concept, and as such, represents an important step towards a unified Germany.40

Although there was a notable absence of almost any works by artists from the Blaue Reiter, Dada or Constructivist movements (all of whom had fallen out of favour in the Soviet Union), the exhibition nonetheless contained a large number of works by Weimar modernists such as Otto Dix and artists associated with the expressionist circle Die Brücke.41 However, it soon became clear that any attempt on the part of the Kommission Bildende Kunst to mobilise a concept of transcendent aesthetics grounded in Weimar modernism and pre-1933 art in order to foster a new sense of German unity and identity was inevitably going to come into conflict with the Kulturbund’s programme of political re-education in the East. For, as Becher pointedly reminded his readers in an article published in the Tägliche Rundschau on 25 May 1947, the Kulturbund was not an art club, but a prominent political organisation.42 As a result, the Kommission Bildende Kunst was required to monitor more closely the political leanings of contemporary artists in order to identify those who would be sympathetic to a more overt politicisation of art in the years to come in which art would play a key role in the realisation of the Two-Year Plan.43

Film Culture in the Soviet Occupation Zone For German filmmakers in the immediate postwar years, the situation was of a rather different order from that with which artists working in music and the visual and plastic arts were confronted. In stark contrast to music and painting, cinema not only required extensive infrastructure, but was also heavily dependent on viewers having a command of German. At the same time, cinema was seen as a popular art that, in terms of its mass appeal, could mobilise a different type of audience than other more highbrow forms such as modernist music and abstract expressionism. Even so, discussions on the direction that postwar cinema would take in the East also bore the imprint of the Expressionism Debate of the 1930s. Although Béla Balázs had touched on the cinema of Sergei Eisenstein in his essay of 1938, ‘Meyerhold and Stanislawsky’, his major contribution to a consideration of cinema in the context of the ongoing debate about realist aesthetics came in the form of another essay (also published that same year in Das Wort)

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entitled ‘Zur Kunstphilosophie des Films’ [‘On an Aesthetic Philosophy of Film’], in which he set out to challenge the notion that developments in film aesthetics could be explained reductively and simply in terms of developments in cinematic technology.44 Balázs’ discussion of montage and shifting perspective (two effects that had, of course, been facilitated by developments in camera technology) attempts to promote cinema as a revolutionary new form of visual culture that challenged conventional ways of seeing and signalled the beginning of a new form of spectatorship. For Balázs, cinema – ‘the only art form that came into being during capitalism’45 – was the product of a new revolutionary form of bourgeois culture in America that had the advantage of not being weighed down by tradition (and so had fewer obstacles to overcome than European art in its quest to grasp the totality of modern life). In contrast to sculpture, painting and other forms of visual art, cinema was not subject to ‘eternal laws’, which, despite originating in the precapitalist epoch, still dictated European standards of taste in the bourgeois era. Accordingly, what a film such as D. W. Griffiths’ Intolerance (1916), demonstrates with its critique of imperialism, Balázs argues, is that it is not developments in technology, but new types of subject matter that prompt the discovery and creation of radically new aesthetic forms.46 While recognising that the use of shifting and exaggerated perspectives had played an important role in the development of expressionist cinema, Balázs remained critical of the latter because of its oversubjective tendency. In its most exaggerated form, he argued, expressionism had brought about a disintegration of form and a corresponding loss of reality that was contrary to the spirit of progressive art.47 Balázs’ analysis of cinema as a revolutionary art form with its own specific aesthetic was couched in terms that made it possible to launch a critique of early expressionist cinema, while at the same time promoting the modernist techniques of classic Soviet productions such as Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925). The importance of Balázs’ theoretical work for DEFA’s early development is attested to not only by the publication of a collection of his essays by the GDR’s Staatliches Filmarchiv in 1973, but also by his involvement in a large number of DEFA’s early productions, together with a feature for Der Augenzeuge (1949, No. 17) to mark the occasion of his visit to the set of Slatan Dudow’s Unser Täglich Brot [Our Daily Bread, 1949]. 48 There were essentially four major traditions of filmmaking against which German filmmakers had to position themselves in the immediate postwar years: first, the legacy of radical Soviet cinema as embodied in such classic works as Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925)

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and October (1928), Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930) and Mark Donskoy’s Gorky Trilogy (1941); second, German expressionist cinema of the 1920s that included such films as Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari [The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1920] and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927); third, proletarian cinema of the Weimar Republic during the 1930s, such as Piel Jutzi’s Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück [Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness, 1929] and Slatan Dudow’s Kuhle Wampe (1932); and, finally, the more recent legacy of the UFA studio of the 1940s and, in particular, Nazi melodramas such as Rolf Hansen’s Die große Liebe [The Great Love, 1942] and Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s Ich klage an [I Accuse,1940], as well as the so-called Geniefilme (Genius films), such as Herbert Maisch’s Friedrich Schiller – Der Triumph eines Genies [Friedrich Schiller – The Triumph of Genius, 1940] and Traugott Müller’s Friedemann Bach (1941). When the Filmaktiv was established in the autumn of 1945 by the Zentralverwaltung für Volksbildung to oversee the resumption of film production in the Soviet Occupation Zone, its members included Carl Haacker, who had worked as a set designer for the proletarian film production company Prometheus, Adolf Fischer, who had played alongside Ernst Busch in Kuhle Wampe, and Hans Klering, who had worked with the Soviet director Mark Donskoy. However, as we shall see, during the early years of its existence, DEFA was also heavily reliant on filmmakers who had been employed by UFA during the late 1930s and early 1940s. At the ceremony to mark the handing over of the official production licence on 17 May 1946, the Soviet cultural officer Sergei Tulpanov sketched out his vision for the future: DEFA faces a number of important tasks. Of these the most crucial are the struggle to restore democracy in Germany and remove all traces of fascist and militaristic ideology from the minds of every German, and the struggle to re-educate the German people . . . especially the young to a real understanding of genuine democracy and humanism, and in so doing to promote a sense of respect for other people and other nations.49

Not surprisingly, these views on the ideological importance of film and other related art forms dovetailed perfectly with those of the Kulturbund, for whom, in the words of Becher, peace was ‘the continuation of the war against fascism by other means including ideology’.50 But while most of the filmmakers working for DEFA were ideologically committed to an antifascist agenda, there was very little consensus as to the form that such films should take, and this lack of agreement is reflected in the thematic and stylistic diversity of the films released

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during the early years of the studio’s existence. Although everyone seemed to agree that the model to be avoided was, as Paul Wandel had put it in 1944, the ‘nightmarish vision of Ufa’s factory of dreams’,51 determining the direction that film production should take proved to be considerably more difficult than was first imagined. Several months before DEFA received its licence, a number of filmmakers, including Kurt Maetzig and Wolfgang Staudte, had already been actively engaged in the production of German-language versions of Soviet films banned during the Nazi era, including such classics as Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible (1944). Since the production facilities at  the  former UFA studios in Babelsberg had been badly damaged during the latter stages of the Second World War and the legal issues surrounding ownership of the studio had not yet been resolved by the Allies, the dubbing of Soviet films was carried out in Berlin-Johannisthal at  the  former studios of Tobis-Filmkunst. For essentially the same reasons, the bulk of DEFA’s productions in 1946 and 1947 were filmed in the Althoff studio in Babelsberg’s Wilhemstraße. Although Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns (1946) was the first film produced by DEFA, the first to be shot on the site of the former UFA studios was Hans Müller’s 1-2-3 Corona of 1948, the first of a number of circus films that underline the importance attached to popular lowbrow art in the studio’s cultural agenda. While the film was a huge success at the box office, attracting an audience of some eight million viewers, it also highlighted just some of the obstacles DEFA faced in attempting to break with the legacy of the past. For the popular appeal of 1-2-3 Corona lay not in the film’s rather laboured attempt to adapt the circus milieu to the demands of socialist ideology, but rather in its relationship to a long tradition of circus films extending back through the 1940s and beyond. Indeed, the very title of the film was clearly designed to evoke memories of Arthur Rabenalt’s Die drei Codonas [The Three Codonas], an earlier circus film from 1940 and one on which Müller himself had worked as an assistant director. At the same time, the opening credits of 1-2-3 Corona also serve as a reminder of just how difficult it was for DEFA to assemble production teams whose members were untainted by involvement in the Nazi film industry; the film’s musical director was one Hans-Otto Borgmann, a figure perhaps best known for his collaboration with Hans Steinhoff on Hitlerjunge Quex (1933) and for composing the melody of its infamous Nazi anthem ‘Und die Fahne flattert uns voran’ [‘Our Banner Flutters before Us’]. DEFA did enjoy certain advantages over its rivals, not least the fact that the old UFA production studios at Potsdam-Babelsberg were

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located within the Soviet Occupation Zone; however, the studio was very aware that there were an increasing number of opportunities for filmmakers in the Western zones of occupied Germany and that – as in the other arts – an overtly dogmatic approach would put off the talent it wanted to attract. To a large extent, this explains the inclusive approach of the 1. Deutscher Filmautoren-Kongress, an event organised by the Kulturbund that took place in Berlin between 6 and 10 June 1947 and that was designed to appeal to filmmakers across the political divide. In the publication resulting from the conference, Alfred Lindemann made clear that the driving force behind the conference was ‘not propaganda but a desire to bring together East and West on the grounds that film had always been an international art form and would remain so. That’s why, even in Germany no film production group can afford to become isolated from the others’.52 A rather more partisan view of the direction that film production was to take in the postwar period was provided by Kurt Maetzig in his conference address ‘Was erwartet der Film vom Autor?’ [What Does Film Production Need from Writers?]. Maetzig’s vision of the future was predicated, above all, on the rejection of ‘the cinematic illusions served up by UFA’.53 However, his target was not simply confined to UFA melodramas of the 1940s, but also embraced those writers and artists whose response to the catastrophe of Hitler entailed an enduring rejection of political engagement. Citing the example of the writer Wolfdietrich Schnurre, who just months earlier had advised the new generation of aspiring writers that ‘the artist’s only true friend is solitude, and his only enemy, the masses’,54 Maetzig warned of the dangers inherent in attempting to turn one’s back on the political challenges of the contemporary situation.55 Accordingly, he advocated a return to a form of cinematic realism understood not as an aesthetic based on a set of normative principles, but rather as a way of representing the world in its totality. In place of the uncritical mediation of everyday life that had characterised the entertainment cinema of the Third Reich, what was required was a form of cinema in which, as he put it, ‘in addition to the characters, the social milieu is shown to be a factor in its own right’.56 In an attempt to promote filmmaking that depicted the relationship of human beings to the totality of their social and political environment, Maetzig argued that historically speaking, all the great masterpieces of cinema had been predicated upon such a concept of realism. Accordingly, he urged the audience to look beyond the dark traditions of early Expressionism – embodied in such works by Paul Wegener as Der Golem [The Golem, 1920] and

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Der Student von Prag [The Student of Prague, 1913] – and to draw their inspiration instead from the realism of films of Piel Jutzi in the 1930s and to reconnect with the traditions of realism embodied in such films as Mark Donskoy’s The Childhood of Maxim Gorki (1938), David Lean’s Brief Encounter (1945) and Roberto Rossellini’s Roma città aperta [Rome Open City, 1945]. Maetzig’s sketch of film history was clearly designed to reassure those in the audience who were still undecided as to where their loyalties lay that realism in the cinema was not simply the preserve of the Soviets, but was something that united all progressive filmmakers, irrespective of the political context in which they happened to work. Yet mindful of the increasingly tense political situation, he went out of his way to draw a principled distinction between a film with a political underpinning and crude works of ideological propaganda (Tendenzfilme), and in one final attempt to persuade those listening to throw their weight behind DEFA, he held up a promise of artistic freedom: ‘No obstacles will be placed in the way of those artists who have succeeded in liberating themselves from the burden of the past.’57

Notes   1. ‘Ein Vorschlag für eine Kulturfilm-Serie’, Neue Filmwelt 3(3) (1949), 31.   2. The preliminary work for this study was published as Seán Allan, ‘Representations of Art and the Artist in East German Cinema’, in Marc Silberman and Henning Wrage (eds), DEFA at the Crossroads of East German and International Film Culture: A Companion (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 87–106.  3. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).   4. Ibid., p. 23.  5. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 2006).   6. Marc Silberman, ‘What is German in German Cinema?’, Film History 8 (1996), 297– 315, at 297.   7. Hans Joachim Meurer, Cinema and National Identity in a Divided Germany, 1979–1989: The Split Screen (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2002), p. 43.   8. Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana, 1976), p. 216.   9. Leon Trotsky, ‘The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism’, in David Craig (ed.), Marxists on Literature: An Anthology (London: Penguin, 1975), pp. 363–79, at pp. 367 and 368. 10. Ibid., p. 375. 11. Ibid., p. 379. 12. David Bathrick, The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), p. 87.

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13. Andrey Zhdanov, ‘Soviet Literature: The Richest in Ideas, the Most Advanced Literature’, in Maxim Gorky, Karl Radek, Nikolai Bukharin, Andrey Zhdanov et al., Soviet Writers’ Congress 1934 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1977), pp. 15–26, at p. 21. For a selection of key documents outlining the rise of socialist realism, see HansJürgen Schmitt and Godehard Schramm (eds), Sozialistische Realismuskonzeptionen. Dokumente zum 1: Allunionskongreß der Sowjetschriftsteller (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp), 1974. 14. Zhdanov, ‘Soviet Literature’, p. 21. 15. David Bathrick ‘Moderne Kunst und Klassenkampf: Die Expressionismus-Debatte in der Exilschrift Das Wort’, in Reinhold Grimm und Jost Hermand (eds), Exil und innere Emigration (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1972), pp. 89–109, at p. 95. 16. For a comprehensive set of documents relating to the debate plus commentary, see Hans-Jürgen Schmitt (ed.), Die Expressionismusdebatte: Materialien zu einer marxistischen Realismuskonzeption (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973). 17. Georg Lukács, ‘Expressionism: Its Significance and Decline’, in Rodney Livingstone (ed.), Essays on Realism: Georg Lukács, trans. David Fernbach (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1980), pp. 76–113, at p. 87 (originally published as Georg Lukács, ‘Größe und Verfall des Expressionismus’, Internationale Literatur 1 (1934), 153–73). 18. Bernhard Ziegler [= Alfred Kurella], ‘Nun ist dies Erbe zuende . . .’, Das Wort 2(9) (1938), 42–49, at 42 (reproduced in Schmitt, Die Expressionismusdebatte, pp. 50–60). 19. Gustav von Wangenheim subsequently went on to become a director for DEFA. His films included Und wieder 48 [1848 Once Again, 1948] and Der Auftrag Höglers [Högler’s Mission, 1950]. 20. Ernst Bloch, ‘Discussing Expressionism’, in Ronald Taylor (ed.), Aesthetics and Politics (London: Verso, 1980), pp. 16–27 (originally published as ‘Diskussionen über Expressionismus’, Das Wort 2(6) (1938), 103–12). 21. Ibid., p. 23. 22. Ibid., p. 26. 23. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Author as Producer’, in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith (eds), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, trans. by Rodney Livingstone et al., 4 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005–6), vol. 2.2 (1931–34), pp. 768–82, at p. 770) (unpublished in Benjamin’s lifetime; German text in: Rolf Tiedemann and Hermann Schwepenhäuser (eds), Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften, 7 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1991), vol. 2, pp. 683–701). 24. Bertolt Brecht, ‘The Expressionism Debate’, in Tom Kuhn and Steve Giles (eds), Brecht on Art and Politics (London: Methuen, 2003), pp. 213–19, at p. 214 (German original: Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei and Klaus-Detlef Müller (eds), Bertolt Brecht: Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, 30 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988–2000), vol. 22.1, pp. 417–19). 25. Bertolt Brecht, ‘On the Formalistic Character of the Theory of Realism’, in Taylor, Aesthetics and Politics, pp. 70–76, at p. 74 (German original: ‘Über den formalistischen Charakter der Realismustheorie’, in Bertolt Brecht: Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, vol. 22.1, pp. 437–45). 26. Bertolt Brecht, ‘Popularity and Realism’, in Taylor, Aesthetics and Politics, pp. 79–85, at p. 85 (German original: ‘Volkstümlichkeit und Realismus’, in Bertolt Brecht: Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, vol. 22.1, pp. 405–15). 27. For a more detailed discussion of Soviet attitudes towards postwar Germany in this period, see Ted Hopf, Reconstructing the Cold War: The Early Years, 1945–58 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 112.

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28. Henry C. Alter, ‘Recommendations of Film, Theatre and Music Sub-Section (18 July 1945)’ [= NA 260/390/42/16/5-6/75]. 29. ‘Leitsätze des Kulturbundes zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands. Beschlossen von der Gründungskundgebung des Kulturbundes zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands, 3. Juli 1945’, Aufbau 2(7) (1945), 200–1, at 200. 30. On the resonance of this event, see Elizabeth Janik, Recomposing German Music: Politics and Musical Tradition in Cold War Berlin (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 106. 31. However, as Ulrike Goeschen notes, in a document dated 15 June 1946, an attempt was made to assemble a list of practitioners across all the arts together and to assess both their aesthetic approach and their political leaning. See Ulrike Goeschen, Vom sozialistischen Realismus zur Kunst im Sozialismus (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2001), p. 28. 32. As Maike Steinkamp notes, the catalyst for the ban was an acrimonious dispute about censorship at the Erster Schrifstellerkongress on 8 August 1947. See Maike Steinkamp, ‘The Propagandistic Role of Modern Art’, in Philip Broadbent and Sabine Hake (eds), Berlin Divided City, 1945–1989 (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), pp. 23–33, at p.  32, n. 5. See also Anneli Hartmann and Wolfram Eggeling, ‘Zum “Verbot” des Kulturbundes in West-Berlin 1947’, Deutschland Archiv 11 (1995), 1161–70. The banning of the Kulturbund also features in an early version of the script to Kurt Maetzig’s film Roman einer jungen Ehe. See ‘Treatment’ (p. 2) [= Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, 166]. 33. Johannes R. Becher, ‘Deutsches Bekenntnis’, Aufbau, 1(1) (1945), 2–12, at 6. 34. Johannes R. Becher, ‘Ansprache’, in Manifest des Kulturbundes zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands (Berlin: Aufbau, 1945), pp. 32–40, at p. 37. 35. Ibid., p. 40. 36. Ibid., p. 10. 37. Wilhelm Pieck and Anton Ackermann, Unsere kulturpolitische Sendung: Reden auf der ersten Zentralen Kulturtagung der KPD vom 3. bis 5. Februar 1946 (Berlin, 1946), pp. 5 and 20. 38. See Elizabeth Janik, ‘Back to the Future: New Music’s Revival and Redefinition’, in Broadbent and Hake, Berlin Divided City, pp.  34–45. As Janik notes (at p.  36), the antiformalist campaign in the Soviet Union meant that, with the exception of Shostakovich and Prokofiev, very little contemporary Soviet music was performed in the Soviet Occupation Zone during 1945 and 1946. 39. Janik, ‘Back to the Future’, p. 38. 40. Excerpts from the opening address are reproduced in the opening section of the catalogue Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstaustellung, Dresden 1946 (no page numbers). 41. For a discussion of the exhibition, see Maike Steinkamp, Das unerwünschte Erbe: Die Rezeption ‘entarteter’ Kunst in Kunstkritik, Ausstellungen und Museen der SBZ und frühen DDR (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), pp.  105–9. See also Steinkamp, ‘The Propagandistic Role of Modern Art’. 42. Johannes R. Becher, ‘Kulturbund’, Tägliche Rundschau, 25 May 1947. 43. See BArch DY IV 2/906/140 (p. 33). 44. Béla Balázs, ‘Zur Kunstphilosophie des Films’, in Rudolf Denk (ed.), Texte zur Poetik des Films (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1992), pp. 82–108 (originally published in Das Wort 3(3) (1938), 104–19). 45. Ibid., p. 215. 46. Ibid., p. 218. 47. Ibid., pp. 224 and 225.

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48. Gertraude Kühn, Manfred Lichtenstein and Eckart Jahnke (eds), Béla Balázs: Essay, Kritik 1922–1932 (Berlin: Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR, 1973). 49. Cited in Ralph Schenk (ed.), Das zweite Leben der Filmstadt Babelsberg: DEFA Spielfilme 1946–1992 (Berlin: Henschel, 1994), p. 14. 50. Johannes R. Becher, ‘Zu unseren Kulturaufgaben’, cited in Horst Haase (ed.), Johannes R. Becher. Leben und Werk [Schriftsteller der Gegenwart 1], 2nd ed. (Berlin: Volk und Wissen, 1987), p. 187. 51. See Christiane Mückenberger and Günter Jordan, ‘Sie sehen selbst, Sie hören selbst . . .’: Die DEFA von ihren Anfängen bis 1949 (Marburg: Hitzeroth, 1994), p.  14. For a concise overview of the ideological issues with which DEFA was confronted during the first decade of the studio’s existence see David Bathrick ‘From Soviet Zone to Voksdemokratie’, in Lars Karl and Pavel Skopal (eds), Cinema in the Service of the State: Perspectives on Film Culture in the GDR and Czechoslovakia, 1945–60 (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2015), pp. 15–38. 52. Der deutsche Film: Fragen, Forderungen, Aussichten. Bericht vom Ersten Film-AutorenKongreß 6.–9. Juni 1947 in Berlin (Berlin: Henschel, 1947), p. 7. Lindemann’s tenure as head of production at DEFA was to prove short-lived, and he left the studio for the West in 1948. 53. Kurt Maetzig, ‘Was erwartet der Film vom Autor’, in Der deutsche Film, pp. 20–33, at p. 20. 54. Wolfdietrich Schnurre, ‘Kunst und Künstler. Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen eines Außenseiters’, Horizont, 5 January 1947. Schnurre was a founding member of the Gruppe 47 that was heavily criticised in the Western zones of occupation by the United States on account of its allegedly nihilistic stance. 55. Some months later, writing in the Deutsche Rundschau in November 1947, Schnurre had written a polemical review of Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten, in which he condemned it as ‘aesthetically primitive’. Wolfdietrich Schnurre, ‘Film-Rundschau’, Deutsche Rundschau 70(11) (1947), 148–52, at 149. 56. Maetzig, ‘Was erwartet der Film vom Autor?’, p. 23. 57. Ibid., p. 33.

Chapter 1

German Classical Humanism and the Sovietisation of Culture

In his speech to the 1. Deutscher Filmautoren-Kongress of June 1947, the director Kurt Maetzig drew attention to the dangers of ignoring developments in the political sphere and embracing a position of inner emigration, before going on to warn delegates that ‘artists who adopt an apolitical position are putting their art at risk’.1 It is hardly surprising that such issues should have featured so prominently in his address because they lay at the very heart of his film Ehe im Schatten, the release of which was scheduled for October of that same year. Although Ehe im Schatten was the 35-year-old Maetzig’s first full-length feature film for DEFA, he had already gained considerable experience as a studio employee, working first on the dubbing of Soviet films banned during the Third Reich and then on the weekly newsreel Der Augenzeuge as editor. Maetzig was by no means alone in his condemnation of inner emigration and of what many on the left regarded as the questionable and at times opportunistic behaviour of some members of the artistic intelligentsia during the Third Reich. Early cultural gatherings in Berlin organised by the Deutsche Verwaltung für Volksbildung (DVV) such as that which took place in the former UFA-Haus at Dönhoffstrasse in January 1946 sought to encourage artists and writers to adopt an explicitly political stance in their work, while at the same time reassuring them that the politicisation of art in the postwar period was something altogether different from the doctrinaire approach of the Nazi

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regime. The January gathering of 1946 was followed just two months later by a similar rally on 4 March at the Admiralspalast on Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse under the slogan ‘Zu neuen Ufern’ [‘In Search of New Shores’] an event that was reported on at length in Der Augenzeuge (1946, No. 3). Although there were clear differences of opinion among the conference delegates, Maetzig’s unambiguous stance on the need for active political engagement is already evident in his editing of the newsreel where Ernst Wiechert’s observation that ‘By remaining silent artists also played their part in the national catastrophe’ is juxtaposed with Erich Weinert’s exhortation that there had never been so great a need for writers and artists to embrace the national cause and the demands of the working classes, to fight for justice and a united front for democracy, and to oppose the division of the nation. The coverage of the conference is just one of a number of items on art and culture in this particular edition of Der Augenzeuge, which also includes features on Johannes R. Becher greeting the conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler upon his return to Germany, and on the opening of a Tolstoy museum in the house in Moscow where the champion of realist fiction had lived and worked. Tellingly, the newsreel concludes with an extended feature on a production of Jacques Offenbach’s operetta La Vie Parisienne at Berlin’s Hebbel Theater, a production that, as the accompanying libretto ‘Go easy, have fun, and travel light!’ suggests, reflects a view of apolitical art characteristic of the Western sectors of the city. As we shall see, all of these different facets of postwar German cultural politics – the fate of Jewish musicians/actors during the Third Reich (Furtwängler), the renewed emphasis on realist aesthetics (Tolstoy) and the role of art as entertainment/distraction from contemporary reality (Operetta) – lie at the heart of Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten. Viewed from such a perspective, the film represents an important contribution to the development of the prevailing socialist imaginary and one that, in contrast to the more sober discursive style of Der Augenzeuge, draws on the conventions of both UFA melodrama of the 1940s and the eighteenth-century bourgeois tragedy, the so-called ‘bürgerliches Trauerspiel’, in its exploration of the individual moral responsibility of the artist and the limitations of bourgeois humanist aesthetics.2

Ehe im Schatten (1947) Using the fictional personae of Hans and Elisabeth Maurer, Ehe im Schatten re-rehearses the tragic careers of the real-life actor couple

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Figure 1.1 Romantic Liebestod in Ehe im Schatten. © DEFA-Stiftung/Kurt Wunsch. Published with permission.

Joachim Gottschalk and his Jewish wife Meta Wolff, both of whom committed suicide on 6 November 1941.3 For Maetzig, whose Jewish mother had also taken her own life, Hans Schweikart’s novella had a highly personal resonance, even though, as he notes, his parents’ behaviour (and especially that of his own father) did not quite match the Schillerian sublimity of the Gottschalks.4 Drawing in particular on the three landmark moments in the history of the Holocaust in Germany in 1933, 1938 and 1943, the storyline of Ehe im Schatten focuses on the couple’s doomed attempt to negotiate the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi regime that, among other restrictions, bar Elisabeth from performing on stage and eventually drive the couple to commit suicide in what is, stylistically speaking, a Romantic Liebestod (Figure 1.1).5 In terms of box office appeal, the film was an unqualified success and played to an audience of over 10 million viewers. The only DEFA production to be premiered simultaneously in all four sectors of occupied Berlin, it was awarded a ‘Bambi’ as the best film of 1947.6 However, not everybody was quite so convinced by its quality, for as Maetzig recalls: When Brecht saw my first film Ehe im Schatten – he had just returned from emigration and people told him that there was a film which was a great

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success, and we immediately arranged a screening of the film for him – when the screening was over he said ‘what terrible kitsch!’7

Maetzig, who accepted Brecht’s critique as a challenge to develop a different approach to directing in his next film Die Buntkarierten [Girls in Gingham, 1949], did not disagree fundamentally with such a damning verdict: ‘Real emotions are, at least in part, obscured by the quite unnecessary sentimentality of the actors’ performances’, he conceded. ‘The whole thing is still too reminiscent of an UFA production.’8 That this should be so is hardly surprising, for the film’s credits read like a ‘who’s who’ of German cinema from the early 1940s: Hans Schweikart, author of the treatment ‘Es wird schon nicht so schlimm’ [‘Things Won’t Turn out That Bad’] on which the script of Ehe im Schatten was based, had enjoyed a successful career in Germany as a writer and director during the 1930s and 1940s working for Bavaria.9 During this period, he had been feted for his production of Das Fräulein von Barnhelm (1940), an adaptation of G.E. Lessing’s classic eighteenth-century comedy Minna von Barnhelm.10 Cameraman Friedl Behn-Grund had been the cinematographer on Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s Nazi propaganda film Ich klage an [I Accuse, 1941],11 art director Otto Erdmann had acted as set designer for Helmut Käutner’s melodrama Romanze in Moll [Romance in a Minor Key, 1943] and composer Wolfgang Zeller had written the score for Veit Harlan’s infamous anti-Semitic film Jud Süß (1940). While Maetzig was relieved to have assembled such an experienced crew to assist him on what was his first feature film, the composition of the production team underlines the difficulties that postwar filmmakers faced in addressing the formal traditions of UFA’s wartime melodramas. Indeed, as Maetzig acknowledged some years later, breaking with the ‘UFA-Stil’ of the 1940s was not simply a question of addressing new types of subject matter, but required a radically different approach to cinematography itself: It gradually became clear to us that what we called ‘UFA-style’ always had something to do with idealising things, painting over the cracks and offering a distorted picture of reality. These stylistic devices were a way of dressing things up and were designed to convey the illusion of a world in which everything was just fine.   I went along with this form of cinematography partly because of a lack of self-confidence and partly to take account of the viewing habits of the cinema-goers I wanted to reach.12

As these remarks suggest, Maetzig’s position on Ehe im Schatten is often ambivalent: at times he goes as far as to suggest that the pathos in

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Figure 1.2 Kurt Maetzig on the set of Ehe im Schatten. © DEFA-Stiftung/Kurt Wunsch. Published with permission.

the film was intentional and designed to elicit an emotional response on the spectator’s part, while at others he seems to accept the thrust of Brecht’s criticism, blaming his own inexperience for his failure to elicit a more controlled performance from the lead actress, Ilse Steppat (Figure 1.2).13 Contemporary reviews of Ehe im Schatten, however, reveal that what appealed to postwar audiences was its theme, and that few were really troubled by any perceived aesthetic shortcomings in its formal composition. Hans Ulrich Eylau, writing in the Tägliche Rundschau, spoke for many in both East and West when he praised the film ‘precisely because of emotional power and intensity of the production as a whole’.14 While Ehe im Schatten represents an early attempt on DEFA’s part to address the issue of the Holocaust, recent scholars such as Robert Shandley have, quite understandably, objected to its treatment of anti-Semitism and in particular to the way in which its ‘sentimental tone’ allows the audience to enjoy the spectacle ‘without . . . having to concentrate on the historical reasons for Elisabeth’s persecution’.15 However, rather than interpret the film as a failed attempt on DEFA’s part to offer a historically critical analysis of anti-Semitism, it is perhaps more productive to see it as the first in a series of DEFA films exploring

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the changing relationship between art and politics from an explicitly East German perspective. For, as in so many of Maetzig’s subsequent films, Ehe im Schatten explores the question of individual moral responsibility generally, and the responsibility of the artist at a moment of political crisis in particular. When the troupe of actors goes on holiday in Hiddensee shortly before the Reichstag fire of 1933, Fehrenbach, the fictional director of the successful production of Kabale und Liebe, utters the fateful words: ‘After all, we are just artists and as long as we are all here together we don’t need to worry about politics.’ The dangerous consequences of embracing such a view are already evident in Dr Blohm’s sinister reassurance that they have nothing to fear from the Hitler regime since ‘whatever happens, it’s bound to be a great time for artists . . . it’s always been like that in dictatorships’. And while the reactionary leanings of Hofbauer, a potter who has withdrawn to the remote northern setting of Hiddensee, are evident in his observation that what is needed is ‘a strong leader’, it is left to the film’s most clear-sighted individual, the Jewish actor Kurt Bernstein, to challenge Blohm’s fascist ideology when he objects that ‘we live in a modern political state, not some primeval jungle’. As the film shows, any such attempt to separate art and politics has, quite literally, fatal consequences, and it is not long before the group is split ideologically and we witness a struggle between two mutually opposed concepts of aesthetics. While Dr Blohm, the Nazi devotee, bemoans the lack of suitable contemporary works that would reflect his enthusiasm for Nietzsche’s Will to Power, Hans, a conventional liberal, defends a concept of humanist values that are, by and large, derived from German classical drama. Inevitably, this clash of aesthetics is focused on the figure of Elisabeth: ‘You are determined to see her as Lulu’, he tells Blohm. ‘But I see her as Luise.’ Yet, it is important to remember that Nietzschean aesthetics, along with the stereotypical notion of ‘daemonic’ (i.e. sexualised) femininity that Blohm associates with it, were not simply the preserve of the authoritarian right. Many avant-garde artists in both Wilhelminian Germany and the Weimar Republic  – especially those of an expressionist persuasion  – had been inspired by Nietzsche’s subjectivist ethics to launch a critique of conventional bourgeois morality. Likewise, Nietzsche’s provocative history of Greek tragedy with its emphasis on the Dionysian had provided the impulse behind many works of art that were celebrated by both right and left alike. However, given the tenor of the Expressionism Debate of the late 1930s and the enduring misgivings of those Marxist theorists who regarded any notion of modernist art rooted in the

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‘Dionysian’ with suspicion, it is no coincidence that the chief proponent of Nietzschean ideas in the film is the opportunistic Nazi Dr Blohm.16 Although Elisabeth seems an unlikely ‘Lulu’, her Jewish origins mean, of course, that Blohm’s projected vision for her can never be realised on stage; however, confined to the domestic sphere as she is by the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazis (and, it should be said, by Maetzig’s adherence to the cinematic conventions of melodrama), she comes to embody the passivity of Schiller’s heroine more completely than at any point during her stage career. Ehe im Schatten begins with a performance of Act V Scene 7 of Kabale und Liebe [Love and Intrigue], in which Elisabeth’s words ‘I die in innocence’ anticipate the female protagonist’s fate both on and off-stage, and it ends with a suicide that, though played out within the confines of their Berlin flat, is equally indebted to the final act of Schiller’s drama. As Hans poisons the tea, Elisabeth embarks on a litany of death-­ monologues culled from the pages of Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans [The Maid of Orleans] and Georg Büchner’s Dantons Tod [Danton’s Death]. As Ute Wölfel has noted, the film is littered with intertextual references to canonical works of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century German literature.17 Both of these monologues call to mind the concept of (female) renunciation that is the cornerstone of the so-called ‘bürgerliches Trauerspiel’ of late eighteenth-century Germany. Yet the two deathmonologues sit together uneasily. Lucille’s monologue in Dantons Tod (Act IV Scene 4)  – ‘Death  – what’s that word? Tell me Camille!’ (‘Sterben! Was ist das für ein Wort? Sag es mir Camille’)  – evokes an image of a despotic and brutal world in which the only redeeming feature is love, and in particular Lucille’s unconditional love for the revolutionary Camille. What makes Lucille’s death-monologue so powerful is the fact that, in contrast to the male figures in Büchner’s play who have lost faith in the revolution in whose name they are now to be slaughtered, her faith in her love for Camille is both absolute and unshakeable, and although it might be argued that, as a woman, her agency in Büchner’s play is hopelessly restricted, she does at least have the consolation that she is dying for something she believes in. The contrast with Johanna’s death-monologue – ‘Do you see the rainbow in the sky?’ (‘Seht ihr den Regenbogen in der Luft?’) – quoted from Schiller’s Die Jungfrau von Orleans is subtle, but nonetheless striking. Whereas in Dantons Tod Lucille never has to question the ‘legitimacy’ of her love for Camille, Johanna’s death in Die Jungfrau von Orleans is presented as an act of atonement precisely for the ‘crime’ of having betrayed her calling by falling in love with the English knight Lionel, and Schiller’s drama

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ends accordingly with a vision of the sublime in which the moral will triumphs over desire and the claims of the body. This tension between Lucille’s ‘innocence’ on the one hand and Johanna’s ‘guilt’ on the other strikes right at the very heart of Elisabeth Maurer’s predicament in Ehe im Schatten. For, as Maetzig noted, to have portrayed Elisabeth and Hans simply as innocent victims would have made the film sad, but not tragic, and the claim that Ehe im Schatten should be viewed as a tragedy is rooted in the characters’ complicity in their own downfall: ‘they act and behave . . . in accordance with classical dramaturgy . . . They are not simply victims but must also share some of the responsibility for what happens. That was the key point I wanted to get across in my film’.18 Nowhere is this sense of guilt more clearly articulated in the film than at the point where Hans refuses to divorce his wife and, during the ensuing confrontation with Dr Blohm, acknowledges the complicity of the artistic intelligentsia for the predicament with which they now find themselves confronted: ‘But those of us who shunned politics, we’ve only ourselves to blame that we find ourselves in such a predicament! We always believed things wouldn’t be that bad – and that as individual artists we could ignore the persecution going on around us. We’re just as guilty as the rest.’ Yet even Elisabeth herself is not entirely free from blame: not only does she flirt with the possibility of a relationship with Dr Blohm, but in addition she shuns the political discussion that takes place in the Hiddensee holiday cottage and instead utters the fateful words: ‘Things won’t be that bad.’ On one level, Elisabeth’s ‘performance’ in the penultimate sequence of Ehe im Schatten represents an act of release by an artist who, for years, has been denied the opportunity to perform on stage, but on another level, it serves as a pessimistic commentary on the failure of bourgeois humanist art to engage with the demands of the contemporary political situation and offer an escape from the impasse in which she finds herself. While Kabale und Liebe is conventionally seen as a drama about the obstacles placed in the way of love by social class during the age of absolutism, Maetzig exploits Schiller’s bourgeois tragedy as a structural device through which to explore the impossibility of an interracial marriage in Germany during the Nazi period. Yet just as Ferdinand’s aristocratic heritage blinds him to Luise Miller’s class-bound predicament, in Maetzig’s reworking of Schiller’s play, Hans’ Aryan origins and his desire to carve out a career in the worlds of the theatre and the cinema also prevent him, at least for much of the film, from acknowledging the dangers to which his Jewish wife is exposed. Indeed, it is a telling commentary on the capacity of popular cinema of the 1940s to

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deflect attention from the prevailing political realities that Elisabeth’s fate is finally sealed when Hans persuades her to attend the premiere of ‘Melodie’, a light-hearted historical operetta in the UFA style in which he has a leading role. Moreover, in both Kabale und Liebe and Ehe im Schatten, the loss of personal autonomy that the female protagonists suffer as a result of the male protagonists’ well-intentioned (albeit misguided) attempts to ‘protect’ them is underlined by the fact that, ultimately, both Luise and Elisabeth die at the hands of their respective lovers. Seen in this light, it is perhaps hardly surprising that Brecht (whose hostility to Schillerian pathos is well documented) should dismiss the film so summarily. Brecht’s critique of Maetzig’s film has, understandably, been echoed by a number of contemporary scholars. However, it is important not to lose sight of the fact that, in the context of its late eighteenth-century origins, the drama of the Sturm und Drang was a revolutionary aesthetic form that sought to portray the progressive values of an emerging bourgeois class in terms of universalist concepts that, ultimately, the more enlightened representatives of the feudal aristocracy would come to embrace. Running parallel to the opposition between the decadent values of the ancien régime and the new ‘natural’ virtues of the modern’ bourgeoisie is a corresponding opposition between rationality and affect; given the often Machiavellian manipulation of reason underpinning court intrigue, it is hardly surprising that in many dramas (and Kabale und Liebe is no exception in this respect), the locus of honesty and virtue is to be sought in feeling rather than reason. Indeed, Schiller’s mobilisation of affect in the service of progressive politics was one of the reasons why Friedrich Engels famously referred to Kabale und Liebe as ‘the first real political drama in the German canon’.19 However, a closer reading of these dramas reveals that bourgeois virtues can be no less tyrannical than the structures of feudal absolutism against which they are pitted. Likewise, the intensity of the aristocratic Ferdinand’s feelings for the bourgeois musician’s daughter in Kabale und Liebe leads him to believe (mistakenly) that love can conquer all and blinds him to the extent to which these feelings are themselves conditioned by his privileged class origins (‘your heart belongs to your class’, Luise tells him). Accordingly, insofar as it seeks to mobilise affect in order to achieve a political end, Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten remains true to the spirit of the Schillerian drama that informs its structure. When Maetzig talks of his desire ‘to open up the hardened hearts the viewers and to engage with them on an emotional level’, his aesthetic agenda is not fundamentally different from those of the Sturm und Drang generation

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of writers.20 In Kabale und Liebe, Schiller offers an example of what he hoped to achieve with his affect-laden drama when the aristocratic Lady Milford is moved by the constancy of Luise’s virtuous behaviour and renounces both Ferdinand and her aristocratic privilege, and chooses to embrace bourgeois values instead. In a similar fashion, Maetzig’s film also seeks to mobilise political affect in an attempt to persuade postwar spectators to confront the errors of the past, admit their guilt and embrace a more progressive form of politics. What Maetzig later regretted was not the recourse to emotion per se, but rather the degeneration of political affect into melodramatic sentimentality under his direction: ‘If you want to generate a particular emotional response in the viewer, it is important not to allow the actor to perform that emotional content in advance on screen.’21 While Ehe im Schatten serves as a warning to those (both Jewish and Gentile) who would see art as a transcendent realm into which it is possible to withdraw from the contingencies of everyday fascism, it contains within it a paradox that, ultimately, remains unresolved. Rather than launch a critique of transcendent aesthetics by adopting a critical perspective on both the action and aesthetic form of Kabale und Liebe (somewhat in the manner that Martin Hellberg attempted in his adaptation of the drama for DEFA in 1959), Maetzig’s film actively exploits Schillerian pathos in the presentation of its subject matter. This shortcoming in the conceptualisation of Ehe im Schatten is further exacerbated by a combination of Friedl Behn-Grund’s emotive camera­ work and Wolfgang Zeller’s melodramatic score. Indeed, Brecht was not the only one to object to Maetzig’s attempt to elicit an emotional response to what was clearly a political problem; as one viewer, writing in Die Weltbühne, noted: ‘any attempt to bring about an improvement in people by appealing to their emotions is doomed to fail’.22

Roman einer jungen Ehe (1952) The year 1952 represents a key moment in the development of aesthetics and visual culture in the GDR: the premiere of Maetzig’s latest film Roman einer jungen Ehe in Berlin’s Babylon cinema on 18 January was followed the very next day by a celebration to mark the completion of Hermann Henselmann’s Hochhaus an der Weberwiese, a prototype building for the new architecture on the flanks of the Stalinallee. The timing of the two events was anything but coincidental, for the construction site of Berlin’s first socialist boulevard provided one of the key

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locations for Maetzig’s film about life on the stage in postwar Berlin. Of the two, Henselmann’s building has stood the test of time rather better than Maetzig’s film; while the Stalinist architecture on what is now Karl-Marx-Allee has acquired a certain cachet in the architectural landscape of post-unification Berlin, Maetzig’s Cold War classic Roman einer jungen Ehe has long been forgotten. Yet, despite its schematic narrative and formal shortcomings, this film (which even Maetzig himself in later life dismissed as an error of judgement) remains a key historical document for an understanding of the development of cultural policy and film aesthetics during the founding years of the GDR. While Ehe im Schatten looks back at the political responsibility of the artist during the late 1930s and early 1940s, similar questions are raised five years later, albeit in the new ideological context of postwar Germany, in Maetzig’s next film about an artist-couple, Roman einer jungen Ehe: ‘We’re artists – what has politics got to do with us?’ Jonas asks, in an obvious echo of Fehrenbach’s fateful remark from the earlier film.23 Despite the popular success of Ehe im Schatten, Maetzig had sought to eliminate sentimentality wherever possible from his subsequent work, and the results are evident in both Die Buntkarierten (1949) and Der Rat der Götter [Council of the Gods, 1950]. But while Roman einer jungen Ehe might also be seen as a corrective to the melodramatic style that had so endeared Ehe im Schatten to postwar audiences in 1947, ultimately the need to bring it into line with the new doctrine of socialist realism at the start of the 1950s resulted in a work that is equally dependent on the manipulation of human emotion and, in particular, on the cultivation of a form of pathos that reaches its climax in the monumentalist performance of Kurt Barthel’s poetic eulogy to Stalin towards the end of the film. When Roman einer jungen Ehe was released in January 1952, contemporary reviewers were initially fairly enthusiastic: ‘The right topic at the right time’, one critic wrote in the Leipziger Volkszeitung.24 Mindful of the difficulties DEFA was facing because of a chronic shortage of quality scripts, several commentators praised the novelist Bodo Uhse for his involvement in coauthoring the script and urged others to follow his lead. Just how keen critics in the East were to see DEFA make a genuine break with the past and embrace a new aesthetic approach is evident in one remark to the effect that Maetzig’s latest film was quite different from ‘all the kitschy films about marriage and romance produced by those dream-factories’ (shorthand for both Hollywood and UFA melodrama, though it might easily have served as a description of Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten), while the more critical observation that

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‘the world of working class people . . . receives far too little attention’ underlined the SED’s continuing desire to assign greater prominence in postwar German film culture to representatives of the working class.25 Despite a reasonably favourable press, the film’s schematic structure and wooden dialogue did not endear it to audiences in either East or West. In a revealing diary entry of 23 April 1951, the scriptwriter Bodo Uhse (who by then was working on a new film project) noted ‘above all avoid any kind of dialogue resembling that used in “Junge Ehe”’ and made a point of boycotting the film’s premiere.26 However, perhaps the most telling indictment of the film is that, despite its near-exemplary embodiment of socialist realist aesthetics, it is conspicuously absent from the list of films singled out for praise during the GDR’s Second Film-Kongress of September 1952. Roman einer jungen Ehe is, above all, a film that deliberately eschews traditional models of character development and psychological interiority, and opts instead, as John Urang has argued, to make ‘the protagonists’ love contingent upon their politics’.27 In his own contribution to a vigorous debate entitled ‘Warum gibt es keine Liebe in unseren Filmen?’ [‘Why Doesn’t Love Feature in Our Films?’], published almost a year after the release of Roman einer jungen Ehe in Neues Deutschland, Maetzig displayed some sympathy with those readers who demanded that DEFA produce more films about love and who, dissatisfied with the studio’s current output, were turning instead to films imported from the West. In Maetzig’s view, the problem lay in the tendency of DEFA’s scriptwriters to see love solely as an escapist phenomenon rooted in essentially bourgeois attitudes. Starting from the view that love was an area of human relations that was subject more than any other to the outmoded attitudes and beliefs of the past, Maetzig used the platform of Neues Deutschland to promote a new ‘postbourgeois’ concept of onscreen love: Our conception of love is already quite different to what it was in those forms of bourgeois society that are now in decline . . . In today’s great struggle between the old and the new, each of us helps the other to abandon what is outdated and to embrace the new instead. And so now in every genuine love relationship we see people ‘lending each other a helping hand and raising each other to new heights’. That’s why a true love story set in the present must reflect the changes in our lives that are taking place at a social, political, moral, bodily and intellectual level.28

In this programmatic statement, the ideological underpinning of Roman einer jungen Ehe is clearly discernible. For here, as in so many of Maetzig’s other films, it is the female protagonist who guides her male

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counterpart to an understanding – and acceptance – of a radically alternative social structure. However, as Maetzig was to discover, the subordination of romantic love to the demands of political ideology was an approach that cinema audiences in the East had difficulty warming to, and of the two films he had constructed around the theme of marriage, critics and audiences alike showed a marked preference for the more conventional approach of the earlier Ehe im Schatten. Contemporary reviews also point to a further reason for the film’s failure to connect with mainstream cinema-goers, namely its focus on the subtleties of postwar cultural politics in the occupied zones of Berlin. Yet what critics at the time saw as a weakness is precisely what makes the film so fascinating for film historians today. Although Roman einer jungen Ehe is often regarded as a symptom of, rather than a solution to, the difficulties that DEFA was experiencing in the early 1950s, it remains, as Detlef Kannapin has also suggested, a vital source of information about attitudes towards the Cold War in the founding years of the GDR.29 The rigid East-West binary that lies at the heart of Roman einer jungen Ehe is typical of many of DEFA’s productions from the 1950s and early 1960s, and reflects Maetzig’s claim that its main concern was ‘the division of the nation and the destruction of any prospect of reunification’.30 In its scrutiny of the careers of two artists from the East and the West, the film also offers historians a unique insight into the cultural politics of divided Germany during the years 1946–50, but at the same time reflects the development of Maetzig’s own conceptualisation of aesthetics or, as he terms it, ‘the artist’s struggle to engage with ordinary people’.31 As the film unfolds, we are presented with a range of literary and dramatic works, some real, some imaginary, and are invited to reflect on the different relationship between politics and aesthetics in the Eastern and Western zones of occupation in Berlin (Figure 1.3). For while Maetzig went to some lengths to claim (somewhat disingenuously) that Roman einer jungen Ehe was not a drame à clef (‘the script-writer, director and performers never set out with the aim of bringing identifiable individuals to life on screen’),32 almost all the works quoted in the film played a key role in the cultural politics of postwar Germany. The first such work is Lessing’s Nathan der Weise. After Agnes is introduced to Jochen at the Möwe – the artists’ club situated, appropriately enough, on the border between East and West in Berlin Mitte – she is soon recruited for the role of Recha in a production of Nathan der Weise being staged in the Western sector of the city. While Maetzig’s decision to embed the production of Nathan der Weise in the film reflects the director’s ongoing engagement with questions of Jewish identity,

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Figure 1.3 Quo vadis? Culture in the Cold War in Roman einer jungen Ehe. © DEFA-Stiftung/Erich Kilian. Published with permission.

it also has a symbolic function insofar as postwar revivals of Lessing’s drama of religious tolerance marked the collapse of National Socialist ideology in the theatre and the start of a new era of tolerance tempered with remorse. For the cultural theorists of the Third Reich, Lessing’s work had occupied an ambiguous position in the National Socialist literary canon. Although plays such as Die Juden (1754) and Nathan der Weise (1779) disappeared from the theatrical repertoire and school reading lists, Lessing’s standing in the tradition of German letters meant that other works such as Philotas (1759) and Minna von Barnhelm (1767) were reinterpreted and assimilated into the prevailing ideologies of heroism and nation.33 But, as we saw in Chapter 1, despite the (mis)appropriation of these and other classic works for the stage by the Nazis, cultural theorists such as Becher had continued to promote a revival of the German classics as a means of bringing about the intellectual and democratic rebirth of Germany in a way that, superficially at least, appeared nonpartisan. The initial enthusiasm for the type of cultural agenda promoted by the Kulturbund was reflected in the numerous productions of Nathan der Weise in the years 1945–49. Directed by Fritz Wisten and with Paul Wegener in the title role, Lessing’s drama was

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the first postwar production to be staged at the Deutsches Theater on 7 September 1945. Given the historic significance of the production at the Deutsches Theater in the East, it is striking that the fictitious production of Nathan der Weise featured in Roman einer jungen Ehe takes place in 1946 and is quite unambiguously located in the West (in Möbius’ ‘Westend Theater’). Maetzig’s decision to focus on a production in the West in 1947 rather than the East in 1945 is symptomatic of a growing desire in the East to expose the limitations of classical bourgeois humanism as a means of tackling the legacy of fascism, and to move towards more contemporary forms of drama. As Becher had acknowledged in his speech promoting the Kulturbund, one of the most difficult issues for advocates of German classicism was precisely its failure to combat the rise of fascist politics, and the fragility of such models of tolerance is hinted at in Roman einer jungen Ehe when the anti-Semitic film director ‘Hartmann’ turns up at Möbius’ premiere. Based on Maetzig’s own experience of the first screening of Ehe im Schatten in the West (when Veit Harlan and his wife Kristina Söderbaum appeared at Hamburg’s Waterloo Cinema only to be thrown out by the manager), this thinly concealed reference to the director of such infamous Nazi propaganda films as Jud Süß (1940) and Kolberg (1945) highlights one of the problems with which all those working in the arts were confronted in the immediate postwar years, namely how to deal with those whose careers had been compromised by working for the Nazi culture industry. When Möbius reflects on his rage at discovering Hartmann in the audience – ‘It ruined my whole conception of the evening. Tolerance. And I’m forced to be intolerant!’ – it is left to the socialist Burmeister to expose the contradictions implicit in his essentially bourgeois concept of liberal humanism when he asks: ‘Why be humane to the inhumane?’ The brief extract from Act 3 Scene 2 of Nathan der Weise that is embedded in Roman einer jungen Ehe encapsulates the overall structure of Maetzig’s film. For it is there that Recha (Agnes) first engages the Templar (Jochen) in dialogue after he rescues her from the burning building. Following this scene, the Templar, a figure whose rescue of the Jewess Recha is motivated by a deep love of humanity in general, is plunged into turmoil by the conflict between his loyalty to his Christian roots on the one hand and his love for the Jewess on the other. However, by revealing the Templar and Recha to be brother and sister, Lessing brings about a harmonious resolution to this potential conflict. The parallel with the relationship between Jochen and Agnes in Roman einer jungen Ehe is compelling. Just as the ring parable in Nathan der Weise suggests a way

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in which the religious differences between Jew, Christian and Muslim might be transcended, so too in its postwar context, the play might be read as appealing to a shared notion of humanity in which the political differences between East and West might also be overcome. Yet, as the story of the marriage between Jochen and Agnes underlines, this wish remains at best utopian, for Jochen’s humanity and well-­intentioned (but misguided) sense of artistic freedom are shown to be incapable of resisting the exploitative approaches of the unscrupulous capitalist entrepreneur Pflisch. And while it is Jochen who initially ‘rescues’ Agnes (albeit from the snow-covered ruins of Berlin in 1945 rather than the flames of a burning building), ultimately it is she who, with the help of her Nathan-like adoptive father, the philosopher-plasterer Papa Dulz, rescues him and persuades him to embrace the Marxist version of humanity to which she and her ersatz family in the East subscribe. While the inclusion of Nathan der Weise highlights the limitations of classical bourgeois humanism in tackling the legacy of fascism, the next project in which both Jochen and Agnes are involved underlines the importance of taking control of the institutions through which cultural values are transmitted. Towards the end of 1947, the young couple are offered parts in Hedda Zinner’s radio adaptation of Anna Segher’s novel Das siebte Kreuz (The Seventh Cross, 1942) that is to be broadcast by the Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR) from its Heidelberger Platz studio in the British sector of Berlin. The return of the antifascist author Anna Seghers from exile in May 1947 had been a major event in the Soviet zone and had featured in one of the earliest editions of Der Augenzeuge (1947, No. 53), edited by Maetzig himself. Like most of the cultural references in Roman einer jungen Ehe – notably the acquittal of Veit Harlan (‘Hartmann’) following his trial of March 1949 (Figure 1.4)  – this sequence is also based on an actual historical event; on 2 December 1948, Zinner’s adaptation of Das siebte Kreuz had indeed been broadcast by NWDR’s Berlin studio in their series Hörspiele der Zeit.34 At the time, Hedda Zinner had been working freelance for the Berliner Rundfunk, which, even though its studios were located in the British Sector in Masurenallee, was controlled by the Soviet Military Administration. Like a number of others working in radio and making the daily trip to the city’s Western sectors, Zinner also freelanced for NWDR, where, at the instigation of the politically open-minded head of drama, Ludwig Cremer, she had been commissioned to produce and direct a radio adaptation of Segher’s novel. However, as Zinner recounts, despite being approved by the British cultural officer, her production so incensed Hans Haberfeld, the controller of NWDR’s Berlin

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Figure 1.4 ‘My party is art’. Roman einer jungen Ehe. © DEFA-Stiftung/ Erich Kilian. Published with permission.

studio, that after the recording he declared that, regardless of its artistic merits, he would not allow it to be transmitted.35 Forced by his superiors in Hamburg to back down, Haberfeld resorted to the only remaining option available to him, namely prefacing the broadcast with an antiSoviet diatribe. Some flavour of these introductory remarks is hinted at in Maetzig’s reworking of the episode in Roman einer jungen Ehe when the radio announcer introduces the play with the words: ‘Seghers’ book was anti-Nazi. Now it’s anti-communist, whether she likes it or not.’ And although the well-intentioned Möbius attempts to pacify the enraged Agnes by appealing once again to the capacity of art to transcend politics – ‘What’s in a commentary? The performance speaks for itself’ – by the end of the film, he too is forced to recognise his own error of judgement as the repertoire of his ‘Westend Theater’ is almost wholly subject to the ideological requirements of Pflisch’s capitalist agenda. The episode revolving around Das siebte Kreuz in Roman einer jungen Ehe reveals Maetzig’s sceptical view of often well-intentioned, but in his view misguided, attempts to promote East–West cooperation on postwar cultural projects. It is also no coincidence that around the time the film was conceived in late 1950, the studio management at DEFA

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was actively seeking to dispense with employees who continued to live in the West and who, in their eyes, were thus unwilling to commit themselves unequivocally to the East. The impossibility of bringing any such East–West partnerships to fruition is further underlined by the film’s reference to the Marshall Plan  – a stark reminder that currency reform and the subsequent division of Germany was less than two years away. ‘You live in one city’, Jochen remarks. ‘But it feels like living in two different continents.’ As the Cold War really starts to bite, Jochen and Agnes no longer work together on any joint projects, but become increasingly polarised both personally and professionally. From this point on, the film’s cultural references are restricted to works that underscore, rather than transcend, the ideological differences between the two emerging states. The first of these concerns Jochen’s involvement in a production of Carl Zuckmayer’s Des Teufels General [The Devil’s General, 1947] at Möbius’ ‘Westend Theater’. Whereas in Ehe im Schatten the banning of Zuckmayer’s comedy Der Hauptmann von Köpenick [The Captain of Köpenick, 1931] is offered as evidence of the Nazi regime’s repressive cultural policies, in Roman einer jungen Ehe, the enthusiasm with which Möbius’ production of Des Teufels General is greeted is cited as evidence of revanchist tendencies in the West: ‘I have the feeling that, in the end, the applause is targeted at Hitler’s general’, Agnes pointedly remarks to her husband. It is hardly surprising that Zuckmayer’s play should feature so prominently in Roman einer jungen Ehe, for during the years 1947–50, it was the most-performed drama in the British and American zones of Germany, with well over 3,000 performances;36 by contrast, in the East – where the play’s positive depiction of Harras and the Wehrmacht provoked outrage – performances were not permitted. No doubt the popularity of Boleslaw Barlog’s 1948 production of Des Teufels General in West Berlin’s Schloßpark Theater was due in no small way to its reaffirmation of ‘the good German’.37 Yet Maetzig’s critique – as encapsulated in Agnes’ reproach ‘You told me you would never wear that Nazi uniform again’ – suggests that what mattered most at the time of the filming Roman einer jungen Ehe was not the play’s apologist take on the crimes of the Third Reich – ­essentially the objection in 1947 – but the rather more pressing question of remilitarisation in the Federal Republic (an issue that was being openly discussed in the press in both East and West following the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950). Agnes, by contrast, opts for a role in Constantin Simonov’s The Russian Question, (1947), a work that, historically speaking, was first performed in a German version on 3 May 1947 at Wolfgang Langhoff’s

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Deutsches Theater in the East. Directed by Falk Harnack, whose antifascist film Das Beil von Wandsbek [The Axe of Wandsbek, 1951] would become the first DEFA production to be banned, Simonov’s play constituted a polemical attack on the manipulation of the American press by monopoly capitalism. Described by Paul Rilla as a work that succeeded in breaking new ground in establishing a concept of postwar political drama, The Russian Question was the subject of more than thirty different productions in the East between 1947 and 1949.38 Staging the play in Berlin was a calculated act of provocation on the part of the Soviets, and both Frederic Mellinger, theatre officer for the American sector, and Colonel Frank Howley, head of the U.S. Military Government in Berlin, lodged protests with the director of the Deutsches Theater, Wolfgang Langhoff, and the Cultural Affairs Committee of the Four-Power Kommandatura respectively. Although, predictably enough, these protests came to nothing, the Berlin premiere of The Russian Question – like that of Zuckmayer’s Des Teufels General – came to represent a defining moment in the history of postwar theatre in Berlin, and one that is captured in Roman einer jungen Ehe when Agnes’ actor-friend Jonas voices his fears that, having performed in Simonov’s play, he will never be offered a part on a stage in the West. Nor were such fears unfounded, for in the wake of Harnack’s 1947 production, several theatres in the East lost the rights to plays by American authors, and blacklists of politically suspect actors soon followed.39 Just before Agnes is offered a role in The Russian Question, she briefly considers taking a part in a production of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les mains sales [Dirty Hands, 1948]. While Zuckmayer and Simonov are situated unambiguously at opposite ends of the political spectrum, Sartre’s role in the cultural politics of the Cold War was considerably more complex. Despite Sartre’s critical view of the role of the United States and the Marshall Plan in the reconstruction of postwar Europe, the emphasis on radical ethical autonomy in his philosophy (and corresponding rejection of the more extreme versions of Marxist historical determinism) meant that any alliance with more orthodox-minded members of the Communist Party (both in France and beyond) would inevitably be a precarious arrangement. After his essay ‘Qu’est-ce que la littérature?’ [‘What is Literature?’] was serialised in Les temps modernes over the course of 1947, Sartre became a persona non grata in the East following his assertion that Stalinist communism was incompatible with the honest practice of the literary craft. In the light of his often unpredictable left-wing views, it is hardly surprising that when Les mouches [The Flies, 1943] was first staged in German (in a production directed

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by Gustaf Gründgens in Düsseldorf in November 1947), it became the subject of a polemical discussion in the left-leaning periodical Theater der Zeit. Now relocated to a German context, Sartre’s play about politically motivated murder, collaboration and resistance in Vichy France acquired an altogether new dimension. The Soviet cultural officer Alexander Dymschitz was just one of a number of critics in the Soviet zone who accused Sartre of a reactionary concept of freedom rooted in anarchic individualism.40 Even before the premiere of Jürgen Fehling’s production of January 1948 in Berlin’s Hebbel-Theater in the West, Anton Ackermann demanded that the play be banned.41 While it might well be argued that – even in Fehling’s Berlin production of Les mouches – no contemporary reference to Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party was implied, Sartre’s portrayal of Illyria and the question of political assassination in Les mains sales was a very different matter. Although some years later, in an interview of 1964 with Paolo Caruso, Sartre claimed that the play was never intended to be anticommunist,42 many in the East thought otherwise in 1948. This negative critical reception is mirrored in Agnes’ own interpretation of the play when she declines the role offered her on the grounds that: ‘I’ve just realised that it targets the East . . . and it attacks decency and honest people.’ However, while Maetzig’s film reflects the hostility towards Sartre in the Soviet zone during the late 1940s, it was not long before political events on the world stage called for a revision of such attitudes. In 1952, Sartre mounted a defence of the Soviet Union’s peaceful intentions in his essay ‘Les Communistes et la Paix’ and attended the Vienna Congress for World Peace in December of that year. The following year, in an article entitled ‘Les Animaux Malades de la Rage’ published on 22 June 1953 in Libération, he denounced the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in the United States as a ‘legal lynching’ that, in his view, highlighted the Americans’ incapability of assuming moral leadership of the Western world. The execution of the Rosenbergs for conspiracy to commit espionage and for allegedly supplying the Soviet Union with information concerning atomic weapons had also featured briefly in the sixth edition of Der Augenzeuge in 1953. Accordingly, in the light of what it termed ‘Sartre’s support for the Rosenbergs and his active participation in the movement for world peace’,43 the studio management at DEFA requested some cuts to Roman einer jungen Ehe that, though never actually carried out, were designed to make it impossible for the viewer to discern either Sartre’s name or the title of the play.

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As the film unfolds, the impossibility of adopting a neutral position on matters of postwar cultural policy comes to a head in the sequence leading to the final breakdown of Agnes and Jochen’s marriage. As Agnes  anticipates her recital of Kurt Barthel’s socialist realist ‘Hymn to Stalin’ before a huge mass of construction workers on East Berlin’s Stalinallee, Jochen is preparing to recite a series of poems supporting a liberal-bourgeois concept of ‘freedom and humanity’ at the TitaniaPalast in the Western half of the divided city. The occasion of Jochen’s poetry reading, as Agnes notes with disgust, is a guest performance by Dresden’s Mozart-Choir, an event that, like almost every other in Maetzig’s film, is grounded in the historical reality of the time. On 2 April 1950, the East German daily Neues Deutschland proudly announced the start of the celebrated choir’s international tour, which, after a performance in West Berlin, would take them to England, France, Denmark and Brazil. Three days later, however, on 5 April, it reported what it referred to as a failed attempt on the part of the Americans to kidnap the entire choir. In an interview for Western television, the leader of the choir, Werner Schück, expressed his unhappiness at being forced to perform political songs in support of the FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend) and the SED, and suggested that the members of the choir wished to defect to the West, arguing that that it was no longer safe to return to the GDR.44 Although the GDR’s news teams worked overtime to mitigate what was rapidly becoming a PR disaster for the SED, if anything the fallout from the event was, as Maetzig underlines in Roman einer jungen Ehe, even worse for the Americans. A number of the key singers chose to return to the East leaving the choir desperately short of soloists and playing to houses that were, at best, only half-full. Moreover, when the parents of the girls (some of whom had not yet reached the age of majority) demanded that they be returned to their homes in the GDR and came to Berlin to collect them, the Americans intervened and flew the remaining members of the choir to West Germany. In the West, Der Spiegel subsequently claimed that this had been at the request of the choir members, and in the East, the press decided it was better to focus on the continued existence of the ensemble itself, and on those who had chosen to return to the GDR rather than those intending to stay in the West.45 In a follow-up article published in Neues Deutschland on 5 September 1950, East German readers were reminded of the dire consequences in store for those who sought their fame and fortune in the West: ignored by the Western press and with no upcoming performances, the young members of the choir (now resident in Bad Soden) live a hand-to-mouth existence, with some, we are told, ‘even having to resort to prostitution to make ends meet’.46

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Not surprisingly, in Maetzig’s film, the members of the choir are portrayed as naïve victims of unscrupulous Western politicians and theatrical agents who clearly have no qualms in reneging on their financial obligations to the girls. Through the inclusion of this episode, Roman einer jungen Ehe argues that, under capitalism, the likely fate of any young female artist in the West is a life of exploitation and/ or prostitution. As an increasingly disillusioned Jochen is led into a seedy West Berlin dance bar, he meets up with one of the couple’s former friends, the actress Carla, who, the visual language of the film suggests, is just such a victim. In addition, the sequences of crazed intimate dancing to the accompaniment of a discordant jazz soundtrack conveys an atmosphere of decadence and depravity that, the viewer is to infer, is the inevitable result of well-intentioned, but ultimately misguided, liberalism on the part of those like Jochen who attempt to accommodate the demands of postwar capitalism. Nonetheless, in keeping with the optimistic trajectory of Maetzig’s socialist realist film, the experience signals the start of a process of rehabilitation for Jochen as he is forced to recognise the error of his ways – ‘I’m an idiot . . . I wanted to help the poor girls’ – and returns to the path taken by his beloved Agnes. Through its critique of Nathan der Weise, Des Teufels General, Les mains sales and the co-production of Das siebte Kreuz Maetzig’s Roman einer jungen Ehe offers a conventional Marxist critique of bourgeois humanism and capitalist modes of cultural production. At the same time, through the device of a film within a film, Roman einer jungen Ehe also seeks to define an aesthetic agenda for an alternative and (allegedly) politically progressive conceptualisation of materialist aesthetics. By and large, this vision is explicitly articulated in the film by Burmeister, who, in an often excruciatingly patronising fashion, attempts to re-­educate Agnes towards a new understanding of stagecraft. Accordingly on the film-set of ‘Die ersten Jahre’ (‘The Founding Years’) – the fictitious ‘DEFA-style’ film for which Agnes has been recruited in Roman einer jungen Ehe – he castigates her for her outmoded acting style: ‘Helga isn’t a Gretchen or Käthchen. You’re supposed to be playing a modern woman in today’s world.’ And when she suggests that the function of art is to distract people from the sufferings caused by the war, he wastes no time in explaining that: ‘Art shouldn’t lead us astray . . . but perhaps be a flaming torch on the foggy road to the future.’ However, despite the quasi-Brechtian ring of Burmeister’s programmatic statement, Roman einer jungen Ehe never quite adheres to the aesthetic agenda it appears (at least theoretically) to endorse.

 

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Although the master-plasterer Papa Dulz – an idealised caricature of a working-class figure  – congratulates Agnes on her contribution to Burmeister’s film, and praises it as a work that appeals to both hearts and minds, the radical potential of such a reconceptualisation of art is grotesquely undermined during the celebrations to mark the completion of the first flats of the Stalinalleee housing development, where, to the accompaniment of a mass choir in the background, Agnes performs KuBa’s (Kurt Barthel’s) eulogy to Stalin before a crowd of approving construction workers.47 And when this performance reaches its emotional climax with the rhetorical question ‘Tell me, how can we begin to thank Stalin?’, it is she who articulates the equally rhetorical answer: ‘We gave this street his name.’ However, given that Roman einer jungen Ehe is usually cited as an example of the extent to which the DEFA studio was increasingly in thrall to Andrei Zhdanov’s doctrine of socialist realism, it is important to note that this sequence in particular was the cause of considerable disagreement within the studio hierarchy. Maetzig’s handwritten record of a discussion on 24 July 1951 with Alfred Wilkening, Falk Harnack and Slatan Dudow reveals that all three regarded the sequence in question as one of the film’s weakest elements and proposed cutting it radically.48 In addition, Wilkening objected to the negative depiction in the film of all those who opted for the West, while Harnack argued for a more positive depiction of the (politically undecided) actor Jonas on the grounds that, in 1951, most actors were moving not to the East, but to the West. That Maetzig should have argued for the retention of the sequence featuring the hymn to Stalin is all the more remarkable given that, less than a year before the film’s release, he had publicly condemned such schematically conceived sequences (Schematismus) in DEFA’s output: ‘Adopting a conventional, schematic approach has little or nothing to do with art. These schematic approaches are particularly evident in the massed crowd sequences of our film.’49 Indeed, it is hard to think of any sequence in DEFA’s entire output that conforms more closely to Maetzig’s definition of Schematismus than Agnes’ address to the massed construction workers at the end of Roman einer jungen Ehe. Ultimately, however, Maetzig’s desire for a partisan approach to film production outweighed his fear of Schematismus,50 and in attempting to avoid a repeat of the UFA-style sentimentality that had so coloured his earlier film Ehe im Schatten  – ‘such sentimentality’ he suggests is the very opposite of ‘a powerful, deep and clearly defined emotion’51 – he was to fall into the trap of embracing a new form of pathos, albeit one rooted in a largely uncritical acceptance of socialist realist aesthetics.

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It would be only a matter of time before the sentimentalised projection of the relationship between ordinary working people on the one hand, and GDR artists and intelligentsia on the other, would be exposed for the fantasy it was. In the uprising of June 1953  – just eighteen months after the film’s release – those construction workers who, in the fictional world of Maetzig’s film, had applauded Agnes so enthusiastically went on strike, and with Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin’s crimes on 25 February 1956, the days of Roman einer jungen Ehe were numbered. Although on 21 February 1956, the East German Film Bureau, the HV Film, had reviewed the film and concluded that it could continue to be exhibited in cinemas for another year, the political tide was turning rapidly. On 23 June 1956 a letter from the GDR’s distribution agency Progress Film-Vertrieb reported that a screening in Erfurt had prompted what it euphemistically refers to as ‘discussions about Stalin’.52 Just two days later, DEFA withdrew the film from circulation altogether on the grounds that: ‘In the final phase of this film the creation of a new form of society is associated almost exclusively with the figure of Stalin . . . These sequences are dominated by that personality cult and, for that reason, are politically problematic.’53 Quite understandably, Roman einer jungen Ehe has been rejected by many as a crude propaganda film offering an embarrassingly uncritical view of Stalin; likewise, just as Maetzig’s treatment of Jewish identity in Ehe im Schatten is steeped in pathos, his portrayal of working-class life in Roman einer jungen Ehe is also irredeemably sentimental. However, despite such shortcomings, it remains a key work for scholars of both East German film history and in the cultural politics of postwar Berlin. For in few films of this (or indeed any other) period in DEFA’s history is the viewer exposed to such a diverse range of literary and dramatic works both by German authors past and present, and contemporary foreign authors actively involved in the reshaping of cultural life in postwar Europe. On one level, Roman einer jungen Ehe represents a calculated attempt on the part of DEFA to engage with – and critique – international developments in the cultural sphere, while at the same time creating a new discursive space in which an alternative left-wing film culture could evolve in Germany, but on another level, it revealed, albeit inadvertently, what both bourgeois humanist aesthetics and socialist realist art had in common, namely the generation of political affect as a driving force for social change.

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Conclusion In the five years that separate Ehe im Schatten and Roman einer jungen Ehe, the transition from a melodramatic UFA-style aesthetic of the prewar years to a position of socialist realist cinematography is clearly visible. In the edition of Progress Filmillustrierte published to publicise the film’s release, the political impact of this new type of aesthetic was defined as follows: Art is no longer something for the privileged few, but belongs to everyone. Groups of amateur actors and writers are branching out in new directions, the theatres are nurturing our cultural heritage and promoting new authors, and our cinema is no longer a ‘factory of dreams’ but strives instead to offer an accurate reflection of real life.54

While the publicity material sought to link the new doctrine of socialist realism with a more general democratisation of art, it also went much further and, in an amplification of the film’s political thrust, accused the Federal Republic and the Western Allies of adopting a cultural policy – banning East German artists from performing in the West and the blacklisting of West German artists who had taken part in joint ventures in the East – designed to promote the division of Germany. As it reminded its readers, in 1951 the concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, Siegfried Borries, had been suspended for going on tour with the Dresden Philharmonic, and it was only thanks to the intervention of Wilhelm Furtwängler and others that he was reinstated.55 In this way, Progress Filmillustrierte sought to alert viewers that the underlying message of Roman einer jungen Ehe was not just the need for cultural unity, but political unity (albeit on socialist terms) in the widest possible sense: ‘It asks us to decide just what side we are on and whether we are prepared to fight for peace, and for a country that is not divided. The whole German nation needs to come together – not just this actor-couple.’56 This view of postwar cultural politics was echoed some months later at the Second Film-Kongress, which convened under the rubric ‘Für den Aufschwung der fortschrittlichen deutschen Filmkunst’ [‘A Revival of Progressive German Cinema’] on 17–18 September 1952 and at which the SED’s Politbüro presented its vision for the future of filmmaking in the GDR. A crucial element in this vision was the role of progressive cinema in reconciling the legacy of Germany’s eighteenthand nineteenth-century traditions of humanist ethics with the demands of the new political situation:

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At a national level, progressive German cinema is playing a key role insofar as it is successfully propagating such ideas as defending peace, democracy, political autonomy and humanist values, and preserving and enhancing the great cultural legacy of Germany.57

At the same time, by drawing a contrast between the SED’s view of progressive cinema and the supposedly ‘decadent’ approach of American filmmaking in the West, the SED’s document underlined the important contribution that DEFA’s filmmakers could make in preserving the viability of a unified German nation at some point in the future: All over Germany the new progressive cinema is demonstrating its ­superiority  – both in terms of form and content  – over decadent films from the USA which, in West Germany, are designed to promote military conflict and intensify the division of Germany, and in West Berlin, to antagonize and demoralize the population.58

One of the shortcomings of DEFA that the Politbüro found particularly troublesome was precisely the low number of films promoting the cause of an undivided German nation under socialism. This view of the key difference between the film cultures in East and West was reiterated in Hermann Axen’s highly polemical address at the conference. There he cited an article published in the (Western) periodical Der neue Film under the title ‘Ist Westdeutschland eine amerikanische Filmkolonie?’ [‘Film Distribution: Is West Germany a Colony of the USA?’], which argued that the dominance of the American film industry in terms of export and distribution of its own products represented a considerable obstacle for indigenous film production in the Federal Republic.59 As he noted, in an aside that evoked the spirit of Maetzig’s Roman einer junge Ehe: ‘As far as film production in West Germany is concerned it really is the case that The Murderers – in the guise of Veit Harlan and the Hollywood hyenas – Are Among Us!’60 In the context of the ensuing discussion on the relationship between film production and the preservation of national culture, it is important to note that, in the run-up to the production of Roman einer jungen Ehe, Maetzig had been criticised for adopting an approach that was, at least in some quarters, seen as too inflammatory and as an argument for – rather than against – the division of Germany. Originally entitled ‘Ehe im Westen’ [‘Marriage in the West’], earlier versions of the script were much more polemical than the final released version of the film, and during a discussion on 28 September involving Maetzig and the

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assistant director, Günter Reisch, the studio’s head dramaturge, Wolf von Gordon, advocated adopting a more ‘neutral position’, Maetzig retorted that such a liberal attitude was no longer appropriate given the political situation with which they were confronted: It’s no longer possible for people with real backbone to represent such a liberal standpoint. In their day liberal attitudes were progressive. But in today’s world, by contrast, the inevitable consequence of embracing such a position is that the Americans will waste no time in embarking on the armed conflict they are trying to incite and there can be no doubt that Germany will be the battlefield on which that military action will take place and the victims will be precisely those people who adopted a position of liberal neutrality.61

Maetzig’s rejection of liberalism and corresponding emphasis on the need to adopt an unambiguous position of political commitment is reflected not only in the portrayal of the well-intentioned but fundamentally misguided figure of Möbius in Roman einer jungen Ehe, but also in Maetzig’s essay of 1951 ‘Über die Parteilichkeit in der Spielfilmregie’ [‘Partisan Politics and Directing Films’]. In that essay, Maetzig outlines his understanding of socialist realism in terms of a rejection of simplistic concept of naturalistic aesthetics. ‘What matters is to abandon a position of objectivity’, he explains, before redefining his vision of art as a means of redefining reality.62 As we shall see in the next chapter, this emphasis on the need for an explicitly partisan approach was closely related to debates about the future of a divided Germany and the ensuing assault on so-called ‘cosmopolitan’ attitudes in both the preservation of the German cultural heritage and the production of new art.

Notes Parts of this chapter have been previously published in Seán Allan, ‘“Sagt, wie soll man Stalin danken?” Kurt Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten (1947), Roman einer Jungen Ehe  (1952) and the Cultural Politics of Post-War Germany’, German Life and Letters 64(2) (2011), 255–71.  1. Kurt Maetzig, ‘Was erwartet der Film vom Autor?’, in Der deutsche Film: Fragen, Forderungen, Aussichten. Bericht vom Ersten Film-Autoren-Kongreß 6.–9. Juni 1947 in Berlin (Berlin: Henschel, 1947), p. 22.   2. Maetzig refers to the style of early episodes of Der Augenzeuge as offering ‘a sober but friendly analysis combined with a slightly ironic intellectual detachment’. See Günter Agde (ed.), Kurt Maetzig: Filmarbeit. Gespräche, Reden, Schriften (Berlin: Henschel, 1987), p. 37.

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  3. In an interview with Günter Agde, Maetzig describes Ehe im Schatten as ‘a documentary presented in the guise of a feature film’. Ibid., p. 38.   4. Ibid., p. 35.   5. As Ute Wölfel notes: ‘Maetzig actually changes the year of death of the historical models in order to focus on the atrocities against Jews following the “WannseeKonferenz” in 1942.’ See Ute Wölfel, ‘Inverting the Lives of “Others”: Re-telling the Nazi Past in Ehe in Schatten and Das Leben der Anderen’, German Life and Letters 64(4) (2011), 601–18, at 605.   6. The need to distinguish between box office popularity on the one hand and artistic quality on the other was much debated at the time. See, for example, Walter Lennig, ‘Film, Experiment und Publikumsgeschmack’, Neue Filmwelt 2(6) (1948), 2–5, where he argues that ‘during the initial phase, box office success can only be a very limited measure of success of the new German film’ (at 4). For a discussion of Lennig’s essay and the problem of prewar and postwar spectatorship in the context of Ehe im Schatten, see Stephen Brockmann, ‘The Struggle over Audiences in Postwar East German Film’, Film and History 45(1) (2015), 5–16.   7. Martin Brady ‘Discussion with Kurt Maetzig’, in Seán Allan and John Sandford (eds), DEFA. East German Cinema, 1946–92 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 77–92, at p. 82.  8. Agde, Kurt Maetzig, p. 36.   9. In 1939, Schweikart had directed another Künstlerfilm, Befreite Hände [Liberated Hands] for the production company Bavaria. 10. On the ideological inflection of Schweikart’s production of Das Fräulein von Barnhelm, see Karsten Witte, ‘How Nazi Cinema Mobilizes the Classics: Schweikart’s Das Fräulein von Barnhelm (1940)’, in Eric Rentschler (ed.), German Film and Literature: Adaptations and Transformations (New York, London: Routledge, 1986), pp. 103–16. 11. Ich klage an, Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s film about euthanasia had been one of the films singled out for criticism by Maetzig at the first Film-Autoren-Kongress of 1947 as an example of a film that was ‘psychologically nuanced’, but that in spite of its obvious quality ‘served to prepare the population ideologically for one of the most terrible crimes against humanity’; Maetzig, ‘Was erwartet der Film vom Autor?’, pp. 28–29. 12. ‘Neuer Zug auf alten Gleisen. Kurt Maetzig über die Ufa-Tradition’, in Hans-Michael Bock and Michael Töteberg (eds), Das Ufa-Buch (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 1992), pp. 470–73, at p. 471. 13. Maetzig had hoped to recruit a different actress – Joana Maria Gorvin – for the role, noting that her screen tests pointed to a performance that he describes as ‘both aloof and affectionate at the same time together with an element of vulnerability combined with great determination and a strong character’. ‘Casting Gorvin in the role’, he argued, ‘would have been more in keeping with both the script and my artistic intentions; that way the film would have turned out less sentimental and of a higher aesthetic quality.’ Agde, Kurt Maetzig, pp. 51 and 52. 14. Hans Ulrich Eylau, ‘Ehe im Schatten. Ein Film aus Deutschlands dunkler Zeit’, Tägliche Rundschau, 5 October 1947. 15. Robert R. Shandley, Rubble Films: German Cinema in the Shadow of the Third Reich (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001), pp.  81–90, p.  84. See also Fernand Jung,  ‘Das Thema Antisemitismus am Beispiel des DEFA-Films Ehe im Schatten’, in Nationalsozialismus und Judenverfolgung in DDR-Medien, ed. Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 1997), pp. 45–52.

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16. Lukács condemns Nietzsche as a ‘forerunner of fascist aesthetics’ in his essay ‘Nietzsche als Vorläufer der faschistischen Ästhetik’, Internationale Literatur 8 (1935), 76–92. For a similarly polemical view, see the essay by the politician Ernst Niekisch published in the Kulturbund’s journal: ‘Im Vorraum des Faschismus’, Aufbau 2(2) (1946), 122–37. Further evidence of the left’s hostility to Nietzsche’s thought in the postwar period is reflected in the Soviet Military Administration’s prohibition of any attempt to commemorate Nietzsche’s life in the town of Weimar. For a study of Nietzsche’s reception in the GDR of the 1980s in particular, see David Bathrick, The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 193–219. 17. Wölfel, ‘Inverting the Lives of “Others”’, 607. 18. Agde, Kurt Maetzig, p. 54. 19. Friedrich Engels, Letter to Minna Kautsky, 26 November 1885, trans. Andy Blunden, in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, On Literature and Art (Moscow: Progress, 1976), pp. 87–89. 20. Agde, Kurt Maetzig, pp. 35–36. 21. Ibid., p. 52. 22. Günter Brandt, ‘Gerührte Filmbesucher’, Die Weltbühne 5–6 (1948), 136–38, at 138. 23. Maetzig himself refers to the film – which had the working title of ‘Ehe im Westen’ [‘Marriage in the West’] – as a continuation of Ehe im Schatten. Kurt Maetzig, ‘Ehe im Westen’. Erste Niederschrift. Bad Elster, den 22.9.50 [= Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, 166]. 24. ‘Ein richtiges Thema zur rechten Zeit’, Leipziger Volkszeitung, 26 January 1952. 25. Hermann Martin, ‘Junge Ehe nicht mehr im Schatten’, BZ am Abend, 21 January 1952. 26. Bodo Uhse, Reise- und Tagebücher, 2 vols (Berlin: Aufbau, 1981), vol. 2, pp.  27 and 70. 27. John Griffith Urang, ‘Realism and Romance in the East German Cinema, 1952–1962’, Film History 18(1) (2006), 88–103, at 89. 28. Kurt Maetzig, ‘Über die Liebe in unseren Filmen. Eröffnung einer Diskussion’, in Agde, Kurt Maetzig, pp. 243–46, at pp. 243–44 (first published as ‘Warum gibt es keine Liebe in unseren Filmen?’, Neues Deutschland, 1 February 1953). 29. Detlef Kannapin, ‘Am Nullpunkt des Films’, WerkstattGeschichte 30 (2001), 87–95. 30. Kurt Maetzig ‘Unsere Absicht’, DEFA-Pressedienst 1(12) (1951), 7–11, at 7. 31. Ibid., 11. 32. Ibid. 33. See Ann Schmiesing, ‘Lessing and the Third Reich’, in Barbara Fischer and Thomas C. Fox (eds), A Companion to the Works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2005), pp. 261–80; and Jo-Jacqueline Eckhardt, ‘Das Lessing-Bild im Dritten Reich’, Lessing Yearbook 23 (1991), 69–78. 34. See Hans-Ulrich Wagner, ‘Der gute Wille, etwas Neues zu schaffen’: Das Hörspielprogramm in Deutschland von 1945 bis 1949 (Potsdam: Verlag für Berlin-Brandenburg, 1997), pp. 251 and 254. 35. See Hedda Zinner, ‘Erlebtes aus den Anfangsjahren des demokratischen Rundfunks’, Beiträge zur Geschichte des Rundfunks: Schriftenreihe des DDR-Rundfunks 13(4) (1979), 27–45, at 42. 36. Werner Mittenzwei, Manfred Berger et al. (eds), Theater in der Zeitenwende: Zur Geschichte des Dramas und Schauspieltheaters in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik, 1945–1968, 2 vols (Berlin: Henschel, 1972), vol. 1, p. 62.

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37. Kannapin (‘Am Nullpunkt des Films’, 89) suggests that the character Möbius is modelled on Boleslaw Barlog, the artistic director of the Schloßpark Theater in BerlinSteglitz. An earlier (handwritten) treatment of the film refers to the theatre in Steglitz and a director named ‘Kurt Bernstein’. Kurt Bernstein was the (fictional) Jewish actor who flees Nazi Germany in Maetzig’s earlier film Ehe im Schatten. 38. Paul Rilla, ‘Die Russische Frage’, Berliner Zeitung, 6 May 1947. 39. For a more detailed discussion of the furore caused by the production, see David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 105–10. 40. Alexander Dymschitz, ‘Warum mir das nicht gefällt: Jean-Paul Sartres Fliegen’, Tägliche Rundschau, 30 November 1947. See also David Pike, The Politics of Culture in Soviet-Occupied Germany, 1945–1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 462–64. 41. Anton Ackermann, ‘Die existentialistischen Fliegen Jean-Paul Sartres’, Neues Deutschland, 4 January 1948. 42. Michel Contat and Michel Rybalka (eds), Jean-Paul Sartre: Sartre on Theater, trans. Frank Jellinek (London: Pantheon, 1976), pp. 210–25. 43. ‘Aktenvermerk’ of 10 December 1952 (BArch 1-Z/644). 44. See ‘Kidnapping des Mozart-Chors gescheitert’, Neues Deutschland, 5 April 1950. An interview with Werner Schück filmed at the time for the Federal Republic’s newsreel Welt im Film (1950, No. 254) is available at: https://www.filmothek.bundesarchiv. de/video/583686 (5’ 45”). 45. See ‘Sängerinnen gesucht’, Der Spiegel, 20 September 1950, 36–37. 46. ‘So endete die “Flucht” des Mozart-Chors’, Neues Deutschland, 5 September 1950. The article of 20 September 1950 in Der Spiegel (‘Sängerinnen gesucht’) was clearly written as a response to the accusations coming from the East. 47. As the publicity material produced for the film was keen to emphasise: ‘Der Roman einer jungen Ehe shows the way in which the artists must embrace the needs of ordinary people. At the end of the film, Agnes – who began by performing for a small audience of bourgeois theatre-goers – recites her poem before thousands of working class men and women.’ DEFA-Pressedienst 12 (1951), 142. 48. ‘Diskussion Roman einer jungen Ehe. 24.07.51’ (Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, 245). 49. Kurt Maetzig, ‘Probleme des realistischen Filmschaffens’, in Deutscher Filmverlag Berlin (ed.), Auf neuen Wegen: 5 Jahre fortschrittlicher deutscher Film (Berlin: Henschel, 1951), pp. 30–39, at pp. 36–37. 50. Kurt Maetzig, ‘Über Parteilichkeit in der Spielfilmregie’, in Agde, Kurt Maetzig, pp. 222–31. 51. Ibid., p. 36. 52. Letter to Hauptverwaltung Film from VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb of 23 June 1956 (BArch DR 1-Z/644). 53. ‘Zusatzprotokoll zum Protokoll Nr 1956/54’ (BArch DR 1-Z/644). 54. ‘Roman einer jungen Ehe’, Progress Filmillustrierte, n.p. 55. On the case of Borries, see Elizabeth Janik, Recomposing German Music: Politics and Musical Tradition in Cold War Berlin (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 242. 56. Roman einer jungen Ehe’, Progress Filmillustrierte, n.p. 57. ‘Für den Aufschwung der fortschrittlichen deutschen Filmkunst. Resolution des Politbüros des ZK der SED Juli 1952’, in Für den Aufschwung der fortschrittlichen deutschen Filmkunst (Berlin: Dietz, 1953), pp. 5–14, at p. 5.

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58. Ibid., pp. 5–6. 59. Hermann Axen, ‘Über die Fragen der fortschrittlichen deutschen Filmkunst’, in Für den Aufschwung der fortschrittlichen deutschen Filmkunst, pp. 15–46, especially pp. 17–19. 60. Ibid., p. 20. 61. ‘Aktennotiz über die Besprechung vom 28. September 1950 um 13.30 Uhr in der Möwe zwischen Herrn Dr. von Gordon und Dr. Kurt Maetzig im Beisein von Günter Reisch. Thema: Ideen zum Film “Ehe im Westen”’ (Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kurt-Maetzig-Archiv, 166). 62. Kurt Maetzig, ‘Über Parteilichkeit in Spielfilmregie’, in Agde, Kurt Maetzig, pp. 222–31, at pp. 223 and 231.

Chapter 2

Cosmopolitanism, Formalism and Fantasies of National Culture

Many of the discussions of individual works of art and literature in Maetzig’s Roman einer jungen Ehe  – in particular its critique of JeanPaul Sartre’s Les mains sales and endorsement of Simonov’s The Russian Question – can be seen as a reflection of, and a contribution to, part of a wider debate about formalist aesthetics and so-called ‘cosmopolitan’ tendencies in the GDR during the late 1940s and early 1950s. During the years leading up to the foundation of the FRG and the GDR, the lines of demarcation – at least in cultural terms – were extremely fluid. Nowhere was this more obviously the case than in the field of painting and sculpture. Indeed, given the catastrophic situation in which Germans found themselves in May 1945, it is astonishing just how many art exhibitions were staged in both the Eastern and Western zones of occupation during the twelve months immediately following the end of the Second World War. In the Soviet zone alone, there were over six major shows.1 However, as the sheer number of these events suggests, well before the foundation of the two German states in 1949, the search for a progressive form of visual aesthetics that could revive the traditions of classical humanism, while at the same time providing the basis for a new postwar German identity was already well underway. Not surprisingly, many of the earliest exhibitions were filled with works that had either been banned by the Nazis or put on display in the infamous exhibition of so-called ‘degenerate’ art in Munich in 1937.

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As the catalogues to these exhibitions reveal, there were essentially two answers to the question of the direction the visual arts might take in postwar Germany, each of which was inspired by two very different interpretations of modernism: on the one hand, some artists embraced a cosmopolitan (i.e. explicitly non-German) version of avant-garde aesthetics that had its roots in fauvism and was heavily influenced by Mediterranean artists such as Picasso and Matisse; and, on the other hand, there was an attempt to develop a form of (critical/socialist) realism (the origins of which could be traced back to the late nineteenth century) and which, because of its often unheroic subject matter and the left-wing politics of its exponents, had been suppressed during the Third Reich. Tempting though it is to map each of these approaches onto subsequent developments in the visual arts in the Federal Republic and the GDR respectively, recent studies of the history of postwar German art underline just how complex and intertwined developments in the two states were.2 These problems are further compounded by the fact that, all too often, the ideological rhetoric of such debates in both East and West seems curiously detached from the actual aesthetic qualities of the works under discussion. Nonetheless, the sheer number of paintings on display in postwar Germany meant that it was in the sphere of the visual arts that debates about the allegedly pernicious effects of formalist aesthetics were played out in all their ferocity. Writing in the catalogue of the Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstausstellung of 1946 in Dresden, Soviet cultural officer Alexander Dymschitz remarked that: ‘The defeat of Nazism is a victory for humanist ethics. That is why the new German art will reflect humanist values.’3 Two years later, however, in his essay of 1948 ‘Über die formalistische Richtung in der deutschen Malerei’ [‘On Formalism in German Painting’], Dymschitz began to sound a note of caution. In his attack on the modernist tendencies of certain postwar schools of European painting, he contrasts the experimental (and often ‘bleakly existentialist’) character of such fauvist works with a national tradition of German painting that, in his words, ‘places a high premium on the content and ideas embodied in a work of art and was renowned for the articulation of progressive social ideals. Classical German painting – Dürer and Grünewald, Bosch and Cranach, and so on right up to Zille and Käthe Kollwitz  – embodies an attitude to art that is inspired by a passion for ideas.’4 However, the remodelling of the GDR’s SED into a more explicitly Stalinist organisation towards the end of 1949 was accompanied by a much more hardline approach in the sphere of cultural politics, grounded in a narrowly defined concept of realist aesthetics. Perhaps the most

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striking example of this tendency was the publication on 20–21 January 1951 of a highly polemical essay in the Soviet-sponsored newspaper the Tägliche Rundschau. Written by a certain ‘N. Orlov’ (a pseudonym for the dogmatic Soviet cultural theorist Vladimir Semjonov), the essay ‘Wege und Irrwege der modernen Kunst’ [‘Methods and Mistakes of Modern Art’] launched a full-scale attack on formalist art that reflected a new attitude of intolerance towards modernist aesthetics. In particular, those modernists who sought to justify their distinctive style by claiming that their aesthetics of ‘ugliness’ had its roots in a tradition dating back to left-wing artists such as Käthe Kollwitz were singled out for criticism in the essay on the grounds that there was ‘a huge gulf between the achievements of Käthe Kollwitz and the amateurish splotches masquerading as art executed by her so-called imitators in Germany today’. At the same time, however, the essay also called into question Kollwitz’s reputation as the founder of proletarian art: Käthe Kollwitz saw only the suffering of the working classes. In only a very small number of her works (such as, for example, The Weavers), was she able to distance herself from such a perspective. In the meantime, as every schoolboy knows, the working classes are actively leading all proletarians in the struggle to emancipate society from the chains of imperialism . . . That is something that Käthe Kollwitz failed to grasp. Perhaps it was not possible for her in the age she lived through to understand the great historical mission of the working classes. That was her misfortune.5

Given that the radical German dramatist Ernst Toller, writing in 1937, had observed that ‘[i]f ever an artist can be called an artist of the people, it is Käthe Kollwitz’6 and that the very first edition of the DEFA newsreel Der Augenzeuge (19 February 1946) had run a short feature on Kollwitz’s Turm der Mütter [‘Tower of Mothers’, 1938] as its ‘pick of the week’, the criticism of Kollwitz was both unexpected and yet symptomatic of an increasingly intolerant climate in the cultural sphere. Kollwitz’s early works – above all, her series of etchings and lithographs depicting the Silesian weavers’ uprising in the early nineteenth century, Ein Weberaufstand [‘Weavers’ Revolt’, 1893–97] and the suffering of the German Peasants during the wars of Reformation Bauernkrieg [‘The Peasant War’, 1901–8] – make her a pivotal figure in the history of German art in the early twentieth century. Yet, although many would see Kollwitz as the example par excellence of a socially committed artist, her work, like that of her near-contemporary Ernst Barlach, has always proved unsettling for those who seek to either condemn it or indeed exploit it for crude ideological purposes. During the latter part

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of the nineteenth century, Kollwitz’s talents were widely recognised and acknowledged by many members of the Berlin Secession, a group of avant-garde artists that included the likes of Max Liebermann, Walter Leistikow and, later, Lovis Corinth, and whose penchant for formal experimentation inevitably brought them into conflict with the more orthodox approach of the academy. When Kollwitz was nominated by Max Liebermann for one of the academy’s annual prizes, Robert Bosse, the then Minister of Culture, counselled Kaiser Wilhelm II against making such an award on the grounds that: The technical competence of her work as well as its forceful, energetic expressiveness may seem to justify the decision of the jury from a purely artistic standpoint. But in view of the subject of the work, and of its naturalistic execution, entirely lacking in mitigating or conciliatory elements, I do not believe I can recommend it for explicit recognition by the state.7

While Orlov/Semjonov does not quite display the same degree of distaste for Kollwitz’s Weavers’ Revolt as Bosse in 1897, his critique of Kollwitz’s work made it clear that the yardstick by which art was to be judged in the Stalinist era of the early 1950s was not content, but rather form and, above all, a rigidly applied concept of socialist realism. In addition, Kollwitz’s initial sympathies for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), together with her interest in French art (she had spent two months in 1904 at the Académie Julian in Paris, where she also visited the sculptor Auguste Rodin in his studio), exposed her to the charge of ‘cosmopolitanism’. A key aspect of the debate about formalist art during the early 1950s was the attempt to reconcile, on the one hand, the rejection of ‘cosmopolitan’ concepts of art on the grounds that they threatened the integrity of German national identity with, on the other, an acceptance of (non-German) models of socialist realism that, for the most part, had their roots in the art and literature of the Soviet Union. In an article entitled ‘Kosmopolitismus und Formalismus: Zur Situation der deutschen bildenden Kunst [‘Cosmopolitanism and Formalism: On the State of German Art’] published in the leading East German daily newspaper Neues Deutschland on 1 December 1949, Stefan Heymann, a leading member of the SED’s Central Committee, had cited the Dresden art exhibition of that same year as an example of how the two concepts were inextricably intertwined: The Dresden exhibition in particular reveals the extent to which the intellectual underpinning of almost all the paintings and sculptures is essentially cosmopolitan and no longer rooted in a concept of the national . . .

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To slavishly imitate the art of foreign cultures is to embrace a false notion of internationalism – something that even progressive artists are guilty of.8

For an example of what was implied by the term ‘false notion of internationalism’, we need look no further than Alexander Abusch’s essay ‘Goethe und der Kosmopolitismus’ [‘Goethe and Cosmopolitanism’], a polemical commentary on the reopening of the Goethe-Haus in Frankfurt am Main on 10 May 1951 by the then U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, John McCloy. Arguing that McCloy’s attempt to invoke the cosmopolitan spirit of Goethe’s life and work was merely an attempt to justify a U.S. vision of a Europe united under Western capitalism, Abusch notes: ‘McCloy’s blatant manipulation of the truth underlines the extent to which, in this day and age, the attempt to portray Goethe as a rootless cosmopolitan figure is not merely anti-Goethe, but fundamentally anti-life.’9 On one level, the pejorative term ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ clearly echoed that coined by Stalin in the late 1940s to refer to those Jewish communists who had sought refuge in the West rather than the East during the Third Reich (and who were persecuted during the antiSemitic purges of the 1950s in both the Soviet Union and the GDR). However, on another level, it calls to mind those opposed to the use of a distinctively socialist understanding of nationalism in promoting an anticapitalist concept of German cultural identity. Indeed, it is striking that while the Duden of 1947 (and subsequent editions of the dictionary published in the Federal Republic) define the term Kosmopolitismus simply in terms of its near-synonym Weltbürgertum (global citizenship) in the first East German Duden of 1951, the two terms are clearly differentiated. For in the latter, Kosmopolitismus is defined as ‘an ideology that, under the guise of global citizenship’ [Weltbürgertum] seeks to enslave nations for the benefit of Anglo-American imperialism’.10 Accordingly, in his essay on Goethe, Abusch highlights the progressive aspects of Goethe’s Weltbürgertum and his contribution to the struggle of late eighteenth-century German writers against the political and economic structures of feudal absolutism. This concept of Weltbürgertum is then contrasted with a reactionary notion of cosmopolitanism propagated by the United States (and the West generally) that has as its goal the eradication of national cultures and their replacement with ‘a pseudo-concept of “culture” that – according to the needs of different audiences  – is either blatantly pornographic or dressed up as an “­aesthetic” phenomenon’.11

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In the eyes of some East German cultural theorists, this concept of cosmopolitanism was virtually indistinguishable from the process of homogenisation that accompanied the spread of global capitalism. Writing in the Socialist Unity Party’s theoretical journal Einheit in July 1949, Ernst Hoffmann suggests that ‘for bourgeois entrepreneurs, traders and bankers there is only one kind of inter-personal bond, and that is rooted in money. These people make themselves at home wherever there is money to be made . . . The ideology of the cosmopolitan bourgeois is predicated upon a complete lack of interest regarding the fate of his homeland and its population’.12 In the GDR, the rejection of such Western-style cosmopolitanism was prompted not only by a hostility to capitalism generally, but also by the as-yet unresolved question of Germany’s political future and the belief that the preservation of a unitary concept of German national culture was the sine qua non of a united socialist Germany at some point in the future. For as Otto Grotewohl put it in a speech of 1950: ‘What is at stake is German culture itself, something that cannot simply be divided. Our goal is to nurture and preserve the notion of a genuinely national German culture. In our view, those living in the West are part of this German nation. That is why we are firmly opposed to both Americanisation and its most prominent ideology, cosmopolitanism.’13

Culture Wars Wary of the ways in which the Western Allies were exploiting culture as a form of ‘soft power’ in their attempt to bring the recently established Federal Republic into their sphere of influence, East German cultural theorists vehemently opposed any notion of cosmopolitan art, claiming instead that German classical humanism was an essentially national phenomenon and that the ‘antifascist’ GDR (and not the FRG) was the true guardian of this humanist legacy. A clear articulation of the role of culture in the creation of postwar national identity is provided by an article published on 13 February 1951 by the editor of Neues Deutschland, Wilhelm Girnus, entitled ‘Wo stehen die Feinde der deutschen Kunst?’ [‘Where Are the Enemies of German Art to Be Found?’]. There, Girnus invoked Stalin’s definition of a nation as a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.14 On the basis of such a definition, Girnus argues, art must be regarded as an essential component

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in the construction of a nation’s identity. Accordingly, rather than seeking to imitate works of art produced by alien cultures, artists (and critics) were to identify those genuinely national works of art that at the same time demonstrated a progressive character. The historical significance of such works, he suggests, can be determined by their role in the development of a ‘national consciousness’ and ‘national character’. By the same token, the progressive character of these works is to be judged in terms of their contribution to overcoming the political fragmentation associated with feudal society and to promoting the formation of nation states. Like Otto Grotewohl, Girnus also rejects the claim that the concept of cosmopolitanism has rendered the notion of the national redundant, and argues instead that the preservation of the national (and the development of a progressive concept of national culture) was vital if the onslaught of (American) capitalism and economic colonisation was to be successfully resisted. Girnus’ essay ends with an appeal: ‘We know the position of the enemies of German art; but the question now is what is the position of German artists?’15 During the 1950s and early 1960s, the DEFA-Studio für Wochenschau und Dokumentarfilme responded to the challenge thrown down by Grotewohl and Girnus by producing a series of documentaries, many of them timed to coincide with major anniversaries of German writers, artists and composers such as Schiller, Menzel, Bach, Beethoven and Handel. All of these figures were championed as progressive artists whose life and work could be mobilised in the service of a new socialist concept of German national identity.16 One of the earliest opportunities for the SED regime to bolster the standing of the GDR on the wider global stage was the bicentenary of Bach’s birth in 1950. For as the education minister Paul Wandel noted in a letter to Walter Ulbricht, music was an internationally understood language and one that could be exploited in order to reach out to a wide international audience.17 Nonetheless, the need to reconcile the religious dimension of the composer’s music with the demands of the GDR’s explicitly secular agenda  – the committee responsible for organising the anniversary celebrations noted that ‘the real significance of Bach’s music was that it broke free from the constraints of the church’18  – was to present both the GDR’s Kulturbund and the filmmakers at DEFA with a formidable challenge. This attempt to refashion the composer’s life and works in accordance with the SED’s ideology is evident in Ernst Dahle’s 34-minute documentary Johann Sebastian Bach released on 27 July 1950. The three-minute sequence in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche is shot in a manner that studiously avoids evoking any

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overtly religious connotations and depicts the church not as a place of worship, but rather as an architectural monument and historical backdrop for musical performance. On the voiceover, the religiosity of Bach’s music is reinterpreted in terms of a quasi-Romantic lyricism: ‘His music’, we are told, ‘expresses far more than the accompanying libretto, and whatever subject he embraced, the expression of deep human feeling was paramount.’ At the same time, the composer is celebrated as a progressive figure whose groundbreaking work Das wohltemperierte Klavier [The Well-Tempered Clavier, 1722] owes as much to his grasp of developments in musical technology as it does to artistic talent, and the significance of his oeuvre in the context of the GDR’s materialist conception of history is underscored by a sequence in which the enthusiastic members of an FDJ (Freie Deutsche Jugend) orchestra head off to a rehearsal remarking that ‘the Peasant Cantata has enabled them to gain an altogether new understanding of Bach’s work’. Most strikingly, however, the circumstances of Bach’s life and, in particular, the legacy of the Thirty Years’ War are presented in a way that seems designed to rekindle memories of the Second World War in the minds of contemporary audiences: ‘Sorrow, fear and the suffering caused by war devastated the wretched Empire, driven as it was by feudal conflict’, we are told. ‘People had lost everything and the German territories were more divided than ever . . . How could a national culture develop under such circumstances?’ There is nothing cosmopolitan about the film’s presentation of Bach; instead, the composer’s life is creatively repurposed as an opportunity to launch a veiled protest against both the division of Germany and the presence of U.S. forces in the Federal Republic. Two years later, another major anniversary loomed large on the cultural horizon  – the 125th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven’s death – and in 1954 the DEFA studio marked the occasion with a fulllength (95-minute) documentary Ludwig van Beethoven directed by Max Jaap and based on a script by Stephan Hermlin. Like Bach, Beethoven was another iconic figure whom the SED leadership exploited to articulate its opposition to the division of Germany during the 1950s: ‘Beethoven’s works’, an SED policy document of 1952 notes, ‘will always be numbered amongst the jewels of our national culture. It is the duty of all Germans to preserve and nurture this legacy’.19 During the Third Reich, however, Beethoven had been vigorously cultivated by the Nazis as a figure whose work supposedly captured the heroic Nordic spirit of the German nation, and Nazi musicologists such as Ludwig Schiedermair had gone out of their way to counter any

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suggestions that, as some mooted, the composer might not be a ‘pure’ German.20 Likewise, Beethoven’s enthusiastic support of the French Revolution had been airbrushed out of his biography and replaced with a characterisation of the composer as an all-conquering daemonic genius in a manner clearly designed to evoke comparisons with Hitler. Last but not least, the Nazis’ mythicisation of Beethoven had been strategically disseminated via popular culture and the cinema in particular. In Detlef Sierck’s melodrama Schlußakkord [Final Chord, 1936] about the troubled marriage of a (fictitious) conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, Beethoven’s music functions as an indicator of the commitment to the German national cause. In one particularly striking sequence, the young German, Hanna Müller, who has succumbed to the lure of jazz and other ‘decadent’ attractions of New York City, is placed in medical care, where, on hearing the finale of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony on the radio, is miraculously revitalised and inspired to return to Germany and rejoin the child from whom she has become estranged.21 Confronted with such a legacy, one of the most urgent tasks for the filmmakers at the DEFA- documentary studio was to provide a corrective to the Nazi legacy of Beethoven as a völkisch cult figure and champion of the irrational in the German cultural imaginary. DEFA’s reappropriation of Beethoven reflected a desire to provide a counter-narrative not only to the Nazi’s characterisation of Beethoven as daemonic genius, but also to Thomas Mann’s ambivalent commentary on the nature of musical ‘genius’ in his 1947 novel Doktor Faustus. A further difficulty for both filmmakers and musicologists was the need to show how music that, by and large, had been composed for, and dedicated to, the composer’s aristocratic patrons could be re-aligned with the progressive forces of history and reclaimed for a working-class audience. The agenda was set in the early part of 1952 with a bulletin for Der Augenzeuge entitled ‘Beethoven Abend am Stahlwerk Gröditz’ [‘A Beethoven Evening at the Gröditz Steelworks’], just one of five features on the composer carried by the newsreel that year. Released two years later, Max Jaap’s documentary also went out of its way to portray Beethoven as an artist whose creative roots lay primarily in vernacular culture. Every reference to the patronage of Prince Lichnowsky or Count Razumovsky is complemented by a voiceover emphasising Beethoven’s enduring interest in the Volkslied tradition and reminding the viewer that however dependent the composer may have been on his aristocratic patrons for financial support, he never adopted a position of moral or aesthetic subservience. In a similar vein, Jaap’s documentary contains an extended sequence from the opera Fidelio (1805),

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in which the Prisoners’ Chorus offers up a celebration of freedom: ‘Oh welche Lust in freier Luft / Den Athem leicht zu heben! / Nur hier, nur hier ist Leben / Der Kerker eine Gruft’ [‘Oh what a joy, in the open air / freely to breathe again / Up here alone is life! / The dungeon is a grave’]. While the words of the chorus could hardly have failed to resonate with postwar German audiences, the stylistic similarities between the staging of the opera’s finale here and the sequences of massed crowds with which many DEFA films of the late 1940s and early 1950s end – Slatan Dudow’s Unser täglich Brot [Our Daily Bread, 1949] immediately springs to mind – suggest a line of continuity that would connect the emancipatory impulse of German classical humanism with its ‘re-invention’ in the GDR in the form of socialist realist cinema. By the same token, the closing sequence of Jaap’s documentary in which images of children and family life in the socialist community of the GDR are underscored on the soundtrack by Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ is testimony to a tradition of deploying the composer’s music to generate political affect that can be traced back to Schlußakkord and beyond. However, what makes Jaap’s documentary so memorable is not its often formulaic approach to the significance of Beethoven and his work in the context of early nineteenth-century European history, but rather its role as a showcase for the musical talent of the GDR. Throughout the film, we are presented with extended extracts from Beethoven’s major works conducted by the likes of Franz Konwitschny, Heinz Bongartz and Hermann Abendroth (a figure sometimes caricatured as the ‘East German Furtwängler’). All three were former members of the NSDAP whose professional careers had been rehabilitated in the GDR, but what matters, at least in the Cold War context of Jaap’s film, is their international standing. The opportunity to observe these conductors on the podium together with the interpolated footage of such global stars as Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrach and Arturo Toscanini was to play a key part in boosting the resonance of the documentary beyond the GDR itself. Praised at international film festivals in both East and West, Jaap’s film was, quite exceptionally for an East German production of the 1950s, distributed in Switzerland and Japan before being screened by the BBC in 1956. The key role played by music and art in the reconstruction of a concept of German national identity in the East during the time of the Hallstein Doctrine also lies at the heart of Wernfried Hübel’s Georg Friedrich Händel (1960). Commissioned to mark the 200th anniversary of Handel’s death, Hübel’s film is based on a script compiled by Stephan Hermlin who some years earlier had also worked on Jaap’s

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documentary about Beethoven. Yet here too the composer’s biography is still refracted via the prism of Cold War ideology. As we are presented with a list of Germany’s most famous baroque composers and instrumentalists, a list that includes not only Handel but also the likes of Praetorius, Buxtehude and Telemann, the historical map of the Holy Roman Empire in the background highlights the towns with which they were associated and which, in very many cases, are shown to be located within the borders of the contemporary GDR. By the same token, Hübel’s film invites the viewer to draw a parallel with the revival of musical culture at the end of the Thirty Years’ War and the efforts of the SED and the SMAD to bring about a similar revival of classical humanist values in the Soviet Occupation Zone after the Second World War. The violence of the Thirty Years’ War, the film suggests, is an inevitable consequence of a combination of religion and the reactionary politics of the Holy Roman Empire’s feudal structure. Accordingly, the documentary highlights not only Handel’s rejection of Catholicism, but also his attendance at the lectures of Christian Thomasius, the enlightened jurist and philosopher and an opponent of witch trials. By the same token, Handel’s travels to the trading port of Hamburg (a city where art enjoys the support of a ‘progressive’ bourgeois class) and to London, the birthplace of parliamentary rule, are presented as the natural choices of an enlightened artist fleeing the threat of military conscription in the absolutist milieu of his youth. Seen in this context, the true significance of Handel’s music is, in the words of Otto Grotewohl, not so much its capacity to generate affect, but rather its capacity to enlighten and ‘to enable us to see more clearly the beauty of the world we inhabit and to renew our strength to change the world for the better’. Moreover, as the inclusion of extended extracts of Handel’s opera Poro­ (1731) underlines, a faith in humanist ideals makes it possible to circumvent tragedy through the application of reason and humanity. Like Jaap’s much earlier documentary Ludwig van Beethoven, Hübel’s film also showcases the GDR’s finest performers with sequences of orchestras being conducted by the likes of Helmut Koch and Horst-Tanu Margraf, the founder of the Händel-Festspiele. Here too, sequences of industrial workers listening to a performance reflect the impact of the ‘Bitterfelder Weg’ (see Chapter 3) and suggest that, in the new social order of the GDR, Handel’s music  – and bourgeois ‘high culture’ generally  – is not something to be enjoyed exclusively by an intellectual elite, but is a vital component in the education of the working classes. In many respects, Hübel’s approach in 1960 resembles that of Dahle and Jaap in the 1950s. Nonetheless, the increasingly tense political context in

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which Georg Friedrich Händel was released (less than a year before the building of the Berlin Wall) gives the film an additional edge that the earlier documentaries lack. Seen in this context, the dissolute behaviour of the British aristocracy echoes, albeit in an eighteenth-century idiom, the images of ‘decadence’ associated with capitalism that are to be found in many DEFA films of the late 1950s, as the SED sought to combat the lure of the West. Eighteenth-century London, the film suggests, may have been one of the most advanced cities of its time, but as Hogarth’s caricatures of the aristocracy underline, progress that is only for the benefit of a narrow ruling elite rather than the population as a whole inevitably leads to stagnation, ennui and despair. For those East Germans in awe of the glittering attractions of West Berlin, the ­conclusion to be drawn was unambiguous.

Fantasies of the Nation: The Artist-Genius As Sabine Eckmann and others have argued, in the fields of painting and sculpture the accent on cosmopolitanism in the immediate postwar years is to be understood, at least in part, as a response to the radical aestheticisation of nationalism during the Third Reich. Even so, the appeal to visual artists in the late 1940s to articulate a (prefascist) concept of German identity using an internationalist style was nothing if not paradoxical.22 Filmmakers at DEFA, by contrast, had to contend with a slightly different legacy, namely that of the Nazi ‘Genius-Films’ produced during the 1940s. Many of these films were historical features based (albeit loosely) on the lives of historical writers, architects, musicians and painters such as Herbert Maisch’s films Friedrich Schiller  – Triumph eines Genies (1940) and Andreas Schlüter (1942), Traugott Müller’s Friedemann Bach (1941), G.W. Pabst’s film about the actress and theatremanager Caroline Neuber, Komödianten [The Comedians, 1941], Karl Hartl’s film about Mozart, Wen die Götter lieben [Whom the Gods Love, 1942], and Hans Steinhoff’s Rembrandt (1942). All of these films were entertainment’ features rather than straightforward propaganda, but as critics such as Francis Courtade and Pierre Cadars, Julian Petley and, more recently, Linda Schulte-Sasse have argued, in each case they can be seen as attempts to construct a form of social imaginary catering for the needs and desires of the petty bourgeois audiences at which they were targeted.23 As Schulte-Sasse notes: ‘The establishment of a national identity in any collective mirror, whether Art, War, or the King’s Body, is inherently political; hence

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these films exemplify Nazism’s aestheticization of politics no less than the more obviously “political” films.’24 Although each of the films listed above approaches its subject matter in quite different ways, almost all of them have a number of elements in common. First, although each is set in a clearly identifiable historical context (and one with which its audience would have been very familiar as a result of their schooling and upbringing), in each of them, aesthetic ‘Genius’ is presented as something both timeless and essential. Thus, when in Friedrich Schiller – Triumph eines Genies, the Enlightened despot Karl Eugen asks his cadets whether great minds are the result of breeding or education, it is the young Schiller who contradicts his fellow students by declaring: ‘Born, your Highness, not raised!’ Second, in each of the films, the ‘Genius’ is compelled to struggle against reactionary forces that are blind to the protagonist’s visionary qualities. In Maisch’s Schiller film, for example, these reactionary forces are embodied in the rational ‘enlightened’ pedagogy of the Duke’s academy, but a similar hostility to genius can also be discerned in the Church Council of Brunswick’s rejection of the eponymous hero of Traugott Müller’s Friedemann Bach. Third, in almost every case, the (male) protagonist’s genius is predicated on a total devotion to the cause that either relegates the female characters to the status of objects to be overcome or reduces them to wholly compliant figures. Thus, when, at the end of Andreas Schlüter, the great architect is thrown into prison and abandoned by his lover and former model, Gräfin Vera Orlewska, the only female figure to stand by him is his loyal, forgiving wife. Fourth, in many of the films, the genius of the protagonist consists precisely in his or her rejection of foreign (i.e. non-German) aesthetic models. Accordingly, while in Friedrich Schiller – Triumph eines Genies the ‘limitations’ of the rationality of the ‘French’ Enlightenment and the classical models of French drama are constantly highlighted, so too in Andreas Schlüter, the rejection of the French baroque style constitutes a similar endorsement of the ‘natural’ superiority of German national culture (architecture). Finally, in almost every case, the film presents a vision of transcendence of the kind that is encapsulated by the closing titles of Andreas Schlüter: ‘Life passes, but their work lives forever.’ Thus, despite their tragic endings, the mythologised pasts in all these films have an affirmative function in respect of the period in which they were made and portray that present as the result of the endeavours of past genius and as part of a national project that is ongoing in the present. As I shall argue, both in terms of its content and style, Helmut Spieß’s DEFA film Tilman Riemenschneider (1958) can be seen as a belated attempt to recycle elements of the ‘Genius-film’ (and its

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associated qualities of political affect) in order to create a new (socialist) fantasy of the German nation.25

Fantasies of German National Culture: Tilman Riemenschneider (1958) Given the SED’s rejection of cosmopolitan approaches to culture, it is hardly surprising that artists and critics alike should search for historical antecedents whose claim to embody a concept of (progressive) German nationalism was not in doubt. Taking their cue from Girnus, whose list of national artists includes the likes of Bach, Beethoven, Goethe and Dürer, postwar scholars looked for inspiration in what many regarded as the two most progressive periods of German history: the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation and the eighteenth-­ century Enlightenment. Even before the founding of the GDR, an article by Wolf Strache on Tilman Riemenschneider (1460–1531) published in December 1948 in the art magazine Bildende Kunst underlines the appeal of the renaissance wood-carver for those attempting to relaunch a concept of German ‘national’ culture that was untainted by ­association with the Nazi regime. For the postwar generation, for whom, as Strache put it, ‘the traditional yardsticks of beauty are no longer valid’,26 the appeal of Riemenschneider’s art lay precisely in its realism. Given the devastation with which postwar museum-goers were confronted, it is perhaps hardly surprising that they were less interested in the harmonising, neoclassical approaches of da Vinci, Titian and Tiepolo, and had become more attuned to the realism of such artists as Pieter Breugel, Hieronymus Bosch, Jörg Ratgeb and Tilman Riemenschneider, all of whose aesthetics reflected the suffering and everyday experiences of ordinary men and women during the German Peasants’ War of the mid sixteenth century. The realism of these renaissance artists and their depictions of the Flight of the Holy Family and peasant s­ uffering – ‘We see their despair in terms of our own’27  – clearly struck a deep chord with postwar Germans. ‘The uncomfortable parallel with that which we have just experienced is immediately striking’, Strache notes, before adding ‘Tilman Riemenschneider belongs to us today even more than he did to our forefathers’.28 Although the revival of interest in Riemenschneider’s work (after a period of almost total neglect in the nineteenth century) can be traced back to the start of the twentieth century and the rise of expressionist art, for the post-1945 generation,

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the suffering embodied in his carved figures assumed a new significance and came to be seen in terms of a (quasi-religious) process of transfiguration. However, the appeal of these works was not simply a reflection of their aesthetic qualities. Created by an artist who had experienced first-hand the conflicts of the Protestant Reformation, these works also reflected the collapse of the old world of the Catholic Church and the emergence of an altogether new form of social organisation. Likewise, Riemenschneider’s political activities (in 1520 he became the Mayor of Würzburg) and his solidarity with the peasants marked him out as a progressive individual capable of recognising the changing tide of history. His commitment to the cause of the oppressed was celebrated by Becher in his poem ‘Riemenschneider’ of 1947, just as it had been, two years earlier in May 1945, by Thomas Mann in his famous address ‘Germany and the Germans’ at the Library of Congress: ‘Moved by the great and fundamental contrast of his time, he [Riemenschneider] felt compelled to emerge from his sphere of purely spiritual and aesthetic artistic life and to become a fighter for freedom and justice. He sacrificed his own liberty for the cause that he held higher than art and the dignified calm of his existence.’29 Given that, as Mann’s speech suggests, Tilman Riemenschneider was a figure who could be presented not only as an embodiment of the best national traditions of German art, but also as a radical figure whose politics, it could be argued, anticipated the rise of socialism, it is hardly surprising that filmmakers in the GDR saw in him the ideal subject for a feature-length film, and on 12 September 1954, Die Entscheidung des Tilman Riemenschneider [Tilman Riemenschneider’s Decision] was broadcast on East German television. Directed by Bodo Schweykowski with the assistance of the former DEFA employee Hans Müncheberg as dramaturge, and starring Herman Dieckhoff in the title role, the production was one of the very first full-length television films made by the Deutscher Fernsehfunk (DFF).30 Further evidence of Riemenschneider’s importance (and the significance of German art in what came to be known as the Northern Renaissance) in the culture wars between East and West of the 1950s is provided by the premiere just one year later on 14 October 1955 of a full-length documentary Begnadete Hände. Tilman Riemenschneider, seine Zeit, sein Leben, sein Werk [Blessed Hands. Tilman Riemenschneider, His Epoch, His Life, His Oeuvre] directed by the West German documentary-maker Alfred Ehrhardt for West-Film.31 In the GDR, the decision to turn to television in the first instance may have been a reflection of the fact that the DEFA studio was already preparing the ground for another major historical feature – Thomas Müntzer

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(1956)  – about the Peasants’ War.32 Nonetheless, a review of Harry Hindemith and Werner Stewe’s exposé ‘Riemenschneider’ reveals that even as early as April 1952, plans were already underway at DEFA for a full-scale cinematic release of a Riemenschneider film.33 Directed by Helmut Spieß, who three years earlier had worked on another historical biopic, Robert Mayer – Der Arzt aus Heilbronn [Robert Mayer – The Doctor from Heilbronn, 1955], Tilman Riemenschneider drew on a highly experienced production team. The musical director Joachim Werzlau had worked with Konrad Wolf on Genesung [Recovery, 1956] and Lissy (1957); the cinematographer Eugen Klagemann had vast experience stretching right back to the very first DEFA film, Die Mörder sind unter uns; and the set designer Erich Zander had worked on a wide range of productions for both UFA and DEFA. The resulting film traces the career of Tilman Riemenschneider (Emil Stöhr) and begins in Würzburg in 1523 with the arrival of a radical preacher whose mission is to propagate the ‘true’ Christian doctrine that all people are equal in the sight of God, thereby challenging the dominance of the Catholic ruling elite. During the course of the film, we see a Riemenschneider torn between, on the one hand, serving his obligations towards his papal patron, the art-loving Fürstbischof Konrad, and on the other, demonstrating his solidarity with the brutally exploited local peasants. News of the peasants’ sufferings is relayed via Anna (played by the rising star Annekathrin Bürger), a young woman whose mother had previously acted as the model for the wood-carver’s figure of Eve. Although Riemenschneider tries to persuade peasants such as Anna’s father to renounce violence, and seeks instead to bring about an improvement in their situation through negotiation, it is not long before he is forced to recognise that the Fürstbischof and his circle have no intention of supporting him. When the papal troops arrive to suppress the peasant uprising, the Fürstbischof is restored to power, while Riemenschneider is incarcerated as one of the leaders of the rebellion. In keeping with historical legend, the wood-carver is released some months later, and while his mutilated hands mean that he can no longer devote himself to the production of new works, his spirit remains unbroken. On one level, Tilman Riemenschneider is a film that, like Maetzig’s earlier films about life in the German theatre, seeks to remind the viewer of the consequences that ensue when progressive artists fail to recognise and embrace the political dimension of their work. Initially, Riemenschneider distances himself from the political activism of wandering preachers such as Pfeiffer Hänsel and instead counsels a course of nonviolent moderation. Similarly, when  – like the Domherr  – his

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apprentice Gotthold claims to see the peasant revolutionary in the features of Riemenschneider’s figure of St Sebastian, the wood-carver rejects such a politicised reading of his work and proposes an alternative interpretation grounded in a purely humanist concept of ethics: ‘All I wanted to do was represent human suffering.’ Inevitably, it is only a matter of time before Riemenschneider’s humanist attitude to art is shown to be at odds with his progressive politics. The turning point occurs when Anna’s father, beaten by the local tax collectors, is brought into the Kloster Meitbronn, where he dies surrounded by his adoring daughter and his fellow villagers. The resulting tableau provides the inspiration that Riemenschneider has been seeking for a ‘peasant pièta’ in which the elderly peasant victim assumes the traditional position of the suffering Christ. This change of heart on the wood-carver’s part is underlined later on in the film when, advised to keep out of politics by his aristocratic patron, the Fürstbischof – ‘Why bother yourself with the affairs of this world?’, the latter asks – Riemenschneider responds by reminding him that: ‘My Christ died for the poor.’ While the need for politically engaged art to replace a humanist conception of aesthetics is, as we have seen in Maetzig’s two films, a standard trope in the films of this period, Helmut Spieß’s Tilman Riemenschneider also attempts to tackle the problem of how a socialist public should deal with works of art reflecting religious themes and created in a cultural context dominated by the Catholic Church. Here too, Spieß’s film chimes with the contemporary hostility to religion in the GDR and corresponding emphasis on a secular society. In his commentary for the studio on Hindemith and Stewe’s ‘exposé’, the director not only cites Engels’ observations of the diverse roles (both progressive and reactionary) played by the Church during the Peasants’ War, but associates the religious dimension of art in the film with a form of non-realistic aesthetics that displays a tendency towards a formalist concept of ‘l’art pour l’art’. The ideological underpinning of Spieß’s film as a whole is encapsulated in these comments: a hostility to transcendent aesthetics, religion and formalist experimentation in art, and all of this presented in the nationalist context of a German renaissance that linked the sixteenth-century world of the Protestant Reformation to the postwar ‘renaissance’ of postwar Germany (at least in the East). At the end of the film, Riemenschneider’s development as an artist is also mirrored in his relationship to the different generations in the film. Whereas Anna’s mother once posed for him as the model for the figure Eva in his depiction of paradise lost, in the ‘peasant pietà’, Anna herself now assumes the role of a muse determined to bring about a

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state of ‘paradise regained’ in the world of the here and now, and it is she who acts as the inspiration for Riemenschneider’s ‘realist-turn’. Like Schlüter’s long-suffering wife in Andreas Schlüter, it is Anna who remains loyal to Riemenschneider when, a broken man, he is abandoned by all around him. Nonetheless, his earlier confession that he and her mother were lovers renders the gender politics of the film increasingly opaque, and like almost all female characters in the Geniefilme of the 1940s, Anna remains an inherently problematic figure whose role oscillates uneasily between, on the one hand, that of the artist’s lover and muse, and, on the other, that of a dutiful (ersatz) ‘daughter’. Just before the film’s conclusion, we see both the Fürstbischof and Domherr admiring Riemenschneider’s figure of St Sebastian and remarking that: ‘You shouldn’t destroy a work of such quality; but you must punish the artist who created it.’ Exposing the hypocrisy of rulers who privately admired the aesthetic qualities of works that they condemned in public was bound to remind postwar audiences of the behaviour of those Nazis who, like Goebbels, collected the very same works they branded as ‘degenerate’. Yet, despite the film’s radically different political agenda, its stylistic indebtedness to the traditions of the 1940s Geniefilm is evident in the camerawork of the final sequence in which Riemenschneider’s transcendent gaze extends over and beyond the shoulder of the adoring Anna into an as-yet unrealised future realm in which, notwithstanding the artist’s eventual physical demise, his work will live on and form part of a concept of German nationhood in the future. Spieß’s film was not well received in the press. Writing in the Berlin Zeitung, Hans Eylau criticised the film on the grounds that while Riemenschneider’s work was presented as an artistic legacy that would outlast its creator, the closing sequence was ‘too sentimental for the film to get its message across’.34 The studio’s newly formed Abnahmekommission, a board designed to approve the release of completed films, was also far from happy with the finished product and regarded it as ‘highly emotional’, ‘too focused on individual psychology’ and as failing to address adequately the sociopolitical milieu in which Riemenschneider operates.35 But while much of the debate centred on the question as to whether the film’s original ending constituted a sufficiently clear indictment of the Fürstbischof for his complicity in Riemenschneider’s punishment,36 perhaps the most telling comment was provided by another member of the commission, the DEFA scriptwriter Kurt Stern, who noted that ‘this film is in a style that is wholly alien to me’.37 In her own assessment of the film for the

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studio’s production department, Anne Pfeuffer noted that while the overall thrust of the film was that ‘the truly great artist is on the side of progress and ordinary people’, the real weakness of the film consisted in the juxtaposition of emotionally charged scenes with what she terms ‘a mediocre and over-declamatory style of delivery’.38 What these comments revealed all too clearly were the contradictions inherent in attempting to reach back to the past of the Geniefilm and redeploying a transcendent notion of national art in order to launch a materialist critique of historical forces during the European wars of religion in the sixteenth century and promote a concept of realist aesthetics in postwar Germany.

The Sovietisation of German National Culture: Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte (1961) While the drive to preserve the integrity of a distinctly German concept of national culture was linked to the desire to prevent the lasting division of Germany into two hostile camps, the increasing alignment of SED cultural policy with that of the Soviet Union necessitated the adoption of the new (and more positive) term  –‘internationalism’  – to refer to the role of the Soviets in protecting German culture. As Alexander Abusch put it in his study of 1949, Stalin und die Schicksalsfragen der deutschen Nation [Stalin and the Fate of the German Nation], the preservation of the German cultural heritage was dependent on good relations with Stalin and the USSR.39 Whereas in earlier Geniefilme from the Nazi era, Russia (and the East generally) had been associated with decadent excess – in G.W. Pabst’s 1941 film Komödianten, Caroline Neuber’s ­invitation to perform in St Petersburg ends in a night of orgiastic revelry – postwar newsreels and documentaries in the East wasted no time in debunking such outdated prejudices and actively sought to portray the Soviet Union as the guardian of national culture and a beacon of aesthetic progress on the international stage. As Kurt Maetzig’s Roman einer jungen Ehe had suggested, the polarisation of Germany into two mutually antagonistic camps stems from the opposition between (destructive) ‘cosmopolitan’ tendencies in the West and the (constructive) ‘internationalist’ orientation of the East.40 For the SED’s cultural theorists, there could be no more clear-cut example of the active role played by the Soviet Union in preserving German culture than the intervention of the Red Army in May 1945 to rescue the collection of Old Masters from Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie.

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Following the death of Stalin in March 1953 and the Soviet-backed suppression of the uprising of June 1953, the SED was also desperately in need of a means of reaffirming the bond between it and the USSR in the GDR’s socialist imaginary, and the ratification on 25 August 1955 of Nikita Kkruschchev’s decision to return the pictures to the GDR provided the perfect opportunity to remind East German citizens of their deep-seated bond with the Soviets.41 Moreover, the fact that the paintings were first put on display at Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in November 1955 before being despatched to Germany made it possible for the SED to present itself as having ‘generously allowed’ the Soviets to catch a glimpse of these superlative works of art before their return to their original collections.42 Prior to their return to Dresden, there was also a preliminary exhibition in the Nationalgalerie in (East) Berlin that attracted huge numbers of visitors (from both East and West) as well as widespread coverage in the press. In particular, the event offered an opportunity to launch an attack on the Western Allies for their failure to return those paintings that they had removed from Germany: ‘Where the magnificent pictures from Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie will soon be put on display’, the GDR’s National-Zeitung pointed out, ‘there used to be equally fine works of art which, even today, have still not been returned to the collections from which they were taken.’43 In an attempt to demonstrate the superiority of Soviet standards of conservation, the U.S. authorities were taken to task for their cavalier attitude to other cultures and their alleged failure to conserve adequately the German collections of painting they had exhibited. In the East German press, the exhibition was further exploited to advance the SED’s own cultural agenda. Writing in the weekly broadsheet Sonntag, Becher reminded readers that such works of art enriched the culture not just of the GDR, but also of ‘our German fatherland in its entirety’, while at the same time – perhaps mindful of the recently launched discussion of Picasso’s work in Bildende Kunst44 – expressing the hope that the exhibition would help progressive artists reject what he termed ‘the sterile phase of grey abstraction’ in favour of the realist tendencies of the Old Masters on display.45 Finally, in an all-too-obvious display of Schadenfreude, the East German press ‘sympathised’ with the difficulties of those West Berlin museums that were struggling to mount a decent exhibition of Old Masters. While Western commentators, such as the director of Hamburg’s Kunsthalle, Carl Georg Heise, writing in Die Zeit, criticised the East for attempting to exploit the paintings in the service of ideology, he nonetheless deplored the fact that the curators of the Dahlem Gallery in West Berlin had to struggle so hard to mount an exhibition,

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pointing out that ‘what is possible in East Berlin, ought to be possible in West Berlin too’.46 In 1957, memories of the Dresden paintings were rekindled once more with the opening of an exhibition of another series of paintings that had recently been returned by the Soviets.47 Once again, the East German press exploited the exhibition to offer a thinly veiled commentary on the cultural politics of the Cold War. In his opening address, the GDR’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lothar Bolz, reminded those present of the bond between the Soviet Union and what he termed ‘the real – better – Germany’, and offered the now well-rehearsed remarks on the need to reject abstraction and embrace the kind of realism embodied in the works of the Dutch Old Masters on display.48 But the fact that this exhibition was taking place in Dresden itself, a city that had assumed such a particular significance in the socialist imaginary of the GDR, also provided an opportunity to remind his audience of the new threat of mass destruction posed by the attempts of the Konrad Adenauer and Franz Josef Strauß to obtain atomic weapons for the Federal Republic. For as Bolz notes, the pictures, plucked in 1945 from the ravages of war, were being returned to a divided Germany now facing a renewed threat of war and one in which those ‘responsible’ had sought refuge in the Federal Republic. Nonetheless, as he was quick to add, ‘eighteen courageous scientists’ had raised their voices in protest against such developments – a tacit reference to the ‘Göttinger Appell’ signed on 12 April 1957 by a group of leading nuclear physicists at the University of Göttingen protesting against the development of atomic weapons.49 With East–West tensions increasing in the run-up to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, it is perhaps hardly surprising that filmmakers at DEFA and in the Soviet Union (Mosfilm) should seek to exploit the historical rescue of the Dresden paintings as a means of bolstering the image of the Soviet Union in the East German popular imagination. The resulting film, Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte [Five Days  – Five Nights], was premiered in Moscow on 28 February 1961 and then on 7 March 1961 in Leipzig’s Capitol. The first co-production between Mosfilm and the GDR’s production studio DEFA, Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte was shot using expensive Eastman colour film stock and was hugely popular in the GDR, attracting an audience of over two million. If the actions of the Fürstbischof and the Domherr in Tilman Riemenschneider had conjured up images of hypocritical Nazis hoarding ‘degenerate’ art in their personal collections, then the behaviour of the Soviets in Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte, coupled with recent memories of the return of the Dresden

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Figure 2.1 The Red Army rescues masterpieces from Dresden in Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte. © DEFA-Stiftung/Karin Blasig. Published with permission.

paintings in 1955, provided an object lesson in how to deal properly with the artistic and cultural legacy of the German nation (Figure 2.1). The links between the two films are also reinforced in the casting of the rising star Annekathrin Bürger, who in both films is instrumental in providing the creative inspiration for the (male) artist/protagonist. Set in the bombed-out city of Dresden and spanning the period 8–12 May 1945, Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte focuses on the rescue of the Old Masters from Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie by Soviet troops under the leadership of the art-loving Captain Leonov. In this the Soviets are assisted by Paul Naumann, a German artist physically and mentally traumatised by his wartime experiences who is determined never to paint again, and Luise Rank, a former cataloguer at the Dresden art gallery. When Dr Nikitina, an expert in conservation, orders the removal of the paintings to the Soviet Union for restoration and safekeeping, both Naumann and Rank believe that their willingness to help Captain Leonov has been exploited. Yet, as contemporary viewers were aware, history would prove their fears to be misguided and would bear out the truth of Leonov’s reassuring words that: ‘The day will come when all your pictures will be returned here again!’ Running parallel to the main action is a redemptive subplot that calls to mind DEFA’s very

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first feature Die Mörder sind unter uns. Naumann’s trauma is in part caused by the belief that his beloved Katrin (Annekathrin Bürger) – the woman whose portrait adorns his studio – has perished in a concentration camp. Initially, her unexpected return to Dresden, where she takes on the task of caring for orphaned and abandoned children, fails to shake Naumann (whose character is essentially a reworking of the traumatised doctor Mertens from Die Mörder sind unter uns) out of his depressive inactivity. It is not until he witnesses the death of the Soviet soldier Koslov, who steps on a mine in the attempt to rescue a painting, that he recognises the vital role of art in creating a better world and is inspired to take up his painting once again. Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte was extremely well received in the press. As Horst Richter put it in his review for Neues Deutschland: ‘Where else in the long history of civilisation is there an example of the victors deploying a whole battalion and risking their lives to ensure the safety of the artistic treasures of the defeated and to restore them  – and all that at a time when most Germans were thinking not about art and painting but about bread?’50 As Richter’s article reveals, the film had a particular resonance with those who saw themselves as political activists involved in the founding of the GDR and who commented on the way the film made them aware of the transformation – both personal and political  – that they had experienced over the past fifteen years. However, given the increasingly tense political situation, it is hardly surprising that Western commentators took a rather different view. An article in Die Zeit with the telling subtitle ‘Kunstraub mit Happy-End’ [‘Looting Art with a Happy End’] argued that the pictures had been stored safely in secret locations in Dresden, were not as damaged as had been claimed, and should not have been removed to the Soviet Union in the first place. Moreover, the article continued, what the film did not show was the fact that the Soviets had transported a huge number of objets d’art (including the Pergamon Altar) to the Soviet Union. For its part, Der Spiegel dismissed the film as propaganda and went as far as to suggest that Khrushchev’s decision to return the pictures was motivated primarily by the realisation that it would be impossible to sell the works on the open market.51

Conclusion All of the films discussed above reflect a rejection of cosmopolitanism in favour of a concept of national culture, rooted in the progressive

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legacy of either the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation or the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Although during the immediate postwar years the work of Tilman Riemenschneider was seen as offering an alternative to the harmonising aesthetics of neoclassical art, the antiformalist campaigns of the late 1940s and early 1950s meant that it was increasingly hard for DEFA’s filmmakers to find an appropriate form of cinematography in which the radical character of his sculpture could be articulated. The problematic reception of Spieß’s film is, at least in part, a reflection of the contradiction between the film’s form and content, and, in particular, the contradictions inherent in the (belated) attempt to rework the transcendent aesthetics of the prewar Geniefilm in order to capture the modernist character of the type of realism embodied in Riemenschneider’s work. By contrast, Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte recycles the conventions of Die Mörder sind unter uns in order to underline the transformative power of art and the role of affect in the construction of the socialist imaginary during the Cold War of the 1950s and early 1960s. As such, it portrays the Soviet Union not only as the guardian of the national cultures of those states that had fallen under its sphere of influence, but also as playing a key role in consolidating one of the key foundational myths of the GDR. Yet, as we shall see in the next chapter, it would only be a matter of time before the antimodernist approach evident in both Tilman Riemenschneider and Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte would come to seem increasingly obsolete in the light of developments in the new wave cinemas of Eastern and Western Europe.

Notes   1. For a list of key exhibitions and related events, see Günter Feist and Eckhart Gillen (eds), Stationen eines Weges: Daten und Zitate zur Kunstpolitik der DDR 1945–1988 (Berlin: Nishen, 1988).   2. See, for example, Eckhart Gillen, Feindliche Brüder? Der kalte Krieg und die deutsche Kunst, 1945–1990 (Berlin: Nicolai, 2009).  3. Catalogue: Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstausstellung Dresden 1946 (Dresden: Sachsenverlag, 1946), n.p.   4. Alexander Dymschitz, ‘Über die formalistische Richtung in der deutschen Malerei’, Tägliche Rundschau, 19 and 24 November 1948 (reproduced in Elimar Schubbe (ed.), Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1972), pp. 97–103, at p. 101).   5. N. Orlov (Vladimir Semjonov), ‘Wege und Irrwege der modernen Kunst’, Tägliche Rundschau, 20–21 January 1951 (reproduced in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 159–70, at pp. 165–66).

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  6. Ernst Toller, ‘Tribute to This Great Figure in German Art, Delivered by Ernst Toller, Playwright and Author, at the Distinguished Special Preview of Kollwitz Prints Held Sunday Evening, June 5, in Zeitlin Bookshop and Gallery, under the Auspices of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy’, in Martin Gerstenbräu, Michael Pilz, Gerhard Scholz, Irene Zanol et al. (eds), Ernst Toller: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Ausgabe, 6 vols (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2014), vol. 4.1 (Publizistik und Reden), pp. 583–85, at p. 583.   7. Letter from Robert Bosse to Wilhelm II, 23 May 1897, and the Emperor’s agreement, Zentrales Staatsarchiv (ZSta), Dienststelle Merseburg. Königliches Geheimes CivilCabinett, Rep. 2.2.1, Nr. 20564, pp. 200–2.   8. Stefan Heymann, ‘Kosmopolitismus und Formalismus: Zur Situation der deutschen bildenden Kunst‘, Neues Deutschland, 1 December 1949 (reproduced in: Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 127–30).  9. Alexander Abusch, Kulturelle Probleme des sozialistischen Humanismus: Beiträge zur deutschen Kulturpolitik, 1946–1967 (Berlin, Weimar: Aufbau, 1967), pp.  140–44, at p. 143. 10. See, ‘Sprache: Duden – Neuer Wortschatz’, Der Spiegel, 9 December 1968. 11. Abusch, Kulturelle Probleme des sozialistischen Humanismus, p. 143. 12. Ernst Hoffmann, ‘Die Stellung des Marxismus zum bürgerlichen Kosmopolitismus’, Einheit 7 (1949), 606–15, at 611. 13. Otto Grotewohl, ‘Die deutsche Kultur ist unteilbar’, Neues Deutschland, 23 March 1950 (reproduced in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, p. 136). 14. Wilhelm Girnus, ‘Wo stehen die Feinde der deutschen Kunst?’, Neues Deutschland, 18 February 1951 (reproduced in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 170–77). 15. Wilhelm Girnus, ‘Wo stehen die Feinde der deutschen Kunst?’, Neues Deutschland, 13 February 1951. 16. See also Elaine Kelly, ‘Composing the Canon: The Individual and the Romantic Aesthetic in the GDR’, in Matthew Philpotts and Sabine Rolle (eds), Contested Legacies: Constructions of Cultural Heritage in the GDR [= Edinburgh German Yearbook, vol. 3] (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009), pp. 198–217, especially pp. 199–200. 17. Letter from Paul Wandel to Walter Ulbricht, 24 November 1949 (BArch DY 30/J IV 2/3/70). 18. ‘Nationales Bekenntnis zu Bach. Stellungnahme des Parteivorstandes der sozia­ listischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands zum Bach-Jahr, 19. März 1950’, Einheit 4 (1950), 381–84, at 381 (reproduced in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 134–35, at p. 134). 19. ‘Zum 125. Todestag Ludwig van Beethovens. Stellungnahme des Zentralkomitees des Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands, März 1952’, in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 231–33, at p. 231 (originally published in Einheit 4(4) (1952)). 20. On the reception of Beethoven during the Third Reich, see David B. Dennis, Beethoven in German Politics, 1870–1989 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), pp. 142–74. See also Esteban Buch, Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 201–19. 21. In her study of the film, Sabine Hake contrasts Hanna Müller’s appreciation of Beethoven’s music with the lack of enthusiasm shown by her female rival, the conductor’s wife. ‘The juxtaposition of two stereotypical female characters via two

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contrasting modes of listening constitutes community through the musical encoding of otherness.’ Sabine Hake, Popular Cinema of the Third Reich (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2001), pp. 107–27, at p. 117. 22. Sabine Eckmann, ‘Ruptures and Continuities: Modern German Art in between the Third Reich and the Cold War’, in Stephanie Barron and Sabine Eckmann (eds), Art of Two Germanys: Cold War Cultures (New York: Abrams, 2009), pp. 48–64, at p. 51. 23. Francis Courtade and Pierre Cadars, Geschichte des Films im Dritten Reich (Munich: Heyne, 1975), especially pp. 96–108; Julian Petley, Capital and Culture: German Cinema 1933–45 (London: BFI, 1979), especially pp. 138–149; Linda Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich: Illusions of Wholeness in Nazi Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1996), especially pp. 147–203. See also Robert von Dassanowsky, ‘Wien-Film, Karl Hartl and Mozart: Aspects of the Failure of Nazi Ideological “Gleichschaltung” in Austrian Cinema’, Modern Austrian Literature 32(4) (1999), 177–88. 24. Schulte-Sasse, Entertaining the Third Reich, p. 147. 25. Sabine Hake has also noted the similarity between the Nazi Geniefilme of the 1940s and Helmut Spieß’s Tilman Riemenschneider (1958). See Sabine Hake, German National Cinema, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge), p. 102. 26. Wolf Strache, ‘Tilman Riemenschneider’, Bildende Kunst 2(11/12) (1948), 24–27, at 24. 27. Ibid., 25. 28. Ibid., 27. 29. Thomas Mann, ‘Germany and the Germans’, Lecture at Library of Congress, Washington: Library of Congress, 1945, pp. 8–9. 30. Unser Rundfunk, 38/1954, p.  18. See also: http://www.fernsehenderddr.de/index. php?script=dokumentationsblatt-detail&id1=13138 (accessed 16 August 2018). 31. In 1948, Ehrhardt had, with the support of the British Zone of Occupation, also produced a two-part documentary on the expressionist sculptor Ernst Barlach, whose artistic legacy was, as I will argue in the next chapter, similarly contested in the East and the West. 32. Hermann Müller, ‘Tilman Riemenschneider  – kein Stoff für die DEFA?’, Neues Deutschland, 29 October 1952. 33. ‘Stellungnahme der stoffführenden Dramaturgen Dr. Spieß u Henneberg zu dem Exposé “Riemenschneider” von Harry Hindemith und Werner Steve. 22.4.52’ (BArch DR 117/10245). 34. H[and] U[lrich]. E[ylau], ‘DEFA-Film um Riemenschneider’, Berliner Zeitung, 9 December 1958. 35. ‘Tilman Riemenscheider. Einschätzung’, Zusatzprotokoll (BArch DR 1-Z/661). Kurt Stern worked with Martin Hellberg on Das verurteilte Dorf [The Condemned Village, 1952] and with Slatan Dudow on Stärker als die Nacht [Stronger Than the Night, 1954]. 36. In the original voiceover, we hear: ‘Der Fürstbischof hat ihm das Leben geschenkt, seine Folterknechte brachen ihm die Hände’ (The Fürstbischof spared his life; his torturers broke his hands). In the version authorised for release this was changed to: ‘Der Fürstbischof ließ ihm die Hände brechen’ (The Fürstbischof ordered his hands to be broken). 37. ‘Einschätzung’, p. 2 (BArch DR 1-Z/661). 38. Anne Pfeuffer ‘Stellungnahme zu dem Film “Tilman Riemenschneider”’. 8.9.1958 (BArch DR 1-Z/661). 39. Alexander Abusch, Stalin und die Schicksalsfragen der deutschen Nation (Berlin: Aufbau, 1949). As David Pike notes, ‘the greater the SED’s “new orientation”, eastward, the more emphatically it talked of its national commitment westward’. David Pike,

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The Politics of Culture in Soviet-Occupied Germany, 1945–1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 560. 40. See also in this context Wolfgang Harich, ‘Kosmopolitismus und Internationalismus’, Tägliche Rundschau, 1 April 1949. 41. ‘Dokumentation zur Übergabe der Gemälde’, National-Zeitung, 31 August 1955. 42. ‘Die dramatische Geschichte der Dresdner Bilder’, Sonntag, 13 November 1955. 43. ‘“Bilderkrieg” auf Kosten unserer Nationalkultur’, National-Zeitung, 14 October 1955. The article accused the Americans and British of stockpiling paintings in Wiesbaden and Celle. 44. See, for example, the discussion triggered by Heinz Lüdecke’s essay, ‘Phänomen und Problem Picasso’, Bildende Kunst 5 (1955), 339–43. For a study of the reception of Picasso in the GDR, see Maria Lau, Die Picasso-Rezeption in der DDR: Offizielle Wahrnehmung und künstlerischer Dialog (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010). 45. Johannes R. Becher, ‘ Siege der Menschheit’, Sonntag, 4 December 1955. 46. Carl Georg Heise, ‘Die Bilder der Dresdner Galerie’, Die Zeit, 29 December 1955. The East German press also provided its own commentary on reviews of the exhibition appearing in the West: ‘Wallfahrtsort Nationalgallerie’, Neues Deutschland, 4 December 1955. 47. The Soviets also returned a series of museum objects that had been removed to Moscow at the end of the war and that were put on display at an exhibition on East Berlin’s Museumsinsel from November 1958 to April 1959 entitled Schätze der Weltkultur von der Sowjetunion gerettet. 48. ‘Weckruf der Kunst zur Verteidigung des Friedens: Festsprache von Dr. Lothar Bolz zur Eröffnung der Sonderaussstellung der Dresdner Gemäldegalerie am 5. Mai 1957’, National-Zeitung, 8 May 1957. 49. Ibid. The text of the letter is reproduced on the University of Göttingen’s website: http://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/54320.html (accessed 16 August 2018). The letter prompted a similar declaration by scientists in Dresden two days later, although it is striking that Bolz does not refer to it. 50. Horst Richer, ‘Das Wertvolle im Menschen erkennen’, Neues Deutschland, 29 March 1961. 51. ‘Gemälde-Deportation: Kampf in der Galerie’, Der Spiegel, 12 April 1961.

Chapter 3

Experiments in Modernism I From Bitterfeld to Barlach

After a sustained phase of increasing Sovietisation during the late 1940s and early 1950s, during which the SED leadership mounted a relentless onslaught against what it saw as the related evils of formalism and cosmopolitanism, the death of Stalin on 5 March 1953 marked the start of a dramatic, but short-lived, period of liberalisation in the Eastern Bloc. In the GDR, the uprising of 17 June 1953 triggered by strikes protesting against the raising of production norms, together with ever-increasing numbers of its citizens emigrating to the West, forced the SED leadership to adopt a more moderate political course. Emboldened by the events of June, a number of cultural organisations sought to press home their advantage. On 30 June 1953, the East Berlin Akademie der Künste issued a declaration (subsequently published in Neues Deutschland on 12 July) in which it demanded greater autonomy for the arts: ‘The state should promote art in every imaginable form; however, the authorities should have no input in questions of style and artistic production. Criticism is a matter for the general public.’1 It proposed a more internationalist approach to the arts and boldly suggested that even artists not living in the GDR should be eligible for state prizes. Finally, the declaration commented on the failings of the DEFA studio and on the need to set up a series of independent production teams (Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppen or KAGs). Just how lasting an impact the Akademie’s declaration had on the SED’s politicians is hard to say. Nonetheless, it was clear to all parties

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that a different approach was needed if public interest in state-sponsored arts was to be rekindled after several years of ideological stagnation. Accordingly, on 7 January 1954, the areas of cultural activity handled by the Staatliche Kommision für Kunstangelegenheiten (Fine Arts), the Amt für Literatur und Verlagswesen (Literature and Publishing) and the Staatliche Komitee für Filmwesen (Film) were all brought together under the umbrella of the newly founded Ministry of Culture under Becher’s leadership. However, the attempts of the relatively liberallyminded Becher to exploit the thaw in cultural policy were ill-fated. His indirect support for the Hungarian uprising of 1956 caused him to be viewed with increasing suspicion by Walter Ulbricht, and following his death in October 1958, he was replaced by the more dogmatic Alexander Abusch, a hardliner who, in effect, had been shaping policy since 1956. The early years of the newly established Ministry of Culture were marked by such eye-catching events as the return of the Dresden pictures from the Soviet Union in 1955. In the second half of the 1950s, films such as Gerhard Klein’s Berliner Romanze [A Berlin Romance, 1956] and Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser [Berlin – Schönhauser Corner, 1957] together with a number of co-productions with France such as Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel [The Adventures of Till Ulenspiegel, 1957] and Die Hexen von Salem [The Witches of Salem, 1957] hinted at an attempt to embrace a spirit of internationalism and to a greater acceptance of aesthetic approaches that departed from the conventional concepts of socialist realism associated with Stalinism. In 1956, however, the Hungarian uprising and the involvement of prominent intellectuals such as Wolfgang Harich, Walter Janka and Hans Mayer in the activities of groups advocating a revisionist approach to conventional Marxist dogma prompted the SED leadership to revert to a more hardline approach. In a speech at the SED’s Cultural Conference of 23/24 October 1957, Kurt Hager (at that point the Secretary to the Central Committee) commented that: ‘It must now be clear that the ideological inspiration for the group led by Harich is not to be sought and found in the West, but above all in the contributions of Georg Lukács and Ernst Bloch’.2 Hager’s assault on three of the GDR’s leading intellectuals – Harich, Lukács and Bloch – reflected the SED’s determination to renew its control of production in the cultural sphere and curtail any revisionist tendencies. However, in stark contrast to the approach adopted in the early 1950s, now control was to be exerted not ‘from above’, but rather ‘from below’ through the active involvement of the working classes in a programme of cultural production dubbed the Bitterfelder Weg.

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The Bitterfeld project that evolved in the GDR in the late 1950s and early 1960s stemmed, at least in part, from a desire to reinvent the relationship between the artist/writer and audience, and to overcome the traditional dichotomy of ‘highbrow’ and ‘lowbrow’ culture, thereby erasing the ‘presocialist’ distinction between bourgeois and proletarian art. The town of Bitterfeld, where the hub of the GDR’s polymer industry was located, was to play a key role not merely in promoting a socialist version of modernist design, as the conference of November 1958 at the VEB Leuna petrochemical works entitled ‘Chemie bringt Brot, Wohlstand und Schönheit’ [‘Chemistry: A Source of Bread, Prosperity and Beauty’] underlined, but it also provided the launchpad for a new conceptualisation of cultural life in the GDR in which the barriers between art and life (understood as industrial production) were to be dismantled. On one level, the development of the petrochemical industry in the GDR (using crude oil supplied by the Soviet Union) was designed to combat East German citizens’ growing dissatisfaction with the lack of modern consumer goods and thereby to stem the tide of skilled employees emigrating to the West in pursuit of a better standard of living. As such, the programme was part of a change of tack in the post-Stalinist era that was designed to ensure that economic productivity was no longer subservient to political ideology. On another level, however, the SED sought, at least in theory, to second artists and writers to industrial plants in order to contribute to the development of what it termed the ‘all-round-socialist personality’ (allseitige sozia­ listische Persönlichkeit) and, in the process, to combat accusations that the alienation of the working classes was no less prevalent in socialist command economies than it was in Western capitalism. The first Bitterfeld conference proper – marked by its much-quoted slogan ‘Greif zur Feder, Kumpel, die sozialistische Nationalliteratur braucht dich!’ [‘Pick up your pen, mate, our socialist literary culture needs you!’] – was held in the Kulturpalast Wilhelm Pieck of the VEB Elektrochemische Kombinat Bitterfeld in the spring of 1959. To begin with at least, the key idea was not simply to educate workers to an understanding of the great works of art and literature, but also to recruit writers and artists from the ranks of the working classes. In his address to the workers at Bitterfeld that was subsequently published in Neues Deutschland on 15 May 1959, Ulbricht observed: The members of our socialist brigades are not just acquiring specialist skills for the work-place, but have also begun to storm the citadels of culture. Only 15 years ago, under German capitalism, the reactionary cultural politics of the ruling classes did not regard the working class

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people as self-determining human beings and, with very few exceptions, denied them access to our nation’s artistic treasures; but now we are witnessing the emergence of fully-rounded individuals who take an active and creative role in the development of our shared cultural life.3

However, as he went on to explain, while the Bitterfeld project sought to educate workers to an appreciation of high culture and to encourage them to become productive artists in their own right, it also had the function of re-educating established artists and writers by seconding them to industrial plants. By analysing the obstacles that lay in the path of the radical transformation of society, writers and artists were given the task of developing creative solutions to come up with solutions to such contemporary problems: But what does that entail? It means that writers and artists themselves need to become involved in the development of socialism; because recognising, understanding, investigating and representing all that is new is something that a writer can best do by putting himself right at the very heart of the process of creating our new society.4

Finally, Ulbricht emphasised that, in the eyes of the SED at least, the ultimate goal for writers and artists was essentially no different from that for those working directly in industrial production, namely to ensure that the pro capita rate of consumption in the GDR exceeded that in the neighbouring Federal Republic.5 In this mission, Ulbricht was ably assisted by Alfred Kurella, who, in many respects, was the main driving force behind the Bitterfeld project and the social re-engineering it was designed to bring about. In the late 1920s, Kurella had been involved in drafting the manifesto for Oktjabr, an avant-garde group of artists in the Soviet Union. The group’s constructivist approach to art and design (which had a number of affinities with that of the Bauhaus) was conceived with the aim of creating a new type of ‘artist’ in the Soviet Union, a designer-architect whose output would consist of material objects for mass consumption and the creation of facilities for the masses. In their attempt to bring about a cultural revolution and realise the utopian goal of bridging the divide between art and life, the Oktjabr group specifically rejected conventional notions of what they termed ‘the passivity associated with that concept of realism in which the artist simply attempts to reproduce what is already there’.6 Yet, as Eckhardt Gillen notes, Kurella’s insistence on the need for writers and artists involved in the Bitterfeld project to adhere to socialist realist paradigms of aesthetics underlines just how far his position in the 1950s had shifted from that of his early life.7

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Rather than bringing about a genuinely revolutionary shift in the role of artists and writers, the Bitterfelder Weg – and above all its rejection of modernist aesthetics – might be seen as the delayed implementation of a project originally sketched out in 1948 by Carola Gärtner-Scholle in the SED’s theoretical journal Einheit, where, albeit in a different political context, she had argued that ‘it is not the general populace who need to be educated by artists and writers, but quite the opposite in fact; ultimately it is the artists and writers who need to be taught a hard lesson by the populace’.8 In the case of the Bitterfeld project, Kurella’s hope was that precisely because of their modernist agendas, certain factions of the intelligentsia would find it hard to gain traction with ordinary workers employed in industry. At the same time, establishing smaller circles of artists would enable the party to control the consumption of art by the working classes and protect them against ‘decadent’ influences. In short, artists would be ‘taught’ the true value of socialist realist aesthetics by the members of the workers’ brigades with which they were associated. Presented as a radical movement that emerged ‘spontaneously’ from below, the Bitterfeld project was, as Ingeborg Gerlach argues, essentially a ‘top-down’ process in which only certain types of stock ‘problem’ could be portrayed in art and literature and ‘solved’ exclusively in ways that were compatible with the SED’s party doctrine.9 As we shall see, one of the reasons why Jürgen Böttcher’s Drei von vielen was so troubling for the studio management was precisely the fact that it took the radical possibilities of the Bitterfelder Weg seriously and, in the process, delivered a vision of what a genuinely autonomous art-scene in the GDR might have looked like.

Jürgen Böttcher: Modernist Experimentation from Picasso to Kafka Born in 1931 in Frankenberg, Jürgen Böttcher grew up in Strahwalde, a small village in Saxony close to the border between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, and the inspiration for the pseudonym Strawalde under which he painted from the mid 1970s onwards. In 1949, at the age of eighteen, Böttcher embarked on the study of painting at the Dresden Kunstakademie, an institution dating back to the late eighteenth century whose illustrious alumni and former faculty included Kurt Schwitters, Oskar Kokoschka, Georg Grosz and Otto Dix. Taught by Wilhelm Lachnit (1899–1962), an expressionist painter whose works had been among those condemned by the Nazis

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as ‘degenerate’, the young Böttcher was to explore ways of mediating his adolescent experience of the Second World War via contemporary developments in modernist aesthetics. Lachnit was a great admirer of Picasso and played a crucial role in promoting the Spaniard’s work at the Dresden Akademie in the early 1950s, even though it led to him being singled out for criticism in the Tägliche Rundschau.10 The significance of Picasso’s work for Lachnit’s young protégé, Jürgen Böttcher, is already evident in the cubist overtones of such early works such as Sitzende [Seated Woman, 1954]; likewise, in Beweinung [Lamentation, 1958] – a painting prompted by the traumatic memory of his brother’s death during the war – the stylised tears of the mourning mother and the use of a predominantly grey-blue palette bear witness to the impact of Picasso’s antiwar masterpiece of 1937, Guernica.11 After completing his training as a painter in 1953, Böttcher taught classes in drawing at Dresden’s Volkshochschule, a city college open to people from a very diverse range of backgrounds. There his students included Peter Graf, Peter Herrmann, Peter Makolies and Ralf Winkler (now better known as A.R. Penck), all of whom featured in Böttcher’s 1961 documentary of Drei von vielen [Three of Many] and became established artists in their own right.12 Unlike Böttcher, however, Graf, Herrmann and Penck all eventually left the GDR for the West. As suggested in the previous chapter, the influence of Mediterranean modernism as embodied in the works of Picasso and Matisse was hardly conducive to the production of new works of socialist realist art, and many of the difficulties Böttcher experienced both as a painter and filmmaker during the GDR’s existence have their origins in his enduring fascination with Picasso’s modernist approach.13 For much of the 1950s, Picasso remained a thorn in the side of the SED, and in his infamous essay of 1951,‘Wege und Irrwege der modernen Kunst’, Vladimir Semjonov (N. Orlov) had criticised Picasso in particular for departing from realist modes of painting, and had even gone as far as to suggest that ‘such formalist distortions constituted an utter waste of Picasso’s talent’.14 That same year, in an address to the 5th Conference of the SED’s Central Committee, Ulbricht declared: ‘We do not want to see any more abstract paintings in our art academies. We need neither the images of moonscapes nor of rotting fish. The grey-in-grey painting, which is an expression of the capitalist decline, stands in the sharpest possible contrast to life today in the GDR.’15 The crude rhetoric of both Semjonov and Ulbricht is perhaps understandable in the context of the increasing Stalinisation of the SED and a perceived need to establish unambiguous positions in the cultural-political sphere during the

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founding years of the GDR. However, as a series of articles in the art magazine Bildende Kunst during the mid 1950s demonstrated, following Stalin’s death it became possible to take a more nuanced view of Picasso’s work. Although some hardline critics such as Heinz Lüdecke continued to dismiss the Spanish painter’s work out of hand, his political credentials could hardly be denied.16 His unwavering support for the antifascist forces fighting Franco in the Spanish Civil War dovetailed perfectly with one of the GDR’s key foundational narratives; he had been a member of the communist party since 1944 and, in 1950, had been decorated with the Stalin Peace Prize. Finally, his Dove of Peace (1949) had become perhaps the most instantly recognisable antiwar symbol of the progressive left in Europe. As Konrad Farner, writing in 1955, noted: In terms of ideology, politics and his attitude to society generally Pablo Picasso belongs unambiguously to the new generation; and he is also a member of the French Communist Party. But in terms of his art, where exactly should we place him? Is it possible to distinguish between the individual and the artist? As Marxists we reject such a distinction. But Picasso’s situation seems peculiarly paradoxical: as an individual citizen he is not allowed to travel to the USA, but there his paintings are received enthusiastically; he can travel to the USSR, but there his work is met with hostility!17

For critics like Farner, the way out of this paradox was to regard Picasso’s work as an attempt to develop (capitalist) modes of critical realism (kritischer Realismus) to their logical conclusion. Seen from this perspective, he argued, Picasso’s murals War and Peace (1952) in the Vallauris Chapel highlighted the limitations of what can be achieved using the ‘distorted approach’ of critical realism, while the mural to peace in particular at the same time served as a potent reminder of what this approach could nonetheless achieve.18 For his part, Ignacio Márquez Rodiles argued that because Picasso’s art embodied an aesthetics of ugliness, it lacked Volkstümlichkeit and remained inaccessible for ordinary people; accordingly, however powerful their antifascist message, key works such as Guernica and Massacre in Korea (1951) were simply beyond the comprehension of the masses.19 Whatever one may think of their respective views, the approach taken by the likes of Farner and Rodiles at least made it possible to acknowledge the progressive character of Picasso’s work (at least when evaluated in the capitalist context of its production), while at the same time adhering to the SED’s doctrine, as spelled out by the GDR’s Minister of Culture, Alexander Abusch, in 1957 that ‘it was inappropriate to apply the aesthetic approach of a

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capitalist societies in decline to the art of working-class nations on the rise’.20 Not surprisingly, many critics were unwilling to accept that Picasso’s work should be dismissed as ‘decadent formal experimentation’, and a number went to some lengths to defend its realist dimension.21 As the readers of Bildende Kunst were reminded, Picasso had explicitly stated in an interview with the art historian Christian Zervos that ‘the fact that the origin of all his works could be traced back to the reality of the material world meant that he had never embraced abstract art. All his works are informed by an appreciation of the real world and the need to find a form suitable for expressing that reality’.22 This alternative view of Picasso as a realist (albeit non-naturalistic) painter offers us a clue as to what it was that initially attracted Böttcher to the Spaniard’s work, namely its capacity not only to engage with the prevailing social and political reality, but also to do so from a multiplicity of often unconventional perspectives. In a retrospective exhibition of Strawalde/ Böttcher’s work staged in 2008, his painting of 1959, Vision, is accompanied by a commentary that explicitly rejects the categorisation of its creator as an abstract artist: The painting Vision is the embodiment of a fundamental principle running through Strawalde’s entire oeuvre. Self-indulgent experimentation with form and colour is something alien to Strawalde’s art . . . His paintings are not instances of abstract art where the dynamic content and quality of a given work is based solely on the self-sufficiency of colour and form; they are the result of a process of abstraction grounded in specific experiences and concrete sensations.23

Although Böttcher increasingly embraced abstract art during the course of his career, his reluctance to accept such a label for his paintings of the 1950s contains more than just an echo of Picasso’s insistence that a rejection of the principle of verisimilitude was not the same as a rejection of realism per se. Just as Böttcher’s early paintings were inspired, above all, by the realist dimension of Picasso’s oeuvre, his interest in modes of cinematic realism (such as we find in both his banned film Jahrgang 45 [Born in ’45, 1965/1990] and the documentary films made after the Eleventh Plenum) also bears witness to the impact of both Italian neorealist cinema and the cinema of the Soviet Union generally, and such films as Vittoria De Sica’s Umberto D (1952), Luchino Visconti’s La Terra Trema [The Earth Trembles, 1948] and Alexander Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930) in particular. Increasingly conscious of the obstacles that stood in the way of his working and exhibiting as a painter (despite their limited potential to

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reach a mass audience, painting and the fine arts were, paradoxically, among the most closely supervised areas of cultural production in the GDR), in 1955 Böttcher had started to train as a filmmaker at the newly founded Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen in Potsdam-Babelsberg. Looking back at this period in his life, he notes: ‘It became clear that I would get nowhere with painting, I realised that the films of Rossellini and de Sica, as well Dovzhenko, which I saw a lot of, reflected life pretty much as I saw it.’24 By 1960, Böttcher had been taken on at the DEFA-Studio für Wochenschau und Dokumentarfilme, the unit responsible for documentary film production in the GDR. There, under the guidance of, among others, the Dutch filmmaker Joop Huiskens, he was to make some of DEFA’s most memorable documentaries. While Böttcher may have hoped that turning to film would offer him greater opportunities to engage with the nouvelle vague aesthetics of the Italian neorealists he so admired, such an approach, based as it was on a stark depiction of postwar social deprivation and the teasing out of contradictions in everyday life, ran directly counter to SED cultural policy in the late 1950s. In an address to the second Film Conference of 3–5 July 1958, Alexander Abusch had attempted to nip such tendencies in the bud, arguing that: ‘It must be clear to filmmakers in the GDR that the aesthetics of the Italian neorealists, intended as they are to expose the irresolvable antagonism of capitalist society to rebel against it are not appropriate for films set in a Workers’ and Peasants’ state . . . The use of critical realism cannot but leave us a pseudo-representation of the new reality in which we live.’25

Life as Art. Art as Life. Jürgen Böttcher’s Drei von vielen (1961/1989) Böttcher’s first project as a regular employee of the DEFA studio for documentary film production was Drei von vielen. In stark contrast to many of Böttcher’s later documentaries, Drei von vielen has an explanatory commentary (delivered by a 24-year-old Manfred Krug) that highlights the aesthetic achievements and political engagement of the three protagonists. The film focuses on the day-to-day lives of three artists, Peter Graf, Peter Makolies and Peter Herrmann, and explores their relationship to the workplace, their families and their art. Superficially at least, Drei von vielen invites comparison with other films made in the spirit of the Bitterfelder Weg, such as Harry Hornig’s Alltag eines Poeten

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[The Everyday Life of a Poet, 1961] about the train driver and amateur lyric poet Werner Barth. Yet as early as the opening sequence in which we watch the trio of flâneurs sauntering aimlessly through the outskirts of Dresden (in a sequence that anticipates the general tenor of Böttcher’s later film Jahrgang 45), it becomes clear that Drei von vielen is anything but a straightforward documentary. This is confirmed by the abrupt change of mood as the idyllic rural setting of leisure time gives way to dark overcast images of an industrial plant, and the carefree whistling on the soundtrack is replaced by a blend of more sombre and discordant tones. Indeed, throughout Drei von vielen, the soundtrack’s modernist score (for the most part provided by Hanns Eisler’s pupil, Gerhard Rosenfeld) complements not only the painterly/plastic modernism of the three artists, but also Böttcher’s unconventional cinematography more generally. The first artist to be presented in the film is Peter Graf – a barefooted bohemian smoking a cigar in the manner of a young Bertolt Brecht – and a truck driver by day who paints after work in his makeshift studio while listening to classical jazz. As the camera pans around the room, a brief glimpse of a photograph of Picasso make it clear just where the artist’s aesthetic and political sympathies lie. The fact that almost all Graf’s paintings feature the iconic IFA G5 truck that he drives at work in some shape or form underlines not only his ability to seek (and discover) beauty in the objects of everyday socialist life, but at the same time points to a fundamental truth about painting, namely that a sustained engagement on the artist’s part with material with which he or she is intensely familiar is an essential prerequisite for the creation of a new works of art. As the voiceover makes clear: ‘Both his [Graf’s] work and his painting are key parts of his life as a whole.’ At the same time, the series of artworks pinned to the studio walls that reveal the obvious influence of other modernists such as van Gogh and Henri Rousseau underline Graf’s fascination with new aesthetic forms (and primitivist aesthetics in particular), while serving as a reminder that, regardless of what the proponents of the Bitterfelder Weg may have claimed about the need to position the workplace at the heart of cultural production, form and content remain inextricably intertwined; accordingly, at the level of content, the recurrent motif of Graf’s truck acts as a fixed point of reference that enables him to experiment at the level of form using the different techniques of the precursor artists he so admires. While the opening section of the documentary devoted to Graf explores the ways in which the modernist aesthetics of a Picasso or van Gogh might be transposed to a socialist context, the next section

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on Peter Makolies – the former stone-mason turned sculptor – focuses on the legacy of the past and on the ways in which the traditions of German classical humanist art might be redeployed in the service of an antifascist agenda. This aspect of Makolies’ work is reflected in his day  job, which involves the restoration of the figures on historical buildings (such as Dresden’s Hofkirche and the Zwinger) that were damaged during the Allied bombing of Dresden in the Second World War, and the construction of the memorial in the former concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. In the sequence in which Graf and Makolies are shown walking through the semi-rural outskirts of Dresden, the ­juxtaposition of the modern housing estate under construction with fragments of classical figures awaiting restoration invites the viewer to reflect on the ambivalent nature of progress, while posing questions about the place of art and beauty in contemporary socialist society. Likewise, the sequence in which Makolies stands next to a winged angelic figure – both of them with their backs turned on the steam train passing over the embankment in the background – evokes not only the clash of tradition and modernity that we find in the railway paintings of the early Impressionists, but also Walter Benjamin’s fatalistic interpretation of the angelus novus as a figure irresistibly propelled into the

Figure 3.1 Peter Makolies and the collision of modernity and tradition in Drei von vielen. © DEFA-Stiftung/Christian Lehmann. Published with permission.

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future on which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward (Figure 3.1). While Makolies restores the great works of the past by day, the naïve quasi-primitivist figures that he seeks to develop at night in his studio underscore his desire to experiment with new forms of sculpture for the present era. The burden of this quest for originality and the desire to break free from the constraints of tradition (something common to all the artists featured in Böttcher’s film) is hinted at in a short text by Makolies published many years later in an exhibition catalogue of 1992, in which he writes: ‘The knowledge we have of all the things that others have accomplished is a burden. Only a very few people succeed in bringing to life the unencumbered spontaneity of a child’s drawing.’26 In Drei von vielen, the importance of such primitive ‘naivety’ in the development of new aesthetic forms is further underlined in the sequence where Graf is surrounded by children, and their attempts to commit their visual fantasies to paper present the viewer with yet another perspective from which to consider the work of the three adult artists. The third artist featured in the documentary is Peter Herrmann, who earns his living as the employee of a publishing house touching up lithographic plates. Here Böttcher’s film offers an oblique critique of a pedagogical practice that, for centuries, has been at the heart of art academies across Europe, namely the reproduction of the works of the Old Masters as a means of assimilating their techniques and style. Yet, as the voiceover explains, ‘sometimes, as Peter traces the images line for line, he dreams of paint and a blank canvas’. Here too, the viewer is reminded that slavishly imitating the art of the past (a process that for many socialist realist artists in effect meant the (re)production of forms based on nineteenth-century models) not only stifles creativity, but also leads to the gradual stagnation of a once vibrant and revolutionary aesthetic. While Herrmann’s day job consists in removing defects from images at the pre-production stage, he seeks to compensate for this in his free time by producing works of art that challenge conventional conceptualisations of harmony and beauty, and which argue instead for a concept of art that engages with the sufferings of others and the violence that human beings inflict on one another. What inspires the creativity of this Dresden-based artist, the voiceover tells us, is not simply a love of life, but also the desire ‘to represent the horrors that have occurred in world history, lest we forget’; and it is this combination of realpolitik with modernist aesthetics that we see embodied, above all, in his painting of Patrice Lumumba, the first legally elected Prime

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Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was assassinated in 1961 as the result of a plot hatched jointly by the U.S. and Belgian governments. Moreover, as the discussions that take place at the house of another artist, Ralf Winkler (A.R. Penck) underline, for all their desire to experiment with new aesthetic forms, all of these artists subscribe to a notion of art that is socially and politically progressive and that, precisely through the juxtaposition of multiple perspectives, invites the active engagement of the viewer. In this way, Drei von vielen serves as a reminder that rejecting the monoperspectival aesthetics of socialist realism need not necessarily entail a rejection of socialism. Just as the film stops well short of endorsing any concept of nihilistic l’art pour l’art aesthetics, so too the multiple sequences depicting the three artists interacting with children and partners point to a world in which art is a dynamic, forward-looking activity and one that, although it inevitably draws on the achievements of the past, cannot stand still and is constantly changing and evolving. The fact that all three artists in the film are male is, perhaps, understandable in the context of the prevailing gender relations of the GDR in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Nevertheless, the film’s emphasis on the importance of family for both Makolies and Herrman (together with the obvious affinity that the as-yet unattached Graf has with the young children at the beach) can be seen as an attempt to portray the artist not as a social outsider, but rather as a figure who belongs at the heart of mainstream life and for whom play, in the widest sense of the term, is a crucial aspect of all creative activity. Indeed, it would be a mistake to see Drei von vielen as a straightforward reflection of an essentially patriarchal world, for when Graf visits the fairground, itself a twilight world of popular culture frequented by ordinary people, the film offers a tantalising glimpse of the changing relationship between the (male) artist and his (female) muse in contemporary socialist society. The girl Graf meets at the fairground is – as the lyrics of ‘The Girl from Piraeus’ in the background and her fashionably modern clothes and haircut suggest – the very embodiment of a modern socialist woman not lacking in either individuality or exoticism. When we observe her riding around on horseback in the fairground tent, the sequence initially calls to mind the circus paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat and Macke. However, when the camera juxtaposes footage of the girl on horseback with close-up images of the anxiously watching Graf and the controlling figure of the Ringmaster, the world that is unmistakably evoked is that of Franz Kafka’s short prose narrative Auf der Galerie [Up in the Gallery, 1916] (Figure 3.2).

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Figure 3.2 Kafkaesque modernism in Drei von vielen. © DEFA-Stiftung/ Christian Lehmann. Published with permission.

Like Drei von Vielen, Auf der Galerie is also a reflection on the process of artistic production and on the role of perspective in shaping our perception of reality. In Kafka’s story, however, the young (male) protagonist discovers that, in the modern world of Auf der Galerie, there is no place for conventional notions of masculine heroism, and so, unable to intervene in the mechanical process of artistic production, he is left sobbing ‘without knowing why’.27 By contrast, Böttcher’s cinematic homage to Auf der Galerie ends with the girl agreeing to act as Graf’s model. And unlike the female performer in Kafka’s novella, who spends her life endlessly circling the ring, in Böttcher’s film Graf’s female muse is a self-assured woman who has a confident sense of her own autonomy; this redefinition of gender roles in the modern world of socialism is underscored when she takes her place in the cab of Graf’s G5 truck and the two of them – almost in the manner of a road movie avant la lettre – embark on an open-ended journey of self-discovery. Böttcher’s documentary ends with the words: ‘They don’t aspire to be great artists; they simply want to express what their friends and colleagues at work feel. They just want to be what they are – three amongst many.’ As the film makes clear, the three artists in the film enjoy good relations with their day-to-day colleagues. Makolies’ colleagues may

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joke that his hard work and enthusiasm is bound to lead to a 200% increase in the productivity norms; nonetheless, they remain resolutely supportive of his work as an artist, while his response is to set up a circle of amateur artists in the workplace. Likewise, Peter Herrmann’s colleagues show an interest in his often unconventional paintings and help him to frame them when they are submitted for an exhibition. Seen from this perspective, Drei von vielen demonstrates that, despite its modernist aesthetic, the body of work produced by Graf, Herrmann and Makolies is not inaccessible and alien, but resonates with ordinary people. In highlighting that artistic creativity is not simply an activity for a highly educated elite, but something to which all people might aspire, Böttcher’s film would appear, at least at first sight, to endorse some of the key principles underpinning the Bitterfelder Weg of the late 1950s. Yet as the reception of the film demonstrates, not everyone saw things that way. Willi Zahlbaum, the director of the DEFA-Studio für Wochenschau und Dokumentarfilme, had originally approved the script at the preproduction stage and, following the test screening, had argued that the finished film should be licensed for general release. However, when representatives of the HV Film viewed the final version in the autumn of 1961, they had grave misgivings and, unable to agree upon how to proceed, referred the matter directly to Alfred Kurella himself in the Politbüro. In a letter of 2 January 1962, Kurella acknowledged Böttcher’s undoubted talent as a filmmaker, but banned the film on the grounds that: ‘The content and underlying idea of Drei von vielen are both completely misguided.’28 It was not until June 1988 that the film was publicly screened for the first time (in Edinburgh), an event followed on 16 January 1989 – some twenty-seven years after its production – by the licensing of the film for general release in the GDR.29 In the absence of any documentation from the HV Film, we cannot be absolutely certain as to the precise reasons cited for banning the film.30 However, as would have been clear to many viewers even in 1961, Graf, Makolies, Herrmann and Penck were hardly amateur artists plucked from the production line, but were members of the ‘Erste Phalanx Nedserd’, a circle of artists established in 1953 and made up of Böttcher’s students at Dresden’s Volkshochschule. The name of the group (‘Nedserd’ is Dresden spelled backwards) was an obvious allusion to an earlier group of radical artists, ‘Phalanx’, who exhibited in Munich between 1901 and 1904 and whose members included Wassily Kandinsky. Kandinsky, it will be recalled, was one of the artists Wilhelm

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Girnus had singled out for special criticism in his polemical article of 1951 ‘Wo stehen die Feinde der deutschen Kunst?’31 Adopting the name ‘Erste Phalanx Nedserd’ was not just a highly provocative act in its own right, but an unambiguous signal of the group’s iconoclastic intentions as far as the prevailing aesthetic of socialist realism was concerned. Not surprisingly, none of the group had been admitted to the (more prestigious) Dresden Akademie der Künste; likewise, none was granted membership of the GDR’s Verband Bildender Künste (VBK), which, up until the early 1970s at least, was a condition for earning a living as a professional artist; accordingly, they had no choice but to study at the Volkshochschule and then to finance their artistic activities by means of regular jobs. The decision to ban Drei von vielen was also bound up with events taking place off-camera. All of the artists featured in the documentary (and indeed Böttcher himself) had submitted paintings for the controversial exhibition Junge Kunst, which had opened at East Berlin’s Akademie der Künste in September 1961. The exhibition had been organised by Fritz Cremer, the sculptor entrusted with the design of the Buchenwald memorial in the 1950s and a leading figure in the Akademie during the 1960s. Cremer was well aware of the existence of a vibrant amateur art-scene and was determined to fight for a greater acceptance of such work. At a meeting of the Akademie der Künste on 27 April 1961, he argued: ‘We need to brace ourselves and have the courage to stand up for things that we know will provoke intense public opposition. We have to make these things part of normal life.’32 Cremer had already had first-hand experience of just how hard that could be when, just six months earlier, an exhibition of paintings organised by him in the Berlin Konkret gallery had been closed prematurely.33 His new project was an exhibition showcasing the work of young artists scheduled for the autumn of 1961,34 and its aim is evident in Cremer’s original draft for the catalogue’s introduction: ‘In view of our overall aims, we struggle to come to terms with the fact that, for all the talk of the potential diversity of socialist art, the reality is that . . . attempts to develop individual modes of creativity are being stifled.’35 Over 600 artists were contacted and invited to submit works for consideration by a jury whose members included the seventy-year-old John Heartfield. According to the minutes of the jury’s deliberations, the basic principle of the exhibition was ‘to produce a genuine overview of the way the work of those young artists living in the GDR has developed since 1945 and to do so without having recourse to official policies and what is currently the order of the day’.36 Amongst the 118 works selected by the

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jury were works by Graf, Herrmann and Makolies, the three painters featured in Böttcher’s film Drei von vielen. Not surprisingly, the exhibition was subjected to particularly harsh criticism in the East German press because of the allegedly formalist tendencies of some of the works on display; on the occasion of his visit to the exhibition, Alfred Kurella is even reported as having personally removed a number of pictures he found particularly offensive.37 In an open letter published in Neues Deutschland on 12 October 1961, ostensibly written by a group of workers from VEB-Borsig, the artists were accused of having produced works that ‘have nothing whatever to do with our life under socialism’. And just six days later, in an article provocatively entitled ‘Wohin, Kumpel?’ [‘Where are You Headed, Mate?’]  – a clear allusion to the ideals of the Bitterfeld project  – the Berliner Zeitung argued that such paintings were wholly contrary to its stated aim of educating the masses to a better grasp of culture.38 Even highbrow art magazines such as Bildende Kunst condemned the exhibition as a failed attempt to redeploy the modernist approaches of late bourgeois art.39 Political tensions had, of course, increased following the building of the Berlin Wall, and the desire to make a clear distinction between the supposedly bourgeois traditions of the West and the progressive tendencies of the East is evident in Alexander Abusch’s speech to the Kulturbund of December 1961, in which he argued that ‘in the current situation it is not possible for both German states, which politically speaking are diametrically opposed, to adopt a common approach to culture’.40 As a result of such pressure from above, Cremer himself was forced to redraft the foreword to the exhibition catalogue so as to include a statement of self-criticism in which he articulated his regret that the exhibition organisers had been unable to attract a truly representative selection of artists and, as a result, the exhibition had been unable to fulfil its supposed mission of ‘endorsing the intentions those young artists who understand what the right way forward is, and to offer a helping hand to those who find themselves still on the margins to identify the practical and ideological difficulties with which they find themselves confronted’.41 Cremer’s frustration at the critics’ response to the exhibition is perfectly summed up in a collage of (negative) newspaper reviews over which he had sketched the figure of a crippled Pegasus, an image that captured the spirit not only of the abortive Konkret exhibition of 1960, but also that of the 1961 exhibition Junge Kunst and Böttcher’s film Drei von vielen.42 What both these exhibitions and Böttcher’s documentary revealed was the existence of a vibrant

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underground arts scene in the GDR, and one that, precisely because of its amateur basis, was able to elude the Ministry of Culture’s control. Accordingly, it seems likely that the decision to ban Drei von vielen was, paradoxically, prompted by the SED’s anxiety that an unforeseen consequence of its attempts to persuade ordinary working people to take up art and writing would be the development of autonomous (and potentially oppositional) artistic groups. Kurella and Ulbricht had hoped that the Bitterfeld project would lead artists and intellectuals to the conclusion that there was no audience for their modernist fantasies and thereby prompt the production of conventional works of socialist realism that would be discussed and displayed at the workplace. But what Böttcher’s film Drei von vielen underlined was that modernist painting need not be inaccessible to ordinary people and that even members of the working class with little or no artistic education could embrace aesthetic forms that deviated from socialist realism; as we shall see in the case of Ernst Barlach, once the genie of modernism had been let out of the bottle, officials at the Ministry of Culture would struggle to regain control of cultural production.

The Expressionist Legacy: Modernist Aesthetics and Antifascism Two artists whose work had featured prominently in debates about realism and the relationship between aesthetics and ideology in the late 1940s and early 1950s were Ernst Barlach (1870–1938) and Käthe Kollwitz (1867–1945). Both had been associated with the Berlin secessionist movement before the outbreak of the First World War, both had received the order Pour le Mérite for their contributions to the arts43 and both had come into conflict with the Nazi regime during the mid 1930s on account of the supposedly ‘degenerate’ character of their work. Not surprisingly, their works were among those displayed at the 1. Deutsche Kunstausstellung in Berlin in August–October 1945, and it seems hardly coincidental that Barlach’s bronze, Kopf des Güstrower Totenmales [Head of the Güstrow Memorial (1927)], with its features modelled on Käthe Kollwitz, should have been selected as the first illustration in the catalogue to the first Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstausstellung of May 1946 in Dresden. In October 1945, an exhibition dedicated to Kollwitz’s work was staged at the Museum of Natural History in Berlin, while the left-wing Kulturbund organised a retrospective of Barlach’s work in Rostock. Nor were such events confined to the Soviet Occupation Zone; 1947 saw an

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exhibition of Kollwitz’s work in Frankfurt am Main under the auspices of the Freie Deutsche Kulturgesellschaft (a left-wing group operating in the West that was, in all but name, a branch of the Kulturbund) and in 1948, there was a Barlach retrospective in Hamburg’s Kunsthalle. As we shall see, however, for all the apparent affinities between the two artists, the reception of Barlach’s work (in the GDR at least) was much more contentious than that of Kollwitz; and this difference in their respective symbolic capital is clearly mirrored in both the production history and critical reception of two major films directed by Ralf Kirsten, namely Der verlorene Engel [The Lost Angel, 1966/1971] and Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens [Käthe Kollwitz – Images of a Life, 1987].

Experiments in Modernism: Ralf Kirsten – From Barlach to Kollwitz For East German scholars and art historians, Barlach was a profoundly problematic figure. Born in 1870 in the small town of Wedel (near Hamburg), Barlach studied first at Hamburg’s Kunstgewerbeschule before moving in 1891 to the Königliche Akademie der bildenden Künste in Dresden, where he stayed until 1895. Early evidence of his talent came in the form of Die Kraut-Pflückerin [The Cabbage Picker, 1894], a bronze that was subsequently exhibited at the Große Berliner Kunstausstellung of 1898. Barlach’s first visit to Paris in 1895 was undertaken with a view to honing his skills as a literary author, but a second visit to the French capital in 1897 took him to the same prestigious art school, the Académie Julien, that Käthe Kollwitz was to visit in 1904. Having returned to Wedel in 1901, five years later he embarked on a trip to Russia during which he produced the series of lithographs entitled Eine Steppenfahrt [Journey across the Steppes] and was inspired to produce the terracotta sculptures Blinder Russischer Bettler [Blind Russian Beggar] and Russische Bettlerin mit Schale [Russian Beggarwoman with Bowl], which were displayed as part of the 13th exhibition of the Berliner Secession and prompted the prominent Jewish art dealer Paul Cassirer to become his patron. Yet, Barlach’s first-hand experience of the terrible conditions endured by the peasantry in late Tsarist Russia did not lead to his embracing the Bolshevik cause. As the entries in his ‘Russisches Tagebuch’ underline, much of what he saw was mediated through the categories of Dostoevsky’s fiction, and the image of the beggar that was to occupy so prominent a position in his art from that point on came to embody not a political statement on the material

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conditions suffered by the poor, but rather a metaphysical reflection on the place of suffering in the human condition.44 Given the sense of lyrical intoxication that pervades Barlach’s commentaries on his experience of the infinite during his travels through the Russian Steppes, it is perhaps hardly surprising that, having returned to Germany, he should turn his back on the frenetic lifestyle of the imperial capital Berlin and set up his studio just outside the provincial Mecklenburg town of Güstrow. His reluctance to become involved in contemporary left-wing politics and his distaste for the bourgeois character of mainstream Berlin society were further factors in his decision to lead a solitary rural existence in his native northern Germany. Nonetheless, it is hard to ignore his persistent tendency to aestheticise experience in essentialist categories that, at times, border on the sentimental. In a letter to his cousin Karl of 27 January 1914, he remarks that ‘here [Mecklenburg] a somewhat backward yet healthy primitiveness exists. Country life gives the most lowly an aristocratic form. Even on the surface, people who are lonely, isolated, not part of the mass, impossible to generalize about, possess something of a plastic quality’.45 Further evidence of Barlach’s tendency to view the world around him via the categories of idealist metaphysics can be found in almost all the works he completed following his return from Russia insofar as they embody a rejection of realism and corresponding attempt to develop an aesthetics of form designed to capture what was essential rather than contingent.46 Like so many of his generation, Barlach was initially enthusiastic about the outbreak of war in 1914 and longed to take part: ‘What use is a bold finger if instead of pulling the trigger of a rifle it scribbles away in a diary in Güstrow?’, he wrote in his diary on 19 October 1914,47 and that same year he completed his figure Der Rächer [The Avenger], a work that he described as ‘the crystallised essence of war, a tempest that transcends every obstacle’.48 However, it was not until December 1915 that he was declared fit for service and ordered to report for duty; even so, his fragile health and the support of a petition signed by, among others, the Berlin secessionist artists Max Liebermann and August Gaul led to him being discharged after just ten weeks. Although Barlach never abandoned his patriotic leanings, subsequent drawings such as Aus einem neuzeitlichen Totentanz [From a Modern Dance of Death, 1916] for Paul Cassirer’s pacifist-oriented magazine Der Bildermann clearly reflect the suffering caused by war. In 1921, Barlach was commissioned to produce a memorial for the Nicolaikirche in Kiel, and the success of his Schmerzensmutter [Mater Dolorosa, 1922] led to further

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important commissions: Der schwebende Engel [The Floating Angel, 1927] in Güstrow; Der Geistkämpfer [The Fighter of the Spirit, 1928] in Kiel; the Magdeburger Ehrenmal [Magdeburg Memorial, 1929]; and the Hamburger Ehrenmal [Hamburg Memorial, 1931]. Although Barlach had always distanced himself from radical politics of both the left and the right, from 1929 onwards there was simply no escaping developments in the political sphere.49 That same year, his memorial to the victims of the First World War had been erected in Magdeburg Cathedral, but it soon drew protests from German nationalists who disapproved of it on account of its unheroic character and pacifist aspect. In 1933, just days before the Nazi seizure of power, Barlach had recorded a talk for the radio in the series ‘Künstler zur Zeit’ [‘Artists on Their Times’], in which he had delivered an impassioned plea for a radical separation of art and political ideology, and concluded with a statement of what he regarded as the fundamental conflict of existence, namely that between the two categories of being, the spiritual and the non-spiritual (‘die Geistigen’ and ‘die Ungeistigen’).50 He also protested about the enforced resignations of Käthe Kollwitz and Heinrich Mann from the Prussian Akademie der Künste following Hitler’s election as Chancellor on 30 January 1933, but his support for them was bound up with their status as artists rather than as proponents of an alternative left-wing agenda. That same year, fearful of the backlash from both German nationalists and supporters of the Nazi regime, the Magdeburg Church Council decided to remove Barlach’s memorial, and in 1936, works by Barlach were also removed from the exhibition of German sculpture Berliner Bildhauer: Von Schlüter bis zur Gegenwart [Berlin Sculpture from Schlüter to the Present]. Just one year later in 1937 – Das schlimme Jahr [The Terrible Year, 1937] as the title of one of Barlach’s carved female figures would have it  – the Güstrow Memorial was removed from its setting by Nazi sympathisers and subsequently destroyed. In addition, two of his works were among those included in the exhibition of ‘Degenerate Art’ in Munich of 1937.51 The following October, Barlach’s long-time admirer Käthe Kollwitz made her way to Güstrow to sketch the artist one last time as he lay dead in his coffin. Part of the reason why, in the GDR in particular, Barlach has been regarded as a much more controversial figure than Kollwitz lies in the very different responses of the two artists to the rise of fascism. Although Kollwitz was never formally a member of a political party, she supported the Bolshevik cause and remained in Berlin for most of the war; as a result, her antifascist credentials were never seriously

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open to question. Barlach, by contrast, had always rejected left-wing politics, and his secluded lifestyle in northern Germany could be seen as symptomatic of a reluctance to engage in any form of organised antifascist political opposition, and as an example of ‘inner emigration’.52 In addition, during the 1930s, Barlach had tried to defend his art against attacks by nationalist critics by emphasising his non-Jewish origins and reminding his critics of the Germanic traditions that he regarded as the inspiration for his own aesthetic approach. His work was admired by a number of prominent figures in the Nazi regime and in some quarters was proposed, albeit unsuccessfully, as an embodiment of a particular type of ‘Nordic modernism’ that might be seen as compatible with Nazi cultural policy.53 Finally, in a further effort to secure public acceptance of his work, Barlach, along with other notable figures such as Emil Nolde and Mies van der Rohe, eventually signed the infamous ‘Aufruf der Kulturschaffenden’ [‘Artists’ Appeal’] that was published in the Völkischer Beobachter on 17 August 1934, and in which he pledged his support to the new regime. It would, of course, be a serious mistake to equate Barlach’s (ultimately fruitless) efforts to secure official acceptance of his work as indicative of active support on his part for the NSDAP.54 Nonetheless, it is important to remember that this episode in his life was one that, for obvious reasons, was invariably passed over in silence by those who sought to rehabilitate the artist and his work in the postwar period. Barlach’s apolitical stance together with his tendency to essentialise his subject matter made it possible for critics such as Lukács to condemn his work (along with that of other expressionist artists and writers) as a form of reactionary mysticism.55 This view of the artist, a view that seemed to be confirmed by his dark and often obscure expressionist dramas, was to dog his reception in the GDR, especially during the early 1950s. Writing in December 1951, the hardline SED cultural theorist Helmut Holtzhauer noted that: ‘Without doubt, Barlach is one of the most controversial artists in Germany. His mysticism makes it impossible to regard him as having made a contribution to progressive art.’56 As we shall see, although both Ralf Kirsten’s film of 1965/66 Der verlorene Engel and Fühmann’s novella of 1963 Das schlimme Jahr (on which the film script was based) are both bound up with the assault on modernist aesthetics in the wake of the Eleventh Plenum, the arguments that were mobilised against the film in 1965 and 1966 have their origins in a much earlier debate concerning the controversial retrospective of Barlach’s works organised by the East Berlin Akademie der Künste in December 1951.

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Barlach in the GDR Following the founding of the East Berlin Akademie der Künste in March 1950, plans were laid for exhibitions devoted to Kollwitz (April 1951) and Barlach (December 1951). Yet well before the details of the exhibition were finalised, there were clear differences of opinion regarding the merits of Barlach’s work. On the one hand, there were those who saw Barlach as a victim of Nazi persecution and for whom the exhibition was an opportunity to rehabilitate art branded degenerate by the Hitler regime; however, on the other hand, there were those who, still mindful of the Expressionism Debate of 1933/34, remained troubled by Barlach’s alleged ‘mysticism’ and the dark undercurrent of violence that is present not only in the works he created in the years leading up to the First World War, such as Der Berserker (1910), but also in some works of the 1920s, including his illustrations to Hebbel’s drama Die Nibelungen [The Nibelungs, 1922]. An already tense situation was exacerbated by the (belated) launch of a parallel exhibition Künstler schaffen für den Frieden [‘Artists Working for Peace’]. Staged by the Verband Bildender Künstler, the latter exhibition contained few formally experimental works and sought instead to make a case for a more conventional concept of (socialist) realist aesthetics. The particular accent of Künstler schaffen für den Frieden is encapsulated in Alexander Abusch’s introductory essay for the exhibition catalogue: The fundamental truths about peaceful human co-existence cannot be conveyed through a decadent distortion of aesthetic and human forms, or by works of art featuring morbid fantasises and abstract ‘adventures of the human spirit’. The essence of peaceful co-existence is something that will only be accessible to all human beings if it is embodied in ­realistic – and technically accomplished – works of art.57

As Ilona Schulz has argued, the ill-timed coincidence of the two exhibitions was to re-ignite a debate about the merits of Barlach’s art that was itself situated within a much wider discussion regarding the need to abandon so-called formalist tendencies in art in favour of the allegedly more progressive aesthetics of (socialist) realism.58 The Barlach exhibition opened in East Berlin on 14 December 1951 and with over 350 works (including not only sculptures, but also graphic works and a selection of illustrated texts) was at the time the most comprehensive retrospective of the artist’s work. The opening was attended by prominent figures from the Akademie der Künste,

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including the painter (and future Akademie president) Otto Nagel and the writer and committed antifascist Arnold Zweig. In his opening address, Zweig attempted to downplay the artist’s refusal to embrace left-wing politics, arguing that ‘he was not a political individual but he was someone blessed with artistic feeling’, before going on to challenge the notion of Barlach as a reactionary mystic: ‘There is no dark side to his work that could be described as confusing or as intended to confuse’, Zweig argued. ‘He never embraced the expressionist tendencies of his epoch.’59 Likewise, the very title of Heinz Lüdecke’s introductory essay for the catalogue, ‘Barlach und die Einsamkeit’ [‘Barlach’s Isolation’], reads like an attempt on the part of the exhibition’s organisers to preempt the arguments of those who insisted that the artist’s solitary existence reflected both his rejection of the collective and the presence of an existentialist (apolitical) tendency in his work.60 In what is effectively an apologia for Barlach’s withdrawal from mainstream society (and a corresponding focus on the themes of isolation and solitude in his work), Lüdecke cites Lukács in support of the view that the alienated individual cut off from the bulk of the population was a commonplace theme in late nineteenth-century literature, before going on to argue that Barlach was merely one of many to meet with such a fate: ‘many of our greatest artists took up the cause of the wretched and oppressed without ever overcoming their own sense of isolation’.61 Lüdecke’s essay also invokes what was almost certainly the exhibition’s most memorable work, the Güstrow Memorial, as evidence of the affinity between Barlach’s work and that of the more politically acceptable figure of Kollwitz: ‘He felt such an affinity with Käthe Kollwitz . . . that he modelled the face of his angel in Güstrow cathedral on hers.’62 At the same time, Lüdecke goes out of his way to draw a clear distinction between the formal qualities of Barlach’s work and the more radical programme of abstract expressionism associated with artists such as Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc: [Barlach] did not wish to deconstruct the human form or banish it from art altogether as the Expressionists did; rather he wanted to share the suffering of those human beings who had been martyred and, through his compassion, bridge the chasm between himself and the external world. Driven by his sense of isolation, he struggled bravely to capture the essence of what it is to be a human being and how to convey this to his fellow-men.63

Finally, the essay concludes with an appeal to antifascist sentiment and a reminder that Barlach’s marginalisation needs to be seen in the context of his status as a victim of the NS-regime: ‘it was the fascist regime

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that plunged Barlach into the most profound isolation’.64 Alongside a (broadly similar) defence of Barlach’s dramatic works by the critic Herbert Ihering, the exhibition catalogue also included a selection of short texts by Barlach himself that, likewise, seem to have been selected by the organisers to counter criticism, both real and imagined, from the proponents of a more realist concept of aesthetics. Among those included were the early short text of 1903, ‘So, so ist es’ [‘That’s How it is’], in which the young Barlach explicitly dismisses the concept of l’art pour l’art aesthetics, arguing that ‘anyone who pursues aestheticism for its own sake is committing a sin against the Holy Spirit; and a much later text from 1937, ‘Als ich von dem Verbot der Berufsausübung bedroht war’ [‘As I was Threatened with Black-Listing’], in which the artist reflects upon his enforced state of isolation and exile as a result of the Nazis’ rejection of his art.65 Initially, the exhibition was well received in the press, with most reviewers following the line taken in the Tägliche Rundschau on 15 December 1951 that seemed to confirm Barlach’s rightful place in the tradition of German humanism. The popular daily the Berliner Zeitung am Abend noted that: ‘The German fascists saw only too clearly that, although Barlach’s pity did not actually evolve into a call to arms, every work he produced was an unrelenting protest against those responsible for the persecution of humanity.’66 Likewise, writing in the Berliner Zeitung, Felix Eick traced the artist’s style art back to the traditions of Gothic art in medieval Germany, an observation that was not so much about the stylistic provenance of Barlach’s work, but rather a tacit argument to the effect that, in staging such an exhibition, it was the GDR – and not the Federal Republic – that was the true guardian of the national traditions of German art.67 However, just two weeks later on 29 December 1951, the Tägliche Rundschau launched an attack on the exhibition in an article entitled ‘Ein merkwürdiges Vorwort’ [‘A Strange Introduction’] written by Kurt Magritz, a dogmatic defender of socialist realism. In it he contradicted almost everything Lüdecke had written in the exhibition catalogue and argued that the content of Barlach’s art was ‘mystical and, in terms of its form, anti-realist . . . an example of the crisis of an aesthetics of ugliness’.68 This was followed by a further highly polemical article on 24 January 1952 in Neues Deutschland by Wilhelm Girnus, in which he argued that Barlach was an individual ‘trapped in the past and fighting a lost cause’ and one who lacked Kollwitz’s understanding of class conflict and had little sense of how human suffering could be overcome.69

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As early as 13 January 1952, Bertolt Brecht had been approached by the exhibition’s organisers at the Akademie der Künste and invited to defend Barlach’s art, which he did, at least to an extent, in a short text entitled ‘Notizen zur Barlach Ausstellung’ [‘Notes on the Barlach Exhibition’]. However, as Brecht’s diary entry of 1 February 1952, it is clear that his support was far from unconditional: i made notes bringing out the positive values and the exemplary quality of the work, defending it against their completely abstract demolition using social-critical weapons. in doing so, however, i established how right, ie pointing in the right direction, social-critical arguments are, even in the weakest and most incompetent hands.70

This same ambivalence runs through Brecht’s commentary on the exhibition. Initially he appears to endorse Barlach as ‘one of the greatest sculptors we Germans have had’, yet it soon becomes clear that the underlying agenda of Brecht’s essay is to promote his own programmatic vision of realistic aesthetics by focusing above all on those works by Barlach that could be assimilated into such a canon. Accordingly, Brecht notes that: Barlach’s religious sculptures do not hold much meaning for me, nor in general do all those that have something of the mystical. And I cannot rightly make up my mind whether he didn’t now and then offer up his beggars and care-dulled mothers to that religious feeling which in pious resignation accepts economic and spiritual poverty. But in those of his sculptures which are, to me, the most beautiful, he makes the human element, the social potential, triumph gloriously over deprival of its rights, over humiliation, and this shows his greatness.71

Despite the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that he can imagine the female figure of Das schlimme Jahr (1937) ‘as an activist of 1951’, Brecht’s commentary seems less a defence of Barlach and more a plea for a more sophisticated approach to the principle of realist aesthetics, and it is this that underpins his closing remark that: ‘Abstract criticism never leads to realistic art.’72 Brecht’s contribution to the discussion may not have succeeded in resolving the question of how Barlach’s work should be evaluated once and for all, but it did mark the end of any further public debate on the matter via the pages of Neues Deutschland and the Tägliche Rundschau.73

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Franz Fühmann and Barlach Despite the controversy unleashed by the exhibition of 1951/52, on 17 November 1953, the Ernst-Barlach-Gedenkstätte was formally opened in Güstrow. Just a few months earlier, however, Wolfgang Harich had provided a coda to the debates of 1952 in the form of an attack published in the Berliner Zeitung under the title ‘Es geht um den Realismus’ [‘About Realism’]. Best known as the proponent of a ‘third way of humanistic socialism’ that would navigate a path between Stalinism and capitalism, Harich used the article to launch an attack on the GDR’s Commission for the Arts and its hostile treatment of artists like Barlach whose art resisted categorisation in terms of a rigid binary of realist and nonrealistic aesthetics: Most artists in the GDR are against the idea that our republic should be flooded with formulaic works of abstract art. They are quite willing to endorse any measures designed to improve the next generation’s mastery of artistic technique . . . all they ask is that the complexity of that which links the two should not be supressed but rather analysed. And quite understandably they reject the notion that unconventional approaches, stylistic idiosyncrasies etc. should be regarded as ­symptomatic of a politically hostile position.74

Although another thirty years would elapse before the next major retrospective of Barlach’s work in the GDR would be staged,75 the artist’s reputation as a ‘complex intermediary’ meant that he could not but appeal to writers and filmmakers interested in exploring the role of art and the artist in contemporary East German society. Ralf Kirsten was among the visitors to the original Barlach exhibition of 1951/52 and was well aware of the controversy it had unleashed. However, by the early 1960s, the hardline approach of the early 1950s had given way to a new more liberal period of cultural policy in the GDR. The Kafka-Konferenz in Liblice of May 1963 (attended by Marxist critics from both Western and Eastern Europe) was to prove a landmark event not only in challenging conventional views of socialist realism but also in promoting revisionist attitudes to Marxist doctrine more generally. Although Alfred Kurella, whose antiformalist leanings had changed little since his involvement in the Expressionism Debate of the 1930s, launched a full-scale attack on the conference, the drive to embrace modernist aesthetics was increasingly gaining momentum.76 During the 5th Congress of the Verein Bildender Künstler (VBK) in 1964, Fritz Cremer made a highly polemic speech attacking ossified

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notions of socialist realism with the words ‘We need art that makes people think for themselves – not art that does the thinking for them’ and demanding that the term ‘formalism’ should be seen as a legitimate aesthetic category and not as a political insult.77 The change of mood during the early 1960s also impacted on the reception of Barlach’s work, and in 1963 the Hinstorff Verlag had published a lavishly illustrated volume designed to coincide with the twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. That volume contained a short novella by the East German writer Franz Fühmann entitled Das schlimme Jahr (the title of which was inspired by Barlach’s figure of the same name).78 The volume – together with Fühmann’s novella – was well received and, on 1 August 1964, the weekend supplement of Heute carried an extensive feature on Barlach’s life and work that focused in particular on the Magdeburg Memorial and its pacifist aspect. However, in stark contrast to the earlier debates of the 1950s, the article went out of its way to emphasise that, for the first time, the artist’s work had finally found its true home in the GDR on account of the state’s commitment ‘to both preserve and extend all the best traditions of our national culture’.79 It is not hard to understand Fühmann’s fascination with Barlach. During the Second World War, Fühmann, a Sudeten German, had been an active supporter of the Hitler regime. Having completed his studies in Reichenberg (present-day Liberec), a town he would later refer to as the ‘capital of Sudeten fascism’, he became an active member of the SA. Because of poor health, his combat duty was interrupted and he was forced to specialise in communications work, during which time he published a number of his poems in the Nazi newspaper Das Reich. After four years of political re-education in a Soviet POW camp, Fühmann had recognised the enormity of the NS-regime’s crimes and in 1949 volunteered for work as a cultural administrator in the newly founded GDR and joined the National Democratic Party of Germany (NDPD), a political faction set up to cater for reformed ex-Nazis. In Barlach, Fühmann saw a writer who, like himself, had attempted to preserve a concept of autonomous art in the context of the NS-regime. In addition, Fühmann’s interest in the expressionist poets Georg Trakl and Gottfried Benn reflected a similar fascination with idealist aesthetics to that which we find embodied in Barlach’s work. Accordingly, Fühmann’s novel can be read both as an attempt to understand the historical predicament of an idealist artist forced to re-evaluate his views on the production and reception of art in a time of political crisis, and as an exploration of the emancipatory potential of modernist literary aesthetics in the GDR of the 1960s.

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Fühmann’s Das schlimme Jahr is a quasi-biographical work that draws on letters and diary entries that in 1963 had not yet been published, and it presents the reader with access to the protagonist’s thoughts using a complex montage of inner monologue and indirect speech.80 As the novella unfolds, we are invited to trace reflections triggered by the events of 24 August 1937 and the removal of the ‘Floating Angel’ from Güstrow Cathedral by Nazi sympathisers. The (physical) journey to which we as readers become privy is, of course, poetic licence; Barlach’s diary confirms that he did not actually leave his house on 24 August 1937. However, insofar as Fühmann’s text attempts to compress the reflections of a lifetime into the temporal limits of a single day, it provides the template for Kirsten’s cinematic reflection on the role of the artist in East German society.81 Both Fühmann’s novella and Kirsten’s film attempt to address the same fundamental paradox. At one level, they highlight the limitations of a concept of idealist aesthetics that, in striving to preserve a notion of artistic autonomy, becomes increasingly detached from social reality and, as a result, becomes powerless in the face of fascism. At another level, however, both text and film go out of their way to argue that art cannot simply be reduced to questions of ideology, and invite the reader/viewer to reflect on the complex relationship between progressive politics and different forms of modernist aesthetics.

Der verlorene Engel (Ralf Kirsten, 1966/1971) Strictly speaking, Der verlorene Engel was not Ralf Kirsten’s first Künstlerfilm; on 4 January 1962, his romantic comedy Auf der Sonnenseite [On the Sunny Side] about a steel-worker, Martin Hoff, who swaps the blast furnace for the stage had premiered in Berlin’s Babylon cinema. Although Hoff was a fictional character, it did not require much imagination on the part of the viewer to relate the central protagonist’s rise from humble steel-worker to successful actor/artist to the career trajectory of the film’s main star, the popular entertainer Manfred Krug. Auf der Sonnenseite was marketed unambiguously as an entertainment film rooted in the social reality of the contemporary GDR; by contrast, Der verlorene Engel, conceived some four years later, was a work of highbrow art-house cinema that, in the manner of a classic expressionist Stationendrama, offers a sustained reflection on the relationship between idealist aesthetics and revolutionary politics. The official premiere of Der verlorene Engel did not actually take place until 22 April 1971, and it is important to remember that the

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print that was the basis for discussion in the context of the Eleventh Plenum no longer exists. The version screened for the benefit of the HV Film in 1966 and on which its reports were based was at least some 400 metres (c. 20 minutes) longer than the version eventually approved for release in 1971.82 The planned inclusion of an introductory song by Wolf Biermann never materialised,83 and some sections of the film  – notably those featuring Barlach’s best-known works – were shot much later in 1970. Likewise, large sections of the dialogue were rewritten for the 1971 version of the film. Nonetheless, the existence of the original shooting script together with a range of other key documents from the production files makes it possible to go at least some way towards reconstructing the original version of the film that was circulating in the DEFA studio around 1966. When approaching Der verlorene Engel, we are confronted with three key questions. First, to what extent can the film be read as an attempt to ‘rehabilitate’ Ernst Barlach as a progressive artist despite his obvious reluctance to engage with conventional left-wing politics during his lifetime? Second, what kind of arguments does the film advance regarding the place of humanist aesthetics and, in particular, the legacy of Expressionism in the articulation of a politically progressive (antifascist) agenda in the GDR of the 1960s? Third, how far – and in what ways – can Der verlorene Engel itself be regarded as an attempt to respond to developments in European new wave cinema and to promote a similar approach to modernist film production in the GDR? Given the controversy surrounding Barlach in the early 1950s, it is hardly surprising that Kirsten should look to the genre of the antifascist film in order to embark on a discussion of modernist aesthetics. During the 1960s, a number of filmmakers  – notably Gerhard Klein in the film Der Fall Gleiwitz [The Gleiwitz Affair, 1961] – exploited the antifascist genre as a means of affirming their basic commitment to the political underpinning of the GDR, while at the same time exploring alternative (i.e. nonrealist) forms of cinematography and film aesthetics. Indeed, it is no coincidence that Klaus Wischnewski – the head of the artistic ensemble ‘Heinrich Greif’ who was subsequently dismissed from the studio as a consequence of the Eleventh Plenum of 1965 – was the dramaturge on both Der Fall Gleiwitz and Der verlorene Engel. Like Der Fall Gleiwitz, Kirsten’s quietly understated film not only marked a radical departure from the more conventionally heroic format of earlier antifascist classics such as Fünf Patronenhülsen [Five Cartridges, 1960] and Nackt unter Wölfen [Naked amongst Wolves, 1963], but also played a key role in preparing the ground for Konrad Wolf’s work of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

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Wolf himself was a member of the artistic ensemble ‘Heinrich Greif’ and was very familiar with the controversy surrounding Kirsten’s film during the mid 1960s, and the process of personal and political development that Barlach undergoes in the course of Kirsten’s Der verlorene Engel anticipates a similar journey along ‘the hard road of discovery’ undertaken by the central protagonist of Wolf’s own film Goya (1971). As early as the unconventional opening sequence of Der verlorene Engel in which we are offered an extended aerial view of Güstrow and its cathedral, it is made clear that Kirsten’s film is anything but a conventional biography of the artist’s life. Even though the film’s main focus is the fateful 24 August 1937 on which Barlach’s ‘Floating Angel’ was removed by Nazi sympathisers, no attempt is made to produce a straightforwardly chronological account of even that one day. Instead, we are presented with a series of loosely connected tableaux (many of them permeated by memories of the past in the form of extended flashbacks) that chart the central protagonist’s journey from a position of suicidal despair following the removal of his angelic figure and the nonintervention of the Güstrow townsfolk to a position of renewed hope in which he and his art is, politically speaking, ‘reborn’. The non-naturalistic aspect of Kirsten’s film is further emphasised through the use of a subjective camera and extreme close-ups, an almost total absence of conventional dialogue, and a soundtrack on which both silence and grotesquely exaggerated sound effects are combined with an often discordant musical score (by the avant-garde composer André Asriel) – all of which contribute to the generation of powerful affects and/or a continual disassociation of image and meaning. Given the biography of the film’s central protagonist, the striking similarity between the style and structure of Der verlorene Engel and that of the Stationendramen favoured by many of the early German expressionist writers (including Barlach) during the first two decades of the twentieth century seems hardly coincidental. Inspired in part by a contempt for bourgeois society and by Friedrich Nietzsche’s emphasis on the Dionysian aspect of dramatic performance, these plays exploited non-naturalistic staging and the use of social types (rather than fullyrounded characters) in an attempt to bypass what their authors regarded as the ‘illusory’ façade of everyday reality. By focusing almost exclusively on the inner development of the central protagonist (often an isolated and/or misunderstood artist-figure), the authors of such dramas sought access to an idealist realm in which the essential unchanging nature of the world might be grasped. Built around a series of exemplary tableaux, these plays often had a quasi-religious aspect

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to them whereby the rebirth of the central figure as a ‘neuer Mensch’ occurs not because of a fundamental change in the material conditions of that individual’s existence, but rather as a result of an inner transformation that itself is brought about through the experience of despair, redemption and salvation. Classic examples of such dramas include Reinhard Sorge’s Der Bettler [The Beggar] of 1912, Ernst Toller’s pacifist drama Die Wandlung [The Transfiguration] of 1918 and a number of Barlach’s own plays, including Der blaue Boll [Squire Blue Boll] of 1926. In keeping with its antifascist agenda, Kirsten’s film goes out of its way to portray Barlach (played by Fred Düren) as a victim of Nazi persecution. After the opening images of Güstrow shot from the air, the viewer is presented with an extended sequence of extreme closeups of his ‘Floating Angel’ in Güstrow and the arrival of a group of Nazi sympathisers determined to remove it (in the 1971 version of the film, Barlach’s mistreatment by the NS-regime is further underlined in additional footage featuring the memorials in Magdeburg, Hamburg and Kiel, together with the dates of their removal and/or destruction). Having being informed of the removal of the angel, Barlach seeks refuge in his studio among his sculptures  – of which the two most instantly recognisable are Der Zweifler [The Doubter, 1937] and Die gefesselte Hexe [The Fettered Witch, 1926] – and reflects on the condemnation of his work by Nazi cultural theoreticians as ‘un-German’ and as the work of a ‘cultural Bolshevik’ (Figure 3.3).84 On one level, Barlach’s mocking tone underlines his critics’ inability to grasp the true character of his work, but on another, it serves to remind the viewer that despite his rejection of conventional left-wing politics, the works on display have been produced by an artist who, in the words of his obituary in the SS newspaper Der schwarze Korps, was ‘emotionally on the left’ and should perhaps be viewed in the same political context as those of his more politically engaged contemporaries such as Käthe Kollwitz and Otto Nagel. During Barlach’s ‘dialogue’ with Der Zweifler, we are presented with an example of the way in which Kirsten’s film combines extended closeups of Barlach’s works with interior monologue as a means of externalising their creator’s inner state of mind. Accordingly, we are invited to reflect on the contrast between the self-imposed paralysis of male selfdoubt (as embodied in Der Zweifler) and the reproachful female gaze of Die gefesselte Hexe, who, against her will, has been prevented from interacting with the outside world because of the restraints placed upon her by mainstream society. Moreover, the juxtaposition of the (male) figure of Der Zweifler with the (female) figure of Die gefesselte Hexe is

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Figure 3.3 Barlach in dialogue with Die gefesselte Hexe and Der Zweifler in Der verlorene Engel. © DEFA-Stiftung/Peter Dietrich, Herbert Kroiss. Published with permission.

just one example of a series of gendered oppositions running through the film that mirror the crucial relationship between the (male) artist Barlach and his creation, Der schwebende Engel – a figure whose ‘femininity’ is suggested by facial features that have been modelled on those of Käthe Kollwitz. Here too, Barlach’s ‘silence’, that is, his withdrawal from almost any form of human interaction, stands in marked contrast to the ‘silent scream’ of the floating angel, whose expression of defiance, though inaudible, is nonetheless so intolerable to the fascists that they would rather destroy the figure than endure her silent protest any longer. Such (female) defiance, the ‘stumme Schrei’ of both angel and witch, the film suggests, represents a far more potent form of protest than the (male) creator’s attempt to turn his back on a world from which he feels alienated. Indeed, it is striking that, at the start of the film, while Barlach seeks to shut himself away in his studio, it is his female companion Marga Böhmer – another figure in whose face the features of the floating angel/Käthe Kollwitz are mirrored – who strives to maintain some form of residual contact with the outside world by opening the shutters and letting the outside light flood into their tomb-like home.85

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In the following tableau, Barlach, having now left the security of his studio for the town, enters the cathedral and gazes up at the (now empty) manacles from which his angel once hung. The extreme camera angle and extended duration of the shot give the metal construction the appearance of a pair of despairing human hands; almost expressionist in style, this allusion to the prominent motif of the human hand in Barlach’s work generally serves to generate a powerful set of affects in the viewer.86 As the artist watches the wedding of the nationalist German factory-owner, he explicitly distances himself from the assembled right-wing bourgeoisie – ‘they were instinctively my enemies’, he murmurs – and this, together with his earlier reflections on Kollwitz’s political activism and the telling remark that ‘almost unintentionally her [Kollwitz] face came into my Angel’, constitutes the first stage in the film’s overall argument that, despite Barlach’s reluctance to engage with conventional politics, his art nonetheless does have a genuinely emancipatory potential of which even he may be unaware. Both the wedding in the cathedral and the subsequent sequence in which the young bride attends the funeral of her husband (now a victim of the First World War) serve as a means of re-examining the vexed question of Barlach’s religiosity and his alleged ‘mysticism’. As the film suggests, the fact that the members of the wedding party are quite unable to grasp the gospel of peace embodied in his angel (and actively welcome its removal from the cathedral) merely confirms the gulf between, on the one hand, their bourgeois version of Christianity with its militaristic and nationalist overtones and, on the other, the more radical system of religious belief underpinning Barlach’s work as an artist. However, while he may regard it as inevitable that the bourgeoisie should fail to recognise his art for what it is, when he steps out of the cathedral and is surrounded by the ordinary members of Güstrow society, the wall of silence with which he is confronted signals a moment of existential crisis: ‘they are only a few metres away from me and yet I cannot reach them’. Compelled to recognise his total isolation not just from the bourgeoisie he despises, but also from the very people he would reach with his art, Barlach then embarks on a journey of self-discovery during which he is forced to completely rethink his view of the role of art and the artist in society. During the ensuing odyssey through the Mecklenburg countryside, Barlach engages in a process of retrospective reflection at the start of which we are transported from the world of 1937 back to the year 1914 – a year in which, as he puts it, he attempted to ‘be one with everyone in Germany’ by supporting his country’s involvement in the First World

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War. During one of the flashbacks, we see him in the company of his young son, Klaus, observing the inmates of POW camp, and his observation that ‘war makes people great’ because ‘in peacetime everyone counts their money and thinks of food’ evokes the (quasi-Nietzschean) view of so many of his generation that the supposedly ‘ennobling’ experience of conflict would sweep away bourgeois society in all its forms and result in a revitalisation of the German spirit. Seen from this angle, the sequence marks a key step in the rehabilitation of Barlach as an essentially progressive artist insofar as the viewer is reminded of his unwavering hostility towards bourgois society (even though the overthrow of such reactionary social forms, the film suggests, is something that can only be achieved by means of revolutionary politics and not, as the Barlach of 1914 believes, through the apocalyptic violence of global war). Barlach’s attempt in 1914 to be part of a collective German identity may have been misguided, but as we are returned to the ‘present’ of 1937, it becomes clear that both his rejection of bourgeois life and his reluctance to join forces with the left-wing opponents of the NS-regime have led to his isolation and to his being ‘an émigré in his own country’. In his next encounter with the emblematic figure Frau Not (played by Agnes Kraus), we are reminded of the subtle difference between the (self-imposed) solitude of Barlach’s earlier years, and the loneliness the isolated artist now experiences following the Nazi seizure of power. As he briefly contemplates the sense of relief that death might offer, the essentially Christian categories underpinning the ethical structure of Der verlorene Engel become increasingly pronounced as the central protagonist moves from a position of despair to one of redemption and salvation. What inspires him to embrace life rather than death is the arrival of a local shepherd who, in the manner of Psalm 23, not only invites him to lie down in the green pastures of the Mecklenburg countryside, but also succeeds in refreshing his tortured soul. In Der verlorene Engel, this moment of quasi-Christian salvation is couched in Marxist categories as the isolated artist’s encounter with the shepherd prompts him to rediscover his connection to the Volk (a key trope that recurs in some form in almost every DEFA Künstlerfilm). Indeed, like the earlier sequence of the wedding in the cathedral, this episode with its obvious religious overtones offers another example of how the religiosity of Barlach’s work (so often decried as a form of ‘mysticism’ by his critics) might be reinterpreted in terms of a more general code of humanist ethics. For Barlach, the film suggests, humanist art assumes the function of an ersatz religion, and it is striking that this

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turning point is symbolised by the rediscovery of his creative impulse as an artist (‘am I creating sculptures in my head again?’) as he sizes up his silent companion as a potential work of art and resolve to bring his work on Die lachende Alte [The Laughing Crone, 1937] to its conclusion. Here too, Kirsten’s film borrows from Barlach’s own visual repertoire as the artist’s renewed enthusiasm is reflected in an extended sequence of close-up images of his works and one in which the elderly crone’s laughter (‘a laughter that’ll make the laughter of Goebbels and Rosenberg vanish’) stands as the optimistic counterpart to the defiant silence of the fettered witch earlier in the film. His spirit now restored, Barlach embarks on the final phase of his journey and, fittingly, is driven ‘home’ by a communist activist who, as we discover, had once sought refuge in the artist’s atelier some years ago while on the run from Nazi thugs. Once again, the synthesis of Christian and Marxist ethics is hinted at in the composition of the shot in which the electric pylons and telegraph masts echo the makeshift cross by the roadside (Figure 3.4). In the course of an extended flashback, we witness an earlier conversation between Barlach (here working on the Hamburg Memorial of 1931) and the young communist in which the materialist ethics of the

Figure 3.4 Marxist and Christian iconography in Der verlorene Engel. © DEFAStiftung/Peter Dietrich, Herbert Kroiss. Published with permission.

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young activist collide with the artist’s idealist aesthetics. Nonetheless, over the course of this sequence that alternates between the past (the artist’s studio) and the present (the horse and cart), the film points towards a dialectical resolution of these two seemingly irreconcilable positions. While the young communist attempts to dismiss the defence of art and its capacity to preserve the vitality of both memory and desire as nothing more than ‘priestly babble’ (‘Pfaffenweisheit’)  – another obvious allusion to the religiosity of Barlach’s art  – the artist tries to justify his single-minded dedication to the improvement of his work by arguing that ‘others can do politics much better than I’. However, when we return to the ‘present’ of 1937, we discover that what unites the two of them is their shared opposition to the Nazis. For as the young communist’s observation that ‘the angel was in their way’ suggests, he now acknowledges the oppositional character of Barlach’s art, while for his part Barlach recognises the consequences of leaving politics ‘to others’. In this way, Kirsten’s film argues that idealist aesthetics  – at least of the kind we encounter in Barlach’s work  – cannot simply be dismissed as ‘misguided’, but can be recuperated and mobilised in the service of antifascism. Evidence of his gradual rehabilitation is reflected in his determination not to become the Barlach of the Nazis, but rather to produce art that is accessible to all progressively minded factions of society. ‘Is my people perhaps the people of the communists? Am I the communists’ Barlach?’, he muses. Indeed, when Barlach subsequently suggests that his sculptures may ‘know more’ than he does and have an emancipatory potential of which even their creator may be unaware, Kirsten’s film introduces a conceptualisation of art that runs directly counter to conventional notions of realist aesthetics where the process of interpretation is almost always inseparable from the intention of the artist. As he finds himself surrounded by a group of uniformed children ‘playing soldiers’, Barlach, the ‘neuer Mensch’, is finally able to envisage a future that, although it may be uncertain, is nonetheless one in which he and his art have a role to play in inspiring the next generation: ‘These children must survive and renew the world and, if possible, improve it.’ The possibility of failure is mirrored in a series of apocalyptic images of nature that, bordering on the abstract, evoke the spirit of such early expressionist works as Ernst Toller’s Die Wandlung and Georg Kaiser’s Von Morgens bis Mitternachts [From Morning until Midnight]. As Barlach’s journey of self-discovery reaches its logical conclusion with his observation that ‘the Nazi storm has driven me far to the Left. Who would have thought it would drive me so far?’, the

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film comes full circle and presents the viewer with a sequence indebted to the conventions of expressionist cinematography in which we see Nazi supporters at work removing Der schwebende Engel from Güstrow Cathedral. The grotesquely amplified sounds of the axe repeatedly striking the metallic figure of the angel coupled with the extreme close-ups of a noose used to drag it across the stone paving serve as a telling reminder that humanist values cannot survive the onslaught of a totalitarian regime without the political engagement of both the artist and the public for whom that art is created. Finally, the film ends, as it began, with a sequence of aerial photography shot as if from the perspective of an angel and set to the chilling accompaniment of André Asriel’s discordant composition for organ, but whereas in the opening sequence the arrival of the angel in the troubled Güstrow is hinted at through images of the cathedral and its surrounding buildings, in the closing sequence of the empty Mecklenburg countryside, the impression with which we are left is of a (fascist) world from which angels, as mediators between the human and the divine, have been banished.

Der verlorene Engel: Production and Reception Following discussions regarding a final version of the script with Franz Fühmann in April 1965, the filming of Der verlorene Engel began in May that same year and was scheduled to finish in July. However, Kirsten’s poor health meant that work on the film was constantly interrupted. As a result, it was not until February 1966 that a rough-cut of the film had been submitted to the DEFA studio management for approval. In the intervening period, the studio had witnessed radical changes following the Eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee of the SED (14–17 December 1965). A number of films that had attempted to build on developments in new wave European cinema in order to articulate a critical view of contemporary East German society (including Günter Stahnke’s Der Frühling braucht Zeit [Spring Takes Time, 1965], Kurt Maetzig’s Das Kaninchen bin ich [The Rabbit is Me, 1965] and Frank Vogel’s Denk bloß nicht ich heule [Just Don’t Think I’m Crying, 1965]) had been banned. In addition, the more liberally minded Jochen Mückenberger was removed from his position as general director and was replaced by an SED hardliner, Franz Bruk, while Klaus Wischnewski was sacked. Although the historical setting of Der verlorene Engel was quite different from the other films that were banned (all of which were set within contemporary East German society), its defence of humanist values

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and its unconventional aesthetic form meant that Kirsten’s project was regarded with suspicion well before its completion. As a report dated 24 February reflecting on the impact of Eleventh Plenum noted: ‘In contrast to Nackt unter Wölfen for example, in which the Nazi dictatorship and the crimes associated with it are depicted from an unambiguous position of socialist humanism, works like Der verlorene Engel or (dir. R. Kirsten) oder Jakob der Lügner [Jacob the Liar] (dir F. Beyer) are informed by a genuinely humanistic approach, although one that is not conceived of in specifically Marxist-Leninist thought.’87 Nonetheless, following an internal screening in March 1966 of the raw material and discussion attended by both the new studio management and the then President of the Academy of Arts, Konrad Wolf, Kirsten was given permission to continue with production for the time being.88 However, the following month, while work was continuing on Der verlorene Engel, tensions within the studio were heightened following the banning of Frank Beyer’s Spur der Steine [Trace of Stones]. On 21 June 1966, the first complete rough-cut of Der verlorene Engel was presented to the studio, and on 18 July, the film was submitted for approval to the HV Film. Amongst the accompanying documentation was a request from the ensemble ‘Heinrich Greif’ that the film be designated ‘artistically important’ on the grounds that ‘the humanistic oeuvre of Ernst Barlach is an integral part of our [the GDR’s] cultural heritage’ and that the film would rekindle interest in the artist’s work. In addition, in their statement the group claimed that the film’s analysis of the central protagonist offered not only a means of exploring Germany’s fascist past, but at the same time constituted a critique of contemporary artists in the neighbouring Federal Republic whose trust in ‘humanist’ aesthetics had contributed to their failure to mount an effective political opposition to the U.S.-led war in Vietnam. Finally, it was argued that the film’s merits were not confined to its subject matter, but also embraced its highly distinctive cinematography that made it a work in the ‘best traditions of global film-making’ and one that had the potential to expand the aesthetic horizons of young cinema-goers.89 The response from the HV Film on 16 August 1966 was devastating. In it, Franz Jahrow complained that the film ‘did not have a clear Marxist basis’ and ‘did not offer a clear-cut perspective on its subject matter in terms of socialist aesthetics’.90 Despite being set in 1937 and in the context of German fascism, the film was said to lack a clear political stance and, as a result, its central issue had been reduced to ‘a general conflict between state and art’. It might be true, the report continued, that Barlach himself did not succeed in arriving at a clearly articulated political position,

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but this did not entitle the filmmakers to do the same. Accordingly, the film – ‘which could be interpreted in many ways’ – seemed to be protesting generally about state intervention into the creative process. Finally, the cinematography was heavily criticised in terms of a lack of mass appeal. In what in hindsight seems like a wilful attempt to misunderstand the film’s aesthetic underpinning, the report suggested that the pronounced focus on the protagonist’s inner thought processes meant that the other characters appeared anonymous and devoid of any social contextualisation. In an unambiguous reference to the other films that had been banned in the wake of the Eleventh Plenum, it went on to argue that Der verlorene Engel exemplified many of the studio’s recent failings and that its departure from a recognisable concept of socialist realist aesthetics gave the impression that it was designed to promote elitist thinking among certain artistic factions. As a result of its limited appeal, the film was regarded as unlikely to recoup its production costs; in addition, ‘for artistic and ideological reasons’, it was regarded as unsuitable for export because it would convey a m ­ isleading ­impression of intellectual life in the GDR. Essentially the same points were amplified in a further report by Jahrow of 29 September 1966 (the very same day on which he had written another damming report on Gerhard Klein’s Berlin um die Ecke [Berlin Around the Corner, 1966/1990]).91 In addition to confirming that Kirsten’s film had indeed been rejected by the HV Film, Jahrow complained about the failure of the artistic ensemble ‘Heinrich Greif’ to arrive at a credible assessment of the film. What is new, however, is his suggestion that the film had ‘mystical elements’ – an obvious reference to earlier critiques of Barlach dating back to the formalist debates of the early 1950s. In addition, the film’s obsessive focus on the psychological development of Barlach and its corresponding failure to convey the sociopolitical aspect of his artist’s relationships with those around him constituted evidence of the film’s existentialist (rather than Marxist) underpinning. As Jahrow continued, the film’s critical take on the relationship between art and dictatorship (and totalitarianism) could be interpreted as an attack on state socialism in particular and was the kind of film that could have been produced in any capitalist country. Above all, he bemoaned what he regarded as a missed opportunity to clarify the film’s political stance during the sequence in which Barlach and the young communist argue about the purpose of art. (In stark contrast to the version of the film released in 1971, the shooting script for the 1966 version of the film shows Barlach and the communist parting with no hint of a reconciliation between their diametrically opposed

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viewpoints.) A few days later, on 6 October, a letter sent by the HV Film stated that Der verlorene Engel should not be released and that the studio director Bruk and his colleagues should be disabused of the notion that the film could yet be salvaged.92 Kirsten’s memories of the impact of the Eleventh Plenum on his film are reflected in his own notes on the process in which he interprets Jahrow’s objections as suggesting that the film was not sufficiently partisan, that he, as director, had identified too closely with the main character and that, accordingly, Barlach was not presented in a critical light. Kirsten’s notes also reveal that in addition to monologues that were open to multiple interpretations, the film was clearly regarded as a veiled attack on the SED’s cultural policy.93 Still hopeful that the film could yet be salvaged, Kirsten wrote a letter to Siegfried Wagner, the then Head of the Section for Culture on the SED’s Central Committee, in which he referred to the test screening of 21 June and sought to reassure him that he had ‘accepted and implemented the suggested changes’ and demanded to know why, as a loyal party member, nobody had been prepared to discuss the reasons for the film’s rejection with him in person.94 The following day, Kirsten’s diary records the details of a private conversation with studio director Franz Bruk regarding the fate of his film. According to Kirsten’s record of the conversation, Bruk expressed his own disbelief that the film had been banned, but commented that no one was willing to enter into a discussion about the film. At the same time, Bruk stressed the need to curtail further discussion of the project in the studio in order to prevent a polarisation of ideological factions within DEFA. The matter was brought to a close, albeit temporarily, on 5 December 1966, when a screening was arranged in the studio that was attended not only by Kirsten and Jahrow, but also by Franz Fühmann. Writing to his superior, Siegfried Wagner, several days later, Jahrow reported that both Kirsten and Fühmann continued to insist that the film was an unambiguously antifascist work, and that neither was willing to endorse Jahrow’s insistence on the need to make a clear distinction between socialist art and a concept of aesthetics inspired by a more general humanist view of the world.95 It was Kirsten’s misfortune that the completion of his film should coincide with the development of a climate of fear in the studio in the wake of the Eleventh Plenum and an increasing intolerance of cinematic forms that deviated from socialist realism and in which, in the words of a key report on the studio’s production of 1964/65: ‘There seems to be a view . . . that the one and only function of art is to articulate a critique of existing conditions.’96 In a much later discussion of Der verlorene Engel

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in 1991, Kirsten continued to claim that although his film was seen in 1966 as a deliberate attempt to criticise the prevailing system of cultural politics, this was quite contrary to his intentions.97 For Kirsten, a committed party member, the film was not about the SED, but rather about the question of how, as he put it, ‘both a humanist Weltanschauung and the cultural legacy could be appropriated by the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat’ and ‘an attempt to portray the antifascist struggle from an artist’s perspective’.98 By 1969, however, the climate had changed in the Ministry of Culture, and the impending centenary of Barlach’s birth (2 January 1970) prompted a revival of interest in Der verlorene Engel led by the Deutsche Kulturbund in the person of the sculptor Theo Balden. The new tone is reflected in an article published in the East German art magazine Bildende Kunst by Bernhard Quandt, a member of the SED’s Central Committee, in which he argued that the sculptor was ‘a patriot and a humanistically inclined artist. That’s why he belongs to us’.99 Following an in-house screening and discussion at the Babelsberg studio chaired by Wera Küchenmeister on 5 December 1969, a fresh evaluation was compiled that focused on practical, rather than ideological, issues. The film’s portrayal of Barlach was criticised this time on the grounds that it was only really accessible to those already familiar with his work, as well as the fact that images of his works were restricted to one brief ‘visionary’ sequence was regarded as an additional shortcoming. The report also suggested shortening the material by 25–35 minutes and supplying additional information about the sculptor’s works at the beginning.100 In a subsequent document, the studio requested a further reworking of the monologues and dialogues, changes to the editing and montage, and a greater focus on the historical-political context of the removal of Barlach’s angel from Güstrow Cathedral.101 In February of the following year, Kirsten, together with the studio’s new head dramaturge, Werner Beck, started work on a revised version of the film, and in May 1970 the scriptwriters Manfred Freitag and Jochen Nestler were enlisted to redraft the monologue and dialogues. It seems likely that the revisions to the film muted its aesthetic impact; along with Jürgen Böttcher’s Jahrgang ’45 [Born in 45, 1965/1990], it was probably the most formally inventive of all the films banned in the wake of the Eleventh Plenum.102 Paradoxically, the film’s nouvelle vague structure and, in particular, the fact that large sections of the film consisted of Barlach’s interior monologue meant that the script could be redubbed using the original actor, Fred Düren, relatively easily and without incurring large costs. The final go-ahead for the release of Der verlorene Engel in 1971

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was brought about by the intervention of Konrad Wolf, who asked the studio to ensure that a copy of the film would be available for screening at the GDR’s embassy in conjunction with a major exhibition of Barlach’s work at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. On 1 April 1971, the new (shortened) version of the film was approved for release in the GDR and premiered at East Berlin’s Colosseum cinema later that month, where it was well received by the press. However, as was the case for so many of the films banned following the Eleventh Plenum, the belated release of Kirsten’s Der verlorene Engel deprived it of much of its impact. Released in a truncated format and with only five copies issued for distribution, its resonance amongst wider cinemagoing audiences was inevitably limited. A review entitled ‘Monolog eines Einsamen’ [‘A Lonely Figure’s Monologue’]  – an obvious allusion to the lead actor Fred Düren and his earlier role in Günther Stahnke’s banned television drama of 1962, Monolog eines Taxifahrers [A Taxi Driver’s Monologue] – praised Der verlorene Engel as ‘a film that represents the very best of those produced in Babelsberg over the past years’, while criticising the fact that distribution of the film the GDR was to be largely confined to regions of Berlin, Dresden, Magdeburg and Schwerin.103 Despite its relatively restricted release, Kirsten’s film remains as a landmark Künstlerfilm and one that, as Konrad Wolf’s films of the 1970s confirm, played a key role in shaping the genre by suggesting ways in which complex aesthetic ­intermediality could be presented on screen. While it is tempting to see Der verlorene Engel primarily in the context of the reactionary shift in cultural policy following the Eleventh Plenum, to do so is to underplay many of the distinctive qualities of Kirsten’s modernist film. All the films that were banned in 1965/66 were Gegenwartsfilme set in the contemporary GDR of the 1960s and, with the possible exception of Jürgen Böttcher’s Jahrgang ’45, almost all were, aesthetically speaking, far less challenging than Der verlorene Engel. Kirsten’s film did not attempt to offer a conventional biography of an established artist, and there are moments in the film where Claus Neumann’s subjective camerawork invites the viewer to become part of the creative process itself and to trace, with the artist’s eye, the creative process of abstraction whereby the materiality of the external world is transformed into a work of art. However, what really makes Der verlorene Engel stand out from others made around this period is its presentation of time and multiple temporalities. As we shall see in the final chapter, the disruption of conventional chronologically organised narratives through the use of multiple levels of temporality is one of the

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most distinctive aspects on Kirsten’s much later film, Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens. Interestingly, many of the objections raised against Der verlorene Engel – both political and aesthetic – can be traced back to a concern regarding the film’s temporal structure. The objection of SED’s cultural theorists that the film displayed existentialist rather than socialist tendencies can be read as a negative commentary on the film’s supposed failure to engage sufficiently with historical time and, above all, the historical context of the Third Reich. Likewise, their critique of the way in which some of the subsidiary characters appeared to have been abstracted from any recognisable sociopolitical milieu reflects an unease at the way in which the film constantly plays transcendent notions of time off against historical contingency. However, it was not just the SED ideologues who struggled with the multiple levels of time embedded within the film, but also those studio employees who, being by and large well disposed towards Kirsten’s project, wanted to ensure that Der verlorene Engel was screened to as wide a range of viewers as possible. In 1966, the HV Film had complained about a ‘lack of dramatic tension’ and the fact that ‘long sections of the film show Barlach walking in silence and encountering various people but without making clear how these advance the plot’.104 Three years later, the committee tasked with assessing the film’s potential for release also found the ‘extended sequences of rural landscapes’ hard to take and requested that they be cut.105 Ironically, one effect of re-editing the film to increase its tempo (and, supposedly, its audience appeal) was to shorten its overall duration to a length where it could no longer be billed as a main feature and could only exhibited as a ‘short’. The comments made by both SED functionaries and studio employees highlight the failure of both groups to appreciate the extent to which questions of time and temporality constitute an integral part of  the modernist aesthetic underpinning Der verlorene Engel and betray the influence of European nouvelle vague cinema. As the film unfolds, the use of multiple temporalities undermines any attempt to sustain conventional realist narrative structure and instead forces the viewer to re-evaluate the central protagonist and his art from a range of constantly shifting perspectives. At its most basic level, the film seeks to expand the political implications of Barlach’s art by focusing on a 24-hour period in the artist’s life that, in cinematic time, is played out over just under an hour; yet even this radically compressed timespan is itself disrupted by the interpolation of a number of flashbacks during which we are transported back to different points in German history.

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Nonetheless, the past we encounter is not a series of causally linked events constructed in accordance with conventional historical discourse; rather, it is a collage of impressionistic memories that are linked associatively in the artist’s mind and embedded in what is clearly a subjective notion of time. The film’s insistent juxtaposition of objective and subjective temporalities is further underscored in a series of generational encounters in which past, present and future are simultaneously encoded in the visual image on screen. This is perhaps most obviously the case in the sequences in which Barlach is shown first with his young son, Klaus, and then, towards the end of the film, is surrounded by a group of young boys playing soldiers. Accordingly, during the sequence in which he and his son observe the POW camp, the period 1914–18 (the First World War), the year 1937 (the cinematic ‘present’ from which this memory of the past is narrated) and the year 1939 (the outbreak of the Second World War that the memory anticipates) are all alluded to simultaneously – just one instance of the way in which the film attempts, in a single shot, to foreground the simultaneity of what is temporally disparate. The most important locus of multiple temporalities in the film is Barlach’s Der schwebende Engel itself. On one level, the angel’s abstract form seems to embody an image of mourning and melancholy that is both timeless and enduring; however, on another level, the unambiguous reference to Kollwitz inscribed on its surface serves to situate the experience of suffering within an identifiable historical/temporal context. Insofar as the angel simultaneously embodies the concepts of both transcendence and historical contingency, it/she reflects the distinctively modernist aspect of Kirsten’s film while at the same time offering a (visual) commentary on Barlach’s aesthetic response to the crisis of the First World War. In the context of Barlach’s oeuvre, Der schwebende Engel of 1927 functions (in a manner that evokes Benjamin’s ‘Angel of History’) as a figure of mourning and as the articulation of a protest against the barbarism of the contemporary world. At the same time, the angel’s other-worldliness evokes melancholic feelings of nostalgia for a premodern world that is diametrically opposed to the secular world of modernity in which individuals have lost touch with genuine humanist values through an obsession with bourgeois life and technological ‘progress’. Widely regarded as Barlach’s masterpiece, Der schwebende Engel has formed the centrepiece not only of Kirsten’s film but also the major East German exhibitions of the artist’s work in 1953 and 1980, and the London exhibition ‘Germany  – Memories of a Nation’ in 2014. However, what is so remarkable about Barlach’s

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figure is the way in which – through the inclusion of the instantly recognisable features of Käthe Kollwitz – the desire for transcendence is simultaneously combined with historical memory. In Kirsten’s film, the contingent character of this desire for transcendence is something of which the angel’s creator, Barlach, seems only dimly aware (hence the latter’s observation that the resemblance to Kollwitz was ‘accidental’). Seen from this perspective, Der verlorene Engel demonstrates that the concept of idealist aesthetics through which this desire for transcendence is articulated can never be wholly separated from historical and material conditions of artistic production. Put another way, even an angel has to be modelled on a real human being of flesh and blood. On one level, Der verlorene Engel can be seen as an attempt to rehabilitate the historical figure of Barlach in the GDR and, by using a provocative blend of expressionist aesthetics and an antifascist narrative, to recast his work as a precursor of progressive socialist art. As such, Kirsten’s film can be seen as a corrective to the (anti-)expressionist debates of the 1930s and to the hostility of GDR cultural policy in the 1950s to almost all nonrealist art-forms. On another level, however, Kirsten’s film deploys a range of non-naturalistic cinematography  – flashbacks, interior monologue and multiple temporalities  – together with the use of an often discordant soundtrack to challenge conventional notions of (socialist) realism and to promote the use of a new wave aesthetic in East German filmmaking. Just as the film offers multiple perspectives on the historical past that are mediated by subjective memory, so too the evaluation of art is shown to be a process in which the viewer/spectator is actively bound up and that cannot simply be contained within the intentions of the original artist.

Notes    1. ‘Erklärung der Deutschen Akademie der Künste [30.6.1953]’, Neues Deutschland, 12 July 1953 (reproduced in Elimar Schubbe (ed.), Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der der SED, 1946–70 (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1972), pp. 289–90, at p. 289).    2. Quoted in Hans Mayer, Ein Deutscher auf Widerruf. Erinnerungen, 2 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988), vol. 2, p. 139.    3. Walter Ulbricht, ‘Fragen der Entwicklung der sozialistischen Literatur und Kultur: Rede Walter Ulbrichts vor Schriftstellern, Brigaden der sozialistsischen Arbeit und Kulturschaffenden in Bitterfeld, 24. April 1959’ (reproduced in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 552–62, at p. 552).   4. Ibid., p. 553.   5. Ibid., p. 555.

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  6. ‘Manifest der OKTJABR-Grupp’, in Hubertus Gaßner and Eckhart Gillen (eds), Von der Revolutionskunst zum Sozialistischen Realismus: Dokumente und Kommentare: Kunstdebatten in der Sowjetunion von 1917–1934 (Cologne: DuMont, 1979), p. 182.    7. Eckhart Gillen, ‘“Die Einheit von Kunst und Leben”  – eine totalitäre Utopie der politischen und künstlerischen Avantgarde. Die Kulturrevolution in der SU 1929 und der Bitterfelder Weg in der DDR 1959 im Vergleich’, ILCEA 16 (2012).    8. H. Carola Gärtner-Scholle, ‘Stiefkind bildende Kunst’, Einheit 3(1) (1948), 65–73, at 68 (reproduced in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 76–82, at p. 78).   9. Ingeborg Gerlach, Bitterfeld. Arbeiterliteratur und Literatur der Arbeitswelt in der DDR (Kronberg Ts: Skriptor, 1974), pp. 23–24.   10. Maria Lau, Die Picasso-Rezeption in der DDR (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011), pp.  395–402. See, in particular, Joachim Uhlitzsch, ‘Die Situation der bildenden Kunst in Dresden’, Tägliche Rundschau, 14 March 1951.   11. Cf. Eckhart Gillen, Feindliche Brüder: Der kalte Krieg und die deutsche Kunst, 1945–1990 (Berlin: Nicolai, 2009), pp. 178–79. André Meier notes that, in addition, the influence of Max Beckmann and Sergei Eisenstein is clearly discernible in the picture. See André Meier, ‘“Beweinung” ohne Larmoyanz: Der Maler-Filmer Jürgen BöttcherStrawalde in der Berliner Festspielgalerie’, die tageszeitung, 9 October 1990.   12. For a list of exhibitions in which Graf, Herrman, Penck and Makolies took part and a wealth of bibliographical information on the artists, see Lucius Grisebach and Günter Braunsberg (eds), Erste Phalanx Nedserd (Nuremberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 1991), pp. 104–20.   13. Although Böttcher’s painting Beweinung was eventually purchased (in 1982) for the collection of the Nationalgalerie in East Berlin, at the time of its execution in the late 1950s, its indebtedness to the avant-garde aesthetics of Picasso meant that the work was heavily criticised.   14. N. Orlov (Vladimir Semjonov), ‘Wege und Irrwege der modernen Kunst’, Neues Deutschland, 20/21 January 1951.   15. Walter Ulbricht, ‘Zur Vorlage des Gesetzes über den Fünfjahrplan: Rede vor der Volkskammer 31.10.1951’, Neues Deutschland, 1 November 1951 (reproduced in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 213–15).   16. Heinz Lüdecke, ‘Phänomen und Problem Picasso’, Bildende Kunst 5 (1955), 339–43.   17. Konrad Farner. ‘Picasso und die Grenzen des kritischen Realismus’, Bildende Kunst 1 (1956), 49–52.  18. Ibid. For a similar view, see Emil Utiz, ‘Picasso  – Triumph des Manierismus’, Bildende Kunst 5 (1965), 283–84, who refers to Picasso as, aesthetically speaking, a ‘latecomer’.   19. Ignacio Márquez Rodiles, ‘Picasso contra Picasso’, Bildende Kunst 1 (1956), 51.   20. Alexander Abusch, Im ideologischen Kampf für eine sozialistische Kultur (Berlin: Dietz, 1957), pp. 44–45.   21. Peter Spielmann, for example, argued that: ‘For Picasso the formal dimension of his work is a way of articulating the reality of the world.’ Peter Spielmann, ‘Picasso und sein Realismus’, Bildende Kunst 2 (1956), 105–7.   22. Carlfriedrich Claus, ‘Picasso und die Frage der Verständlichkeit’, Bildende Kunst 7 (1956), 398.  23. Peter Joch, ‘Strawalde – Bilder bis heute’, in Strawalde – Bilder bis heute. 2.10.07– 13.01.08 Kunsthalle Darmstadt (Darmstadt: Justus von Liebig, 2007), pp. 7–17, at p. 8.

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 24. See the Goethe-Institut’s short documentary in its KuBus series: The Painter and Filmmaker - Jürgen Böttcher/Strawalde (2004, 15 mins). A version with English subtitles is available at: http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/prj/kub/flm/en3947235. htm (accessed 15 August 2018).  25. Alexander Abusch, ‘Aktuelle Probleme und Aufgaben unserer sozialistischen Filmkunst: Referat der Konferenz des VEB DEFA Studio für Spielfilme und des Ministeriums für Kultur der DDR’, Deutsche Filmkunst 6(9) (1958), 261–70, at 267.   26. Peter Makolies, ‘Zeit – Stein – Bilder’ in Grisebach and Braunsberg, Erste Phalanx Nedserd, p. 112.   27. Franz Kafka, ‘Up in the Gallery’, in N. Glatzer Nahum (ed.), The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka (London: Minerva, 1992), pp. 401–2, at p. 402.   28. Alfred Kurella, Letter to Fehlig, 2 January 1962 (BArch, DY 30/IV2/2026/88).   29. See the Zulassungsprotokoll of 16 January 1989 (BArch DR 1/3937).  30. See Jürgen Böttcher and Erika Richter, ‘Filmsplitter: Fragmentarisches über die Anfänge’, apropos: Film 2000 [ = Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung, 2000], pp. 10–19, at p. 11.   31. Wilhelm Girnus, ‘Wo stehen die Feinde der deutschen Kunst?’, Neues Deutschland, 13 and 18 February 1951 (reproduced in abbreviated form in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 170–177, at p. 171).   32. Protokoll. Sitzung vom 27 April 1961 Akademie der Künste, Berlin. AdK 170, Bd 1.  33. On the history of the Konkret gallery, see Gudrun Schmidt, ‘Die Galerie Konkret in Berlin’, in Günter Feist, Eckhart Gillen and Beatrice Vierneisel (eds), Kunstdokumentation SBZ/DDR 1945–1990: Aufsätze, Berichte, Materialien (Cologne: Dumont, 1996), pp. 290–97.  34. For a detailed discussion of the exhibition in the context of the run-up to the Eleventh Pleanry of 1965, see Kathleen Krenzlin, ‘Die Akademie-Ausstellung “Junge Künstler” 1961 – Hintergründe und Folgen’, in Günter Agde (ed.), Kahlschlag. Das 11. Plenum des ZK der SED 1965. Studien und Dokumente (Berlin: Aufbau, 2000), pp. 66–78.   35. Cited in Siegfried H. Bergenau, ‘Nicht anonyme Dogmatiker – bekannte Dogmen hindern!’, Bildende Kunst 11 (1961), 769–71, at 770.  36. ‘Protokoll: Jurysitzung zur Ausstellung Junge Künstler. Malerei’, Akademie der Künste.   37. Krenzlin, ‘Die Akademie-Ausstellung’, p. 70.   38. Max Bünger, ‘Wohin, Kumpel?’, Berliner Zeitung, 18 October 1961.   39. Peter Feist, ‘Die ausgebliebene Sensation: Zur Akademie-Ausstellung junger Maler’, Bildende Kunst 1 (1962), 13–17. As Krenzlin notes (‘Die Akademie-Ausstellung’, pp. 71–72), Feist’s negative review of the exhibition is all the more striking because it is immediately followed by his eulogy to Paul Cézanne. See Peter H. Feist, ‘Harmonie Parallel zur Natur: Zur Malerei Paul Cézannes’, Bildende Kunst 1 (1962), 18–24.   40. Alexander Abusch, ‘Absage an die Einheit der deutschen Kultur’, Sonntag 52 (1961) (partially reproduced in Schubbe, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, pp. 745–46).   41. Fritz Cremer, Junge Künstler. Malerie, Graphik, Plastik. Katalog ((East) Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Künste, 1961), p. 3.   42. Reproduced in Günter Feist and Eckhart Gillen (eds), Stationen eines Weges: Daten und Zitate zur Kunstpolitik der DDR, 1945–1988 (Berlin: Nishen, 1988), p. 44.   43. Although the military class of the order Pour le Mérite was abolished in 1918, the civil class for achievements in the arts and sciences was retained and, from 1923 onwards, was awarded by other holders of the order.

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  44. See, for instance, the diary entry ‘Kiev, 17 June 1906’, in Ernst Barlach, Das dichte­ rische Werk, ed. Friedrich Dross, 3 vols (Munich: Piper, 1958), vol. 1, pp. 240–44.  45. Letter to Karl Barlach of 27 January 1914. Ernst Barlach, Die Briefe. 2 vols, ed. Friedrich Dross (Munich: Piper, 1968–69), vol. 1, p. 425.   46. As Peter Paret has observed, one of the most obvious ways in which he attempted to do this was by dressing his figures in garments that were ‘historically and culturally indeterminate’. See Peter Paret, German Encounters with Modernism, 1840–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 148.  47. Barlach, Das dichterische Werk, vol. 2, p. 27.   48. Diary entry of 5 September,1914; Das dichterische Werk, vol. 2, p. 43.   49. In his defence of Barlach’s position during the Third Reich, Peter Paret describes the artist’s politics as ‘moderately liberal with conservative tendencies’. See Peter Paret, An Artist against the Third Reich: Ernst Barlach, 1933–38 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 36. For a discussion of the reception of Barlach’s work by representatives of the so-called ‘Conservative revolution’ and his relationship with Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, the author of Das Dritte Reich (1923), see James van Dyke, ‘Ernst Barlach and the Conservative Revolution’, German Studies Review 36(2) (2013), 281–305.  50. ‘Rundfunksrede “Künstler zur Zeit”’ (Deutschlandsender, 23 January 1933), Barlach, Das dichterische Werk, vol. 2, pp. 413–22, at p. 422.  51. The works in question were Das Wiedersehen; Christus und Thomas [The Reunion; Christ and Thomas, 1926) and a book of drawings, Zeichnungen, that Goebbels had banned from publication.   52. See Barlach’s opening comment in his essay of 29 and 30 July 1937, ‘Als ich von dem Verbot der Berufsausübung bedroht war’ [‘When I was Threatened with a Ban on Working’], where he writes: ‘Forced to lead the life of an immigrant in the country of my birth, the only choice open to me was between either really emigrating or deciding to insist on my absolute right to engage fully with my professional activities, irrespective of the consequences.’ Barlach, Das dichterische Werk, pp. 427–31, at p. 427.   53. See Paret, An Artist against the Third Reich, pp. 51–76.  54. For a discussion of Barlach’s career during the Third Reich, see Jonathan Petropoulos, Artists under Hitler: Collaboration and Survival in Nazi Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), pp. 137–53.   55. See, above all, Lukács’ critical essay of 1934, ‘Größe und Verfall des Expressionismus’, in which he notes: ‘The Expressionists certainly wanted anything but a regression. But since they could not free their world outlook from the basis of imperial parasitism, since they shared uncritically and without resistance in the ideological decay of the imperialist bourgeoisie, even being sometimes its pioneers, their creative method needed no distortion to be pressed into the service of fascist demagogy, of the unity of decadence and regression.’ Georg Lukács, ‘Expressionism: Its Significance and Decline’, in Rodney Livingstone (ed.), Essays on Realism: Georg Lukács, trans. David Fernbach (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1980), pp. 76–113, at pp. 112–13.  56. Letter from Helmut Holtzhauer to Rudolf Engel of 14 December 1951. AdK [ZAA 29].  57. Alexander Abusch, ‘Im Kampf um den Realismus’, in Verband Bildender Künstler (eds), Künstler schaffen für den Frieden (Berlin: Aufbau, 1951), pp. 6–8, at pp. 6–7.

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  58. Ilona Schulz, ‘Die Barlach-Ausstellung 1951/52 in der Deutschen Akademie der Künste, Berlin (DDR)’, in Günter Feist, Eckhart Gillen and Beatrice Vierneisel (eds), Kunstdokumentation SBZ/DDR 1945–1990: Aufsätze, Berichte, Materialien (Cologne: Dumont, 1996), pp. 139–59.   59. Arnold Zweig, ‘Aus der Stenografischen Niederschrift der Eröffnung der ErnstBarlach-Ausstellung 14. Dezember 1951’. AdK [ZAA 202].   60. Heinz Lüdecke, ‘Barlach und die Einsamkeit’, in Deutsche Akademie der Künste (eds), Ernst Barlach: Ausstellung Dezember 1951 bis Februar (Berlin: Karl Lehmke, 1951).   61. Ibid., p. 11.   62. Ibid., p. 14.  63. Ibid.  64. Ibid.   65. Ibid., pp. 49 and 67.   66. L.K, ‘Er brachte Holz und Stein zum Aufschreien’, Berliner Zeitung am Abend, 19 December 1951.  67. See, for example, Felix Eick, ‘Ein Ringen um den Menschen. Zur Ausstellung der Werke Barlachs in der Deutschen Akademie der Künste’, Berliner Zeitung, 18 December 1951.   68. Kurt Magritz, ‘Ein merkwürdiges Vorwort’, Tägliche Rundschau, 29 December 1951.  69. Wilhelm Girnus, ‘Ernst Barlach Ausstellung in der Deutschen Akademie der Künste’, Tägliche Rundschau, 4 January 1952.  70. Bertolt Brecht, Journals 1934–1955, trans. Hugh Rorrison, ed. John Willett (New York: Routledge 1993), p. 41.  71. Bertolt Brecht, ‘Notes on the Barlach Exhibition’, trans. Daniel C. O’Neill, Massachusetts Review 1(3) (1960), 535–40, at 535.   72. Ibid., p. 539.  73. Whatever reservations the SED’s specialists in cultural policy may have had regarding the exhibition, in terms of visitor numbers, it was an unqualified success, with over 43,000 tickets sold. See Schulz, ‘Die Barlach-Ausstellung 1951/52 in der Deutschen Akademie der Künste, Berlin (DDR)’, p. 159.  74. Wolfgang Harich, ‘Es geht um den Realismus: Die bildenden Künste und die Kunstkommission’, Berliner Zeitung, 14 July 1953.  75. Ernst-Barlach-Ausstellung, Altes Museum, East Berlin, 1981.   76. Alfred Kurella, ‘Der Frühling, die Schwalben und Franz Kafka’, Sonntag 31 (1963).   77. Fritz Cremer, ‘Diskussionsbeitrag auf dem V. Kongreß des Verbandes Bildender Künstler Deutschlands’, in Agde, Kahlschlag, pp. 165–74, at pp. 169–70.   78. Franz Fühmann, ‘Barlach in Güstrow’, Sinn und Form 15(1) (1963), 94–116. The first publication in Sinn und Form is a slightly abridged version of the text Das schlimme Jahr published in the Hinstorff volume: Ernst Barlach. Das schlimme Jahr. Grafik  – Zeichnungen  – Plastik  – Dokumente. Mit einem Text von Franz Fühmann (Rostock: Hinstorff, 1963), pp. 7–72. From 1966, the text is usually referred to as ‘Barlach in Güstrow’. See Dennis Tate, Franz Fühmann, Innovation and Authenticity: A Study of His Prose-Writing (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), especially pp. 89–92.   79. H. Schierz, ‘Barlach mahnt’, Heute [Wochenende Beilage], 1 August 1964.  80. For a discussion of the particular challenges faced by the filmmakers in adapting Fühmann’s metaphorical discourse for the screen, see Lutz Haucke, Nouvelle Vague in Osteuropa? Zur ost- mittel- und südosteuropäischen Filmgeschichte, 1960–1970 (Berlin: Rhombos, 2009), pp. 516–17.

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  81. Rudolf Jürschik argues that novella and film should be seen as two related – but essentially independent  – works. Rudolf Jürschik, ‘Der unwürdige Ort: Franz Fühmanns Arbeit für den Film’, in Ralf Schenk and Erika Richter (eds), apropos: Film 2003 [ = Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung, 2003], pp. 82–1.  82. This is essentially the version of the film on the commercial DVD released by ICESTORM.   83. See Barbara Barlet’s detailed account of the controversy surrounding Barlach’s film, ‘Censored: The Lost Angel’, essay on DVD, pp. 16–18. As Barlet notes (p. 18), by 19 September 1966, Wolf Biermann was persona non grata at the DEFA studio and was banned from entering the premises.  84. The obituary published in Der schwarze Korps on 3 November 1938 reflects the ambivalent light in which Barlach was seen and argues that although ‘unsatisfying and often repulsive’, his work was ‘nearly always gripping and unforgettable’ and thus could not be the work of a cultural Bolshevik.  85. The similarity between the facial features of Marga Böhmer and those of the angel is also noted by Hermann Herlinghaus. See Hermann Herlinghaus, ‘Der verlorene Engel: Ernst Barlach im DEFA-Spielfilm’, in Analyse und Betrachtung: DDR-Spielfilme in den 80er Jahren [= Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft, 36 (1989)], 24–43, at 36.   86. See Gudrun Fritsch, ‘Die Bedeutung der Hände im Werk der Künstler Barlach und Käthe Kollwitz – Symbol und Gestaltung’, in Martin Fritsch (ed.), Ernst Barlach und Käthe Kollwitz im Zwiegespräch (Berlin: Seemann, 2006), pp. 30–37.   87. Ideologische-Künstlerische Probleme bei der Auswertung und Durchsetzung des 11. Plenums der ZK der SED (BArch DR 117-vorl.BA A-269B, p. 3a). Because of the banning of Beyer’s Spur der Steine [Trace of Stones] at the Eleventh Plenum, production of Jakob der Lügner was postponed until 1973/4.  88. ‘Aktennotiz’ dated 10 February 1966 (BArch DR 117-vorl.BA I-0375). See also Kirsten’s own ‘Protokoll’ of events leading up to the banning of the film (Kirsten Nachlass, Potsdam Filmmuseum NO14/0127).   89. ‘Einschätzung zum Spielfilm “Der verlorene Engel”, 18 July 1966 (BArch Z-1/163).   90. ‘Stellungnahme zu dem DEFA-Spielfilm “Der verlorene Engel”’ (BArch Z-1/163). The document is reproduced in Andreas Kötzing and Ralf Schenk (eds), Verbotene Utopie: Die SED, die DEFA und das 11. Plenum (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2015), pp. 500–2.   91. ‘Stellungnahme zu “Berlin um die Ecke”’ (BArch DR 1/4559).   92. Hermann Schauer, ‘Bericht der Abteilung Filmproduktion an den Stellvertreter des Ministers und Leiter der HV Film (Situation, Probleme und Lösungsvorschläge’ (BArch DR 1/4213).   93. Tagebuch von Ralf Kisten. Barlach Film u. 11. Plenum’ (NO14/0087).   94. Ralf Kirsten, Letter to Gen Siegfried Wagner, dated 9 November 1966 (NO14/0142).   95. ‘Bericht Dr Jahrow an den Leiter der HV Film, Siegfried Wagner’ of 10 December 1966 (BArch DR 117/4249).   96. ‘Stellungnahme zu dem DEFA-Spielfilm “Der verlorene Engel”’(BArch Z-1/163).   97. ‘Werkstattgespräch mit dem Regisseur Ralf Kirsten über dessen Film Der verlorene Engel’, Stephanie Stender and Ute Einicke. 2 March 1991 (NO 14/0166).   98. Ibid., pp. 4 and 5.   99. Bernhard Quandt, ‘Barlach gehört zu uns’, Bildende Künste 6 (1970), 328–30, at 330. 100. (Dieter) Wolf ‘Aktenvermerk’ 9 December 1969 (BArch DR 1-Z/163). 101. BArch DR 1/14927.

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102. Michael Wedel suggests that: ‘Even in its fragmentary form Kirsten’s film articulates a utopianism in a manner more radical than any other film of this period.’ See Michael Wedel, ‘Menschenbilder, Denkfiguren: Ralf Kirstens Der verlorene Engel’, in Kötzing and Schenk, Verbotene Utopie, pp. 253–74, at p. 268. 103. Manfred Haedler, ‘Monolog eines Einsamen. Der verlorene Engel – ein DEFA Film um Ernst Barlach‘, Der Morgen, 2 May 1971. Günter Sobe also describes the film as ‘ein weit über dem Niveau des Kino-Alltags stehender Film’. See Günter Sobe, ‘Der stumme Schrei des Engels. Zu einem DEFA-Film über Ernst Barlach’, Berliner Zeitung, 7 May 1971. 104. ‘Stellungnahme zu dem DEFA-Spielfilm “Der verlorene Engel’, 16 August 1966 (BArch DR 1-Z/163). 105. ‘Aktenvermerk über DEFA-Film “Der verlorene Engel” of 15.9.1969’ (BArch DR 1-Z/163).

Chapter 4

Experiments in Modernism II Responses to the Eleventh Plenum

The Eleventh Plenum of 1965/66 was instrumental in preventing the emergence of a distinctively East German nouvelle vague cinema during the late 1960s.1 The banning of so many films, together with the replacement of the more liberally minded studio manager Jochen Mückenberger by Franz Bruk, contributed to a marked reluctance on the part of filmmakers to engage in formal experimentation and had a negative impact in terms of both the quality and quantity of DEFA’s output during the final years of the Ulbricht era. In addition, the obstacles that Ralf Kirsten had faced in his attempt to complete his work on Der verlorene Engel to a conclusion suggested that films about art and artists that attempted to challenge the prevailing orthodoxy of socialist realism were unlikely to be approved by the studio’s new management team. Seen in this context, Konrad Wolf’s Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis [Goya, or the Hard Road to Knowledge, 1971], one of the most memorable artist-films ever released by DEFA, remains a remarkable achievement and one that paved the way for an extended series of feature films dealing with the relationship between artist and the state in the 1970s, and the importance of aesthetic innovation. Although the decision to ban Der verlorene Engel was not taken until the autumn of 1966, the controversy surrounding Kirsten’s film can hardly have escaped Wolf’s attention. Some months before the clampdown of 1965/66, Wolf had been appointed President of the East German Akademie der Künste, and one of his first official functions

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had been to attend the Eleventh Plenum in December 1965.2 In a handwritten note composed just a few days later, he reflects: ‘I can hardly recall an end to a year where so many questions were raised and so many discussions and exchanges of radically different opinions took place on the role of art and literature in today’s society.’3 Although none of Wolf’s own films were among the twelve subsequently withdrawn or terminated before completion, his decision to abandon (albeit temporarily) the genre of the Gegenwartsfilm – his last film had been the controversial adaptation of Christa Wolf’s novel Der geteilte Himmel [Divided Heaven, 1964] – and return instead to the relative safe haven of the antifascist genre in his antiwar film Ich war 19 [I was 19, 1968], underlines his pragmatism. For in the immediate aftermath of the Eleventh Plenum, it must have been obvious to Wolf that a film such as Goya in which the relationship between Geist and Macht would inevitably play a prominent role was likely to be problematic and would have to wait until the fallout from the Plenum had settled and a relationship of trust had been re-established between filmmakers and politicians. Like other members of the Akademie der Künste, Wolf was acutely aware of the extent to which film aesthetics in the GDR were failing to keep pace with developments in new wave cinema in other Eastern European states, and it was clear that the censorship crisis of 1966 was unlikely to improve the situation. But no matter what he may have thought in private, in his public role as president, he had little choice but to back the SED leadership and, at the plenary meeting of 2 March 1966, he and the assembled members endorsed the following statement: As members of the German Akademie der Künste, we accept that criticism of harmful tendencies in a number of works of art and literature and of certain individuals and institutions was justified, and for our part we endorse it too.4

Mindful perhaps of the way in which during the course of the Eleventh Plenum the likes of Kurella had condemned both avant-garde art and nouvelle vague cinematography as ‘nihilistic’ and ‘decadent’,5 Wolf explicitly distanced himself from bourgeois notions of aesthetics, arguing that ‘it is ridiculous to regard the isolation of the artist from ordinary people and their political representatives as the “only way” to achieve “true” art’.6 At the same time, he also exploited the occasion to re-emphasise his commitment to the social function of art, and his belief in the importance of (socialist) conceptualisations of art in the

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construction of a distinctively East German national identity: ‘in order to find our place in the world and our mission’, he noted, ‘we need to scrutinise the concept of “national culture” very carefully’.7 Although Wolf did not actually begin the filming of Goya until 1969, like his groundbreaking film about the end of the Second World War, Ich war 19, his adaptation of Lion Feuchtwanger’s classic antifascist novel for the cinema would be a vital component in arguing that a rigid adherence to outdated concepts of socialist realism constituted an obstacle to progressive politics. Not only was Feuchtwanger a major figure in the GDR’s canon of antifascist literature, but the novel Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1951) was widely read, had never been out of print in the GDR and was untainted by the formalist debates of the mid 1950s. As Marta Feuchtwanger noted, the novel mirrored her husband’s own transition from being a devotee of an autonomous l’art pour l’art aesthetics until his experience of the First World War convinced him of the need to conceptualise art in terms of its social function.8 Accordingly, in Feuchtwanger’s novel, the emphasis is not so much on Goya’s romantic liaison with the Duchess of Alba, but rather on the gradual politicisation of the painter’s art. The obsessive desire of so many writers and filmmakers to present a romanticised view of Goya is evident in films such as the highly sentimental romance The Naked Maja (1958), directed by the German-Jewish émigré Henry Koster and starring Ava Gardner and Anthony Franciosa in the lead roles. Wolf’s film, by contrast, analyses the politically charged aspect of Goya’s art in terms of a deep-rooted connection with the Spanish Volk. However, produced as it was some twenty years after the publication of Feuchtwanger’s novel, Wolf’s screen adaptation goes much further and, in the context of the contemporary GDR of the 1970s, presents Goya’s engagement with the grotesque as visual proof that departing from conventional socialist realist aesthetics was not incompatible with progressive politics. In this way, Goya was to both rekindle and extend the debate triggered by Ralf Kirsten’s film Der verlorene Engel some years earlier (indeed, it is no coincidence that Wolf was instrumental in supporting the release of Kirsten’s film that was first screened in the GDR  – albeit in a truncated form  – in April 1971, just months before the premiere of Goya). Last but not least, using a novel by a canonical antifascist author to launch a discussion about the relationship between aesthetics and politics was clearly a strategy designed to reassure the HV Film and the Ministry of Culture that they would not be faced with a rerun of the events of 1965/66, while at the same time offering Wolf the opportunity to produce a Künstlerfilm that would stand

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as a socialist ‘corrective’ to its bourgeois counterpart, the romantic Hollywood biopic. While Wolf’s enduring commitment to the Goya project was, at least in part, a way of responding to East German cultural policy in 1965 and 1966, it is important to remember that DEFA had been involved in negotiations to secure the film rights to Feuchtwanger’s novel since the early 1960s. Indeed, according to Walter Janka, the man responsible for negotiating the film rights with the author’s widow, Marta Feuchtwanger, the initial idea to turn the novel into a film had been floated as early as the 1950s.9 In the early 1960s, however, Janka had fallen on hard times. Dismissed from his post at the East German publishing house the Aufbau Verlag in 1956 on the grounds of alleged ‘counter-revolutionary’ activities and sentenced to four years in prison, he had been given a chance to rehabilitate his professional life in his new position as a dramaturge working at the DEFA studios. For Janka – and for DEFA – the main obstacle to acquiring the rights to Feuchtwanger’s novel seemed likely to be the cost since they would have to be paid for in western currency. However, Marta Feuchtwanger’s readiness to settle for a relatively modest sum meant that DEFA was able to secure a preliminary agreement as early as 1963. In a document addressed to the head of the HV Film, Günter Witt cites a figure of DM 25,000 plus a 12 per cent share of revenues from nonsocialist countries, a figure that, as the report confirms, could easily have been somewhere in the region of DM 100,000 and DM 500,000.10 As Marta Feuchtwanger’s correspondence with Janka underlines, her willingness to settle for such a small fee was motivated partly by her admiration for Soviet cinema and the hope that DEFA would embark on a coproduction with the USSR, and partly by the desire to ensure that the rights could be purchased by a socialist production team that would seek to preserve the left-wing thrust of her late husband’s novel.11 The ideological significance of the Goya project for the GDR’s selfunderstanding as the legitimate heir to the antifascist, humanist tradition of German culture emerges very clearly in the correspondence of 1968 between the studio and the SED’s Central Committee, which – echoing Konrad Wolf ’s appeal two years earlier for the need to rethink the concept of Nationalkultur (national culture) in the GDR – explicitly underlines the importance of exploiting more fully ‘the traditions of democratic humanism that we find embodied in the great works of art and literature . . . for the all-round education of the socialist individual’.12 But ideology was not the only driving force; commercial interests and political prestige were also key factors. For as the DEFA studio

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put it in a draft report addressed to the then Minister of Culture, Kurt Hager: ‘This film has the potential to open up foreign countries and export markets that film production in this country has been unable to penetrate up until now.’13 Moreover, the studio was convinced that in a political climate where the GDR was still struggling for international recognition, an eye-catching production of Goya could lead to a situation where ‘important works of our literary heritage (Thomas Mann) which are currently being sold for West German currency to low-quality West German directors, will in future be offered to us and turned into films that reflect our mission and our national concerns’.14 But even given the generous financial terms offered by Marta Feuchtwanger, it was clear that mounting a production that would appeal not just to Eastern Bloc audiences but those from the West too would be a costly undertaking (and one requiring a considerable injection of convertible currency that DEFA simply did not have at its disposal). Throughout the mid 1960s, a number of attempts were made to overcome this problem by finding a suitable production partner from the West.15 Because of the Franco dictatorship, filming in Spain was out of the question. After it became clear that a French coproduction was impractical (since a film that could not be made in France would not attract funding from the French government), DEFA turned to Arthur Brauner’s Central Cinema Company based in West Berlin. Just how ambitious DEFA’s plans were at this point is evident in a résumé of the negotiations submitted by Klaus Wischnewski to the recently appointed studio manager, Franz Bruk, in which the possibility of Marlon Brando or Anthony Quinn in the title role is mooted.16 Despite Wischnewski’s carefully crafted document emphasizing the advantages of an international coproduction with Western partners (greater financial returns plus an enhancement of the GDR’s international standing in European cinema), in the final analysis DEFA simply could not accept Brauner’s terms and eventually opted for the solution originally envisaged by Marta Feuchtwanger, namely a coproduction involving the Soviet production company LENFilm and a number of partners from Eastern Bloc states. Although working with LENFilm represented a substantial saving, the project was still a hugely expensive undertaking and one made even more so by the decision to shoot in colour on 70 mm film stock. However, as the correspondence between the studio and other officials at the Ministry of Culture reveals, expenditure on this level would not be sanctioned without a degree of ideological control. In a letter of 25 February 1969, Anton Ackermann (a former head of the HV Film who had been recruited as an adviser for the project) reminded

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the studio that, as past experiences had shown, it was not always possible to deduce from the script how a given film would turn out subsequently. Nonetheless, having read the first version of the script (by the Bulgarian Angel Wagenstein), he was pleased overall: ‘It’s absolutely not a question of what’, he writes, ‘but how it’s going to be done’, and for that reason he suggested that only Konrad Wolf should be considered for the position of director.17

Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1971) Divided into two parts, Wolf’s adaptation of Feuchtwanger’s epic novel spans Goya’s life from his early years in Madrid at the court of King Charles IV and concludes with his flight to Bordeaux in 1824. However, rather than offering a conventional historical account of the Spanish painter’s life, Goya operates with a series of visual tableaux that exemplify key stages in the development of Goya’s art beginning with the rococo portraits of Spanish aristocrats of the 1780s and 1790s and ending with the so-called ‘Black Paintings’ of the Quinta del Sordo produced in the years 1819–22. The division of the film into two parts straddles the execution and public unveiling of the monumental royal portrait Carlos IV and His Family in 1800. Goya often worked simultaneously on several (stylistically quite different) projects, and the impossibility of reducing the painter’s life to a sequence of neatly organised phases is reflected in the often anachronistic aspect of the visual citations of his works in the film.18 What matters in Wolf’s analysis of ‘the hard road to understanding’ is the mediation of Goya’s emotional and political insight in a series of images that depart from conventional paradigms of realist art and, increasingly, embrace the grotesque and the fantastic. This is also reflected in the very structure of the film: while the first part is underpinned by a relatively conventional narrative structure focusing on Goya’s pursuit of fame and his infatuation with the Duchess of Alba, the second part of the film (which in a number of respects extends beyond the end of Feuchtwanger’s novel)19 is more episodic and includes elements of the grotesque, especially during the sequence in which we are presented with an extended visual montage of works from the later period of Goya’s career. Increasingly, the characters of Alba and Augustin Esteve come to be replaced by the works themselves in the dialogic exchanges underpinning Goya’s development, and, tellingly, Wolf’s own nouvelle vague leanings are evident in his observation that he found the first part of the film less interesting than the second

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precisely because it had been designed to introduce viewers carefully (and using cinematic conventions with which they would already be familiar) to the particular challenges with which Goya as an artist was confronted in the absolutist world of late eighteenth-century Spain.20 Focusing on Goya allowed Wolf to explore the development of an artist who clearly shared the progressive values of the European Enlightenment, but whose later work, inspired as it was by a deepseated empathy with the traditions of Spanish national culture, came to embody a proto-expressionist aspect that could not easily be assimilated into the canon of classical aesthetics. Like Feuchtwanger, Wolf also sets out to trace the transformation of an essentially apolitical painter into an artist whose works had, and continue to have, a political resonance that transcends the historical period in which they were created.21 For East German viewers in particular, images of the Spanish peasantry in conflict with the Catholic Church and an aristocratic ruling elite resonated with one of the GDR’s key founding myths, namely the participation of German communists in the antifascist resistance during the Spanish Civil War. The view of Goya as a source of inspiration for a progressive political movement in Spain informs what was perhaps the most important monograph on Goya in the GDR, F.D. Klingender’s Goya in the Democratic Tradition, which had been translated into German and published by the East Berlin publishing house Henschel in 1954.22 In addition, in 1962, Kurt and Jeanne Stern had released the film Unbändiges Spanien [Unruly Spain], a full-length documentary exploring the collapse of democracy and the rise of the Franco regime in Spain. The origins of this process of political decline – or so the visual logic of their documentary suggests – can be traced back to an unholy alliance of Church and royalty that is alluded to through the juxtaposition of Goya’s unflattering painting of Charles IV and His Family with twentieth-century photographs of the Spanish monarch Alfonso XIII and his relatives.23 For all of these reasons, the associations that Goya and his works evoked in the German cultural imaginary extended well beyond eighteenth-century Spain and included not only memories of the Civil War and the oppressive Franco regime in the twentieth century, but also the fate of all those artists and writers who had been forced into exile during the Nazi era.

Painting and Cinema The painterly quality of Wolf’s Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis is evident right from the very start of the film. Goya’s artistic development

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is mediated via a series of references to his work that begins as early as the opening title of the film displayed against the background of the 1788 tapestry cartoon, The Meadow of San Isidro a light-hearted image that is recapitulated towards the very end of the film, albeit in the more sombre form of the black paintings of 1819–23 including A Pilgrimage to San Isidro (1819–23) and The Colossus (1812). Likewise, the transition from the bright colours of the early court paintings, through the (sepia-tinted) reproduction of the Caprichos to the dark hues of the Quinta del Sordo murals is also echoed in the subtly changing palette of Alfred Hirschmeier’s set designs.24 At times the integration of Goya’s drawings and pictures – in particular, the series of grotesque satirical images from the Caprichos – is used as a means of revealing the interior workings of the painter’s mind as he seeks to externalise (and thereby exorcise rationally) the demons in the depths of his imagination. At other moments, such as the quasi-slapstick sequence that precedes the composition of Charles IV and His Family, Wolf’s approach makes it possible for the spectator to appreciate the subversive dramaturgy underpinning Goya’s approach and to bring to life, as it were, the image of the painter that is only just discernible in the top left-hand corner of the royal portrait. Finally, there are moments when visual references to works by other artists – notably La Venus del espeyo [The Rokeby Venus (1647–51)] by Goya’s great idol Diego Velásquez as he weighs up the Duchess of Alba’s proposal that he paint a nude portrait of her – serves as a reminder of the importance of recognising, challenging and surpassing the aesthetic achievements of the Old Masters in an attempt to kindle the flame of artistic genius and avoid simply recycling the forms of the past and thereby reducing them to hollow conventions. What propels the initially apolitical Goya down ‘the hard road to understanding’ is a series of encounters with those who, by virtue of their gender or social class, inhabit the margins of contemporary society. At the beginning of the film, Goya is portrayed as a vain ­individual whose desire for recognition blinds him to the essentially reactionary – and patriarchal  – milieu of early nineteenth-century Spain. He may mock his loyal friend Augustin Esteve as an untalented artist incapable of painting anything other than horses’ backsides, but, at least to begin with, he lacks the latter’s understanding of the vacuousness of an aesthetic that is wholly devoid of any political stance. However, what renders Goya’s art ‘political’, almost in spite of the artist’s professed intentions, is its realist character. When commissioned to produce an equestrian portrait of Queen Maria Luisa on Horseback (1799), he combines Velásquez’s compositional style with his own unerring eye for

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the queen’s distinctive physiognomy and produces a portrait that, in its unflattering realism, contains within it a subversive undercurrent. Yet as a woman compelled to operate within the constraints of the patriarchal milieu of the court, the Italian is blessed with a degree of intelligence – and an eye for the truth – that many of her male counterparts lack. For as Goya explains to Alba: ‘Dona Maria Luisa is a clever woman. Therefore she wishes her portraits to resemble her’, and this independent cast of mind on her part is evident later on in the film in her appreciation of the painting Charles IV and His Family (a critical understanding that her husband, Charles IV, manifestly lacks). But although the film attacks both the decorative art of Charles IV’s court and the Inquisition’s attempt to subordinate aesthetics to the demands of religious dogma, it also stops well short of endorsing the one-dimensional propagandist art that the revolutionary poet Jovellanos urges Goya to adopt. Indeed, when the latter criticises Goya, saying ‘In my opinion you experiment too much’, we seem to be momentarily plunged back into the GDR of the 1950s and into a rerun of the seemingly endless debates about formalist tendencies in the visual arts (Figure 4.1). It is left to the less gifted but more enlightened Augustin Esteve – a character often referred to by Wolf as Goya’s alter ego – to make the case for a politicised aesthetic that, nonetheless, avoids the crude clichés of David’s monumental classicism: ‘Of course Jovellanos is mistaken in what he says about Zeus and David, but he’s right to insist that art should become political.’

Figure 4.1 ‘In my opinion you experiment too much’. Back to the 1950s in Goya. © DEFA-Stiftung/Werner Bergmann, Konstantin Ryshow. Published with permission.

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Augustin may lack the necessary talent to put his theories into practice, but it is he who opens Goya’s eyes to the need to reject the conventions of the past if he is to capture the spirit of the contemporary world: ‘Things that are straightforward’, he tells his friend, ‘can be rendered straightforwardly. But human beings are not straightforward. What is evil, dangerous and full of witchcraft cannot be rendered using the old techniques.’ Here we can begin to discern the radical thrust import of Wolf’s film, namely that the development of a new aesthetic – one that breaks with the traditions of conventional realism – need not necessarily entail abandoning a politically radical agenda and endorsing a view of art as an autonomous realm detached from the prevailing sociopolitical reality. Rather than embrace an overtly monumentalist aesthetic and return to the classical forms of the past – and here the echoes of Alfred Kurella’s attempts to define socialist aesthetics in terms of a rejection of modernism and a revival of the aesthetics of Weimar Classicism can hardly be ignored – Augustin’s intervention prompts Goya to recognise and develop the expressive aspects of his great precursor, Velásquez, and to develop these into a new aesthetic that, precisely by eschewing conventional mimetic realism and embracing the fantastic, was imbued with a greater political intensity. As we shall see, it is the twin influence of the female Other and the Spanish Volk that is the inspiration behind this process of development. The importance of women in the painter’s life is hinted at as early as the film’s opening sequence, where, like Goya, we watch a religious procession made up exclusively of men. Only when this pageant of patriarchal power is interrupted by the appearance of an icon of femininity, the image of the Virgin Mary, do we catch a glimpse of Goya for the first time. Yet this image of Mary as a woman with long flowing black hair portrays the mother of Christ not as a chaste virgin, but as an explicitly sensual woman, and Goya’s reaction here already hints at the hold the equally sensual Duchess of Alba will exert over him during the course of his life. For it is she who teaches him the difference between those who are prepared to compromise and those who are not: ‘You cannot change me. You must take me for what I am.’ Moreover, it is she who prompts Goya to break new artistic ground when she reacts to his reluctance to paint a nude portrait of her with her deliciously provocative remark: ‘So, my dear court painter, you only paint what they allow you to?!’ (Figure 4.2). Nonetheless, the Duchess of Alba remains what she is – a member of the aristocracy caught up in an internal struggle for power  – and the limitations of her capacity to embrace a radical mode of aesthetics

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Figure 4.2 ‘You only paint what they allow you to’. Breaking with tradition in Goya. © DEFA-Stiftung/Werner Bergmann, Konstantin Ryshow. Published with permission.

are clearly revealed in her disgust when confronted with her own selfimage in Goya’s Caprichos. Goya’s inability to accept her determination to live her life on her own terms underlines the extent to which he remains trapped within the macho clichés of his provincial upbringing. For her part, Alba’s rejection of the more radical aesthetics of the Caprichos reveals her inability to share Goya’s concept of authenticity in art. Her desire to be painted as the naked maja may be an act of daring, but, as the dwarf-jester Padrilla underlines, this self-styled pose as a woman from the Volk is precisely that: a pose lacking in authenticity. Like the queen (another female character whose understanding of art extends well beyond that of her male counterparts), Alba may be Other in terms of gender, but not in terms of class. The Duchess, however, is not the only woman to assume the role of Goya’s muse; more important still is the figure of Maria Rosario, a singer from the ‘Volk’ who sings not the songs of her forefathers, but, as she puts it, ‘the songs of our mothers’. In keeping with Wolf’s presentation of women in the film generally, it is she who functions as the perfect embodiment of the director’s concept of authenticity. And it is the echo of her voice that provides the acoustic context for the extended montage of Goya’s ‘Black Paintings’ towards the end of the film. Of the four so-called ‘heretics’ condemned by the Inquisition, she alone points out the absurdity of the verdict: ‘Of what am I guilty?’, she exclaims, the only individual to voice the obvious truth that all those watching

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inwardly acknowledge but lack the courage to articulate.25 Seen in this light, the female characters contribute to the construction of a discursive space that contrasts markedly with both the worlds of mainstream court culture and the conventional rhetoric of the representatives of French revolutionary politics. Indeed, it is striking that when the three male activists Jovellanos, Quintana and Bermúdez inspect Goya’s portrait of Carlos IV and His Family, they recognise its originality, but remain unable to view the painting except through the categories of their own ideological rhetoric. Goya’s fascination with the margins of the world he inhabits – both in terms of gender and class – leads to the development of an aesthetic in which conventional notions of realism come to be radically redefined. The contradictions he experiences in the course of this process threaten, momentarily, to drive him insane. But as his mother – another female figure from the Volk and the only figure apart from Augustin Esteve with whom he discusses his art – reminds him: ‘Anyone who can see his madness so clearly is surely more rational than other people.’ Her remark  – which needs to be read in the context of the 43rd Capricho The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters – is central to an understanding of Wolf’s own view of Goya and his art. In an interview for the Soviet magazine Sowjetska kultura, the director bemoaned the tendency of Western critics to see Goya as an advocate of irrationalism and a precursor of surrealism, and argued instead that he should be regarded as ‘one of the key figures in the development of modern revolutionary aesthetics’.26 Accordingly, Wolf presents Goya not as a ‘pathological’ figure in the manner of a van Gogh avant la lettre, but as an artist whose aesthetic has a cathartic dimension insofar as it seeks to externalise – and thereby exorcise – the demons of his imagination. In taking such a view of Goya’s later works, Wolf’s film acts as a riposte to the antiformalist campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s that had so often singled out the primitivist aspects of prewar and postwar expressionist art as the product of a nihilistic mindset and, as such, as politically reactionary. At the same time, cycles such as the Caprichos and the Tauromaquia (1816) suggested ways in which the popular nationalistic iconography of the Spanish majos – a social group regarded as both highly superstitious and politically reactionary by East German cultural historians of the eighteenth-century – could be reworked in the service of a progressive political agenda.27 Throughout the film, it is striking that Goya’s art is presented in terms of an aesthetic that, despite its increasingly political character, not only resists crude instrumentalisation but is also imbued with imaginary resonance that extends beyond the materiality of the painting

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itself. This is perhaps most obviously the case in Goya’s dealings with the Inquisition. After the auto-da-fé, the Grand Inquisitor seeks to neutralise the critical potential of the resulting cycle of paintings (a cycle that includes The Inquisition Tribunal and The Procession of Penitents of 1812–19) by labelling them as ‘pious works’ that ‘reflect the benevolent cleansing terror to which the Holy Inquisition aspires in God’s name’ and by instigating their removal from the public sphere (by consigning them to the ‘oblivion’ of the Inquisition’s private collection). Similarly, when Goya is summoned a second time by the Grand Inquisitor and confronted with a series of images from the cycle of the Caprichos, the painter seeks to evade the latter’s attempt to ‘fix’ objectively once and for all the meaning of his paintings, and reminds the viewer that interpretation is an ongoing dynamic process that is itself conditioned by the experiences that each individual brings to a work of art. For as Goya counters in this cat-and-mouse exchange between artist and critic: ‘I cannot say what it is that you see in the pictures.’ Last but not least, the iconic image of Goya’s signature immediately after the Grand Inquisitor’s threat  – ‘I condemn Goya to eternal oblivion’  – together with the ironic juxtaposition of the painting Colossus serve as a reminder that the painter’s works have enjoyed a significance that has extended well beyond the imagination of their creator or the contemporary audience for whom they were created.28 In passing, we might note that in 1971, the Soviet authorities objected to these closing remarks and it was only thanks to Wolf’s insistence that they were retained.29 In 1974, some three years after the film’s release, the Grand Inquisitor’s final remarks would, of course, assume a new resonance for viewers following the attacks in the Soviet press on the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whose expulsion from the Soviet Union was, in the words of Pravda, an act designed to consign both him and his work to oblivion.30

Contextualising Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis At the time that Wolf began work on the making of Goya, a string of Künstlerfilme had been released in the Soviet Union, including Alexander Mitta’s Gori, gori, moja zvezda [Leuchte, mein Stern, leuchte!/ Shine, Shine, My Star!, 1970] about an itinerant actor who attempts to elicit support for the October Revolution through his performances of Shakespeare, Igor Talankin’s Dnevnye zvezdy [Tagessterne/The Stars of the Day, 1968], a study of the radical female poet Olga Bergholz set

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during the siege of Leningrad that won an award at the Venice Film Festival largely on account of its highly experimental cinematography, and Eldar Shengelaia’s Georgian comedy Arachveulebrivi gamopena [Eine ungewöhnliche Ausstellung/An Unusual exhibition, 1968], a film that courted controversy in the Soviet Union because of its ironic critique of socialist realism. Of these, only Alexander Mitta’s Gori, gori, moja zvezda was publicly screened in the GDR; however, like many other DEFA employees and members of the East German Akademie der Künste, Wolf had an opportunity to view these and other films at specially organised screenings.31 Almost all of these films – Gori, gori, moja zvezda is perhaps the exception – highlight the ways in which the DEFA studio was failing to keep pace with developments in modernist cinema in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; however, more importantly, like Wolf’s Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis, they all embody a quasi-Romantic tendency whereby art and the imagination reveal the workings of the external world more effectively than other more conventional discursive forms. Moreover, as Wolf notes in what seems like a postscript on the debacle of the Eleventh Plenum, the role of the imaginary as a distinct mode of cognition in its own right was an issue that extended far beyond the historical figure of Goya and touched all aspects of contemporary socialist society.32 As a number of Wolf’s colleagues at DEFA noted following the screening of the rough-cut, Goya invites comparison with Andrey Tarkovsky’s masterpiece Andrei Rublev about the fifteenth-century icon painter. Premiered in Moscow in February 1969 and screened at the Cannes Film Festival in May that same year, Tarkovsky’s controversial film had been withdrawn from circulation almost immediately and it was not until December 1971 that it went on general release (albeit in a heavily censored version) in the Soviet Union.33 Tarkovsky’s film presents the viewer with a wide range of artist-figures and conceptualisations of art that include the yearning for transcendence embodied by the Balloonist of the opening sequence, the aspiring but untalented Kirill, the conventional illustrator Daniel and the bell-caster Boriska, whose art is dedicated exclusively to the adoration of God. By contrast, the humble Christ-like figure of Rublev – and here the significance of the film’s earlier title, The Passion of Andrei, cannot be overstated – serves as a bridge between the human and the divine. However, unlike Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis, Tarkovsky’s film resembles a proto-expressionist drama in which Rublev overcomes the considerable social and political obstacles strewn in his path and maintains his faith in art as a form of an ersatz religion. In this respect, the icon-painter appears as

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an on-screen embodiment of Tarkovsky’s belief that ‘art is born whenever there is a timeless and insatiable longing for the spiritual, for the ideal’.34 Yet it is precisely in respect of its religiosity that Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev is much closer to Ralf Kirsten’s Der verlorene Engel than it is to Wolf’s Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis. Tarkovsky’s film may end with a montage of Rublev’s icons, but their static subject matter hints at a desire for religious transcendence that stands in marked contrast to the dynamic quality of Goya’s overtly political works such as Third of May 1808 (1814) and the cycle of prints The Disasters of War (1810–20). Andrei Rublev pulls no punches in depicting the violent character of fifteenth-century Russia, but despite the tendency of some critics to see the unremitting cruelty of this medieval milieu as an allegory of Stalinism, the nature of this violence lacks the materialist historical underpinning that we see both in Goya’s painting and the novel by Feuchtwanger on which Wolf’s film is based. Comparing the two artist-films, the East German playwright Helmut Baierl praised Wolf precisely for his refusal to portray Goya as a ‘mystical talent’.35 Moreover, whereas in Tarkovsky’s film, the external world is portrayed as something to be endured, in Wolf’s film, by contrast, we are constantly presented with an appeal to reason mediated by a figure who sees the world he inhabits in materialist historical terms as one that is capable of being grasped and thus subject to change. Indeed, Wolf himself draws attention to this aspect of the film in the sequence where Goya attempts to confront his demons by painting them on the walls of the Quinta del Sordo and, in the words of the director, ‘seeks to render these forces in material and thereby, in a Brechtian sense, comprehend them’.36 This fundamental difference between the artist-figures in the two films is also visually underscored in the contrast between Rublev’s ascetic lifestyle and Goya’s larger-than-life sensuality as he consumes copious quantities of food during the painting of the walls (that also calls to mind the materialist characterisation of the central protagonist in Brecht’s Life of Galileo). In the light of the above, it is perhaps hardly surprising that Wolf should recognise the documentary quality of Goya’s two cycles of drawings Caprichos and The Disasters of War (in one interview he even goes so far as to refer to the Caprichos as ‘the first silent movie’ and to Goya as ‘the first documentarist of his epoch’) and chose to exploit their commentating function as a means of linking the disparate episodes of the first and second parts of the film.37 Moreover, by visually reconstructing the Quinta del Sordo (which had been demolished in 1909) and thereby offering viewers a rare glimpse the cycle of Goya’s

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‘Black Paintings’ (long since dispersed across different collections) as an ensemble in their original context, Wolf’s film enabled them to be seen not as the products of a schizophrenic imagination and/or tragic figure, as many Western critics had argued, but rather as political documents in their own right.38 Seen from this perspective, the monumentality of Goya’s oeuvre is of a quite different order from that of a Jacques-Louis David insofar as it does not overwhelm, but – precisely because of its epic character  – makes it possible for viewers to bring their own associations, feelings and thoughts to bear on the process of interpretation. The documentary character of Goya’s work is closely bound up with a concept of authenticity that had informed Wolf’s earlier film Ich war 19. Images based on Goya’s Caprichos had, of course, been widely recycled in antifascist propaganda produced during both the Spanish Civil War and the Nazi period, and had a resonance that was not confined to the era in which they were produced. However, the grotesque character of Goya’s ‘documents’ served as a reminder that the search for an aesthetic form in which such authenticity could be adequately rendered was, in theory at least, a neverending quest: ‘It is in this respect’, Wolf observed, ‘that the question of authenticity with which we were confronted in the 1960s needs to be revisited and redefined.’39 However, with memories of the Eleventh Plenum still fresh in the minds of many, it seems highly probable that contemporary East German audiences saw a parallel between, on the one hand, the fate of Goya and other radical intellectuals at the hands of the Inquisition and, on the other, the harsh treatment of GDR writers and filmmakers by the SED only a few years earlier. Indeed, such speculation becomes even more tempting in the light of Günter Witt’s description of the Eleventh Plenum when he suggested that ‘The whole process was like a visit from the Inquisition’ and even went as far as to refer to Kurt Hager – the then Minister of Culture  – as ‘the Grand Inquisitor’.40 (Witt had been the head of the HV Film at the time of the Eleventh Plenum.) Not surprisingly, there is no explicit discussion of such parallels in the official GDR media. Yet behind the questions put to Wolf in interviews about the film’s treatment of the relationship between artists/intellectuals and the state in eighteenth-century Spain, it is hard to ignore the underlying issue of the film’s relevance to the predicament of artists and intellectuals in the contemporary GDR. In his responses, Wolf always sidesteps the issue, preferring instead to characterise Goya’s conflict as an artist’s (often contradictory) response to a provocative situation in which all political power appears

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to reside in the hands of a reactionary minority. As he goes on to explain: ‘It’s Goya who makes life hard for himself. That’s why I do not really regard the film as revolving around a straightforward conflict between artists/intellectuals on the one hand and those in power on the other.’41 Yet when questioned further about Künstlerfilme from the West in which artist-figures are portrayed as individuals who are powerless in the face of political authority, Wolf’s response contains an echo of his much earlier address of March 1966 to the Akademie der Künste: The fatalistic view that artists in bourgeois society are simply at the mercy of those in power leads nowhere . . . What we really need to do is to move beyond this fetishisation of a conflict between art and power.42

Just how far Wolf’s comments were directed at his fellow filmmakers in DEFA must remain something of an open question. Nonetheless, his remarks reflected both a desire to draw a clear distinction between the socialist Künstlerfilm and its bourgeois counterpart produced under Western capitalism as well as a determination to develop a new form of modernist aesthetics that, while avoiding the pitfalls of orthodox socialist realism, would stop short of embracing the supposedly ‘nihilistic’ aspects of modernism associated with the avant garde of the 1920s. In his efforts to promote his own distinctive version of a modernist nouvelle vague cinema in the East, Wolf showed himself to be a master in adapting the cultural-political discourse of the GDR to suit his personal artistic ambitions. In November 1967, the East German parliament had published a new resolution on ‘Die Aufgaben der Kultur bei der Entwicklung der sozialistischen Menschengemeinschaft’ [‘The Role of Culture in the Development of Socialist Society’], which emphasised the need ‘to overcome the legacy of all elitist conceptions of art as an autonomous sphere, as a luxury or as something decorative’.43 Only a few years later, Wolf was to frame his own approach to art and the artist in Goya in terms that were remarkably similar: ‘The film’s basic subject matter strikes at the very heart of our conception of society and . . . in no sense is art here presented as something essentially decorative.’44 In essence, Wolf’s film set out to challenge not only bourgeois interpretations of Goya’s art in particular, but also, more importantly, to reveal the shortcomings of bourgeois concepts of art generally. In an interview just a few months prior to the film’s release with Hermann Herlinghaus for the GDR’s leading literary journal Weimarer Beiträge, Wolf went out of his way to point out that the film’s significance for contemporary viewers lay in its analysis of the failure of bourgeois

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concepts of art and capitalist society to provide the basis for a society in which it was possible to be human in the full sense of the term.45 Seen from this perspective, Feuchtwanger’s portrayal of Goya’s unending struggle with the Catholic Church and the Inquisition went much further than a mere critique of bourgeois society and underlined the need for a radical transformation of society. Goya was the only film Wolf made that was set in a period to which he had no personal connection, and in almost every interview he gave during its production, his anxiety at tackling such historical material is palpable.46 In his efforts to remind the East German press that Goya was not a period costume drama, but a film dealing with contemporary political and cultural questions, both Wolf and his dramaturge, Walter Janka, went to great lengths to highlight the importance of the political context in which the novel on which it was based was written. In the accompanying documentation published by the Akademie der Künste, for instance, Janka cites one of the many letters written by Marta Feuchtwanger to the production team in which she points out that ‘for Lion Feuchtwanger, the Inquisition was not just a historical phenomenon, but a means of drawing parallels with the present, with National Socialism and, here in America, with McCarthyism’.47 Further evidence that Goya should not be seen primarily as a historical film is also evident in Janka’s remark that ‘we are much more interested in those at whom art is targeted (Kunstkonsumenten) than we are in the artists (Kunstproduzenten) themselves’.48 The East German premiere of Goya was on 17 September 1971 and during the first six weeks of its run, more than 70,000 spectators went to see it at the Kosmos Kino on East Berlin’s Karl-Marx-Allee – a high number by any standards.49 In the HV Film’s protocol of the pre-release screenings, the filmmakers’ goals are stated very clearly: Our aim is to have a direct impact on contemporary society because in the world we live in today, a time of momentous changes, art has never had such an important and challenging role.50

Although Marta Feuchtwanger regarded the film as the first successful screen adaptation of any of her husband’s novels,51 Wolf himself was clearly disappointed by the film’s apparent failure to stimulate a discussion about the role of art and the artist in contemporary East German society. Public discussions only confirmed the truth of Günter Reisch’s comment at an earlier test screening at DEFA that the film would ‘require a mode of viewing (‘eine Kultur des Sehens’) that will be beyond most cinema-goers’,52 and time and again Wolf would be called

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upon by the East German press to clarify the significance of the film for contemporary audiences.53 Reflecting on his experiences with three groups of young viewers, Wolf identified three recurrent issues: first, the extent to which his film, although intellectually demanding, was capable of appealing a broad range of viewers; second, the accusation that it was essentially ‘unrealistic’ insofar as it depicted Goya’s art not as the result of human labour, but rather as a consequence of ‘inspired genius’; and, finally, the question of the film’s relevance for contemporary East German viewers.54 What emerges very clearly from these discussions is the sense of a clear divide between those who preferred the more conventionally realistic plot of the first part over those who were attracted to the more allusive imagery of the second. However, as we shall see, the difficulties that both director and audience encountered in processing the historical material of Feuchtwanger’s novel was to provide the inspiration for Wolf’s next project, Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (1974).

Cultural Policy and the VIII Party Congress of 1971 Although initial discussions about a production of Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis were conducted under the shadow cast by the Eleventh Plenum of 1965/66, the release of the completed film in September 1971 occurred in a very different climate. Walter Ulbricht’s suggestion (made in the aftermath of the Prague Spring of 1968) that the GDR should be granted a greater degree of independence from the Soviet Union, coupled with his refusal to engage with the new policy of détente espoused by the West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, prompted the Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to withdraw his support. As a result, on 3 May 1971, Ulbricht was left with no choice to relinquish all his public duties, and a month later at the SED’s VIII Party Congress (15–19 June 1971), the 58-year-old Erich Honecker was confirmed as First Secretary of the SED’s Central Committee. Initially at least, the change of political leadership appeared to signal the start of a new and more liberal phase of cultural policy. In his address to the Party Congress in June 1971, Honecker set the tone for a more tolerant approach towards artist and writers: Our party can always be relied on to help artists and writers and to support them in their quest to find new ways of making their work more effective in socialist society . . . It is precisely because of our

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understanding of the complexity of artistic creation and the effort it requires that we show our appreciation of their efforts to develop new aesthetic forms.55

These remarks were followed several months later by Honecker’s much-quoted declaration at the 4th Meeting of SED’s Central Committee (16–17 December 1971) that: ‘As long as one proceeds from the firm position of socialism, there can in my opinion be no taboos in the field of art and literature. This applies to questions of content as well as of style, in short to those questions which constitute what one calls artistic mastery.’56 Delivered just months after the East German premiere of Goya, Honecker’s words were taken by many as a clear sign that change was in the air.57 For his part, Wolf, in an address subsequently published in Neues Deutschland on 21 July 1972, not only welcomed the new atmosphere of trust, but also exploited the occasion to argue for a new and more dynamic understanding of socialist realism in all its ‘breadth and diversity’ and suggested that ‘obsolete outmoded ideas that are preventing us from grasping the relationship between workers and artists, and the mediation of reality in art need to be replaced by new creative forms’.58 The extent to which simplistic and one-dimensional concepts of socialist realism were increasingly being called into question is also evident in an interview with the sculptor Fritz Cremer published the following year in the popular magazine Forum – the official publication of the FDJ organisation – in which, in a comment prominently reproduced on the magazine’s title page, he notes: ‘The more questions a work of art poses, the better it is for our cause . . . What’s the use of art that merely echoes slogans, views and opinions that you can find all over the place.’59 Seen in this light, Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz is, as Carel Fischer has also suggested,60 a key contribution to debates about the social function of art in the 1970s.

Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz (1974) Wolf’s experiences with Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis had underlined the need for a new conceptualisation of the social function of art as something that was neither decorative nor the exclusive plaything of a privileged elite, but rather as an activity embedded within everyday life under socialism. In his comments on Goya’s international cast and crew, the cultural theorist Anton Ackermann had praised the film precisely on account of its capacity to demonstrate the global

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aspect of socialist culture and its mission to campaign indefatigably for all political causes associated with freedom and progress.61 If Wolf’s earlier film perhaps represented DEFA’s most ambitious attempt to position itself internationally, then Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz, a film set in the GDR of the 1970s and dealing with a fictitious forty-yearold artist in crisis, was by contrast one of the studio’s most introspective productions. The tone of this understated film – in which the central figure struggles to persuade those around him to test the limits of their imagination and accept artistic forms that depart from conventional realism – is aptly captured in Wolf’s notes where he comments that ‘the more we make our way through that which seems “insignificant”, the greater our chance of uncovering something of real significance’.62 The inspiration for the film came, as the author of the script, Wolfgang Kohlhaase, notes, from observing the East German sculptor Werner Stötzer (1931–2010) at work.63 The forty year-old Stötzer (who appears in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz in the guise of a local mayor and supporter of the football club Mergenbach Traktor 04) was a successful member of the second generation of East German sculptors and one whose works were displayed in prominent locations throughout the GDR.64 Although certain events in Stötzer’s career, notably the rejection of two reliefs on the theme of land reform of the 1950s and his own project Babi Jar (1967) on the massacre that took place just outside Kiev during the Second World War), can be mapped onto episodes in Kohlhaase’s script, the film is not a fictionalised biography of a successful artist, but rather a languid meditation on the aesthetic challenges faced by a professional, albeit not particularly well-known, fictitious artist teetering on the brink of a midlife crisis. 65 Stötzer’s retrospective summary of his life and career  – ‘What lies within me is neither heaven nor hell. It is humanity’66 – perfectly captures the muted tone of Wolfgang Kohlhaase’s script for Wolf’s Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz. Mindful of the criticism that in Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis he had idealised the creative process by portraying the central protagonist as an artistic ‘genius’, in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz Wolf deliberately set out to demythologise what he saw as the lasting and pernicious legacy of bourgeois concepts of artistic endeavour. Accordingly, the central character, Kemmel, is presented not simply as a conscientious artist, but also as a family man fond of beer and football. As the steady stream of friends and visitors who pass through Kemmel’s studio underlines, he is accepted by, and part of, the local community – even though its members often struggle to comprehend

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what he does. In this respect, his ‘ordinariness’ stands in marked contrast to the extravagant behaviour of the self-styled bohemians, Klippfisch and Fräulein Fritze, who arrive at his studio on a horse and cart. Klippfisch, who has emigrated from West Berlin and now works for the East German postal service, describes his feelings as ‘predominantly Slavic’. For her part, the slightly self-conscious Fräulein Fritze confesses to Kemmel that she earns her living selling decorative items, before adding: ‘A compromise of course, but a necessary stage on my voyage of self-discovery.’ The clichéd image of the artist as an exotic being ‘who lives a quite different type of existence . . . and whom one can watch groaning and sighing as he embarks on his inscrutable divine mission’67 – caricatured to the point of absurdity in the figures of Klippfisch and Fräulein Fritze  – contrasts sharply with the reality of Kemmel’s everyday life as an artist. If Kemmel gasps and groans, it is almost always from the sheer physical effort of shifting the heavy slabs of stone into his workshop. The conviction that artistic creativity should be seen as an integral part of human labour is generally underscored both in the opening sequence during which we are presented with a series of close-up images of the artist’s hands working his material, and in a subsequent sequence, shot almost in the style of an industrial documentary and depicting the casting of Kemmel’s ill-fated bronze relief on the theme of land reform. Following a prerelease screening of the film, Kurt Maetzig went so far as to suggest that Wolf’s film presented the figure of the artist in a manner quite unlike any other DEFA film.68 However, although Wolf and Kohlhaase set out to challenge the view that artistic activity is something tangential to the lives of ordinary men and women, they are not under any illusions that everyone is blessed with artistic talent. This is underlined towards the end of the film when Kemmel stands in front of an art gallery and is forced to listen to the philistine views of a passer-by: ‘I could paint that if you paid me enough’, he tells a bemused Kemmel. ‘An art-dealer once explained to me that anyone can knock off something like that.’ Yet even if, as Kemmel’s sceptical interlocutor would have him believe, the technical ability to execute a work of art lies dormant within each one of us, the fact remains that art cannot simply be reduced to the mastery of an appropriate set of technical skills; the real challenge with which every artist is confronted is, as Kemmel points out to Fräulein Fritze, not a matter of technique, but rather a question of ethics: ‘Above all, you have to have an idea of what the right thing to do is.’ In their film, Wolf and Kohlhaase also go out of their way to highlight the obstacles that stand in the way of a genuine appreciation of

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art on the part of ordinary men and women. For the most part, such obstacles include a slavish adherence to a conventional concept of naturalistic aesthetics coupled with a belief that the function of art is essentially decorative. But although Kemmel is surrounded by a collection of relatively uneducated East German provincials whose appreciation of art is clearly far inferior to his own, it is a mark of both his basic humanity and his belief that it is precisely such people that art must reach in order to play a meaningful role in society that he never treats them with contempt. As Kohlhaase notes: ‘In our film we take great care not to portray people simply as misguided. That doesn’t mean that everyone’s opinion is correct; but the fact is that everybody has a reason for holding the opinion they do.’69 Accordingly, when the delivery man at the beginning of the film asks Kemmel if he could make him a garden fountain complete with an ornamental frog, Kemmel does not dismiss the man’s request out of hand, but seeks to evade it on technical grounds. In a similar vein, when Kemmel’s neighbour presents him with yet another crude wooden carving – this time ‘The Hunchback of Rotterdam’ (sic) – the episode serves to demonstrate that although the dividing line between genuine art and kitsch may be hard to define, it clearly exists. By the same token, those who regard art as something more than mere decoration are prevented from developing a deeper appreciation of it by their reluctance to abandon an essentially naturalistic concept of aesthetics. Thus, when Kemmel offers to make a memorial for Traktor 04, the club’s vice-presidents immediately seize upon the idea of commissioning a statue of their former goalkeeper, the late Eugen Speerschneider. Once again, Kemmel does not poke fun at the obvious absurdity of their suggestion, but tries to put them off the idea on the grounds that such a project is unlikely to attract state funding, while at the same time attempting to broaden their aesthetic horizons: ‘Wouldn’t it be better’, he asks them, ‘if it was an abstract figure rather than a particular person?’ Similarly, when the local pastor gives Kemmel permission to remove a piece of precious Carrera marble from the churchyard, he asks in return for a picture of Christ or a relief for the local church based on a biblical scene. When Kemmel gently suggests that an abstract work might be better, the pastor’s lack of sophistication is evident in his conventional reply: ‘Surely faith is most clearly manifested in people’s facial expressions?’ Kemmel’s parting observation – ‘Isn’t that what Tilman Riemenschneider did? 400 years ago?’ – serves as a reminder that, however well-intentioned it may be, it is precisely the reduction of artistic creativity to a slavish imitation of the tried and

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trusted that leads to a decline in aesthetic quality and, in the long term, to the production of kitsch. Just as the characters’ view of art as something essentially decorative together with their sceptical view of any attempt to depart from a conventional realist aesthetic prevents them from developing a deeper enjoyment of art, so too their preconceived notions regarding the appropriate subject matter for a work of art constitutes yet another obstacle. When Hannes, the brigade-leader from the construction site who eventually agrees to act as a model for Kemmel, comes to visit the artist in his studio at the end of the film, he is clearly puzzled by the question of why Kemmel should wish to make a bust of him: ‘Emperors and kings . . . lions and horses, or Lenin . . . that’s all perfectly u ­ nderstandable – but my head, for example, is that really necessary?’ In this way, the later film echoes the critique of monumentalism that was prefigured in Goya. For, as Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz suggests, it is the promotion of a monumentalist approach to aesthetics that leads the bulk of the population to assume that art is of no real relevance to them. Paradoxically, not only is the cultivation of such monumentalism shown to be contrary to the guiding principles of socialist realism, but it also contributes to a devaluation of socialist realism itself, a point that is underlined in the brief sequence in which Kemmel talks to two interior decorators who plan to produce mosaics in the ‘heroic style’ – ‘A man with a hammer, a woman with a child, that sort of thing’ – and who charge for their work by the square metre. Although Kemmel is presented as a figure who spends much of his time helping those around him to broaden their artistic horizons, he too is compelled to reflect on the conditions of artistic creativity in a post-Auschwitz world. While working on a range of commissions, he constantly wrestles with the dilemma of how to produce a work that would capture the horrors of the Second World War and the concentration camps, and thereby make his own contribution to preserving and re-energising a tradition of antifascist art. As an individual born in the 1930s who grew up during the war (and as such a member of the ‘second generation’ of East German artists), Kemmel regards it as his duty to ensure that the memory of the past is kept alive in the minds of successive generations: ‘Even though I’ll soon be forty I can remember the war.’ Nonetheless, he cannot avoid the stark reality that, with each successive generation, the memory of the past is fading. When he is visited by a young couple with a genuine love of art (a young NVA officer and his pregnant wife), he shows them a photograph of a landscape close to Buchenwald in the district in Thuringia

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in which he grew up and they nod in response to his question: ‘Does that seem long ago to you?’ Nonetheless, when Kemmel adds ‘And what if you went past it every day?’, his question (to which he receives no answer) reflects both the unease of a man who cannot erase his own memories of the past and his awareness of the need to search for new forms of memorialisation that would resist the onslaught of familiarity. Yet when his wife, Gisi, picks up the book from which he continually reads – an account of the massacre at Babi Yar – and asks him whether this is to be the basis for a future work of art, his mounting sense of frustration at his inability to find a suitable artistic form for this dark chapter in history is reflected in a momentary breakdown of communication with his wife. In an obvious gesture of mauvaise foi, he turns away from her, declaring ‘I can’t remember . . . I wasn’t there’, a remark that not only contradicts his earlier point of view, but at the same time also echoes the sentiments of the others in the film who would prefer to turn their backs on the past and forget. However, that this is merely a momentary lapse does not escape Gisi’s attention and prompts her to challenge him with the words: ‘Why don’t we talk anymore?’ This breakdown of communication at a personal level – itself symptomatic of the impossibility of finding a form of aesthetic expression adequate to the horrors of the past – is further underlined in the film when we ‘accompany’ Kemmel on a visit to Ravensbrück and are presented with a visual montage of Will Lammert’s memorial to the female victims of the camp set against a silent soundtrack.70 As Kemmel’s gaze then travels across the idyllic lake and settles on the nearby town of Ravensbrück itself, the film invites us to reflect on what comes next, aesthetically speaking, in the quest to remind future generations of the enduring contradiction between natural beauty and manmade violence. As Tobias Ebbrecht has noted, when the ‘second-generation’ artist Kemmel contemplates the female figures in Ravensbrück, he finds himself projected into an intergenerational dialogue with the ‘first generation’ of East German antifascist artists represented by the likes of Lammert.71 Yet it is a mark of the sophistication of Wolf’s film that it refrains from offering the spectator easy answers to Kemmel’s dilemma as a ‘belated’ artist and suggests failure as an inevitable aspect of what is an empirical process of trial and error. For when Kemmel goes to a village to attend the unveiling of his relief on the topic of the land reforms of the 1950s, he discovers that his work has been rejected by the local council because ‘it lacked optimism’. As Kemmel sits alone in his room, the lighthearted music of the local village disco drifting through the window and the words of

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the LPG manager – ‘Surely people want to see something more uplifting?’– merely underline the extent to which those he would reach out to see art as little more than a pleasant distraction from the hardships of their everyday lives. It is precisely the difficulty of making an impact with a work of art that Kohlhaase singles out when he explains what drew him initially to write a film about a sculptor: What interested us about the character was his sense of commitment and his view that the works dotted around the house are all part of a long-term process. If you want to reach a particular goal you have to keep at it for a long time . . . Regardless of how you react, the fact is that you are constantly being forced to start all over again and you have to keep telling yourself ‘the main thing is to keep going . . . don’t lose the will to try and try again’.72

Here the metaphorical significance of the other image that accompanies Kemmel throughout his personal journey – Breughel’s Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1558) – is of particular importance. As the tiny figure of Icarus disappears beneath the surface of the waves, his demise passes almost completely unnoticed by the other figures in the painting. In a manner that echoes William Carlos Williams’ poetic commentary on the same painting, ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ (1960),73 Wolf’s film also invokes the figure of Icarus to symbolise the artist whose efforts to embrace the Ideal, by and large, pass unnoticed in contemporary society. Nonetheless, Kemmel’s determination to continue with his as-yet unfulfilled quest highlights an essential difference between artistic activity and other, more utilitarian, spheres of human endeavour, namely that what really matters is not so much the end product, but the artistic process itself. It is in this sense that Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz echoes the sentiments of Bertolt Brecht’s essay of 1939, ‘Betrachtung der Kunst und Kunst der Betrachtung’ [‘Viewing Art and the Art of Viewing’]: ‘Anyone who admires a work of art’, Brecht writes, ‘is admiring the successful outcome of a process of labour that requires great skill. And it is essential to be aware of that process of labour in order to admire and to enjoy the result, namely a work of art.’74 By highlighting the difficulties that a second-generation artist living in the 1970s experiences in his efforts to build on the antifascist legacy of the first generation of East German artists, Wolf’s film addresses the issue of intergenerational conflict in the GDR. At the same time, however, the emergence of new paradigms of antifascist art and the rise of a modernist aesthetic with a much greater emphasis on the

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subjectivity of the creative artist is mediated via a complex network of gender relations. On one level, the ‘naked man on the playing field’ refers to the nude statue that Kemmel creates for the football club, but on another level, it alludes, metaphorically speaking, to the artist himself who is exposed in all his nakedness to the public scrutiny of a largely philistine group of spectators. For Kemmel, the creation of a nude male figure signals the start of a difficult process of introspection and an altogether new artistic departure that is equally troublesome. In part, his difficulties are due to the fact that, without his ever really having made a conscious decision to do so, all the nudes he has ever produced have invariably been female nudes. Indeed, when the young couple visit his studio to buy a picture, he appears to have nothing else to offer. Not surprisingly, when he settles down to work, he soon realises that the task he has set himself is not as straightforward as it first seemed. And by the time the elderly Wilhelm calls round, Kemmel is quite exasperated: ‘Can you believe it, I just don’t know what men look like!’, he exclaims. Having set up a mirror in an attempt to model the statue on himself, he soon abandons the idea, clearly ill at ease when confronted with an image of himself (Figure 4.3). For Kemmel, accustomed as he is to observing the female form, the observation of a male body (especially his own) is an experience that is both alien and disconcerting. Here he becomes conscious, perhaps for

Figure 4.3 Studies in masculinity in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz. © DEFA-Stiftung/Wolfgang Bangemann, Alexander Kühn. Published with permission.

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the first time, of what it feels like to be the object of the artist’s gaze. For when he goes to visit a female-photographer friend of his, the intensity with which she examines her reflection close-up in the mirror stands in marked contrast to his reluctance to do so earlier. And when he questions her about a series of pictures she has taken of elderly women laughing, asking her whether they minded being photographed, her reply – ‘No, you see I’m not a stranger in their eyes’ – reminds us of the different dynamic inherent in the relationship of the female artist to her female subject matter. Her uncomplicated relationship both to her (female) models and to her own femininity serves to underline just how problematic Kemmel’s relationship to his (male) models and to his own masculinity is. Nowhere is the problematic relationship of men to their own bodies more clearly revealed than at the moment when Kemmel finally unveils his male nude to the representatives of Traktor 04, prompting their exclamation of shocked disbelief: ‘He’s naked!’ Yet while they protest on the grounds of ‘propriety’, pointing out that women and young girls attend the matches of Traktor 04, the comic potential of the sequence derives from the fact that, perhaps for the first time, these men are compelled to reflect on their own relationship to their masculinity and to what it means to be the object of the gaze themselves. This aspect of the film is explored in some depth in the sequences in which Kemmel visits a construction site in search of a suitable model. In stark contrast to the ease with which he approaches a complete stranger (an attractive woman standing next to him in a supermarket queue) and asks if he can draw her, his initial conversations with the brigade-leader, Hannes, are difficult, tense and punctuated by prolonged embarrassed silences. For Hannes and his colleagues – whose view of what artists do is articulated by one of their number when he says ‘Don’t they usually do nude women?’ – the presence of the artist in their midst constitutes a threat to their sense of their own masculinity. The idea that there is something vaguely indecent about agreeing to act as an artist’s model is also hinted at in the tone of Hannes’s remark that: ‘The majority of colleagues are not in favour of that kind of thing.’ For these men, locked as they are in a conventional world of their own making, art is not a means to truth and self-understanding, but rather something that is merely decorative. As such, it is, in stark contrast to the ‘masculine’ world of work that they inhabit, an essentially ‘feminine’ activity. Kemmel, of course, has a far better understanding of the real value of art than they do. But even he discovers that he has something to learn

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about the power of art as a means to self-understanding; for when he decides to embark on a study of the male, as opposed to the female, form, he discovers that he is far more caught up in the conventions of the predominantly male-oriented world in which he lives than he might have suspected. Indeed, his struggle with the nude male body extends beyond questions of gender and comes to symbolise a process of introspection in which the artist’s gaze is turned not outward, but inward and on to his own identity as an artist in a socialist society. In this way Wolf’s film reminds us that art has its own special dynamic, insofar as it is never a straightforward process of communication between the artist and his audience, but rather a complex three-way relationship in which the artist himself is always implicated. Kemmel is, of course, not the only character to develop in the film. After some persuasion, Hannes agrees to act as Kemmel’s model and in time a relationship of trust develops between the two men. Here too Wolf’s film echoes, once again, the sentiments of Brecht’s ‘Betrachtung der Kunst und Kunst der Betrachtung’ and the view that ‘in order to be able to enjoy art it is never sufficient just to sit back in comfort and consume the end-result of a process of artistic production; it’s essential to be involved in the process of production and even to some extent to be productive’.75 And when Hannes visits Kemmel in his studio and reports the reactions of the other construction workers to the ­sculpture – ‘We had a discussion about why people do that sort of thing

Figure 4.4 The art of seeing. Hannes and the artist Kemmel in dialogue in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz. © DEFA-Stiftung/Wolfgang Bangemann, Alexander Kühn. Published with permission.

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. . . today, I mean’ – it is clear that now there is at least dialogue on art where formerly there was only silence (Figure 4.4). Moreover, Hannes’s newfound curiosity regarding the artist’s work not only bears out the truth of Wolfgang Kohlhaase’s observation that ‘there’s only way to understand art and that’s by getting involved in art’, but at the same time points to the opening up of a new world of aesthetic experience. Or as Brecht would have it, what Hannes learns from his encounter with the artist Kemmel is the ‘art of seeing’ (‘Die Kunst der Betrachtung’).76 While Wolf’s earlier film Goya invited comparisons with Tarkovsky’s epic masterpiece Andrei Rublev, the episodic character of Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz calls to mind Giorgi Shengelaia’s equally understated film Pirosmani (1969). Broadcast on East German television on 24 November 1972, Shengelaia’s film about the self-taught Georgian painter Nikolo Pirosmani (1862–1919) was one of the most influential artist-films in the GDR.77 Pirosmani’s works had been posthumously ‘rediscovered’ and exhibited for the first time in Paris in 1969, and in 1972 interest in the naïve artist had been further stimulated by Picasso’s portrait of the naïve painter. Pirosmani’s enduring significance for filmmakers and artists in the GDR was such that he features prominently in Jürgen Böttcher’s much later documentary In Georgien [In Georgia, 1987].78 Like Henri Rousseau, a figure to whom he is often compared,79 Pirosmani was seen as a figure whose ‘naïve’ art was diametrically opposed to the norms of the academy and was celebrated by avant-garde artists such as Braque and Picasso as forming a bridge between the past and the present. Given that Pirosmani’s art, associated as it was with the city and surroundings of Tbilisi, had an ambivalent character that combined elements of both European and Asian aesthetics, it is not hard to understand why his work should appeal to those members of the artistic intelligentsia in the GDR such as Wolf, Kohlhaase and Böttcher who looked as much to the East as to the West in their quest for new and alternative forms that went beyond conventional realism. At first sight, the similarities between Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz and Pirosmani are far from obvious. Nonetheless, in each film, the subtle blend of humour and melancholy together with the episodic structure of the two films point to a deeper affinity that finds its expression in the two artist protagonists, Kemmel and Pirosmani. Just as Kemmel operates in a profoundly ‘everyday’ milieu, so too Pirosmani’s artistic endeavours take place within the provincial setting of the taverns and farmhouses of Georgia. Both Kemmel and

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Pirosmani set out on a quest to find their place within their respective societies and to create works of art that are capable of transcending the predominantly utilitarian concerns of the local population and expanding the limits of their imagination. Like Kemmel, Pirosmani often fails in his attempt to reach out with his art to those around him, and yet here too – as Pirosmani’s subsequent rediscovery half a century later underlines – the appreciation of a work of art is depicted as a process that is not instantaneous, but one requiring the passage of time.80 It is perhaps hardly surprising that Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz was not a hit at the box office. In a discussion of the film at the Verband der Film- und Fernsehschaffenden in January 1974, Klaus Wischnewski commented that ‘Kemmel’s problems, the questions he poses, and the way in which, generally speaking, he makes life difficult for himself, these are both the film’s qualities and difficulties  – problems we encounter in socialist filmmaking in today’s world’.81 Inevitably such an introspective, episodic film82 was ill-suited to the demands of Massenwirksamkeit and a public whose taste was increasingly being shaped by film imports from the West and the availability of Hollywood films on West German TV channels. Indeed, there is a note of resignation in Wolfgang Kohlhaase’s remarks about the pernicious effect of films from the West when he comments that: ‘It’s not we who dictate cinema-goers’ tastes. I’m just stating a fact. I don’t know to what extent we can change that.’83 For the director Wolf, Kemmel’s anxieties mirrored not only his own predicament as an artist of the over-forties generation, but also his own concerns as to how the tradition of antifascist filmmaking could be extended and in ways that would reach a young audience for whom the Second World War was an increasingly distant phenomenon. Yet looking back at this film, it is hard to dismiss this humorous and thought-provoking work as one rooted in the crisis of GDR cinema in the early 1970s. Indeed, Kemmel’s observation when he talks with the LPG-Vorsitzende about his disappointment at the rejection of one of his works reads almost like a commentary on the fate of Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz itself. For, as he points out: ‘Providing that it’s not completely hopeless everything has something that you see straight away, and something that you don’t see straight away. It just has to stand there for a while so you can look at it in the light. From this angle and that.’

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Notes   1. For an in-depth study of the Eleventh Plenum’s impact on film production in 1965/66, see Andreas Kötzing and Ralf Schenk (eds), Verbotene Utopie: Die SED, die DEFA und das 11. Plenum (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2015).   2. For a discussion of Wolf’s attitude towards the Eleventh Plenum, see Aune Renk, ‘Zur Position von Konrad Wolf’, in Günter Agde (ed), Kahlschlag. Das 11. Plenum des ZK der SED. Studien und Dokumente (Aufbau: Berlin, 2000), pp. 383–94.  3. Konrad Wolf, ‘Mut für das Neue’ (26.12.1965), in Aune Renk (ed), Konrad Wolf: Direkt in Kopf und Herz. Aufzeichnungen, Reden, Interviews (Berlin: Henschel, 1989), p. 109.   4. ‘Aus dem Kommuniqué der Plenartagung der deutschen Akademie der Künste 2. März 1966’ [= AdK [ZAA 436]]. Reproduced in Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künste, ed., in Zusammenhang mit Inge Jens; ausgewählt und kommentiert von Ulrich Dietzel und Gudrun Geißler; mit einem Vorwort von Inge Jens, Zwischen Diskussion und Disziplin: Dokumente zur Geschichte der Akademie der Künste (Ost) 1945/50–1993 (Berlin: Henschel, 1997), p. 293.   5. Erich Honecker, ‘Stenographisches Protokoll der 11. Tagung, Bericht des Politbüros, Berichterstatter Erich Honecker’ (BArch DY 30/IV/2/1, Nr 336). Also published (in an edited form) in Neues Deutschland, 16 December 1965. For a similar line of argument, see Alfred Kurella, ‘Man “trägt” Skepsis’, Neues Deutschland, 15 December 1965.  6. Konrad Wolf, ‘Plenartagung am 2.3.1966’, Archiv der Akademie der Künste der DDR, Adk [ZAA 423].  7. Ibid.   8. Marta Feuchtwanger, ‘Ich sah Goya . . .’, Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft 26(3) (1985), 66–71, at 67. Feuchtwanger’s explicit rejection of such ‘aestheticism’ features prominently in the document ‘Gedanken zur Verfilmung des Romans Goya – oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis von Lion Feuchtwanger’ dated September 1966 (no author, Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Konrad-Wolf-Archiv, 597).   9. Janka himself had got to know the Feuchtwangers in his capacity as the director of the Mexican-based publishing house El Libro Libre that between 1942 and 1946 published a large number of works by German exile writers (including Feuchtwanger’s Unholdes Frankreich in 1941). 10. ‘Grundsatzfragen zum Film Goya: 19 October 1964’, Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Konrad-Wolf-Archiv, 597. 11. Excerpts of the extensive correspondence between Walter Janka and Marta Feuchtwanger regarding the development of the script are reproduced in Ruth Herlinghaus (ed.), Goya. Vom Roman zum Film: Eine Dokumentation zum Film von Konrad Wolf [= Arbeitshefte der Akademie der Künste zu Berlin, No. 7 (1971)], pp. 15–23. At the same time, her generous offer meant that she was in a position to insist on Janka’s continued involvement in the project, a condition that was to play a key role in helping her friend of many years to re-establish himself in GDR society. See Walter Janka, Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1989), p. 121. 12. Letter of 26 January 1968 from Siegfried Wagner to Arno Hochmuth, ZK der SED, cited in Wolfgang Jacobsen and Rolf Aurich, Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf (Berlin: Aufbau, 2005), p. 341.

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13. ‘Entwurf eines Informationsbriefes für den Genossen Hager betr. Goya-Film und Dienstleistungen für CCC-Film Arthur Brauner’ (Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Konrad-Wolf-Archiv, 597). 14. Ibid. 15. For a detailed discussion of the negotiations with Brauner in the mid 1960s, see Jacobsen and Aurich, Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf, pp. 340–46. 16. Letter of 16 May 1966 from KAG Heinrich Greif to Frank Bruk (Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Konrad-Wolf-Archiv, 597). 17. ‘Stellungnahme von Anton Ackermann vom 14. Februar 1969 zum Drehbuch in der 1. Fassung vom 15.11.1968 (‘Nachlass Ackermann’ = BArch NY 4109). 18. The appearance of Otero (Pablo de Olavide, the governor of Seville) at the auto-da-fé would suggest that this takes place in 1775, yet one of the paintings associated with this sequence is A Village Bullfight completed in 1812–14. 19. As the closing lines of his novel indicate, Feuchtwanger clearly intended to produce a continuation of the novel. 20. See Konrad Wolf, ‘Aussprache über die Rohschnittfassung des Films’ in Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, pp.  150–57, at p.  150; and ‘Wie nahe ist Goya dem Zuschauer von 1971?’, Junge Welt, 17 September 1971. 21. Writing in the Revue LITTERAIRE on 25 November 1957, Feuchtwanger notes that: ‘It was the fate of [Goya’s] nation that, despite a deep-seated reluctance on his part, drove him to embrace politics.’ Reproduced in Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, p. 5. 22. The author, Francis D. Klingender (1907–55), was a Marxist art historian from Britain. Although his monograph on Goya was written during the Spanish Civil War, it was not published until 1948. It seems hardly coincidental that a second edition of the German translation Goya und die demokratische Tradition Spaniens was published by the Henschelverlag in 1971, the same year in which the Wolf’s film adaptation was released. 23. See also the volume produced to accompany the film: Kurt Stern and Jeanne Stern, Unbändiges Spanien (Berlin: Verlag der Nation, 1964), pp. 22–23 and 28–29. Kurt Stern had been one of the advisors on Helmut Spieß’s film Tilman Riemenschneider. 24. For an analysis of the relationship between Goya’s psychological development and the décor of the sets, see Alfred Krautz ‘Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis (1971): Die Charakterisierung des Helden durch seine Lebensräume’, in Konrad Wolf. Neue Sichten auf seine Filme: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte der DDR [= Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft, No. 39 (1990)], pp. 146–54. 25. The theatrical character of the auto-da-fé in the cathedral suggests a number of striking parallels both with the Rudolf Slánsk´y show-trials in Prague during the early 1950s and Walter Janka’s own trial in the GDR in 1957. See Artur London, L’Aveu: Dans l’Engrenage du Procès de Prague (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), especially Chapter 4; and Janka, Schwierigkeiten mit der Wahrheit, pp. 79–112. 26. Konrad Wolf, ‘Zur Erkenntnis führen’, Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft 26(3) (1985), 197–201, at 198 (orginally published in an extended form in Sowjetska kultura, 21 September 1971). 27. See, for example, Claude Keisch, who highlights the differences between the role of the Third Estate in France and Spain at the time of the French Revolution, and argues that popular nationalism in Spain constituted a serious obstacles to the introduction of enlightened reforms. Claude Keisch, ‘Bemerkungen zum literarischen Szenarium’, in Herlinghaus, Goya: Vom Roman zum Film, pp.  26–30. See also Karlheinz Barck

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‘Historische und kulturgeschichtliche Detailstudien zum Film’, in Herlinghaus, Goya: Vom Roman zum Film, pp. 43–46. 28. For a discussion of Goya’s signature in terms of an opposition of the ‘depersonalised sublimity of Genius and the Authoritarian sublime’, see Larson Powell, ‘Breaking the Frame of Painting. Konrad Wolf’s Goya’, Studies in European Cinema 5(2) (2008), 131–41, especially at 138–39. 29. See Alexander Dymschitz’s letter of 17 February 1971 to Irina Pawlowna, the head dramaturge at LENFilm (Archiv der Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Konrad-WolfArchiv, 603). 30. See the response of the New York Times 16 February 1974 to Solzhenitsyn’s deportation on 13 February 1974. 31. In addition to the films listed, Wolf also confirms that he saw Gleb Panfilov’s V ogne broda net [Durchs Feuer führt keine Furt/No Path through Fire (1968)] and Tengiz Abuiladze’s highly experimental Vedreba [Das Gebet/The Entreaty (1967)] in his conversation with Ruth Herlinghaus. See ‘Gespräche mit Konrad Wolf. Erstes Gespräch’, in Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, pp. 11–15, at p. 12. 32. Ibid., p. 13. 33. An earlier (205-minute) version of the film The Passion according to Andrei had been released in 1966. 34. Andrey Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time, trans. Kitty Hunter-Blair (London: Faber & Faber, 1989), p. 38. 35. Aussprache über die Rohschnittfassung des Films (15.10.1970) in Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, pp.  150–57 (cf. p.  154). Contrasting the two final montage sequences in each film, Larson Powell sees them as diametrically opposed, with the closing sequence of Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis reflecting Wolf’s ‘Marxian preference for history as against Tarkovsky’s cosmic liturgy’. See Powell, ‘Breaking the Frame’, p. 135. 36. ‘Gespräche mit Konrad Wolf. 2’, in Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, pp.  30–34, at p.  34. See also Konrad Wolf, ‘Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis’, Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft 26(3) (1985), 190–96, especially at 190 (orginally published in an extended form in Kinoiskustwo 2 (1970), 46–51. 37. ‘Gespräche mit Konrad Wolf. 2’, p. 31. 38. Ibid., p. 32. 39. Ibid., p. 31. 40. Günter Witt, ‘Wie eine Inquisition’ in Agde, Kahlschlag, pp. 339–44, at p. 342. 41. Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, p. 14. 42. Ibid. 43. Elimar Schubbe (ed), Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED, 1946–1970 (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1972), pp. 1310–15, at p. 1314. 44. Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, p. 13. 45. Hermann Herlinghaus, ‘Gespräch mit Konrad Wolf’, Weimarer Beiträge 12 (1971), 10–15, at 11. 46. Ibid, p. 67. 47. Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, p. 21. 48. Walter Janka, ‘Kein Experiment Goya, und kein Wettlauf’, in Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, pp. 15–23, at p. 16. 49. See Hermann Herlinghaus (ed.), Konrad Wolf – Sag’ dein Wort! Dokumentation – eine Auswahl [= Aus Theorie und Praxis des Films; Sonderdruck, 1982], p. 83.

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50. ‘Entwurf: Maßnahmeplan zum Einsatz des Goya-Films in der Hauptstadt der DDR’ (BArch DR 1-Z /180). 51. Marta Feuchtwanger, ‘Ich sah Goya’, Beiträge zur Film und Fernsehen 26 (1985), 66–71, at 69. 52. ‘Aussprache über die Rohschnittfassung des Films’, in Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, p. 155. 53. See, for example, the title of the review ‘Wie nahe ist Goya dem Zuschauer von 1971?’, Junge Welt, 17 September 1971. 54. ‘Akademie-Dialog über den Film Goya’, Mitteilungen der Akademie der Künste zu Berlin 10(4) (1972), 2–4 (reproduced as ‘Zuschauerreaktionen auf Goya’, in Herlinghaus (ed.), Konrad Wolf, pp. 82–86). 55. Erich Honecker, ‘Wirklichkeitsnähe, Volksverbundenheit und Parteilichkeit. Bericht des ZK an den VIII. Parteitag, 15. Juni 1971’, in Gisela Rüß (ed.), Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED 1971–1974 (Stuttgart: Seewald, 1976), pp. 180–82, at pp. 180–81. 56. Erich Honecker, ‘Zu aktuellen Fragen bei der Verwirklichung der Beschlüsse unseres VIII. Parteitages’, Neues Deutschland, 18 December 1971 (reproduced in Rüß, Dokumente zur Kunst-, Literatur- und Kulturpolitik der SED 1971–1974, pp. 287–88, at p. 287). 57. See, for example, the vigorous debates in the predominantly literary journal Sinn und Form in the early 1970s. For a detailed overview, see Stephen Parker and Matthew Philpotts, Sinn und Form: The Anatomy of a Literary Journal (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), especially pp. 94–115. 58. Konrad Wolf, ‘Eine Schwere, die nicht niederdrückt, sondern uns stärkt’, Neues Deutschland, 21 July 1972. 59. Regina Scheer and Ingo Ostermaier, ‘Gespräch mit dem Bildhauer Fritz Cremer’, Forum 3 (1973), 1 and 3. 60. Carel Fischer, ‘Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz’, Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft 31 (1990), 155–67. 61. Anton Ackermann, ‘Buch und Regie’, in Herlinghaus, Goya. Vom Roman zum Film, pp. 160–62, at p. 160. 62. Konrad Wolf, ‘Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz. Regiekonzeption, 1972’, in Renk, Konrad Wolf, pp. 221–22, at p. 222. 63. ‘Gespräch mit Wolfgang Kohlhaase und Konrad Wolf am 26.9.1973’, in Regine Sylvester, Heiner Sylvester, Hans Lohmann and Manfred Fritzsche (eds), Filmmonographie: ‘Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz [= Aus Theorie und Praxis 1/1974], 1–14 (3). 64. Stötzer’s early works include Sitzender Junge [Boy Sitting, 1956] in Berlin’s ErichWeinert Straße, and Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters [Questions of a Reading Worker, 1959] in the courtyard of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin, and the bronze relief Babi Jar (1967). His first solo exhibition had been in East Berlin’s Nationalgalerie in 1960. For an overview of Stötzer’s work, see Inge Zimmermann (ed.), Werner Stötzer (Berlin: Akademie der Künste, 2016). 65. See ‘Gespräch mit Werner Stötzer am 12.10.1973’, Filmmonographie: ‘Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz’, pp. 15–23. 66. ‘Er war ausschließlich an Menschen interessiert’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 23 July 2010. 67. Konrad Wolf, ‘Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz: Dialog am Abend, 31. Mai 1974’, in Dieter Heinze and Ludwig Hoffmann (eds), Konrad Wolf im Dialog: Künste und Politik (Berlin: Dietz, 1985), pp. 162–74, at pp. 163–64.

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68. Kurt Maetzig in ‘Stenografisches Protokoll über die Diskussion zum Film Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz am 11.1.1974 im Verband der Film- und Fernsehschaffenden, p. 15 [Potsdam Filmmuseum, Nachlass Hermann Herlinghaus]. 69. Sylvester et al., Filmmonographie, pp. 11–12. 70. For a commentary on the development of Lammert’s memorial, see Marlies Lammert, Will Lammert: Ravensbrück (Berlin: Deutsche Akademie der Künste zu Berlin, 1968). 71. Tobias Ebbrecht, ‘Die Unruhe des Künstlers: Kunst, Erinnerung und Geschichte in Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz’, in Michael Wedel and Elke Schieber (eds), Konrad Wolf. Werk und Wirkung [= Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft, No. 63], pp. 145–65, at p. 158. 72. See Heinze and Hoffmann, Konrad Wolf im Dialog, p. 167. 73. William Carlos Williams, ‘Landscape with the Fall of Icarus’ (1960): ‘unsignificantly / off the coast / there was / a splash quite unnoticed / this was / Icarus drowning’. 74. Bertolt Brecht, ‘Betrachtung der Kunst und Kunst der Betrachtung: Reflexionen über die Porträtkunst in der Bildhauerei’, in Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei and Klaus-Detlef Müller (eds), Bertolt Brecht. Werke. Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1993), vol. 22, pp. 569–74, at p. 570. Originally written in 1939, Brecht’s essay had been published in the art magazine Bildende Kunst in May 1962. 75. Bertolt Brecht, ‘Betrachtung der Kunst’, Vol. 22.1, p. 571. 76. See Sylvester, Filmmonographie, p. 3. 77. See Margit Voss’ review of the film, ‘Ein Maler, der sein Volk kannte und liebte’, Neues Deutschland, 29 November 1972, in which she characterises the film in terms of the painter’s struggle for recognition within an essentially philistine world. In a subsequent review for the popular magazine Filmspiegel, she notes the way in which the cinematography of the film invites the spectator to view the world depicted through the aesthetic of Pirosmani’s paintings themselves. See, Margit Voss, ‘Von der Schönheit angerührt’, Filmspiegel 1 (1975), 8. 78. Pirosmani’s resonance was not solely confined to the GDR. In Botho Strauß’s play Trilogie des Wiedersehens, the painter Peter recounts the Georgian artist’s fate as an example of a forlorn quest for aesthetic transcendence in the face of an increasingly commercialised art market. Botho Strauß, Trilogie des Wiedersehens: Theaterstück / Groß und Klein. Szenen (Munich: dtv, 1980), pp. 56–57. 79. See, for instance, H.U, ‘Im Stile eines großen Malers. Georgi Schengelajas Film Pirosmani’, Neue Zeit, 29 August 1974. 80. Scriptwriter Wolfgang Kohlhaase refers to the process of artistic creation as requiring the qualities of a long-distance runner (‘Langstreckenlauf’). See Wolf, ‘Dialog am Abend’, p. 167. 81. Stenografisches Protokoll über die Diskussion zum Film Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz am 11.1.1974 im Verband der Film- und Fernsehschaffenden. [= Potsdam Filmmuseum, Nachlass Hermann Herlinghaus]. 82. Harry Blunk observes, quite correctly, that: ‘Was viele Gegenwartsfilme der DEFA nur zu sein vorgeben, ist Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz wirklich: ein episodischer Film.’ See Harry Blunk, Die DDR in ihren Spielfilmen: Reproduktion und Konzeption der DDR-Gesellschaft im neueren DEFA-Gegenwartsfilm (Munich: Profil, 1984), p. 276. 83. Ibid.

Chapter 5

New Ways of Seeing Jürgen Böttcher and the Transformation of Tradition

In attempting to prepare the ground for a better understanding of modernist aesthetics, Wolf’s film Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz reflects the far-reaching changes in East German cultural policy that were taking place during the early 1970s. Honecker’s commitment to artistic freedom in his ‘no taboos’ speech of 1971 was to a certain extent qualified by a reminder from Kurt Hager, in his address of 6 July 1972 to the 6th Conference of the SED’s Central Committee, that embracing the new doctrine of ‘breadth and diversity’ should not be misinterpreted as a licence to embrace the avant-garde modernism of the 1920s and 1930s: If we take the decision to embrace the breadth and diversity of socialist realism, and permit greater freedom as far as creative experiments in this direction are concerned, that nonetheless rules out any concessions to a concept of art rooted in bourgeois imperialist culture.1

However, despite such warnings, a number of factors in the 1970s made it increasingly difficult to adhere to a narrowly defined concept of socialist realism. First, following the mutual recognition of the GDR and the FRG as sovereign states in 1973 and membership of the United Nations that same year, there was a greater willingness (and need) to engage with cultural developments in the West generally. Second, the possibility of viewing West German channels together with the increasing availability of television sets in the GDR meant that it was much harder for the SED leadership to isolate its populace from

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cultural developments taking place beyond the boundaries of the state. Indeed, for the very first time in 1977, a series of works by East German artists (including Bernhard Heisig, Willi Sitte and Werner Tübke) were exhibited at the documenta, the exhibition of contemporary art that, from 1955, had been staged every five years in the West German town of Kassel.2 Third, the amalgamation of a number of galleries under the umbrella organisation the Staatlicher Kunsthandel der DDR in 1976 and the inclusion of works by East German artists at the Basel Art Fair for the first time in 1981 reflected a growing awareness that there were collectors in the West who were willing to pay hard convertible currency for high-quality works of art from the GDR. Last but not least, a new generation of East Germans who had grown up in the GDR was approaching adulthood, and this generation, lacking any first-hand experience of the Second World War, had a different understanding of antifascist art and of the relationship between aesthetics and politics. Although the expatriation of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann in November 1976 following his criticism of the GDR at a rock concert in Cologne served as an unwelcome reminder of the limits of the East German government’s willingness to tolerate open political dissent, it is important not to allow that moment of crisis to obscure the progress that was being made on a number of fronts in the cultural politics of the early 1970s. In particular, the death of Picasso on 8 April 1973 provided the occasion to revisit the question of what a progressive form of painterly modernism might look like. Initially, critics writing in Bildende Kunst went on the defensive, portraying Picasso as, first and foremost, a realist: Picasso can be seen as representative of modern art as understood in bourgeois society; nonetheless he did not endorse its fundamental maxim that the material reality of the social milieu in which an artist works should be rejected in favour of a view of artistic creativity that privileges instead the private subjective world of the artist’s mind.3

The intellectual gymnastics involved in maintaining such a position merely underlined the need for a more nuanced theory of realist aesthetics, and in March 1974, the Verband Bildender Künstler (VBK) organised a seminar entitled ‘Die Erweiterung und Präzisierung unserer Realismus-Auffassungen’ [‘Extending and Sharpening Our Concepts of Realism’], which  – perhaps drawing on the SED’s new policy of ‘breadth and diversity’ in aesthetics  – sought to expose the limitations of attempting to work within a narrowly defined paradigm of realism. Accordingly, the group argued that even socialist realism

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itself could, and should, not be reduced to a normative style, and that there was a much wider range of ‘realist’ forms than had hitherto been acknowledged by the SED’s more dogmatic cultural theorists. In particular, the group pointed to realist works of art that eschewed closure and that portrayed internal conflicts as an essential aspect of reality, while at the same time arguing that such polyvalent works of art should not be seen as symptomatic of the ideological or technical shortcomings of individual artists.4 The issues debated at the VBK’s seminar were also echoed in a series of articles published in 1974 in the art magazine Bildende Kunst, whose subject matter (‘Is One-Point Perspective Obsolete?’ and ‘Chaos as a Commentary on Our Time’) reflected the new mood of openness.5 At the VII Congress of the VBK that same year, the painter Bernhard Heisig noted that despite the continuing insistence in some quarters to steer clear of ‘Western modernism’, it was no longer possible to define such a concept precisely, adding that: ‘If people feel inspired by Max Ernst or Henry Moore, then so be it. What matters is the resulting work of art.’6 One possible way forward was provided by the art historian and VBK member Peter Feist, who, in an article of 1976 on contemporary approaches to socialist realism in the GDR, proposed a subdivision of the genre into four categories: first, naturalistic realism (unmittelbarer Realismus) predicated on a concept of verisimilitude; second, expressive realism (expressiver Realismus), in which an intensification of form and the deployment of primitivist elements is evident; third, constructivist realism (konstruktivistischer Realismus) that stood in contrast to conventional objectivism and in which knowledge of the world is presented as socially constructed; and, finally, metaphorical or imaginary realism (metaphorischer oder imaginativer Realismus), in which elements of fantasy are clearly discernible.7 In addition, Feist went to address one of the key (and as-yet unresolved) issues in East German cultural politics, namely the place and function of abstract art (Abstraktionismus) within a concept of socialist art. As he noted, although abstract art had once been dismissed as elitist and as incapable of articulating a progressive and historically grounded vision of the world, elements of abstract art were commonplace in the GDR, especially in the fields of applied art and design. For that reason, Feist suggested, the way forward was to accept that ‘certainly there were at least some fundamental propositions that, although well-suited to the nature and remit of socialistrealist art, could also be articulated using abstract compositions; what really mattered was to analyse a work’s underlying ideology and the view of life, qualities that were also evident in abstract works of art’.8

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Inevitably one consequence of Feist’s division of socialist realism into four subcategories was to broaden the concept to such an extent that it became almost meaningless as an aesthetic category. As another delegate at the forum, Irma Emmrich, objected, Feist’s redefinition of the term rendered it little more than a synonym for art itself and that there was no artistic style that could not somehow be subsumed under the rubric of ‘socialist realism’.9 At a subsequent meeting of the VBK that year, the art historian Klaus Weidner took the discussion further and argued for the need to recognise different degrees of abstraction, while at the same time postulating a degree of continuity between abstract art and the geometrical forms of the natural world: Not long ago some of the new generation of artists have discovered abstract art. Their arguments against figurative art [das Literarische] and/or art that is openly political [äußerlich agitatorisch] are often closely related to those of Wassily Kandinsky. There are other older artists who have never stopped working with abstract forms. It’s rare to encounter a truly radical work of abstract art; for the most part what we have are compositions that reflect the same laws of form as we find in the natural world.10

As the opening of an exhibition in April 1977 dedicated to the work of the GDR’s most celebrated constructivist, Hermann Glöckner, underlines, the debates within the VBK played a key role in creating a climate in which the contribution of nonfigurative/abstract and art to a more loosely defined notion of socialist art (rather than socialist realism) could be recognised and acknowledged.11 At the same time, the presentation of these debates in the pages of the art magazine Bildende Kunst was instrumental in the creation of a more historically oriented perspective on developments in East German art of the kind to be found in the catalogue to the 1979 exhibition in Berlin’s Altes Museum entitled Weggefährten – Zeitgenossen: Bildende Kunst aus drei Jahrzehnten [Companions and Contemporaries: Art of Three Decades] that was held to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the GDR. Indeed, it is striking that, in his introductory essay for the catalogue, Günter Feist points out that the origins of East German art should not be traced back to the ‘founding years’ of 1949/50, but rather to the post-1945 period, that is to say, to a period in which socialist realism was but one of a range of different approaches to modernist aesthetics.12 By the same token, Hermann Raum’s contribution on the art of the 1970s seeks to explain the move towards abstraction not only in terms of the rise of a new generation of artists born into the GDR, but also in terms of ‘myth’

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and a quest ‘for timeless interpretations of historical events’ and a more deeply rooted concept of humanist values.13

Nature and Abstraction: Jürgen Böttcher The impact of the discussions taking place at the VBK during the mid to late 1970s regarding the continuity between the geometrical forms to be found in the natural world and their representation and/ or embodiment in abstract art is most obvious in the films of Jürgen Böttcher and, in particular, in his two documentaries Im Lohmgrund [In the Lohm Quarry, 1977] and Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner [A Short Visit to Hermann Glöckner, 1985]. In the documentary Im Lohmgrund, Böttcher picks up where he had left off with Drei von vielen and explores the relationship of the sculptor Peter Makolies not only to the stone on which he is working, but also to the quarrymen whose task it is to excavate the colossal blocks of sandstone from the hillside. In Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner, by contrast, the spectator is invited to reflect on questions of idealist aesthetics and, in particular, on the relationship of abstract constructivist art to the materiality of the natural world. Located some 30 km south of Dresden, the Lohm quarry is one of the most important sources of Elbe sandstone, a key source of material in the construction of Dresden’s Frauenkirche and a stone much favoured by sculptors on account of its durability. In Böttcher’s film, however, the quarry provides the setting for an extended reflection on the relationship between art and nature. By 1977, the year of the film’s release, Peter Makolies was no longer a mason restoring damaged monuments, but an established sculptor in his own right whose work had been exhibited in both Dresden’s Leonhardi Museum and in the Winckelmann-Museum in the town of Stendal. Having been admitted to membership of the VBK in 1965, he had organised the first of what would become annual seminars on sculpture (the so-called ‘Dresdener Bildhauersymposium’) at the Lohm quarry in 1975. However, the documentary Im Lohmgrund is anything but a portrait of the artist; indeed, both he and Hartmut Bonk, the other sculptor working on the site, appear almost as anonymous figures when set against the huge expanse of the quarry itself. As the film unfolds, the boundary between the labour of the two sculptors and that of the regular employees removing the stone using a combination of crowbars and pneumatic drills becomes increasingly blurred (Figure 5.1).

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Figure 5.1 The artist Peter Makolies at work in Im Lohmgrund. © DEFAStiftung/Thomas Plenert. Published with permission.

As the two professional sculptors use their own set of wedges and hammers to shape the crude blocks of stone into recognisable forms, their work of refining and shaping the stone increasingly comes across as an extension of the hard physical labour of the quarrymen. Rather than position Makolies and Bonk in a hierarchical relationship to the workers in this industrial milieu, the film depicts the quarry as a space in which the gulf between art and life (labour) has been successfully bridged and in which the close cooperation of artist and artisan  – together with a recognition of what it is that they have in common in respect of their relationship to the stone  – is reflected in the relaxed manner in which the two sculptors eat, joke and relax with the other workers. When Makolies’ huge figure Große Sitzende [Large Sitting Female, 1977] is loaded onto the truck, the quarrymen are not alienated by what they see, but gather round in muted admiration as the statue is driven away to be exhibited in the town centre of Frankfurt/Oder. While on one level Böttcher’s film focuses on the sheer physicality of working with stone, on another it can be read as an extended meditation on the relationship between space, time and temporality. In the voiceover accompanying the opening sequence in which Böttcher notes

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that the entire landscape is made up of former sandstone quarries, the juxtaposition of the primordial forests shrouded in mist and the exposed hillside of the Lohm quarry serves as a reminder that the transformation of organic material into rock is a cyclical process that takes place on a timescale so extended as to be almost beyond the limits of human comprehension. In this respect, Böttcher’s film offers a cinematic commentary on Jean (Hans) Arp’s concept of concretion: ‘Concretion designates the solidification of a mass. Concretion designates curdling, the curdling of the earth and the heavenly bodies. Concretion designates solidification, the mass of the stone, the plant, the animal, the man. Concretion is something that has grown.’14 Searching for the figure in the stone as both Makolies and Bonk do is, of course, also a long and arduous process and one that, as the voiceover confirms, the film crew have been following for over ten weeks. Yet the endeavours of the two sculptors are thrown into sharp relief by the contrast between the limited span of their lives as artists and the almost infinite temporality of the material with which they are working. These sentiments are echoed in a short text written by Makolies several years later and included in the catalogue to the ‘Erste Phalanx Nedserd’ exhibition of 1991: Let us assume that humanity destroys both itself and the natural world. Then sculptors might, with some justification, entertain the hope that subsequent beings would rummage through the debris of our good old world in search of signs of an earlier race of human beings.   The Winckelmanns and Schliemanns of the future would come across that which survived our downfall.   It might be stones carved in the form of a lost race of humans. And they will reflect on what life was like back then.15

On one level, there is a striking similarity between the archaeologist’s modus operandi and that of the sculptor chiselling at a block of stone: in both cases, the task is to discover and uncover pre-existing objects and forms through the removal of extraneous material. Speaking at the Magdeburg Plastik-Kolloqium of 1977, Makolies refers to ‘the pleasure to be gained from seeking and discovering a form in the  face of the stone’s immediate and uncompromising resistance’ as ‘the most natural form of sculpture’.16 However, on another level, Makolies’ remarks above together with Böttcher’s commentary on the sculptor’s relationship to the stone in Im Lohmgrund reflect a cast of mind in which sculpture is intimately linked with mythical and archetypal forms of the kind embodied in the quasi-primitivist figure Große Sitzende. As such, the film also reflects not only the impact of cubist sculptors such as Henri Laurens (1885–1954) and Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967), but also

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the growing influence of Henry Moore (1898–1986) on East German sculpture of the 1970s. Indeed, it is tempting to see the new interiority of Makolies’ monumentalist figures and the biomorphic qualities of his increasingly abstract works of the late 1970s and early 1980s as a creative response to Moore’s observation that, as he put it, ‘my sculpture is becoming less representational, less an outward visual copy, and so what people would call more abstract; but only because I believe that in this way I can present the human psychological content of my work with the greatest directness and intensity’.17

Constructivism Revisited: Hermann Glöckner The relationship between nature and abstract art also lies at the heart of Böttcher’s portrait of the German constructivist Hermann Glöckner in the film Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner (1985). Born in Dresden in 1889, Hermann Glöckner first worked as a textile designer while simultaneously attending classes held by Karl Rade at Dresden’s Kunstwerbeschule from 1904 to 1911. After studying at the Akademie der Künste in Dresden from 1923 to 1924, Glöckner became increasingly fascinated by geometrical form and constructivist approaches to art. This interest was further stimulated by the works by Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, many of which were on display in Dresden during the 1930s. In 1932, Glöckner became a member of the Dresden Secession, but following the seizure of power by the NS-regime in 1933 and the ensuing campaign against ‘degenerate art’, his distinctive style meant there were almost no opportunities for him to either exhibit or sell his work. After the Second World War, his works were included in the Allgemeine Deutsche Kunstausstellung of 1946 in Dresden. However, having settled in the GDR, Glöckner became a marginalised figure because of the antiformalist campaigns of the 1950s and early 1960s, and it was not until 1969 that the onset of a more liberal phase of cultural politics made it possible for Werner Schmidt to organise a retrospective in Dresden’s Kupferstichkabinett to mark the artist’s 80th birthday. In 1984, just three years before his death, Glöckner was awarded the highly prestigious National Prize of the GDR for artistic achievements. His ashes lie in Dresden’s Loschwitz cemetery, where his grave is marked by a monument designed by Peter Makolies. Although subsequently edited out, Böttcher’s closing remarks in the original footage of Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner – ‘Master-Artist Glöckner, it has been a great honour to have beeen allowed to visit your

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studio – and I thank you from the bottom of my heart’ – underline the 96-year-old constructivist’s significance not just for Böttcher, but for a whole generation of artists in the GDR.18 Yet although Glöckner’s biography spans some of the most turbulent periods in German history, the main focus of Böttcher’s film is not the artist’s experience of five very different political regimes, but rather the development of his creative practice over almost a complete century. Indeed, more often than not, Glöckner’s responses to the filmmaker’s questions about his biography are almost inaudible. Tempting though it may be to link some of the works displayed to the camera (in particular the ‘sechszackiger Stern’ [‘six-pointed star’] of the 1930s that resembles the Star of David) to the changing social and political contexts of the artist’s life, the key to understanding Glöckner’s art, so the film suggests, lies elsewhere. By means of a series of extended shots of the artist and his studio, Thomas Plenert’s camera in Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner invites us to enter the creative world of the 96-year-old constructivist and to accompany him on his personal journey into a world of geometrical abstraction. As the camera moves from a series of hazy shots of Dresden and the River Elbe and takes us inside the studio itself, the grid-like pattern of the window through which we view the trees in the garden mirrors the mind of the constructivist artist as the image of natural world outside is analysed into a series of two-dimensional forms. The significance of this shot is revealed later on in the film, when Glöckner produces a photograph of his painting of 1928, Kleiner Dampfer [Little Steamer], which, with a similar grid-like schema superimposed on the image, converts the image of the ship and landscape into a series of abstract relationships of space and geometry. Just how important this painting was in persuading Glöckner to concentrate almost exclusively on the production of nonfigurative art is made clear in an earlier interview of 1983: It struck me that the composition of the picture is governed by a particular concept of proportionality that had evolved without any conscious input on my part . . . It became apparent that there was always a central axis and that in addition the division of the picture – both vertically and horizontally – into halves, quarters and eighths etc. was accentuated by certain elements of the image itself, and was so clearly defined that I came to the conclusion that it couldn’t just be a matter of chance. I recalled my youthful enthusiasm for geometry . . . That prompted me to examine the constructivist, geometrical aspect of my painting in order to discover the system of both elementary and complex relationships embodied within it.19

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The key to this process, whereby nature is transformed into a series of abstract two- and three-dimensional representations, so Böttcher’s film suggests, is to be sought and found in Glöckner’s fascination with the seemingly infinite possibilities of defining and articulating spatial relationships using a line connecting two points. Time and again, the camera follows his hand as he traces a series of curves on blank sheets of paper, and with each successive iteration of these ‘Schwünge’ [‘Ellipses’], the fundamental tension that lies at the heart of his work, namely the tension between the curved forms of the natural world and the straight lines of constructed form, is revealed with increasing clarity.20 When the camera pulls back and pans across the room, it is striking that while almost all the models on display on the workbench display the sharp angularity of constructed form, the background of the studio against which they are set is littered with drawings of curves and spirals (Figure 5.2). In some cases (such as the revolving sculpture constructed from clothes pegs clipped to a spine-like central pole), straight lines and curves dynamically combine in a relationship of productive synthesis. Similarly, in the model for the Mast mit zwei Faltungszonen [Mast with Two Folded Zones, 1974], the sharp edges of the folded material trace out a series of imaginary curves as the structure is rotated.21 As Glöckner presents one work of art after the other to the camera, we are left to reflect on the extent to which, like Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, the essence of the natural world can be captured using the abstract categories of geometry. Indeed, Glöckner’s biography might be seen as an odyssey through Euclidean geometry itself – a voyage of discovery that begins by embracing the line in its simplest (straight) form as the shortest distance between two points, and ends with the elderly artist’s enduring fascination for the literally infinite possibilities of linking two geometrical points via a series of curves. The tension between straight lines and curves is just one of a series of polarities that reflect a world reduced to a set of abstract forms and categories; Glöckner is dressed in black and white, his geometrical sculptures move in diametrically opposed directions, and the film itself is shot partly in colour and partly in black and white. Moreover, the artist constantly experiments not only with his abstract sculptures, turning them round and inverting them in the continual search for new ways of looking at them, but also with his ‘Tafelwerke’ [‘Tables’], stacking the translucent drawings up on top of each other and turning them around in a way that transforms them from two-dimensional planes into three-dimensional objects. What Böttcher’s film demonstrates,

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Figure 5.2 The artist Hermann Glöckner in his studio in Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner. © DEFA-Stiftung/Thomas Plenert. Published with permission.

above all, is the way in which Glöckner’s approach encourages the viewer to embrace the geometry of nature and at the same time suggests how (in the manner of Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky) the use of abstract form and colour might be deployed as a means of communicating a set of transcendent truths about the continuity between art and nature. There are moments when Glöckner’s ‘Schwünge’ conjure up images of Arabic calligraphy, and this quest to capture the absolute in abstract, nonmimetic modes of representation lends the constructivist’s work a peculiarly Romantic quality. Indeed, the affinity between his constructivist works and the (no less radical) landscape paintings of earlier Dresden artists such as the nineteenth-century Romantics Caspar David Friedrich and Johan Christian Dahl is subtly evoked in the film’s opening sequence.22 There Böttcher presents us with a series of hazy  – almost painterly  – images of the countryside surrounding Dresden and the River Elbe. But as the image sharpens, the bridge that comes into view is not the Augustusbrücke that typically forms the central axis of so many nineteenth-century Romantic landscapes, including Dahl’s View of Dresden by Moonlight (1839), but rather the cantilevered Loschwitz Bridge, the iconic modernist structure known

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locally as the ‘Blaues Wunder’. Yet the very form of this triumph of modern engineering  – the parabola  – underlines how human beings have constantly looked to mathematics and geometry in order to mimic and reproduce forms that occur naturally in the material world. In this way, Böttcher’s film serves as a reminder that, for all its abstract qualities, the 96-year-old constructivist’s art remains profoundly rooted in the reality of the material world and seeks to identify not ruptures, but rather continuities between art and nature.23

Classical Culture and the Avant Garde Jürgen Böttcher’s quest to rediscover the geometry of natural forms in his two documentaries Im Lohmgrund and Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner are symptomatic of a greater willingness to see nature not as an object to be mastered by human reason, but as an indivisible whole that can only be grasped poetically. As such, both films reflect a growing discontent in the GDR of the mid 1970s and early 1980s, with the culture of the rational enlightenment and a corresponding renewal of interest in human subjectivity, the subconscious and other nonrational modes of cognition that, in the minds of many, were seen as part of the Romantic revolution in the early nineteenth century. However, the origins of Böttcher’s increasingly sceptical view of neoclassical culture can be traced back to the early 1960s and, in particular, to his short documentary of 1962, Im Pergamonmuseum [In the Pergamon Museum], a film that focuses as much on the visitors to the museum as it does on the objects on display in the museum itself. As we are reminded in the opening titles, the Pergamon Museum had been severely damaged during the Second World War, and the SED leadership had invested heavily in the restoration of what was widely recognised as one of Berlin’s most important museums. Just as at the beginning of the twentieth century Kaiser Wilhelm II regarded the construction of a prestigious museum complex as essential if Berlin was to be regarded as a genuine rival to cities like London and Paris, so too the postwar SED government recognised the museum’s potential to bolster the status of East Berlin as the GDR’s capital. The party’s efforts received a further boost in 1958, when Khrushchev agreed to return many of the museum’s artefacts that had been transported to the Soviet Union in 1945, and both the ceremonial handover in the Deutsche Oper entitled ‘Schätze der Weltkultur gerettet von der Sowjet Union’ [‘Treasures of World Culture Rescued by the Soviet Union’] and

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the opening of the new exhibition in the Pergamon Museum featured prominently in the newsreel Der Augenzeuge (1958, No. 50B). The contrast between the newsreel’s conventional coverage of the event in which the camera shifts between the museum’s most treasured exhibits and the images of Soviet and SED political grandees, and the more subjective approach of Böttcher’s short documentary is particularly striking. In the case of Der Augenzeuge, the editing is essentially affirmative; male SED politicians are filmed in front of the great works of the past that function unambiguously as timeless exemplars of objective beauty and taste. However, in Böttcher’s documentary Im Pergamonmuseum, the focus is primarily on ordinary men and women visiting the galleries and their reactions to what they witness. Artistic communication, the film seems to suggest, is a triangular process in which the spectator’s relationship to the work is as integral to the aesthetic experience as the relationship of the artist to his or her own work. Where Christian Lehmann’s camera does linger on the works on display, the combination of unusual camera angles and extreme closeups of the Gigantomachy is often alienating and unsettling, and hints at a contradiction between, on the one hand, the scenes of extreme violence in the frenzied struggle between the Olympian gods and the Giants depicted on the altar’s frieze, and, on the other, the quiet harmony of the altar’s architecture with its symmetrically arranged Doric columns. The Gigantomachy depicts a revolutionary moment in which the forces of order and reason triumph over those of chaos and barbarism (a symbolic triumph that clearly resonated with the new generation of postwar German visitors to the museum) and it does so through the familiar form of classical (Hellenistic) art. Seen from this perspective, the frieze appears, at least at first sight, to mirror the GDR’s self-­understanding during the 1950s and 1960s as an antifascist state in which the values of the Enlightenment that underpinned it would prevail over the irrationalism of fascism. Yet, as the film unfolds, the objectivity of the aesthetic yardstick of Hellenistic culture is continually called into question. This is perhaps most obviously the case where the camera focuses on a statue of Persephone and we see the figure viewed first from the perspective of a group of exclusively female visitors, before the camera moves to show the same figure as seen by a group of men. While Böttcher’s short film stops some way short of the radical critique to which the classical tradition was subjected in the works of East German feminist writers such as Christa Wolf in the early 1980s, the juxtaposition of such gendered gazes nonetheless hints at the contradictions of patriarchal culture that lie concealed beneath the

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surface of such noble simplicity and quiet grandeur. By the same token, when the camera leaves the Pergamon Altar behind and turns its attention instead to the treasures of the ancient cities of Babylon, Uruk and Assur, the monumentalist aspect of the artefacts created in such (preHellenistic) ‘barbarian’ cultures together with the ethnic diversity of the visitors to the museum serves call into question not only the binary either/or logic of conventional distinctions between civilisation and barbarism, but also the status of neoclassical culture as a supposedly universal yardstick of cultural value. The distinctive cinematography of Im Pergamonmuseum, with its primary focus on the subjectivity of the viewer, also informs the much later documentary of 1977, Ein Weimarfilm [A Film about Weimar]. Originally commissioned to mark the 1,000th anniversary of Weimar, the small German town whose name is synonymous with the traditions of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and its mediation in neoclassical art and literature, Böttcher’s documentary is anything but a straightforward endorsement of the humanist traditions on which Becher and the founding fathers of the GDR had sought to build the new state. Framed by two extended sequences during which we are transported through a bleak winter landscape to what (as becomes clear later on in the film) is the nearby Buchenwald concentration camp, Böttcher’s film reminds the viewer that even the music of Johann Sebastian Bach that we hear playing on the soundtrack cannot erase the memories of unspeakable violence in this oasis of high culture. In so doing, Ein Weimarfilm provocatively juxtaposes two of the GDR’s key foundational narratives: the claim that Buchenwald was liberated from within through the collective actions of a group of communist inmates whose political legacy would be the GDR; and the claim that the GDR (rather than the FRG) was the true heir to the progressive traditions of German classical humanism and its Renaissance precursors. Böttcher’s reluctance to endorse such simplistic narratives is already evident in the opening voiceover: the conventional view that ‘the new beginning in 1945 offered the city the opportunity to show that people in a community shaped by a socialist heritage can realise’ is subtly undermined by the ironic aside ‘or so it says on the cover of the anthology Weimar in den Augen der Welt [Weimar in the Eyes of the World]’.24 As the film transitions from the almost monochrome footage of the bleak opening section to the colour footage of the contemporary GDR of the 1970s depicting East German tourists visiting Goethe’s house, its underpinning argument becomes clear, namely that no culture, no matter how radical it may once have been, is immune to the passing of time, and

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that the challenge for contemporary artists, writers and filmmakers is to search constantly for new forms in which such radical ideas can be articulated for a new generation. The failure to do this, the film suggests, inevitably leads to a process of ossification in which cultural artefacts of the past are stripped of their former vitality and confined to the museum where they become commodities and treated as objects of reverence rather than inspiration. In this respect, there is a clear line of continuity between the much earlier Im Pergamonmuseum, for in both films the camera lingers not so much on the museal objects on display, but rather on the reactions of the visitors (which, in Ein Weimarfilm, for the most part are a blend of bewilderment and boredom). As the camera shifts from the interior of Schiller’s house to the production line of VEB Uhrenwerk Weimar, the manufacture of watches on an industrial scale by banks of female workers seems like a visual negation of Schiller’s famous dictum that ‘Man only plays when he is in the fullest sense of the word a human being, and he is only fully a human being when he plays’, and the impression with which we are left is that, in the Weimar heritage industry, all that remains of Schiller’s once-radical concept of human freedom is a lock of hair and the writer’s pen p ­ reserved for posterity. As the film cuts to the organised celebrations marking the founding of the town, the huge banners of Lucas Cranach’s Renaissance paintings that are carried aloft call to mind the images of Soviet and SED leaders traditionally paraded at the regular May Day demonstrations in the East. However, the contrast between the monumentalist character of such images and the low-key dialogue between Wieland and Schiller reproduced on the soundtrack reminds the spectator that, rather than this commodification of cultural history for quick consumption, what is needed is what might be termed ‘slow’ culture: ‘Let us begin slowly’, Wieland said. ‘Let us take time to become something for each other.’ In this way, Böttcher’s film seeks to establish a series of parallels between, on the one hand, the neoclassical culture of Weimar and, on the other, the dynamics of contemporary cultural production. As the quotations from Hegel and Engels remind us, Goethe was not a writer who sought refuge from politics in an aesthetic realm. Schiller’s complaints about Herder’s sermonising tendency underline the fact that, even in the eighteenth century, artistic communication and the generation of ideas was not a one-way process, but the result of a creative dialogue. In their attempts to bring about revolutionary change in the arts, Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner – like their precursors Goethe and Schiller – also had to contend with opposition from philistine officials. Finally,

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when we are told of the difficulties encountered by Walter Gropius and other members of the Bauhaus such as Kandinsky and Klee (two artists whose ‘primitivist’ work had come in for particularly harsh criticism in the GDR during the antiformalist campaigns of the l950s), the parallels between Gropius’ treatment at the hands of the reactionary bourgeois of 1920s Weimar, and the rejection of constructivist art and formalism by the SED ideologues in the GDR of the 1950s is impossible to ignore. But perhaps the most telling observation is delivered via a remark from Anna Seghers, in which she recounts the experiences of an eighteenthcentury teacher who, en route to Weimar, notes that he had encountered ‘so much misery, ignorance and superstition that it was hard to believe the greatest thinkers in Germany lived just hours away’. Preceded as it is by a sequence of images that take us away from the neoclassical architecture of Weimar and out into the new town with its industrial quarter and prefabricated housing, Seghers’ remarks underline the dangers of cultural elitism and the need for a broader programme of education. At the same time, the images of uncomprehending tourists being shepherded round the homes of Weimar’s illustrious artists and writers suggest that contemporary heritage tourism, based as it is around a twentieth-century concept of artistic ‘genius’, is no real substitute for a proper grasp of the dynamics of cultural production. Or as Egon Erwin Kisch (and Böttcher’s film) would have it, just as Yellowstone Park is an artificial monument designed to ‘prolong’ the legacy of Native American culture, so too Weimar has become a museum in which a sanitised version of Germany’s once-vibrant ­cultural heritage has been preserved under glass.25 The impossibility of conceptualising Weimar simply in terms of an ‘inner emigration’ into a sphere of art and beauty is subtly alluded to during the extended sequences in which we are transported back to the world of the renaissance painter Lucas Cranach. As the camera lingers on Cranach’s Caritas (1534), with an infant suckling at the breast of Caritas while other children play in the background, we are transported back into a seemingly paradisic state of innocence. On the soundtrack, the mellow harmonies of the Weimar-based rock group Bayon invite us to draw a link between the idyllic world of Cranach’s David and Bathseba (1526) and the arcadian landscape of the Park an der Ilm, the neoclassical architecture of the Goethe Park, and the young children on their school outing.26 However, this extended meditation on the possibilities of an earthly paradise takes a more sombre turn as we contemplate Man’s fall from grace when the camera closes in on the image of an apple in the painting Three Pairs of Lovers (1537). As our gaze shifts

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from the grotesque pairs of lovers deceiving each other and comes to rest on Cranach’s depiction of male brutality in The Fruits of Jealousy (1535), the world of benevolent femininity on display in the figures of Caritas, Princess Sibylle and Charlotte von Stein seems increasingly distant. At the same time, this juxtaposition of beauty and violence in the painterly world of Cranach serves as a symbolic reminder that, whatever aspirations Weimar may have had to be the cultural capital of German humanism and the values of the Enlightenment, none of this could prevent the crimes against humanity associated with the Buchenwald concentration camp. Fittingly the last set of artworks to be presented to the camera in Ein Weimarfilm are a series of drawings produced by prisoners interned at Buchenwald that have been put on display at the 1975 exhibition Lebenswille hinter Stacheldraht [The Will to Live behind Barbed Wire]. As we contemplate the mindset of those Germans who build a brick shelter to protect the statues of Goethe and Schiller from war damage while at the same time ignoring the plight of those being murdered at Buchenwald, we are left to reflect on the catastrophic consequences that ensue when, in their admiration of great artists and writers, human beings lose sight of the humanitarian ideals that ­originally inspired the works of their idols. As the reports of the HV Film underline, Böttcher’s ‘poetic’ film was designed to provoke a critical response on the part of the s­ pectator – and one that was not entirely predictable.27 On the one hand, Ein Weimarfilm highlighted the failure of classical German humanism to prevent the rise of fascism; on the other, it suggested that, in its attempt to extend the nineteenth-century cult of Goethe and Schiller into the postwar period, the SED leadership was stifling new developments in the cultural sphere and preventing the new postwar generation (i.e. those who had grown up in the GDR without any direct experience of fascism) from appreciating the genuinely radical character of ­eighteenth-century neoclassicism.

Avant-Garde Art and the Uses of Tradition The relationship between contemporary art and the traditions of the past on which it draws lies at the heart of Böttcher’s Verwandlungen [Transformations, 1981], a project that, at least up until the Wende, was one the most radical projects ever released by DEFA.28 Made up of three short films  – Potters Stier [Potter’s Bull], Venus nach Giorgione [Venus after Giorgione] and Frau am Klavierchord [Interior with a Woman at the

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Virginal] – the project offers a fascinating insight into Böttcher’s creative work as an artist (hence the reason why the films are also partly credited to his painterly alter ego, Strawalde) and show him overpainting a set of postcards featuring reproductions of Renaissance pictures by Paulus Potter, Giorgione, and Emanuel de Witte. All three films contain multiple references to Böttcher’s earlier work: in the opening moments of Potters Stier, for instance, the shot of another ‘angelus novus’ figure whose back is turned on the uniform architecture of the modern housing estate in the Hans-Loch-Viertel of Berlin-Friedrichsfelde calls to mind a similar juxtaposition in the much earlier film Drei von vielen. At the start of each of the short films, Böttcher flicks through a collection of postcards depicting the masterpieces of Western art in the manner of a musician sifting his way through a pile of sheet music in search of a basic melody on which to develop an improvised riff. This sense of painterly improvisation is further enhanced by the constant background of undifferentiated street noise and exotic discordant tones on the film’s modernist soundtrack. As the focus of Potters Stier shifts to Strawalde’s reworking of Théodore Chassériau’s Baigneuse endormie (1850) and then Edouard Manet’s Chez le Père Lathuille. En plein air (1879), the two Impressionist reworkings of well-known visual topoi seeks to define art history in terms of an ongoing process of critical and creative engagement with the traditions of the past. By the same token, Strawalde’s overpainting of Paulus Potter’s Renaissance painting The Young Bull (1647) places him in a long line of artistic ‘latecomers’ who have looked back to the great works of their precursors for inspiration, and then reinterpreted them through the lens of new and emerging paradigms of modernist aesthetics. The dialogic character of this process is succinctly captured in A.R. Penck’s response – ‘there’s something very Goethean about him’ – when asked about Böttcher’s need for an Other with whom he can engage.29 Seen in this light, Strawalde’s overpainted postcards are proof that artistic creativity does not exist in a vacuum, but is a constant process of engagement with existing artistic traditions. Yet, at the same time, the playful, iconoclastic refashioning of these works of art reflects an understanding that, however much an artist may admire the great artistic achievements of the past, he or she must always resist the temptation to simply reproduce what is already there and must set out instead on a new direction in search of his or her unique artistic identity. By embedding the three films within the overall form of a t­ riptych – a form that we also find in such iconic works of modernism as Max Beckmann’s Departure (1932) and Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937)  – Böttcher succeeds in imposing a tight structure on the otherwise

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free-wheeling series of painterly improvisations in each of the three parts.30 At the same time, the triptych structure invites us to accord a special significance to the painting that lies at the heart of this experimental project, namely Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus of 1510.31 The centrality of this particular painting in Böttcher’s project as a whole is a reflection of its status as a key moment of innovation in the history of modern art; although Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus was an inspiration for many later artists, including Titian, Goya and Manet, the production of a nude female figure on such a scale was completely unprecedented at the time of its completion in 1510. Even so, the question of originality proves to be more complex than it might seem at first sight when we recall that, following Giorgione’s death, the work had to be completed by Titian, who in turn drew on it in his own Venus of Urbino of 1538. Accordingly, when we observe the overpainting of Giorgione’s reclining nude, the film positions Strawalde in the role of a latter-day Titian, whose work on ‘Giorgione’s’ painting through the addition of new elements both ‘completes’ it and at the same time transforms it into something new. As we follow Strawalde’s brushwork, we are taken on a journey through art history punctuated by visual echoes of the works of Seurat, van Gogh and Picasso, to mention just some of the more obvious visual allusions presented to the camera (Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3 Venus after Giorgione after Böttcher (Venus nach Giorgione). © DEFA-Stiftung/Thomas Plenert. Published with permission.

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Moreover, the very title of the segment – Venus nach Giorgione [Venus after Giorgione] – serves as a reminder that, in the world of contemporary art, we are all belated and so after Giorgione there is no longer any possibility of conceptualising the reclining nude female without reference to his Renaissance masterpiece. In the final part of the triptych, Böttcher’s film focuses on Emanuel de Witte’s Frau am Klavichord of 1965–70, a painting that, in its geometrical precision and precise articulation of light and space, seems to contain many of the seeds of twentieth-century abstractionism. In this respect, it contrasts to the first part of the triptych cantered on Paulus Potter’s fundamentally realist work, The Young Bull.32 Whereas Strawalde’s interventions in The Young Bull succeed in transforming the sober realism of Potter’s original into a series of works infused with the elemental vitality of the bullfight that we encounter in the works of Goya and Picasso, the succession of geometric spheres, pyramids and cones that are added to de Witte’s Frau am Klavichord reveal the underlying principle of abstraction that lies latent within the formal composition of the seventeenth-century painting. The final part of Böttcher’s triptych takes us on another journey through the canon of Western art that includes Nicolas Poussin’s Tancred and Erminia (1634), Gerard ter Borch’s Woman Peeling an Apple’(1650), Jean-Etienne Liotard’s The Chocolate Girl (1743), Goya’s Blind Man’s Buff (1789) and Ludwig Richter’s Romantic tableau Crossing at the Schreckenstein (1836).33 While Strawalde’s overpaintings underline the inability of the creative imagination to be constrained by the limits of bourgeois realism, the reflective surface of the rippling water in Richter’s painting anticipates an extended sequence in the film during which the image of ‘Frau am Klavichord’ is itself refracted and transformed into a form of visual ‘white noise’ as a result of being projected onto a series of distorting surfaces that include the nude human body and a television set displaying the banal East German variety shows Ein Kessel Buntes and the highly popular DDR-Fernsehballett.34 This juxtaposition of the high culture of de Witte’s painting and the crude entertainment ethos of television is just one of the reasons why Wilhelm Roth, writing in the West German broadsheet the Frankfurter Rundschau in 1986, described Böttcher’s attitude of art as ‘conservative (in the way that Andrey Tarkovsy’s art is)’ insofar as he endorses a genuinely avantgarde attitude that is diametrically opposed to the mass entertainment industry.35 Although almost none of Böttcher’s films can be regarded as conventional documentaries, the production of Verwandlungen marks the

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beginning of a new phase in his work that, as Claus Löser has noted, reflects the influence of the American experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage (with whom Böttcher was personally acquainted).36 Indeed, the opening sentence of Brakhage’s Metaphors on Vision (1963)  – ‘imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not respond to the name of everything but which must know each object encountered in life through an adventure of perception’  – succinctly captures the underlying thrust of Böttcher’s triptych.37 Although there is a clear difference in the degree of abstraction in a film like Brakhage’s celebrated Dog Star Man (1964) and Böttcher’s Frau am Klavichord, what links the work of the two artists is the use of the film stock itself as a painterly medium. Moreover, whereas the focus of Brakhage’s films is, more often than not, a surreal encounter with objects from the natural world, in Böttcher’s case, this adventure in visual perception is triggered primarily by another work of art.38 Not surprisingly, the DEFA studio management was unsure what to make of Böttcher’s triptych. Although the project was approved for general exhibition in the year of its completion, the following year the HV Film decided to restrict exhibition in the GDR to specialist film clubs.39 As the board noticed, ‘it is hard to predict how audiences will respond to these unusual films’; however, a report on a screening of Verwandlungen as part of a series of Böttcher’s films in Berlin’s Babylon cinema noted that, the cinema sold out, none of the ‘predominantly intellectual’ audience left during the course of the film, and that almost all of the ensuing discussion had centred on the three experimental films.40 While Böttcher’s films clearly appealed to a niche audience of East German intellectuals, they were also a source of inspiration for the work of avant-garde artists such as Helge Leiberg and Cornelia Schleime. However, what differentiates Böttcher’s films from the majority those made by his near-contemporaries was that while they for the most part relied on privately owned Super 8mm cameras, he enjoyed access to the infrastructure of the DEFA documentary studio. Accordingly, while the films of Leiber and Schleime were unambiguously part of an autonomous and underground art movement, Böttcher’s work was recognised by the HV Film, and his trilogy of films represents arguably the most radical articulation of the state-sanctioned Künstlerfilm.41

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Notes   1. Kurt Hager, ‘Zur Kulturpolitik der SED’, Neues Deutschland, 8 July 1972.   2. For a detailed discussion that challenges the commonly held presumption that East German artists were cut off from the West, see A Eisman, ‘East German Art and the Permeability of the Berlin Wall’, German Studies Review 38.3 (2015), 597–616.   3. Ullrich Kuhirt, ‘Pablo Picasso, 1881–1973’, Bildende Kunst 8 (1973), 367–72, at 367.   4. Peter Feist, ‘Bericht über das Wiepersdorfer Treffen vor dem Zentralvorstand des VBK-DDR’, Mitteilungen des VBK-DDR, 4/1974.   5. See, for example, Eberhard Bartke, ‘Ist die Zentralperspektive überholt?’, Bildende Kunst 3 (1974), 117–21; and Ingrid Beyer, ‘Gestaltung des Chaos als Aussage zur Zeit’, Bildende Kunst 3 (1974), 127–30.   6. Bernhard Heisig, ‘Diskussionbeitrag’, VII Kongreß des VBK-DDR (Protokollheft 1, pp. 39–42).  7. Peter Feist, ‘Aktuelle Tendenzen in der sozialistisch-realistischen Kunst der DDR (2)’, Bildende Kunst 8 (1976), 410–12. The first part of Feist’s report was published in Bildende Kunst 7 (1976), 356–58.  8. Ibid.   9. Irma Emmrich, ‘Sozialistischer Realismus’, Bildende Kunst 9 (1976), 462. 10. Klaus Weidner, Referat 9. Tagung des Zentralvorstandes des VBK-DDR (Protokollheft, p. 34). The artist cited as a prime example of such a tendency is Paul Klee, whose influence on A.R. Penck is particularly evident. 11. The exhibition ‘Hermann Glöckner. Dächer – Giebel – Dreiecke. Formenwandlungen von 1927–1977’ [‘Hermann Glöckner. Roofs – Gables – Triangles’] opened on 13 April 1977 in the studio of Berlin’s Altes Museum. 12. Günter Feist, ‘Konturen einer Entwicklung: Zur Konzeption der Ausstellung’, in Fritz Donner, Helga Möbius and Günter Feist (eds), Weggefährten – Zeitgenossen: Bildende Kunst aus drei Jahrzehnten (Berlin: Zentrum für Kunstausstellungen der DDR, 1979), pp. 13–22, at p. 21. Not all the works listed in the catalogue were in fact on display as a number were removed before the opening. 13. Hermann Raum, ‘Weite und Vielfalt. Zur DDR-Kunst der siebziger Jahre’, in Möbius and Feist, Weggefährten – Zeitgenossen, pp. 65–78, at p. 78. 14. Jean Arp, cited in James Thrall Soby (ed.), Arp (New York: MOMA, 1958), p. 15. 15. Peter Makolies, ‘Zeit – Stein – Bilder’ in Grisebach, Lucius, and Günter Braunsberg (eds). Erste Phalanx Nedserd (Nuremberg: Verlag für moderne Kunst, 1991), p. 112. 16. Cited in Matthias Flügge, ‘Peter Makolies’, Bildende Kunst 4 (1979), 184–87, at 185. 17. Alan Wilkinson (ed.),  Henry Moore: Writings and Conversations (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2002), pp.197–98. For a survey of the reception of Moore and his ‘rehabilitation’ in the GDR during the mid 1960s and early 1970s, see Raimund Hoffmann, ‘Modernität ohne Abkehr vom Leben’, Bildende Kunst 4 (1979), 196–200. For a series of short essays on Makolies and his influences, see the catalogue Max Kunze (ed.), Peter Makolies. Werkübersicht. Plastik 1959–1986. Stendal 1989 (Dresden: WinckelmannGesellschaft, 1989). 18. ‘Zulassungsprotokoll. 25 May 1981’ (BArch DR 1/ 1515). 19. Hermann Glöckner, ‘Meine Arbeit ist mein Leben’, in John Erpenbeck (ed.), Hermann Glöckner: Ein Patriarch der Moderne (Berlin: Buchverlag der Morgen, 1983), pp. 37–88, at pp. 56–57.

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20. Although very different in content and style, there is an obvious line of continuity between the abstract patterns traced by Glöckner in Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner and the motion of the freight wagons as they are guided through the complex maze of tracks and sidings in Böttcher’s earlier documentary Rangierer [Shunters, 1980]. 21. The full-size version for Dresden’s Technical University was created in 1984. 22. In an interview with Martin Rögener, A.R. Penck underlines the importance for Böttcher of the traditions of Romantic painting associated with Dresden. See ‘A.R. Penck und M. Rögener in der Galerie M.Werner Köln 10 März 1990’, in Martin Rögener (ed.), Kunst-Postkarten übermalt von Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher) (Hamburg: Johanna Schwarz-Rögener, 1990), n.p. 23. It is in this sense that, as Werner Schmidt argues, Glöckner’s work should be seen as a quest to uncover regularity and proportion, even in the chance events of the natural world. Werner Schmidt, Glöckner [Reihe Maler und Werk] (Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1982), p. 25. 24. The offical anthology released in the GDR to mark the city’s 1,000th anniversary was Herbert Greiner Mai (ed.), Weimar im Urteil der Welt (Berlin: Aufbau, 1975). 25. Although the quotation from Erwin Kisch is preserved in the version of the film currently available on DVD, the ‘Zulassungsprotokoll’ of 4 May 1977 contains a note requesting that it be edited out (BArch DR 1/934). 26. For an interview with the band Bayon about their involvement in Böttcher’s film, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RN0-r_Vl3J0&feature=youtu.be (accessed 23 August 2018). 27. See the ‘Zulassungsprotokoll’ of 4 May 1977 (BArch DR 1/934). 28. As Claus Löser notes: ‘If the dictates of Socialist Realist film policy had been followed to the letter these works should never have come into being in the first place.’ Claus Löser, ‘Zum Oeuvre Jürgen Böttcher. Kritisch kommentierte Filmographie’, in Ralf Schenk and Erika Richter (eds), apropros: Film 2000 [= Jahrbuch der DEFA-Stiftung, 2000] (Berlin: Das neue Berlin, 2000), pp. 35–48, at p. 45. 29. Catalogue: ‘A.R. Penck und M. Rögener in der Galerie M.Werner, Cologne 10 März 1990’, n.p. 30. As the documents produced by the HV Film confirm, Böttcher wished the three films to be screened together as an ensemble. See ‘Stellungnahme zum Filmzyklus “Verwandlungen”’, 26 May 1981 (BArch DR 1/1515). 31. Giorgione’s painting was among those that had been returned to the Dresden Gallery by the Soviets in the mid 1950s and Böttcher would have had plenty of opportunities to view it first-hand. 32. In 1981 – the same year in which Böttcher’s film was released – the American postmodernist artist Mark Tansey produced The Innocent Eye Test, a reworking of Potter’s The Young Bull, designed to underline the superfluity of conventional realism in the modern era. Tansey’s self-commentary suggests a number of parallels between his and Böttcher’s assault on conventional realism. ‘In my work’, Tansey writes, ‘I’m searching for pictorial functions that are based on the idea that the painted picture knows itself to be metaphorical, rhetorical, transformational, fictional. I’m not doing pictures of things that actually exist in the world. The narratives never actually occurred. In contrast to the assertion of one reality, my work investigates how different realities interact and abrade. And the understanding is that the abrasions start within the medium itself.’ Cited in Arthur C. Danto, Mark Tansey: Visions and Revisions (New York: Abrams, 1992), p. 132.

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33. Jean-Étienne Liotard’s painting The Chocolate Girl occupied a prominent place in the East German cultural imagination as it was one of a number of paintings returned by the Soviet Union to the Dresden Gallery to be commemorated by a special issue of stamps issued in the GDR on 15 December 1956. 34. In the summary of the film’s content, the HV Film document suggests that: ‘The impression with which we are left, albeit indirectly, is a parody of modern horror films from the West in which, via a series of grotesquely exaggerated visual and acoustic metaphors, we are presented with an image of the bourgeois class, threatened from all sides and with an innate tendency to self-destruction.’ See ‘Inhaltsangabe zum Triptychon “Verwandlungen”’ (BArch DR 1/1515). 35. Wilhelm Roth, ‘Entdeckungen in kleinen Gesten: Der DDR-Dokumentarfilmer und Maler Jürgen Böttcher-Strawalde’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 19 April 1986. 36. Claus Löser, Strategien der Verweigerung: Untersuchungen zum politisch-ästhetischen Gestus unangepasster filmischer Artikulationen in der Spätphase der DDR (Berlin: DEFAStiftung, 2011), p. 106. 37. Stan Brakhage, Metaphors on Vision, edited and with an introduction by P. Adams Sitney, (New York: Film Culture, 1963), n.p. 38. Precursors of Böttcher’s overpainted postcards include members of the DaDa circle such as Kurt Schwitters and Georg Grosz (who incorporated them into their collages) and Willi Baumeister (who overpainted works by the Nazi artist Adolf Ziegler). For a helpful overview of the genre, see Bärbel Hedinger (ed.), Die Künstlerpostkarte: Von den Anfängen bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Prestel, 1992). 39. See ‘Zulassungsprotokoll’, 26 May 1981 and 12 May 1982 (BArch DR 1/1515). 40. ‘Information zur Veranstaltung mit Filmen Jürgen Böttchers und anschließendem Gespräch im Filmtheater “Babylon” am 22.03.1982’ (BArch DR 1/1515). See also a report on the screening in the daily broadsheet Die Neue Zeit, which noted: ‘Der Maler-Regisseur kam mit seinen Absichten beim Publikum blendend an.’ Bernd Heimberger, ‘Eigenwilliges Plädoyer für die Phantasie. Die Filme des Malers und Regisseurs J. Böttcher’, Die Neue Zeit, 6 May 1982. See also Rolf Richter, ‘Ernsthafte Spiele’, Filmspiegel 14 (1982), 24–25. 41. The GDR underground films would be a complete volume in itself and is beyond the scope of this study. For a selection of films, see the DVD Counter-Images. GDRUnderground Films 1983–1989. The Non-Conformist Super-8 Scene and Claus Löser’s 2011 comprehensive study Strategien der Verweigerung: Untersuchungen zum politischästhetischen Gestus unangepasster filmischer Artikulationen in der Spätphase der DDR. Berlin: DEFA-Stiftung, 2011.

Chapter 6

The Dialectic of Enlightenment and the Romantic Turn

During the founding years of the GDR, East German scholars and politicians had been confronted with a seemingly irresolvable paradox regarding the new state’s relationship to Germany’s cultural heritage and its need to establish a sense of its national identity on the wider global stage. Outside the GDR, there were many  – above all those of a non-Marxist persuasion  – who regarded the Idealist tradition in German art and literature as a golden era of cultural production. But for critics and scholars of a materialist bent, the Romantic revolution in the early nineteenth century represented a pivotal moment in the development of an irrationalist tendency in German culture. Recycled in different forms, including Expressionism and other forms of supposedly ‘bourgeois’ avant-garde art, during the early part of the twentieth century, this tendency was, at least in some quarters, regarded as a key factor in the inability of German intellectuals to resist the rise of fascism. In attempting to marginalise certain forms of Romantic literature as a cultural aberration while focusing instead on the legacy of the Enlightenment and classical aesthetics, critics such as Lukács, Kurella and Becher saw themselves as identifying an alternative tradition to which a new generation of postwar Germans could look for inspiration. In keeping with Lukács’ characterisation of Romantic literature as ‘ideologically and politically reactionary’, a number of nineteenth-­ century authors such as Heinrich von Kleist, Friedrich Schlegel, Clemens Brentano and Novalis were excluded from the socialist

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literary canon of the 1950s and early 1960s.1 However, as Elaine Kelly has noted, while these and other writers of the Romantic period were by and large ignored, a number of early nineteenth-century composers (and above all Ludwig van Beethoven) were championed as progressive figures who could be mobilised in the service of a new socialist concept of German national identity.2 As we saw in Chapter 2, documentaries on canonical figures such as Bach, Handel and Beethoven were designed to persuade viewers of the continuity between the progressive elements of German classical humanism and its supposed realisation in the GDR’s political programme of the 1950s. At the same time, in promoting ‘high culture’ as something capable of being enjoyed by the working classes, these documentaries reflected the continued dominance of bourgeois cultural forms and a corresponding reluctance to embrace avant-garde proletarian art. Although the Eleventh Plenum of 1965/66 represented one last-ditch attempt to turn back the clock and reaffirm conventional concepts of socialist realism, the publication in 1967 of Werner Mittenzwei’s commentary on the Expressionism Debate in the literary journal Sinn und Form reflected a growing acceptance of a Brechtian-inspired model of dialectical art (and a corresponding decline in the currency of Lukácsian-inspired models of realism).3 It also marked the point at which the rigid binary categories of the earlier aesthetic debates of the 1950s increasingly came to be regarded as incapable of capturing the complexities of contemporary socialist life and culture. Likewise, post-Plenum films such as Konrad Wolf’s Goya and Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz underlined that it was no longer possible to ignore developments in the new wave cinemas of both Eastern and Western Europe, and showed that modernist aesthetics, far from being incompatible with a progressive political agenda, could play a key role in revitalising the discourse of antifascism for a new generation. Last but not least, the critical approach adopted by Jürgen Böttcher in his documentary Ein Weimarfilm was symptomatic of a loss of confidence in the legacy of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and German classical humanism generally as a guiding principle for the development of a socialist society. In the light of such developments, it is hardly surprising that the contribution of DEFA’s Künstlerfilme of the mid 1970s and mid 1980s to the development of a socialist imaginary should reflect a greater emphasis on individual subjectivity. This is particularly evident in the mediation of writers and works of art associated with German Romanticism in film, and it is striking that, during this period, DEFA produced a number of films that were based (albeit sometimes very loosely) on Romantic or

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quasi-Romantic works by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century authors. These films included Ralf Kirsten’s adaptation of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere des Teufels [The Devil’s Elixirs, 1973] and Eichendorff’s Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts [From the Life of a Good for Nothing, 1973]; Egon Günther’s adaptation of Goethe’s ‘Storm and Stress’ novella Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1976]; and two films that I will explore in more detail in due course, namely Horst Seemann’s Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben [Beethoven  – Days from a Life, 1976] and Herrmann Zschoche’s film about the writer Friedrich Hölderlin, Hälfte des Lebens [Half of Life, 1985]. This revival of interest in Romanticism and the culture of German idealism was by no means confined to DEFA, but was also a feature of the New German Cinema of the neighbouring Federal Republic. There notable examples include Helma Sanders-Brahms’ adaptation of Heinrich von Kleist’s novella Das Erdbeben in Chili [The Earthquake in Chile, 1975], her cinematic biography of its author Heinrich (1977), Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s San Domingo (1970) and his exploration of the cult of Ludwig of Bavaria, Ludwig  – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König [Ludwig  – Requiem for a Virgin King, 1972]. The success of the New German Cinema in promoting an interest in art-house cinema in the West and the involvement of regional television channels in the production and distribution of such films meant that there were also opportunities for DEFA to market its films in the Federal Republic and beyond. Casting the American Dean Reed and the West German actress Hannelore Elsner in a film such as Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts and using expensive Kodak colour film stock imported from the West were decisions that reflected DEFA’s growing awareness of the importance of foreign markets.4 Likewise, Peter Schamoni’s Frühlingssinfonie [Spring Symphony, 1983] – filmed in the GDR and featuring Rolf Hoppe in the role of Clara Schumann’s father, Friedrich Wieck – and his subsequent GDR/FRG coproduction Caspar David Friedrich – Grenzen der Zeit [Caspar David Friedrich – The Limits of Time, 1986] bear witness to DEFA’s willingness to exploit the new transnational vogue for heritage cinema in order to generate hard currency. The revival of interest in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-­century German culture and, above all, in anti-establishment figures such as Novalis, Kleist and Hölderlin was symptomatic of a pronounced loss of faith in teleological models of history (whether grounded in Marxism or the economics of free-market capitalism) on both sides of the political divide. However, in each of the two states, this Romantic turn had a specific dynamic and was articulated in quite different forms. In the

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West, films about historical literary figures presented a new generation of filmmakers with an opportunity to access state funding designated for the promotion of the German cultural heritage, while at the same time allowing them to indulge their own auteurist fantasies in their characterisation of Romantic artists doomed to work on the margins of mainstream culture. In the East, by contrast, the focus on Romanticism (in both film and literature) allowed filmmakers to move away from the hitherto dominant paradigm of socialist realism and, by embracing what the writer Christa Wolf termed ‘subjective authenticity’, to approach their subject matter from a multiplicity of perspectives. Viewed in the context of Friedrich Schlegel’s much-quoted definition of Romantic art as a process of seeking ‘unity in diversity’ (‘Einheit in der Vielfalt’), the work of such writers and artists might be seen as anticipating certain forms of modernist and postmodernist thinking. Indeed, as David Bathrick has argued, in the context of GDR literature, the critical potential of such Romantic works lay not so much in their content, but rather in their discursive form and the challenge they posed to more conventionally oriented systems of aesthetics and binary thinking generally.5 The Romantic turn in the GDR of the 1970s and 1980s also reflected an increasing lack of faith in the capacity of science and technology (the ‘wissenschaftlich-technische Revolution’) to deliver the kind of progress most East Germans hoped for both in their private and public lives. The uniformity of modern mass-produced housing states in the GDR seemed to be an obstacle in the way of any attempt to articulate a sense of individual subjectivity; the pollution of the environment by outmoded industrial plants in areas such as Bitterfeld seemed increasingly at odds not only with the lyrical celebration of nature in Romantic poetry, but also with the constitution of the GDR itself; increased tensions in the Cold War and the proliferation of nuclear weapons in both the FRG and the GDR contributed to an increased awareness of the precarity of existence for those whose fate it was to live in what was euphemistically referred to as the ‘theatre of war’; and, last but not least, the binary rhetoric of the Cold War came to be associated with a form of patriarchal culture that, from the late 1960s onwards, was increasingly undermined by the rise of feminism and alternative discursive models that celebrated difference rather than homogeneity. All of the above concerns are reflected in a series of films about contemporary life in the GDR – each of them featuring a female protagonist  – that might be described as popularised ‘lowbrow’ ­ manifestations of a Romantic ‘longing’, such as Heiner Carow’s Die

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Legende von Paul und Paula [The Legend of Paul and Paula, 1973], Konrad Wolf’s Solo Sunny (1980) and Lothar Warneke’s Unser kurzes Leben [Our Short Life, 1981]. In addition, events such as the X. Weltfestspiele der Jugend (10th World Festival of Youth and Students), the so-called ‘Red Woodstock’ held in East Berlin in 1973, seemed to signal a greater willingness to embrace cultural diversity in all its forms and a recognition that, for socialist youth (and especially the new generation growing up the post-1968 era), the goal of global socialism could be achieved in a multiplicity of ways and without the need for armed conflict. This rejection of war and enthusiasm for peace and love is evident not only in the ‘flower-power Romanticism’ of Die Legende von Paul und Paula, but also in the characterisation of the central protagonist in Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts, a film in which Ralf Kirsten sought to translate the nineteenth-century Romantic idiom of Eichendorff’s novella into a form that would ­resonate with young viewers in the GDR of the 1970s. In the case of those films that were set directly in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a number of East German filmmakers sought to articulate (from within as it were) a critique of the bourgeois cultural traditions that had been so dominant during the founding years of the GDR. For many, the bourgeois milieu within which their nineteenth-century protagonists were situated was conceptualised as a precursor of capitalism and thus provided an opportunity to reflect on the inherent contradiction of producing politically progressive work in a society where, increasingly, art was regarded as a decorative commodity ripe for commercial exploitation by a new class of bourgeois entrepreneurs. Such readings of cultural history dovetailed with conventional Marxist accounts of cultural history and the decline of aristocratic patronage. In Goya, Konrad Wolf had explored the efforts of the court painter to embrace and then subvert the affirmative aesthetic of the royal portrait, and, as we shall see, in Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben, Horst Seemann and his scriptwriter Günter Kunert offer an analysis of the composer’s struggle in the face of an entrepreneurial society determined to exploit his work for commercial gain. In addition, however, the fact that eighteenth-century neoclassicism and nineteenth-century bourgeois realism had been adopted as the guiding aesthetic paradigms in the GDR meant that historical films about the marginalised writers, composers and painters in this period could be repurposed to articulate a critique of the conditions for artistic production in the contemporary GDR. As my discussion of Herwig Kipping’s Hommage à Hölderlin and Herrmann Zschoche’s Hälfte des Lebens will show, focusing on Hölderlin, a writer whose reception in the GDR

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mirrors the development of East German cultural policy in the 1970s and 1980s, offered filmmakers an opportunity to critique the predicament of artists under socialism, while at the same time embracing a form of cinematography that, in Kipping’s case in particular, constituted a radical break with the conventions of heritage cinema. Seen from this perspective, the Romantic turn in East German filmmaking was an attempt to launch a critique of the application of instrumental reason (and the utilitarian social forms to which its application had given rise) and to highlight the importance of art as a distinct mode of cognition and one capable of expressing truths about the human ­condition that could not be captured in rational discursive systems.

E.T.A. Hoffmann and ‘The Fantastic’ in Socialist Culture Writing in 1966, Brigitte Kirsten, who had been given the task of developing a script for DEFA’s screen adaptation of E.T.A Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere des Teufels, noted that while she felt obliged to portray the workings of fate and the diabolical temptations to which its central protagonist is exposed, as rooted in concrete sociohistorical factors, to adopt such an approach was precisely to downplay the peculiar fascination of the author’s work, namely its engagement with the fantastic.6 Nonetheless, the bicentenary of E.T.A Hoffmann’s birth in 1976 proved to be a key moment in the rehabilitation of Romanticism in the GDR and a highly provocative address by the writer Franz Fühmann triggered a series of conferences organised by the East German Akademie der Künste that focused on the legacy of Romanticism and its significance for the contemporary GDR. Some years earlier, in her novella Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers [New Life and Opinions of a Tomcat Murr],7 a reworking of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Lebensansichten des Kater Murrs [The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr], Christa Wolf had deployed the Romantic irony of her literary precursor to criticise the way in which the application of instrumental reason had led to a betrayal of true socialist ideals in the GDR in the guise of ‘real existing socialism’. In her novel, three scientists attempt to bring about ‘Tohuha’ (‘Total Human Happiness’) through the implementation of ‘SYMAHE’ (‘System of Maximum Health of Body and Soul’). By eliminating certain aspects of human life such as the ‘soul’ that result only in ‘unnecessary by-products’ such as literature, they plan to social engineer a situation where all members of society are inexorably guided to full happiness.

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At the same time, Wolf’s novella (which was written around 1970) also highlights the extent to which the discourse of Romanticism was increasingly aligned with the female Other as Isa, the daughter of one of the three (male) professors working on SYMAHE, pulls no punches in deriding her scientific father as a philistine. For his part, Fühmann exploited Hoffmann’s works to argue that, in exposing the social alienation that is intrinsic to the commodification of human labour generally, Romantic literature anticipated the concerns that would become ever more pronounced in all modern industrial societies (and not just those in capitalist economies). Moreover, Hoffmann is seen as a figure who goes further than many other Romantic writers insofar as he stops short of situating the artist and the ordinary (‘philistine’) member of bourgeois society in a hierarchical relationship, but instead sees each as embodying an overly one-sided concept of humanity: ‘From the perspective of the bourgeois the artist appears, quite understandably as a madman; by the same token the bourgeois, when viewed from the artist’s perspective, comes across as a philistine.’8 Finally, he argued that Hoffmann’s work demonstrated that literature deals, above all, in contradictions, and the only way to resolve such contradictions is by actively embracing them.9 The contrast between Fühmann’s celebration of Hoffmann’s willingness to embrace the complexity of human behaviour in his discursive style and Alfred Kurella’s condemnation of the fragmentary, contradictory aspect of Romantic writing forty years earlier could hardly have been greater.10 Fühmann’s words reflect how rapidly attitudes towards Romanticism were changing not only in East German literary circles, but also at the DEFA studio itself. However, while it was primarily Hoffmann’s work (and subsequently that of Heinrich von Kleist) that prompted writers to reframe the alienation of the individual in terms of Romantic aesthetics, for the filmmakers at DEFA, it was Beethoven, Hölderlin and Novalis who were to provide the impulse behind the Romantic turn in East German film production.

Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben (1976) In 1970, the celebrations to mark the bicentenary of Beethoven’s birth provided the occasion for a reinterrogation of the composer’s life and work. However, the sociopolitical context of this anniversary was very different from that of 1952. Whereas in the early 1950s Jaap’s documentary Ludwig van Beethoven had played a key role in bolstering the international standing of the GDR and making the case for a unified

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socialist Germany, by the 1970s the demise of the Hallstein doctrine and growing international recognition of the GDR had rendered such an approach largely obsolete. In addition, the year 1970 marked the occasion of another major anniversary in the socialist calendar, namely the centenary of Lenin’s birth, and the Russian revolutionary’s muchquoted remark on the impact of listening to Beethoven’s Appassionata – ‘What marvellous things human beings can achieve!’  – provided a perfect opportunity for the SED leadership to link the two events. Accordingly, the 1970 celebrations were mobilised in the service of concept of East German cultural identity whereby the composer’s work was located within a teleological model of history in which certain progressive tendencies in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century art, literature and music were portrayed as paving the way for twentiethcentury socialism.11 Although Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ had once been used as the anthem for the combined German teams competing at the Olympic Games between 1956 and 1964, by 1970 the notion that the 9th Symphony could be used to underscore what the two German states might have in common had long since been rejected by the SED. Instead, mainstream East German media channels portrayed Beethoven as a realist (rather than Romantic) composer and as a supporter of the ideals of the French Revolution and an opponent of the reactionary restorative tendencies of the Metternich regime. By contrast, the darker, more ambivalent aspects of his late work were explicitly associated with the neighbouring Federal Republic: ‘In the state in which Beethoven’s birthplace, Bonn, is located there is a tendency – both in the execution of his works and in theoretical writing about it – to reject its revolutionary and democratic aspect, to deny its heroic character, and to promote the reactionary view that the final phase of his creative period reflects a sense of resignation and hopelessness.’12 At the same time, the Federal Republic was accused of degrading Beethoven’s works by marketing them as part of a profit-oriented entertainment industry and subjecting them to a process of ‘modernist manipulation’.13 As Elaine Kelly has argued in her important study of the reception of Beethoven’s work in the GDR, despite the repetition of such views in the mainstream media, in certain circles of East German musicology, an alternative and more complex picture of the composer was beginning to emerge.14 Speaking at the 1970 Congress on Beethoven’s work in East Berlin, Harry Goldschmidt for example, had argued that the concentration on the works of the middle period such as the Eroica and Fidelio, and an almost obsessive fascination with the 9th Symphony had blinded Marxist critics to the complexity and ambiguity of the composer’s later

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works.15 On one level, Horst Seemann’s film Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben  – the first DEFA production to feature a composer as its main protagonist – reflects the more differentiated reception of Beethoven’s music that was starting to emerge in the GDR during the 1970s. However, on another level, it was also part of an increasingly complex debate (in both East and West) about the relationship between socialist art and bourgeois culture, and the implications of that bourgeois legacy for the production of genuinely radical art. Precisely because of the capacity of music to transcend the limitations of language, this debate assumed a transnational character and was played out across a range of films featuring composers at their heart, and included Straub-Huillet’s Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach [Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968], Mauricio Kagel’s avant-garde film about Beethoven, Ludwig van (1970), and Igor Talankin’s extravagant biopic Tschaikovsky (1970).

DEFA and Beethoven Although Horst Seemann’s film Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben was released in 1976, one year before the 150th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, preliminary discussions about the project (originally titled ‘Der Compositeur’) date back to the early 1970s and beyond. Although there had been talk of a possible co-production with the Soviet Union ­involving the codirector of Fünf Tage  – Fünf Nächte, Lev Oskarovich Arnstam, the studio management at DEFA had concluded that a film on such a ‘German’ topic did not lend itself to a joint venture with non-German partners. 16 Following initial consultations with the musicologist Harry Goldschmidt (who produced a treatment that the studio deemed unusable), DEFA turned instead to the writer Günter Kunert.17 Kunert’s screen adaptation of a novel by Johannes R. Becher for Egon Günther’s film Abschied [Farewell, 1968] had been widely praised in the studio, and in the early 1970s he had produced a series of radio plays about the Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer and the nineteenth-­ century writers Heinrich von Kleist and Heinrich Heine.18 Kunert’s script, which he developed in conjunction with the director Horst Seemann, sought, on the one hand, to demythologise the figure of Beethoven and, on the other, to focus instead on the material conditions and sociopolitical contradictions with which the composer was confronted in the bourgeois world of nineteenth-century Vienna. This critique of the ‘cult of genius’ is already anticipated in an essay of 1973 by Kunert in which he writes: ‘What needs to be shown is not that

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Beethoven created his works in spite of the contradictions he experienced, but that it was precisely the experience of such contradictions that inspired him to compose.’19 As Kunert observed, existing biographies of Beethoven had often portrayed the composer as a larger-thanlife ‘genius’ whose sublime musical talent was inspired by the tragedy of the failed love affair outlined in the composer’s letter to his ‘immortal beloved’. Essentially the same view of the composer underpins such films as Abel Gance’s affect-laden biography of 1936, Un grand amour de Beethoven, and it had been recycled (albeit in a more sentimentalised form) by Walter Kolm-Veltée in his Eroïca of 1949 and by Georg Tressler in The Magnificent Rebel, a two-part production made for Disney in 1962. In Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben, Seemann and Kunert abandon any attempt to produce a conventional biography of the composer and instead offer a series of exemplary tableaux, each of which is introduced by an explanatory subtitle designed to provoke the viewer to reflect on the dialectical relationship between the process of artistic creativity and the prevailing structures of bourgeois society.20 That the film’s focus is on the conditions of production (rather than on individual genius) is underscored by the fact that we do not encounter Beethoven face to face until seventeen minutes into the film and, during the opening section, our knowledge of the composer is restricted to that relayed via the contrasting perspectives of those in his immediate circle. Instead, sequences of Beethoven in Vienna conducting his ‘Wellington’s Victory or the Battle of Vitoria’ (Opus 91) are intercut with images of human suffering on the battlefield where, on 21 June 1813, Napoleon’s forces suffered a heavy defeat. On one level, the performance on stage serves to locate the film’s analysis of Beethoven’s life and work at a key turning point in European history where the progressive ideals underpinning the French Revolution would collide with Metternich’s reactionary vision of a post-1815 Europe following the Congress of Vienna. On another level, however, the sequence highlights the disparity between, on the one hand, the enthusiastic reception of the piece by the predominantly bourgeois Viennese audience for whom Napoleon’s demise represents the end of any real threat to their social status and, on the other, Beethoven’s (post-1804) rejection of Napoleon as a despotic figure in whom the revolutionary ideals of 1789 would be not fulfilled, but rather betrayed. In choosing a work such as Opus 91 (widely regarded as one of Beethoven’s inferior compositions) to launch their analysis of cultural production in early nineteenth-century Europe, Seemann and Kunert draw attention to a further contradiction of this era, namely that between the aspiration of radical artists to challenge existing aesthetic

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norms while at the same time catering to the needs and desires of a bourgeois public. The prospect of exploiting this demand for an endless supply of variations of ‘popular’ works of an affirmative character is precisely that which motivates the entrepreneurial Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, who sees Beethoven’s music almost exclusively in terms of its potential for commercial exploitation via a process of commodification and (mechanical) reproduction for a ‘wider audience’. When Beethoven visits Mälzel’s workshop during the episode whose title ‘The Dawn of the Technical Revolution in Art’ is clearly designed to evoke an association with Walter Benjamin’s celebrated essay of 1935/39, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, he is invited to view the construction of the panharmonicon. However, the composer quickly grasps both the social implications of the invention – ‘There’ll only be mechanical music in our concert halls’ – and the financial implications of this process of automation: ‘You want to sell my music without paying me for it!’ In Benjaminian terms, Beethoven senses the loss of aura that is an inevitable consequence of the mechanical reproduction of his music, but in keeping with his status as an individual artist working in a bourgeois society, that lack of authenticity is also articulated in terms of financial loss. Mälzel is by no means the only character in the film to view Beethoven as a source of revenue; as the ironically captioned episode ‘Brotherly Love’ underlines, both Johann and Karl view their brother as an asset to be managed, and in the bourgeois milieu in which both they and Mälzel operate, what matters is not the quality of the music per se, but rather the ‘brand’ and the sale of fake autographs in order to capitalise on their brother’s ‘star’ appeal. In this way, Seemann’s film exposes a key contradiction at the heart of bourgeois cultural production, namely that despite the commodification of art for mass reproduction (or, perhaps better, precisely because of that process), there is a huge investment on the part of bourgeois audiences in sustaining the myth of individual artistic ‘genius’ and ‘compensating’ for the absent aura of the original site of performance through a carefully managed cult of celebrity. Since Beethoven’s quest for artistic integrity proves to be incompatible with the crude forms of commercial exploitation espoused by Mälzel and his brothers, his financial predicament (at least in Seemann’s film) comes to mirror that of many early nineteenth-century writers and artists who (like Kleist and Hoffmann) struggled to make a living from their work.21 As we watch the composer obsessively counting his last remaining coffee beans, Seemann’s film eschews any attempt

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to romanticise poverty and instead draws attention to the materialist underpinning of all artistic endeavour. At the same time, the film serves as a reminder that the patronage of a wealthy elite merely masks another contradiction with which the progressive artist is confronted. During the episode ‘Artistic Appreciation’, the pretentious aestheticism of Beethoven’s aristocratic sponsors, Prince Lichnowsky and Count Razumovsky, is ruthlessly mocked when the latter observes that ‘Beethoven’s music is capable of guiding all of us to a higher awareness of his own humanity’, only for the camera to draw back to reveal an army of servants tending the beautiful baroque gardens of Schloss Schönbrunn. Seen from this perspective, the aristocrats’ capacity to be ‘lifted out of the banality of their everyday existence’ is shown to have rather more to do with their wealth and status than with their appreciation of Beethoven’s music per se. Lichnowsky may fantasise about exchanging his status as an aristocrat for the musical talents of a Beethoven, but ultimately such speculation merely betrays a failure to grasp the individual authenticity underpinning the creative process itself. Amusing as it is, the sequence nonetheless reveals all too clearly the contradictions of Beethoven’s quest for individual autonomy (‘I must be free so that my art can be free’), faced as he is with an impossible three-way choice between poverty, aristocratic patronage and the commercial rewards of supplying the raw material for Mälzel’s panharmonicon. As Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben unfolds, the viewer is presented with a telling critique of an essentially bourgeois world in which art is undervalued and, for the most part, regarded as something decorative. When the composer visits Dr Malfatti hoping for a cure to his deafness in the episode ‘Faith in Reason’, the grotesquely exaggerated materialism of this self-styled LaMettrie (‘Man may be a complex machine, but for all that he is still a machine’) stands in the starkest possible contrast to the composer’s heartfelt reply that his life would be rendered meaningless without music. Likewise, for all Beethoven’s willingness to exploit the benefits of science in the form of the ear trumpet with which Mälzel supplies him, he remains a staunch critic of the kind of instrumental reason that underpins the entrepreneur’s vision of a musical ‘performance’ in which human performers have become superfluous. However, it is at the level of politics that the contradictions of Beethoven’s existence are most cruelly exposed. His support for the ideals of the French Revolution reflect his belief in the potential of the Enlightenment to deliver political progress, but for the most part, and perhaps most ironically in the episode entitled ‘Political Activism’,

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his progressive rhetoric makes little or no impact on those listening. He may be portrayed as an implacable opponent of the despotic Napoleon and a supporter of the British parliamentary system, but when he attempts to define what it means to be a human being in terms of both Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (‘the starry heavens above me, the moral law within me’) and Schiller’s ‘Ode to Joy’ (‘All people become brothers’), the viewer becomes increasingly conscious of the limitations of this Idealist concept of freedom in the context of nineteenthcentury Europe. For as Metternich explains in the sequence ‘Contexts’, in a society that places a high premium on specialisation and where art is an essentially marginalised activity, ‘nobody takes seriously an artist who talks about politics’. Like the mechanical bird in the cage on Metternich’s desk, the radical artist in bourgeois society is little more than a harmless plaything for the amusement of an aristocratic elite, and it left to Beethoven’s secretary, Schindler, to complete the composer’s political education in respect of the materialist underpinning of aesthetic and political freedom. Here, as in a number of DEFA’s Künstlerfilme, we are confronted with the standard trope of a figure from the Volk who guides the intellectual artist to a proper understanding of the ethical and political predicament of the artist. When the two embark on a discussion of the nature of freedom, and the composer suggests that his financial independence gives him the opportunity to express his opinions without fear of reprisal, it is Schindler who corrects him by pointing out that he is mistaking the freedom of the artist with a more fundamental concept of political freedom. And when Beethoven attempts to defend himself in quasi-Kantian terms, arguing that ‘the very fact that I am beholden to no one is an example to others of someone who simply does what he believes to be right’, Schindler’s reluctance to endorse this Idealist concept of freedom serves not only as a critique of Beethoven at an individual level, but also as a repudiation of the psychological underpinning of eighteenth-century bourgeois drama in which the presence of such virtuous exemplars on stage was regarded as a necessary and sufficient condition to bring about social and political change. In the course of the film, Beethoven’s music is presented in terms of an Idealist concept of aesthetics that would seek to restore the alienated individual of bourgeois society to a condition of wholeness. ‘Only when I work can I truly be myself – that’s what makes time stand still’, he tells his beloved Countess Josephine Brunsvik in the episode ‘Memories of Past Happiness’, in which the lovers look back from the perspective of 1812 and reflect on their earlier (doomed) love affair. However,

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while the sequence invites the viewer to draw a parallel between the restorative powers of art and love, the utopian quality of this moment is undermined by gender difference. For the suspension of time that Beethoven experiences when composing stands in marked contrast to Josefine’s complaint that for her, as a wife and mother trapped in a series of loveless marriages, time simply passes her by. It may be that for the (male) artist Beethoven, the fleeting presence of his (female) muse means that, as he puts it, ‘I’m a completely different person when you are by my side’, but the barriers of class that constitute an insuperable obstacle to her love for Beethoven mean that this love affair is destined to be played out on the margins of society and mediated via the categories of literature and fiction. In an obvious allusion to the illustration from Homer’s Odyssey that recurs at regular intervals during the film, Josefine reminds her ‘Odysseus’ that, in his absence, his ‘Penelope’ had no choice but to marry her suitors and that, as a woman in an essentially patriarchal society, her allotted role is that of Eurydice, condemned to abandon her Orpheus and return to the shadowy world to which she belongs. Yet when Josefine presents her former lover with a miniature portrait of herself, like her, we are left wondering just how far Beethoven’s response ‘I prefer the original’ can really be taken at face value. Beethoven may bemoan the fact that the lovers are condemned to speak ‘through the mouths of the dead’, but his observation that ‘we relive their fates as if we had no other choice’ reflects the character of bourgeois life as an endless series of variations on the same theme. Indeed, it soon becomes apparent that, despite his progressive politics, his capacity to challenge the conventions of his society and find fulfilment is, for the most part, restricted to the spheres of music and aesthetics. Nowhere are these contradictions in the composer’s personality more sharply exposed than in the episode ‘Continuation of a Memory’, in which, in a manner that echoes her lover’s earlier observation that ‘it is never too late to begin again’, Josefine articulates her own utopian vision of breaking with bourgeois society and eloping with her beloved. Yet, as the camera lingers on a close-up of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Beethoven starts to belittle her vision as a bourgeois fantasy and does so in a way that is strikingly at odds with the underlined section of the text in which Romeo declares ‘And what love can do, that dares love attempt’ (Act II, Scene 2). Indeed, the more intensely Josefine paints an idealised picture of a future idyllic existence together, the more clearly Beethoven’s anxiety at the potential loss of his own autonomy as a (male) artist comes to the fore as he deliberately breaks the mood with

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a series of petty remarks about money and hides behinds the bed linen to avoid her gaze. Likewise, his promise to explain everything to her ‘in a letter’ as he seeks to get rid of her reflects Seemann’s attempt to relativise not only the myth of ‘Beethoven the great lover’ that underpins such films as Abel Gance’s Un grand amour de Beethoven, but also the sentimentality of those who would see the composer’s ‘Letter to my immortal beloved’ as the key to his life and work. The two episodes discussed above are just one of a number of attempts on the part of Seemann and Kunert to provide an answer to the question that Beethoven himself poses when he asks: ‘Who is this Beethoven who composes this music?’. However, while sequences of everyday life such as ‘The Culinary Artist’ serve as a reminder that Beethoven is, above all, an ordinary human being of flesh and blood, Seemann’s film never falls into the trap of underplaying his extraordinary talent, and he remains an object of fascination in the bourgeois world of Viennese society. His brothers have little or no understanding of his talents, and while the utterly provincial Johannes sees him as a daemonic Faustian figure who has sold his soul and who needs to be rescued from the depravity of metropolitan Vienna, the more sensitive Karl gazes at an (anachronistic) representation of their brother in the form of a death mask and demands to know what qualities he has that they so manifestly lack. One answer, the film suggests, above all in the sequence ‘A Misunderstanding of the Workings of Art’, is an insistence on authenticity and a single-­mindedness in the pursuit of his artistic goals that is wholly at odds with all forms of bourgeois ‘respectability’. However, such single-minded devotion comes at a price, namely the increasing isolation of Beethoven from those around him (an aspect of his life that is symbolised by the gradual loss of his hearing). On one level, his deafness appears as a blessing insofar as it allows him to filter out everyday trivialities and focus exclusively on the task in hand. But on another level, as the episode ‘Lack of Trust’ underlines, the anxiety he experiences on account of the unheard conversations taking place around him serves as a reminder of his vulnerability. Nonetheless, the alienation he experiences has less to do with his own attitudes to art and love, and much more to do with the bourgeois milieu of nineteenthcentury Vienna. During his rehearsal with a singer in the aptly entitled episode ‘Hermit Crab’, he rejects her simplistic diagnosis that he is dying of solitude and that what he needs is a female companion who appreciates art. As he points out, there is a difference between solitude and what he terms ‘a lack of life’. Ultimately, it is this contradiction

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Figure 6.1 Beethoven and the GDR (Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben). © DEFA-Stiftung/Otto Hanisch. Published with permission.

between the authenticity of the artist and the inauthentic (bourgeois) milieu in which he is destined to operate that is revealed as the master contradiction from which all others follow. In the GDR, Seemann was known primarily as a director of films set in the present, and it is perhaps unsurprising that the film ends with an anachronistic sequence in which Beethoven is portrayed as on the move once again, only for the camera to pull back and reveal him walking against a background that is not Vienna, but East Berlin’s Alexanderplatz in the 1970s (Figure 6.1). The ambivalence of this sequence is further underscored by the transition on the soundtrack from the uplifting strains of the 9th Symphony’s ‘Ode to Joy’ to the more melancholic tones of Sonata No. 8 (the Pathétique) as the location shifts from Metternich’s Vienna to Honecker’s East Berlin. ‘Is he arriving or taking his leave of us?’, Peter Ahrens, the editor of the East German periodical Die Weltbühne, asked provocatively.22 Just how nervous the HV Film was concerning the film’s ending is evident in its protocol of June 1976: ‘The film’s closure seems . . . somewhat undermined by the final sequence. The proof that Beethoven’s oeuvre is an integral part of our cultural heritage could perhaps have been achieved using different aesthetic means.’23 Rosemary Rehan’s review for the Wochenpost articulated what all those who viewed the film feared, but dare not express directly: ‘My feeling’, she wrote, ‘is that Beethoven is out on the street not just for his own cause, but to challenge the viewer,

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and the public in general, to look after those artists whose lot it is to embody a unique, fragile humanity.’24 However, as developments in the political sphere underlined, Seemann’s plea went unheeded. For although in Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben the reactionary Metternich expresses the view that, in a world in which an artist like Beethoven poses no real political threat, there is no need to intervene and restrict his freedom, in the world of real existing socialism in the GDR, Erich Honecker was less forgiving, and barely one month after the film’s premiere at Berlin’s ‘International’ cinema, the film was to acquire a new resonance following the SED leadership’s announcement that the prominent singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann had been stripped of his citizenship.

Production, Reception and Resonance As the title of one review, ‘Nachdenken über Ludwig B’ [‘Thoughts about Ludwig B’]  – an unmistakable allusion to Christa Wolf’s novel Nachdenken über Christa T [Thoughts about Christa T]  – underlines, the filmmakers’ rejection of a chronologically structured biography should be seen in the context of new paradigms of literary modernism that were emerging in contemporary East German fiction. However, in the world of film production, adopting such an approach, especially in the case of such an iconic figure as Beethoven, was a much bolder undertaking. Adopting the view that it was better to have the hardliners within the studio onside from the start rather than encounter their resistance later, Seemann and the production team ‘Gruppe Babelsberg’ took the bold move of appointing Franz Jahrow (best known for his dogmatic approach during the Eleventh Plenum) as the dramaturge on the project.25 An early report from the studio’s script advisors, the Abteilung Dramaturgie, in May 1975 had criticised the film’s episodic character on the grounds that ‘“Beethovens Tage” would merit filming if what is great about Beethoven’s life were a little more obvious . . . what we see instead are primarily his weaknesses’, and the report concluded (incorrectly as it turned out) that the film would struggle to find an audience.26 The importance of the film in the context of the 150th anniversary celebrations of Beethoven’s death in 1977 is also reflected in the decision to engage two East German musicologists, Günter Mayer and Karl-Heinz Köhler, to provide an evaluation of the script that at this point bore the working title of ‘Der Compositeur’ (‘The Composer’).

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For his part, Mayer acknowledged that the script produced by Seemann and Kunert represented an attempt to move away from old-fashioned clichéd views of the composer’s life and to ‘actualise the past’.27 By and large, his report focuses on what it saw as a series of historical inaccuracies, arguing, amongst other things, that it was wrong to depict Beethoven as an impoverished artist. Perhaps mindful both of the SED leadership’s drive to improve living standards in the GDR during the 1970s via the so-called scientific and technical revolution, and of its pride in the near-completion of a project to make the composer’s entire oeuvre available on 116 LPs, Mayer also goes out of his way to criticise the way in which Kunert’s script depicted Mälzel’s attempts to embrace new technologies in a wholly negative light.28 Mayer was also in no doubt of the negative implications of the film’s final sequence, which he saw as suggesting that ‘even in the context of a socialist culture his music remains fundamentally misunderstood, his humanist message falls on deaf ears, remains unfulfilled, is perhaps incapable of ever being fulfilled, and that this iconic figure . . . like a number of others incidentally, is somehow out of place in our society’.29 By contrast, KarlHeinz Köhler’s report was far less critical of the script as a whole and, tellingly, had nothing to say on the matter of the film’s conclusion,30 and it is hardly surprising that Jahrow suggested that Kohler and not Mayer should be co-opted onto the film’s production team.31 However, the sense of unease in the GDR’s Ministry of Culture is evident in a letter of 12 November 1975 from the Deputy Minister of Culture, Werner Rackwitz, to the head of the HV Film, Hans Starke, in which he noted that the film was unlikely to result in a portrait of Beethoven that reflected the GDR’s Marxist interpretation of the composer and his work.32 As the exchanges between Rackwitz, Starke and Jahrow underline, it was becoming increasingly clear on all levels that Seemann’s Beethoven project was unlikely to conform to their expectations of what a film about such an iconic composer might look like. In part, such expectations had been shaped by Igor Talankin’s epic two-and-a-half-hour biography, Tschaikovsky (1970), a prestigious production shot in colour and on 70mm film stock that had been released in the GDR in May 1971. Commenting in the East German press, Talankin observed that ‘our aim was to tell a story about the burden of artistic genius, about the pain of artistic creativity that the composer had to suffer in order to provide pleasure for his listeners’.33 Like Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben, the Soviet director’s film may not have been a wholly conventional biopic, but its endorsement of Tschaikovsky’s genius, its celebration of the

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composer as representative of the Russian nation, and a monumentalist cinematography designed to generate affect was clearly much closer to what some in the Ministry of Culture were hoping for in a DEFA film about Beethoven.34 To a large extent, many of the misgivings were prompted by the fear that Kunert’s demontage of Beethoven’s iconic status might move too far in the direction of Mauricio Kagel’s experimental film Ludwig van, a film that had been released in 1970 in the Federal Republic and that particularly troubled the consultant musicologists employed by DEFA to advise on Seemann’s project. Mauricio Kagel was an Argentinianborn filmmaker and composer who had moved to West Germany in the late 1950s. Inspired by the spirit of the 1968 student movement, Kagel’s avant-garde film emphasised the radical character of Beethoven’s work – ‘to compose music in this way is to call into question everything that has been done in the past’, he explained to Der Spiegel35  – but it did so by means of a systematic deconstruction of all forms of cultural authority in a way that was never likely to be acceptable to the HV Film. Commissioned by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in 1969 as part of the West’s celebrations of the bicentenary of the composer’s birth, Ludwig van mounts a critique of the (mis)appropriation of Beethoven’s work in the service of right-wing political ideology and capitalism. The tone of Kagel’s film is set in the opening sequence in which we observe the performance artist, Stefan Wewerka, shaving and grumbling about ‘all this fuss about Beethoven’. During the course of Kagel’s iconoclastic film, the viewer is taken through a series of rooms (two of which are curated by Dieter Roth and Joseph Beuys) in an imaginary ‘Beethovenhaus’, and from there to the Electrola factory in Cologne featuring the mass production of LPs of the composer’s works. During the manifestly absurd discussion of Beethoven’s significance for contemporary culture by, among others, Werner Höfer, Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Kagel himself (in what is a blatant parody of Höfer’s TV programme about the arts, Frühschoppen, the film suggests that the popularisation and commercialisation of Beethoven’s music within bourgeois society constitutes an act of abuse. In a similar vein, Klaus Lindemann’s extravagantly camp performance at the keyboard in the persona of Elly Ney  – one of Hitler’s favourite pianists  – highlights the misappropriation of the composer’s works by Nazi ideologues. 36 Finally, in a sequence in which images of animals in a zoo are underpinned by a soundtrack on which the strains of the 9th Symphony (‘seid umschlungen Million’) can be heard, Kagel’s ironic demontage of the ‘Beethoven industry’ reaches its apotheosis.37

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Kagel’s avant-garde film was clearly conceived as an attack on the ‘musealisation’ of Beethoven and, as his interview with Der Spiegel underlined, as an attempt to rediscover the radical aspect of the composer’s work.38 Although very different in style, in its critique of the process of musealisation to which radical artists and intellectuals are subjected, it has something in common with Jürgen Böttcher’s equally iconoclastic take on Marx and Engels in the film Konzert im Freien of 2000 (see the final chapter). A number of East German musicologists in the early 1970s were aware of Kagel’s film, but almost all of them condemned it out of hand on account of its ‘nihilistic’ character. Werner Rackwitz dismissed the film as an example of Western ‘decadence’,39 while Ernst-Hermann Meyer condemned Kagel’s attempt to ‘denigrate Beethoven’ as ‘pornographic.40 In his report on the treatment underpinning Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben, Günter Mayer was careful to distinguish between the different approaches taken by Seemann and Kunert on the one hand, and Kagel on the other. Kagel, so Mayer argued, had taken a conscious decision not to situate Beethoven within a recognisable historical context. However, while Seemann and Kunert also sought to present the composer ‘from a distance and with a degree of scepticism’, their film had a historical dimension that Kagel’s clearly lacked.41 For that reason, he suggested, it was all the more important that Seemann’s film adhered to the historical facts about the Beethoven as reflected in established Marxist scholarship. What made Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben so problematic was Kunert and Seemann’s willingness to depart from conventional empirically researched accounts of the composer’s biography in order to present what was clearly a critique of the conditions of artistic production in contemporary East German society. In so doing, their approach seemed to strike at the very heart of notions of socialist realist aesthetics and historical progress in much the same way as, in the early nineteenth century, the optimistic teleology of the Enlightenment had been both relativised and called into question by Romantic writers and artists. That such tensions were never truly resolved within the DEFA studio during the mid 1970s is evident in a report of a postrelease discussion of the film at the HV Film on 30 June 1977.42 During the discussion, Kunert argued that art and the creative imagination were primary, and that the purpose of empirical scholarship was to provide writers and artists with material that required constant creative (re)interpretation. Seen from this perspective, what Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben demonstrated is that history is never something that is closed off once and for all, and that the problems that every artist must confront are not

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metaphysical in nature (‘eternal’), but rather problems that c­ onstantly recur, albeit in different historical contexts. In this respect, Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben also invites comparison with Straub-Huillet’s radical work Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach, a film that was shot partly on location in the GDR by the DEFA (documentary) cameraman Hans Kracht. Like Seemann, StraubHuillet makes no attempt to present a conventional linear plot and, in keeping with their Brechtian approach to aesthetics, opts for a series of episodic tableaus instead. In choosing to focus on Johann Sebastian Bach, a figure whose name is synonymous with the baroque, the filmmakers deliberately sought to distance themselves from the Romantic imaginary that they regarded as having been so compromised at the hands of the Nazis. As Straub comments in the notes accompanying the film: Bach is for me one of the last individuals in the history of German culture where there doesn’t yet exist a divorce between what is called an artist and an intellectual; you find no trace of Romanticism in him – we know what in part resulted from German Romanticism. There is not in him the slightest separation between intelligence, art, and life . . . For me, Bach is the opposite of Goethe.43

On one level, these remarks reflect the filmmakers’ desire to distance themselves from the legacy of the Nazi ‘genius film’ – not least Traugott Müller’s film about Johann Sebastian Bach’s wayward son, Friedemann Bach (1941) – but they also explain the aesthetic rigour of their own film in which music functions not as an accompaniment or commentary, but rather as aesthetic material in its own right.44 As Kailan Rubinoff has noted, the fact that many of the sequences are (deliberately) shot in one take is responsible for a corresponding drop in the sound quality usually associated with postdubbed commercial film production;45 however, it is precisely though such a rigorous insistence on authenticity (understood historically) that the film seeks to articulate its resistance to capitalism and the ‘comfortable’ aesthetic of modern commercial cinema. Like Seemann and Kunert, Straub-Huillet eschews a conventionally romanticised approach to its subject matter in order to launch a critique of the conditions for artistic production under contemporary capitalism, and this quest for authenticity is reflected in the austerity of both the musical performances and the acting of Gustav Leonhardt. In its depiction of Bach struggling in the face of difficult working conditions in Cöthen and Leipzig, Straub-Huillet presents a powerful critique of the concept of the artist as Romantic genius whose musical

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talents remain unaffected by material concerns. Both Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach and Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben protest about the relegation of radical culture to the margins of contemporary society, but each does so in a different way. For Straub-Huillet, the romanticisation of the artist is essentially an act of mauvaise foi designed to conceal the materiality of art; by contrast, their film, through the rigid application of a concept of historical authenticity and the deliberate choice of a preRomantic subject matter, seeks to counter the cult of artistic ‘genius’ that they see as a distortion of capitalist concepts of culture. Although Seemann and Kunert also seek to provide a counternarrative to the mythologisation of the artist as a daemonic figure, the aim of their critique is to show the alienation of the artist not under capitalism, but under ‘real existing socialism’ in the contemporary GDR and to draw attention to the limitations of working within a cultural paradigm that is a blend of essentially bourgeois notions of culture allied with the rigid application of a form of instrumental reason.46 Inevitably, the casting of Donatas Banionis in the title role also prompted comparisons with Konrad Wolf’s Goya.47 Just as on a visual level, Goya’s Caprichos offer a commentary on the action of the film, so too at the level of sound, Beethoven’s music serves to modulate the gestus of each episodic tableau. However, unlike Wolf’s film, which East German viewers saw primarily as a historical drama, Seemann’s film was regarded by many as a ‘contemporary drama’ or Gegenwartsfilm.48 To a large extent, this was because Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben was more successful than Goya in presenting an image of the artist/ composer free of any form of exoticism. This in turn reflects a key difference in the formal structure of the two films: while Wolf attempted, especially in the first part of the film, to combine the epic quality of Feuchtwanger’s realist novel with more conventional aspects of the biopic genre, Seemann and Kunert opted for a an episodic approach. Their characterisation of Beethoven not as a suprahuman genius, but as an ‘ordinary’ individual who happened to be blessed with extraordinary talent made it much easier for viewers to identify with the character. Indeed, as Klaus Wischnewski argued, it was precisely this ‘exaggerated worldliness’ of Beethoven’s artistic personality that, in his view, made it a paradigmatic example of a socialist Künstlerfilm.49

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Kleist or Hölderlin? With the closing sequence of their film Beethoven  – Tage aus einem Leben, Seemann and Kunert created a powerful image of a society in which, especially following the expulsion of Wolf Biermann, writers and artists seemed destined to play an increasingly marginal role. For many East Germans, the Biermann affair, together with an increasingly stagnant economy, suggested that the gulf between the ‘real existing socialism’ of the 1970s and the founding fathers’ vision of a society predicated on the ideals of the Enlightenment was growing ever wider. The increasing sense of alienation that many individuals experienced in East German society of the late 1970s and early 1980s found many forms of expression, but one of the most important was Rudolf Bahro’s seminal work, Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus [The Alternative in Eastern Europe], which was published in the West in 1977 after the manuscript had been smuggled out of the GDR.50 In his study, Bahro offered a theoretical explanation for why it was that alienation was not just confined to industrialised societies under capitalism, but was also a feature of socialist society. Arguing that industry in the Soviet Bloc had failed to break with capitalist modes of production, he emphasised in particular the need to remove the divisions of labour in production under the real existing socialism of the GDR in order to counter the alienation of certain sectors of society and to bridge the divide between the intelligentsia and other members of socialist society. Bahro’s critique was also accompanied by a revival of interest in the utopian thought of the Marxist philosopher Ernst Bloch and in particular the latter’s work Das Prinzip Hoffnung [The Principle of Hope], which had been published between 1954 and 1959 and had had a profound impact on the generation that was now in their forties and fifties.51 During the Expressionist Debate of the 1930s, Bloch had rejected Lukács’ rigid binary distinction between the rationalism of the Enlightenment and the irrationalism of Romanticism, and this, together with his interest in the unconscious as a source of utopian impulses, dovetailed with the view that, far from being a cultural aberration, the Romantic tendency in art and literature should be regarded as a progressive attempt to reimagine the utopia that the rational Enlightenment had promised – but failed – to deliver. As we shall see, both theorists played a key role in providing an intellectual context for the Romantic turn in East German filmmaking of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

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As I suggested above, this Romantic turn was not confined to the East, but was part of an increasingly transnational dialogue that also embraced film production in the West. For writers and artists in the neighbouring Federal Republic, there was one Romantic writer in particular whose life and works reflected the contradictions of the Enlightenment: Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1812).52 As a young student, Kleist had been brought up in the traditions of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. However, his initial faith in the optimistic teleology of the Enlightenment had been shattered by his experience of postrevolutionary Paris. Like many of his generation, he grappled with the problem of how the enlightened ideals of liberty, fraternity and equality could have led to the Terror, and he was appalled at the way in which the application of science and reason in the French capital had, as he saw it, led not to emancipation in the political sphere, but rather to a culture of luxury consumption. Lacking any aristocratic patronage, Kleist struggled to establish himself as a writer in his native Prussia and, having fallen into poverty, committed suicide in 1812. For West German filmmakers such as Helma Sanders-Brahms, Kleist’s status as a marginalised figure whose unconventional work by and large failed to resonate with a contemporary bourgeois reading public and was rejected by established writers such as Goethe seemed to reflect the predicament of her generation.53 Moreover, in her film Heinrich (1977), Kleist’s critique of the mechanistic rationality underpinning the bureaucratic administration of Prussia is presented in terms of a rejection of the binary logic of a patriarchal society. This critique is framed in terms of a form of écriture feminine whereby, as in so many reworkings of Romantic culture in the 1970s and 1980s in both East and West, the Romantic mindset is deployed as a means of articulating certain aspects of feminist thought. In the GDR, however, Kleist was a highly problematic figure. During the Third Reich, Kleist’s patriotism and his hatred of Napoleon and Napoleonic France had been exploited for propaganda purposes by the Nazis, who saw the writer as the very embodiment of an extreme form of Prussian nationalism. This legacy, together with Kleist’s ambivalent attitude towards the French Revolution, was largely responsible for his delayed reception in the GDR. Although during the 1970s a number of writers in the GDR (including Christa Wolf and Günter Kunert) sought to rehabilitate Kleist, interest in his work was, for the most part, confined to Michael Kohlhaas and the comedy Der zerbrochne Krug [The Broken Pitcher], two works that, at least within the context of East German literary scholarship, address the revolutionary potential of the peasantry in the face of a decadent and corrupt aristocracy. In 1969 Günter Reisch

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had filmed a version of Der zerbrochne Krug entitled Jungfer, Sie gefällt mir for DEFA, but here too emphasis was on the sociopolitical aspects of Kleist’s play rather than on the wider issues of gender, violence and human subjectivity that so appealed to filmmakers in the West. In the GDR and for the filmmakers at DEFA, the place occupied by Kleist in the cultural imaginary of the West was, by and large, taken by the poet Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), a writer who, like Kleist, had struggled in vain to be recognised by Goethe and whose achievements as a writer remained largely unrecognised in his lifetime. A fervent supporter of the French Revolution, Hölderlin became increasingly disillusioned with the course of politics in the Metternich era, and his frustrations in the political sphere were mirrored by similar disappointments in his personal life, following the collapse of his love affair with a married woman, Susette Gontard, whose children he had been employed to tutor. Following the arrest of his friend and political ally Isaac von Sinclair, Hölderlin was himself arrested and charged with treason. Diagnosed as suffering from dementia, he escaped prison, but was forcibly interned in a clinic in Tübingen. Deemed incurable, he was released and subsequently spent the remaining thirty-six years of his life in a tower in Tübingen under the care of a local carpenter, Ernst Zimmer, and his wife, Lotte. Like Kleist, Hölderlin had also been feted by the Nazis as a patriotic poet, but Lukács’ essay of 1934 in which he emphasised the writer’s Jacobinist politics and explicit support for the French Revolution made his reintegration into a socialist literary canon a much simpler matter.54 This view of Hölderlin as a revolutionary political writer was further boosted by Becher in his own poetry of the 1940s and in his foreword to a collection of Hölderlin’s poetry published in 1952. Indeed, its significance for the SED’s concept of literary heritage is evident in Alexander Abusch’s address of 2 April 1970 to mark the 200th anniversary of the poet’s birth, in which he reminded his audience that the political vision of the Jacobin poet Hölderlin had found its realisation in the GDR.55 Seen from this perspective, Hölderlin and his work was quite different from that of supposedly ‘reactionary’ Romantic writers such as Kleist. Gradually, the dominant image of Hölderlin as a politically committed writer whose utopian aspirations reflected the impasse of the bourgeois class to which he belonged came to be challenged. Given the revival of interest in Romanticism in the 1970s and an increasingly critical view of the aesthetic underpinning of Lukács’ approaches, it is unsurprising that Hölderlin’s insanity and its putative causes  – a subject largely ignored during the 1950s and 1960s – was increasingly

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attracting the attention of writers and artists, and had prompted a number of fictional accounts based on the writer’s life, including Stefan Hermlin’s Scardanelli (1970) and Gerhard Wolf’s Der arme Hölderlin (1972). Hermlin’s Scardanelli (one of the fictitious personas Hölderlin adopted during his internment in the tower) marked the start of a trend to ‘reromanticise’ Hölderlin and to see his madness as the reflection of a state of alienation resulting from a mismatch between the subjectivity of his poetic imagination and the objective conditions of the world in which he lived. As John Pizer has noted, Hermlin was himself highly critical of the intrumentalisation of Hölderlin’s politics in the service of the GDR’s own ideological agenda and the corresponding neglect of his achievements in the sphere of aesthetics.56 Although rather different in style compared to Hermlin’s radio play, Gerhard Wolf’s novel Der arme Hölderlin operates with a reverse chronology and seeks an explanation of the poet’s isolation from both mainstream literary culture (as represented by Goethe and Schiller) in terms of the a quest for a utopia that is couched in Blochian terms.57 Indeed, during the course of the 1970s, as Helen Fehervary has argued, ‘Hölderlin’s critical reception emerges as a new variation of the Kafka debate that aroused so much controversy in the early 1960s’58 and put uncomfortable questions about alienation in socialist society back on the agenda. Although the publication in 1978 of Pierre Bertaux’s study in the periodical Sinn und Form (in which the French scholar had argued that Hölderlin had merely pretended to be insane for tactical reasons) represented an attempt to restore the earlier image of Hölderlin as a poet unambiguously committed to the Jacobin cause,59 increasingly writers and filmmakers turned their attention to the contradictory aspects of the writer’s life.60 Just as during the 1970s, Beethoven’s late work had come to be seen as considerably more ambiguous than had hitherto been assumed, so too the complexity of Hölderlin’s later poetry seemed to contradict the dominant (pre-1970s) image of the poet as a representative of neoclassical idealism. During the 1980s, two very different Hölderlin films were produced in the GDR: Herrmann Zschoche’s production for DEFA, Hälfte des Lebens (1985), starring Ulrich Mühe and Jenny Grollmann as Hölderlin and Susette Gontard; and Herwig Kipping’s experimental film, Hommage à Hölderlin, with Rolf Ludwig in the title role, a film that was screened just once at the Akademie der Künste in January 1984 and was not broadcast on television until after the Wende.61 In stark contrast to Kipping’s highly experimental film, Zschoche’s Hälfte des Lebens offers not only a much more conventional portrait of the poet, but also one that in its adherence to the conventions of heritage cinema seems

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designed for the Western export market.62 In Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben, Seemann and Kunert had presented a view of Beethoven that challenged the conventional image of the Romantic composer as a daemonic figure, and explained his creativity in terms of the contradictions with which he was confronted; by contrast, the image of Hölderlin that emerges from Herrmann Zschoche’s Hälfte des Lebens builds on the literary works of the 1970s discussed above and presents the poet not as a writer in the neoclassical tradition, but as a Romantic artist for whom the gulf between ideal and reality is ultimately destructive and prompts him to withdraw from society altogether. Based on a script by Christa Kożik, Zschoche’s film focuses on the first half of the poet’s life, roughly speaking the period from 1796 to 1806, and was conceived, in the scriptwriter’s words, ‘not as a film for experts but rather to introduce Hölderlin to a wider public’.63 However, as the evaluations of the script solicited by the DEFA studio confirm, Kożik’s focus on the love affair was a bold undertaking and one that ran contrary to the GDR’s understanding of Hölderlin as a belated Jacobin. In his highly critical report, Dieter Schiller criticised Kożik’s script for pandering to what he disparagingly refers to as ‘the contemporary vogue for Romanticism’ and for focusing exclusively on feelings and emotions while ignoring the complex relationship of real and ideal in Hölderlin’s political and aesthetic thought.64 In downplaying the political dimension of the writer’s life, Kożik’s treatment, he argued, presented an account of the writer’s life grounded in the categories of bourgeois humanist ideology.65 In a rather less polemical commentary on a subsequent version of the script, the DEFA script department was also troubled by what it saw as an over-emphasis on the love affair as an explanation for Hölderlin’s breakdown.66 However, despite such misgivings, the film was approved for release in December 1984 and premiered on 18 April 1985. Seemann’s film is presented in the form of a historical costume drama and presents Hölderlin as a bourgeois revolutionary, but one whose idealism prevents him from embracing a pragmatic approach to the political reality with which he is confronted. Inserted titles and establishing shots of Frankfurt am Main and Bad Homburg lend the film an aura of historicity, and in the characterisation of Isaac von Sinclair, the film presents the viewer with a materialist alternative to revolutionary politics that stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the central protagonist’s idealist sentiments. ‘I have an unfortunate devotion to perfection – and that is something that is incompatible with real life’, Hölderlin tells his friend, only for the latter to respond that:

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‘Our task is to find ways of realising our ideals.’ As the film unfolds, we experience Hölderlin’s rejection – and subsequent marginalisation as a writer – by such figures of the literary establishment as Goethe and Schiller. By means of a series of quotations from the novel Hyperion (1797), Seemann’s film casts Susanne Gontard in the role of Diotima and aligns Hyperion’s loss of faith in the Greek revolution and solitary existence following his beloved’s death, with Hölderlin’s own disappointment at the obstacles placed in the way of a German republic and his eventual isolation in the tower in Tübingen. But the real thrust of the film is encapsulated in the film’s title Hälfte des Lebens (a reference to Hölderlin’s poem of 1804), which, at various points in the film, is alluded to via the visual metaphor of an apple cut in half that itself connotes the Platonic notion of complementarity. Indeed, it is striking that Zschoche’s film presents the relationship between Gontard (Diotima) and Hölderlin (Hyperion) not in terms of the Enlightenment’s understanding of man and woman as complete and autonomous entities in their own right, but via a Romantic notion of complementarity in which each is ‘incomplete’ without the other. That is to say, Zschoche’s film reflects the extent to which, in the cultural imagination of the GDR, Hölderlin was becoming increasingly integrated into a Romantic concept of culture. In the same measure as Hölderlin is denied access to the spheres, of politics, literature and finally love, he become increasingly isolated  – ‘a stranger in one’s one country’ as he puts it  – and retreats into a world of absolute subjectivity. This inability to distinguish between the subjective and objective aspects of his own existence is reflected both in his observation that ‘I know not whether I am awake or merely dreaming’ and his subsequent failure to convince his captors of his sanity by quoting poetry at them. With its closing image of the poet incarcerated in the asylum and placed under restraint, Zschoche’s Hälfte des Lebens would appear to echo Hölderlin’s rhetorical question ‘Wozu Dichter in dürftiger Zeit?’ [‘What use are poets in times of need?’], and so reflects the marginalised status of critical art in the stagnating GDR of the mid 1980s (Figure 6.2). However, the potential of art to elude state control is also hinted at in the utopian dream of Susanne Gontard and the sentiment that: ‘What you have said remains in the world and cannot be taken back.’

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Figure 6.2 Artists in the GDR? Hölderlin and Hälfte des Lebens. © DEFAStiftung/Günter Jaeuthe. Published with permission.

Radical Romanticism: Hommage à Hölderlin During the early 1980s at the Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen, the young trainee director Herwig Kipping was working on a Hölderlin project that offered a much more radical – and even bleaker – treatment of the poet than Zschoche’s Hälfte des Lebens. In stark contrast to Hälfte des Lebens, which ends with Hölderlin’s incarceration in the asylum, Kipping’s project focuses on the ‘second half’ of Hölderlin’s life, namely the post-1807 period during which he lived a hermit-like existence until his death in 1843. Kipping’s film begins with an extract from one of Hölderlin’s letters, written from the perspective of 1814 and the restorative politics of the Metternich era, in which he chides his fellow countrymen with the words: ‘Will the Germans ever win a revolution? All our hopes are dashed!’ This opening, set in a graveyard illuminated by flickering candles, sets the tone for an extended poetic reflection on the phenomenon of Deutsche Misere and the Germans’ failure throughout history to embrace a progressive form of politics. Supervised by Lothar Warneke, a figure better known for the development of the documentary feature film, Kipping’s diploma project

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dispenses with any form of conventional linear plot and instead proceeds to paint a picture of crushed poetic and political idealism via a series of often enigmatic tableaux that draw on a richly ambiguous and metaphorical language. This sense of ambivalence is further heightened by an unnamed narrator on the film’s soundtrack who asks, provocatively, in what is an obvious allusion to the scholarship of Pierre Bertaux: ‘Is he really mad? Or is this illness just a mask so that the former Jacobin Hölderlin can hatch treasonous plans?’ The answers to such questions, the film suggests, cannot be reduced to such simplistic binary oppositions, and this is further underscored in the way the film attempts to find a visual correlate to the lyrical quality of Hölderlin’s poetry. Many of the sequences take place in bleak natural settings far removed from human civilisation and are punctuated by multiple references to the French Revolution in the form of images of the tricolore and flashbacks depicting of revolutionary violence. Here, the influence of Tarkovsky’s use of landscapes as a means of externalising the internal workings of the protagonist’s mind is clearly evident.67 On one level, the juxtaposition of animals roaming freely in their natural surroundings with Hölderlin, bound by ropes and incapable of a­ rticulating his poetic vision, hints at the possibility of a utopian world that exists beyond the parameters of human society. But on another level, images of nature also serve to paint a picture of a world in which the poetic mission of the artist/writer is destined to remain unfulfilled: ‘I resembled a sick plant that could not endure the sun’, Hölderlin notes. Likewise, during the sequence in which the poet observes his own funeral from within the grave, we hear the strains of Schubert’s Winterreise on the soundtrack (‘Ich träumte von bunten Blumen / Es war kalt und finster / Als schrie ein Rabe vom Dach’), a work that, as Elaine Kelly has observed, assumed the character of ‘an anthem of disillusionment’ for East German writers and artists of the 1970s and was widely deployed to conjure up a vision of stagnation and decay.68 This image of stagnation is further underscored in the image of time standing still, as symbolised in the image a clock without hands. The utopian aspirations of Hommage à Hölderlin are perhaps most clearly articulated in Hölderlin’s vision of a world in which, as he puts it, ‘everyone can be who they are and in which there are no contradictions between words, actions and desires’. Nonetheless, the recurring allusions to Don Quixote tilting at windmills suggest that such idealism belongs to an era that now lies firmly in the past; however, the depiction of the poet’s struggle to endure the frosty winter landscape of post-1814

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Germany in the hope of better times to come has an absurdist quality to it that calls to mind the protagonist of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. This loss of agency coupled with a sense of being trapped in the no man’s land of the present is reflected in Hölderlin’s lament ‘It is my destiny from birth to have nowhere I can call home’ – words that themselves succinctly capture the predicament of Kipping and the last generation of DEFA filmmakers. Despite the misgivings expressed by the Film Hochschule during its production, Kipping’s film was well received in the press following the premiere in the Akademie der Künste.69 Writing in Die neue Zeit, Helmut Ullrich praised the montage of images in the film, noting that ‘the great Hungarian film theorist, Belá Balázs dreamed of a form of cinematic lyricism (‘Filmlyrik’); this imaginative experiment comes very close to realising such an aspiration’.70 Not surprisingly, a number of critics, including F.-B. Habel, viewed Kipping’s film through the lens of Wolf Biermann’s ‘Das Hölderlin-Lied’ (‘Hölderlin Song’) of 1967 and his characterisation of Hölderlin – and by implication other writers and artists in the GDR – as ‘strangers in our own home’ (‘In diesem Lande leben wir / Wie Fremdlinge im eigenen Haus’).71 However, despite the complex imagery of Hommage à Hölderlin, the target of Kipping’s critique was obvious, and in positing a link between the repressive character of Metternich’s post-1815 regime and the contemporary GDR, the film went much further than either Seemann’s Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben or Zschoche’s Hälfte des Lebens. As Reinhild Steingrover has argued, ‘the goal of this aesthetic strategy was to perceive the subjective poet’s reality from within and to present it to the audience as his objective view of the world’.72 What made Kipping’s film so different from other more mainstream artist-films produced by DEFA (and what prevented its wider dissemination on East German television) was precisely its rejection of any form of conventional realism in favour of a fragmented poetic form that itself mirrored the fragmentary aesthetic of certain forms of Romantic writing. In his diploma dissertation of 1982, ‘Poesie und Film’ [‘Poetry and Film’], Kipping had set out his theory of a ‘poetic cinema’, a study in which his admiration for the avant-garde poetics of Andrey Tarkovsky’s work comes to the fore and in which he sets out his own agenda for a new form of avant-garde cinema. There he argues that ‘through their inclusion of a fantastic-poetic dimension Tarkovsky’s films enrich the traditions of socialist realism. It is the cinema of the future because it is a cinema of modern human beings, a cinema of experience, and a cinema of self-realisation’.73 At the same time, his indebtedness to Romantic

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aesthetics and the fantastic is evident in his definition of poetic film as the articulation of the filmmaker’s subjective vision in an allegorical form that cannot be resolved through the application of rational discursive structures. Put another way, the poetic film is – as we shall see in his post-Wende work Novalis – a quest for the Ideal, the Absolute, and, as such, is always doomed to remain unfulfilled. It is in this spirit that Kipping proposes an aesthetic that he terms ‘counter art’ (Gegenkunst) and that he defines as the avant-garde aesthetic of socialism.74 This concept of counter-art is conceptualised in terms of an aesthetic that would expose the contradictions of bourgeois life and art, while at the same time exploring new spaces and modes of being that are in keeping with a utopian concept of socialism. As Reinhild Steingrover notes, Kipping’s passionate appeal for freedom and for individual expression of genius has to be understood in the context of the social stagnation and crisis of the 1980s.75 At the same time, however, both his attempt to refashion the term ‘avant garde’ in the context of utopian Marxist thought together with his film Hommage à Hölderlin as a visual correlate to his concept of counter-art also bear witness to the rediscovery of Nietzsche in the GDR. Kipping had been originally trained as a mathematician in the GDR and, in an interview of 1991 for the magazine Film und Fernsehen, he noted that in the GDR, ‘mathematics, as I then experienced it, was not a sacred matter, but a profane one’.76 In Kipping’s stated preference for the sacred over the profane, there is a clear echo of the notion, put forward by the Romantic writer Novalis, that ‘the highest form of life is mathematics’ and that ‘pure mathematics is a religion’.77 Yet when asked whether he would have continued his career as a mathematician if there had been more emphasis on the creative aspects of pure mathematics, the inspirational figure he cites is not Novalis, but Nietzsche: We didn’t have anything like that in maths. I only found it in a small circle of people who philosophized about Nietzsche. A whole world opened up to me then, it was as if I had been stunned . . . The whole culture headed right for me and pressed me out of mathematics. My life got all mixed up, became chaos . . . But despite everything, it was beautiful. I got high on Georg Heym, Trakl, Else Lasker-Schüler, Benn, on Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Baudelaire. In this period, I woke up, lightning struck me.78

Kipping’s enthusiasm for the thought of Nietzsche reflects the feelings of a generation for whom the nineteenth-century philosopher, in common with a number of German Romantic writers, was regarded not as an irrationalist precursor of fascism, but rather as a figure whose rational

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critique of the Enlightenment had undermined the hegemony of such discourse by calling into question the subject-object totality it claimed to have mastered. Far from seeing him as an irrationalist champion of fascism, as philosophers such as Lukács and Wolfgang Harich had in the 1950s and 1980s respectively, a number of East German intellectuals came to regard his critique of rationality as a key influence not only on Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947), but also as providing the impulse behind the epistemological debates unleashed by the works of poststructuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. In addition, the publication of an article by Renate Reschke in Weimarer Beiträge made the case for a more differentiated reception of Nietzsche’s work and one that emphasised the complexity and contradictory nature of his thought.79 Yet, as David Bathrick has argued, to accept Nietzsche’s critique of rationality was, at least for those members of the SED who clung to the vision of the GDR as the culmination of the ideals of the Enlightenment, to call into question perhaps the most important and enduring strand of socialist historiography.80 In Hommage à Hölderlin, Kipping invites us to share in his poetic vision of the alienated German revolutionary and to view the contradictions of real existing socialism from a standpoint that is underpinned by a blend of Romantic subjectivity and Nietzschean relativism. However, this quasi-Fichtean concept of radical subjectivity was taken to its final extreme in Kipping’s 1993 film Novalis  – Die blaue Blume [Novalis – The Blue Flower] about the Romantic poet Friedrich von Hardenberg (Novalis). In stark contrast to Hölderlin, Novalis’ vision of an imaginary inner world wholly independent of material reality was almost impossible to integrate into Marxist c­ onceptualisations of aesthetics.81 Novalis’ treatise ‘Die Christenheit oder Europa: Ein Fragment’ [‘Christianity or Europe’, 1802], in which he articulates the need to return to the past and, in particular, to a pre-Reformation age of religion and Idealist aesthetics in order to rediscover a new ‘golden age’ in the future was anathema to Marxist literary historians in the GDR and was adduced as evidence of the reactionary character of Romantic politics generally. Yet what made Novalis so problematic was not his politics per se, but rather his epistemology and the view that, as he put it, ‘the world must be romanticised again. Only in that way will one rediscover its original sense’.82 This programmatic statement entailed embracing a position of radical subjectivity and the deconstruction of the subject–object relationship that was central to all conventional concepts of realist aesthetics.

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A co-production involving DEFA and the short-lived independent production company Thomas Wilkening Filmgesellschaft mbH, Kipping’s Novalis – Die blaue Blume was the very last film to be made under the auspices of the DEFA studio before its liquidation. In this highly enigmatic work, Novalis is compelled to walk a tightrope between, on the one hand, the aspirations of his father, who would see him take up a position as a bureaucrat in the Prussian civil service, and, on the other, his uncle, who would have him deploy his poetic talents in the glorification of war. Unwilling to choose either path, Novalis turns his back on the utilitarian world of instrumental reason and seeks refuge instead in a world of absolute poetry symbolised by his child-bride Sophie von Kühn. The idealist underpinning of the romanticised world that Kipping attempts to convey in his film is hinted at early on in the film where we are presented with an allusion to the aphorism taken from the Blüthenstaub collection of 1798: ‘Vom Glauben hängt die Welt ab  – die Erfahrung und Natur mag sagen was sie will, wir trauen ihm nicht. / Wir glauben, was wir glauben wollen / und wie wir etwas glauben wollen, so ist es auch für uns – selbst wenn das Gegenteil richtig ist’ [‘The world is predicated on belief – w ­ hatever experience tells us about the natural world, we can not trust it. / We believe what we want / and the form that belief takes, that is our truth  – even if the very opposite is the case’].83 As the film unfolds, we are treated to a montage of enigmatic images that evoke (often anachronistically) not just the world historical individuals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but also the quest for transcendence captured in works such as Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings Mönch am Meer [Monk by the Sea, 1808] and Abtei im Eichwald [Abbey in Oakwood, 1810]. Ultimately, however, the predominant image is of Arnold Böcklin’s Die Toteninsel [Isle of the Dead, 1886]. For just as the protagonist of Novalis’ Heinrich von Ofterdingen searched in vain for the blue flower that came to symbolise the Absolute in his imagination, so too the protagonist of Kipping’s film recognise that the quest for transcendence is a quest that – as the lovers’ final flight in a balloon suggests – is doomed to remain unfulfilled in the material world of reality.84

Conclusion Both Hommage à Hölderlin and Novalis  – Die blaue Blume are belated films of an East German tradition in cinema that, in their complex

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montage of visual references to other works of art, reflected a desire to emulate the poetic cinema of Andrey Tarkovsky. In choosing the Romantic writers Hölderlin and Novalis as protagonists, Kipping’s film attempted to provide a corrective to the more conventional view of Hölderlin as a Jacobinist poet whose insanity was provoked by the contradictions of bourgeois society in early nineteenth-century Germany. While Hommage à Hölderlin suggests, in quasi-Blochian terms, that if political stagnation is to be avoided, revolution is a neverending process, in Novalis – Die blaue Blume, the quest for the Ideal proves to be one that leads to a position of inner emigration and a withdrawal from the world of reality into the world of the imagination and a position of absolute subjectivity. Yet, despite their radical aesthetic composition, the extreme subjectivism of these films and their oblique allusions to the political situation of the GDR in the 1980s rendered them largely inaccessible to a wider public.

Notes   1. Georg Lukács, Fortschritt und Reaktion der deutschen Literatur (Berlin: Aufbau, 1947).  2. Elaine Kelly, ‘Composing the Canon: The Individual and the Romantic Aesthetic in the GDR’, in Matthew Philpotts and Sabine Rolle (eds), Contested Legacies: Constructions of Cultural Heritage in the GDR [= Edinburgh German Yearbook, vol. 3] (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009), pp. 198–217, especially pp. 199–200.   3. Werner Mittenzwei, ‘Die Brecht-Lukács-Debatte’, Sinn und Form 19(1) (1967), 235–69.   4. See, for example, ‘Aktennotiz über ein Gespräch bei stellv. Minister, Gen. Klein am 8.12.71 über das Projekt “Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts”’ (BArch DR 117/29502). See also Seán Allan, ‘Transnational Stardom: DEFA’s Management of Dean Reed’, in Seán Allan and Sebastian Heiduschke (eds), Re-imagining East German Cinema in its National and Transnational Contexts (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), pp. 168–88.   5. David Bathrick, The Powers of Speech: The Politics of Culture in the GDR (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 14–16.   6. Brigitte Kirsten, ‘Notizen über die Möglichkeit, den Roman Die Elixiere des Teufels von E.T.A. Hoffmann zu verfilmen. Gründe für eine teilweise Veränderung der Hoffmannschen Vorlage’. November 1966 (BArch DY 17/ 1398).   7. Christa Wolf, Unter den Linden. 3 unwahrscheinliche Geschichten (Berlin: Aufbau, 1974).  8. Franz Fühmann, ‘“Zum 200. Geburtstag von E.T.A. Hoffmann”: Referat gehalten in einer Veranstaltung der Sektion Literatur und Sprachpflege der Akademie der Künste der DDR zum 200. Geburtstag von. E.T.A. Hoffmann am 21. Januar 1976’, in Heide Hess and Peter Liebers (eds), Arbeiten mit der Romantik heute [ = Arbeitshefte der Akademie Der Künste, No. 26 (1978)] (Berlin: Akademie der Künste der DDR, 1978), pp. 12–18, at p. 18. This collection contains a wide range of materials on the reception of German Romanticism in the GDR during the early 1970s.  9. Ibid. 10. Alfred Kurella, ‘Deutsche Romantik. Zum gleichnamigen Sonderheft der “Cahiers du Sud”’, Internationale Literatur 8(6) (1938), 113–28.

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11. See the series of articles published during the 1970s in Musik und Gesellschaft and, in particular, Paul Michel, ‘Beethoven in unserer Zeit’, Musik und Gesellschaft 20 (1970), 9–13. 12. ‘“Sein Werk hat einen festen Platz in unserem Leben”. Erklärung zur BeethovenEhrung der DDR’, Neues Deutschland, 5 December 1970. 13. Ibid. Similar sentiments are to be found in Prime Minister Willi Stoph’s address of 16 December 1970 to mark the start of the Beethoven celebrations. See Willi Stoph, ‘Festansprache des Vorsitzenden des Ministerrates, Willi Stoph, auf dem Festakt zur Beethoven-Ehrung der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik am 16. Dezember 1970’, in Heinz Alfred Brockhaus and Konrad Niemann (eds), Bericht über den internationalen Beethoven-Kongress, 10.–12. Dezember 1970 in Berlin (Berlin: Verlag Neue Musik, 1971). 14. In her essay ‘Composing the Canon’, Kelly argues that Reiner Bredemeyer’s composition ‘Bagatellen für B’ (1970) forced musicologists in the GDR to see Beethoven’s work in a new light insofar as ‘the Bagatelles are devoid of the heroic qualities associated with Beethoven’s middle period, embracing domesticity instead’ [and] ‘contain the fingerprints of Beethoven’s late style, of a composer at oods with society’ (pp.  201–2). On the question of gender and musicology, see also Nina Noeske, ‘Gender Discourse and Musical Life in the GDR’, in Elaine Kelly and Amy Wlodarski (eds), Art outside the Lines: New Perspectives on GDR Art Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2011), pp. 175–92, especially pp. 179–84. 15. See Harry Goldschmidt, ‘Der späte Beethoven. Versuch einer Standortbestimmung’, in Brockhaus and Niemann, Bericht über den internationalen Beethoven-Kongress, pp.  41–58. For a detailed discussion of the impact of this shift of emphasis on the East German reception of Beethoven and on the concept of ‘belatedness’, see Elaine Kelly, Composing the Canon in the German Democratic Republic: Narratives of NineteenthCentury Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), especially Chapter 4, ‘Late Beethoven and Late Socialism’. 16. Dieter Wolf (private communication) notes that the DEFA production group ‘Babelsberg’ had been contemplating a film about Beethoven as early as the 1960s and had approached the Soviet actor Sergei Bondarchuk regarding the main role. See also Franz Jahrow’s letter of 12 May 1975 to the deputy Minister of Culture, Hans Starke. Arnstam’s disappointment at being overlooked is evident in Konrad Wolf’s letter of 4 June 1975 to the DEFA studio manager, Albert Wilkening (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 17. Ibid. 18. See Günter Kunert, Ein anderer K. Hörspiele (Berlin: Aufbau, 1977). The first of these Ehrenhandel (about Heinrich Heine) had been broadcast on Radio DDR 1 on 8 November 1972 and published in the East German periodical Neue Deutsche Literatur 21(3) (1973), 61–83. 19. Günter Kunert, ‘Beethoven  – zu einem Film über ihn’, in Günter Kunert, Warum schreiben? (Munich, Vienna: Hanser, 1992), pp. 36–42, at p. 37. 20. See Kunert’s preliminary material in ‘Beethoven. Treatment von Günter Kunert. 9.3.73’ (Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Horst-Seemann-Archiv, 8). 21. One of the musicologists involved in the project, Karl-Heinz Köhler, objected to such a portrayal on the grounds that, historically speaking, Beethoven was not wellsuited as an example of a financially impoverished artist. See [Karl-Heinz Kohler], ‘Begutachtung zum Drehbuch Beethovenfilm “Der Compositeur”. Dated 30 October 1975 (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 22. Peter Ahrens, ‘Beethoven und eine glückliche Ehe‘, Die Weltbühne 44 (1976), 21–23.

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23. ‘Stellungnahme zu dem DEFA-Spielfilm “Beethoven” Tage aus einem Leben’ signed S. Heinemann and dated 11 June 1976 (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 24. Rosemary Rehan, ‘Nachdenken über Ludwig B’, Wochenpost, 11 November 1976. 25. Dieter Wolf, ‘Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben’, in Klaus-Detlef Haas and Dieter Wolf (eds), Sozialistische Filmkunst: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Dietz, 2011), pp.  165–68, especially p. 165. 26. Report of 6 May 1975 signed Klaus Richter-de Vroe (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 27. Günter Mayer, ‘Bemerkungen zum Szenarium “Der Compositeur”, Beethoven in Wien von Kunert/Seemann’, 28 September 1975. (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 28. Still photographs in which Mälzel’s nineteenth-century workshop is presented as an electronics assembly plant from the 1970s staffed by East German female workers confirm that the range of references to the contemporary GDR in the film extended well beyond the final sequence set in the Karl-Marx-Allee. See Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Horst-Seemann-Archiv, 52. 29. Ibid. 30. [Karl-Heinz Kohler], ‘Begutachtung zum Drehbuch Beethovenfilm “Der Compositeur”’, 30 October 1975 (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 31. Franz Jahrow, ‘Stellungnahme zur Begutachtung des Drehbuches “Der Compositeur” (Beethoven-Film) durch Dr. Karl-Heinz Köhler (Staatsbibliothek Berlin)’ (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 32. Letter of 12 November 1975 from Werner Rackwitz to Hans Starke. See also the letter of 20 November 1975 from Franz Jahrow to Hans Starke (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). Rackwitz’s concept of a ‘socialist Beethoven’ is outlined in his essay ‘Die Bedeutung Ludwig van Beethovens für die sozialistischen Nationalkultur der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik’, in Brockhaus and Niemann, Bericht über den internatio­ nalen Beethoven-Kongress, pp. 9–20. 33. ‘Filme im Monat Mai’, Berliner Zeitung, 9 May 1971. A review published in Freie Erde on 27 August 1971 complained that because of the primary focus on the creative struggles of the strong-willed genius, the social origins of the conflicts he experienced was obscured. See R.W., ‘Von der Schöpferkeit des Menschen. Tschaikowski  – ein sowjetischer Film über den großen russischen Komponisten’, 27 August 1971. For a similar view criticising the way in which Tchaikovsky had been portrayed as an isolated figure, see M. Sokolski, ‘Der Film, Tschaikowski und der wahre Tschaikowski’, Kunst und Literatur 3 (1972), 319–26. 34. For a comparative study of Talankin’s film and Ken Russell’s film about Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers (1970), see John Gardiner, ‘Whose Tchaikovsky? Consumerism, Nationality, Sex and the Curious Case of the Disappearing Composer’, Cogent Arts & Humanities 1(1) (2014), 964385. Interestingly, when Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben was screened at the Sixth International Film Festival of India, it drew comparison with Ken Russell’s ‘composer-films’. In his polemical review for The Statesman on 3 January 1977, Sunil Sethi noted: ‘The whole thing is a sort of East European Ken Russell but badly made and with an obvious lack of understanding of the composer’s life and works.’ 35. Mauricio Kagel, ‘“Beethovens Erbe ist die moralische Aufrüstung”: Spiegel-Gespräch mit dem Komponisten Mauricio Kagel über Beethovens Musik’, Der Spiegel 37 (1970), 195–96, at 196. 36. As Esteban Buch has noted, this is just one of a series of references in the film to the Nazi era and its fascination with Beethoven. See Esteban Buch, Beethoven’s Ninth: A Political History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 229–31.

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37. For a detailed study of Kagel’s film, see Nikos Stavlas, ‘Reconstructing Beethoven: Mauricio Kagel’s Ludwig van’, unpublished PhD dissertation (London: Goldsmiths, University of London, 2012). 38. Theodor Adorno defines the term ‘musealisation’ as follows: ‘The German word museal [museumlike] has unpleasant overtones. It describes objects to which the observer no longer has a vital relationship and which are in the process of dying. They owe their preservation more to historical respect than to the needs of the present.’ Theodor Adorno, Prisms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967), pp.  173–86 [= ‘Valéry Proust Museum’], at p. 175. 39. Werner Rackwitz, in Brockhaus and Niemann, Bericht über den internationalen Beethoven-Kongress, pp. 9–19, at p. 16. 40. Ernst-Hermann Meyer, ‘Das Werk Ludwig van Beethovens und seine Bedeutung für das sozialistisch-realistische Gegenwartsschaffen’, in Brockhaus and Niemann, Bericht über den internationalen Beethoven-Kongress, pp. 581–92, at p. 583. 41. Mayer, ‘Bemerkungen zum Szenarium “Der Compositeur”’. 42. ‘Stenografische Niederschrift. Gespräch über den Film “Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben” in der HV Film beim Ministerium für Kultur am 30. Juni 1977’ (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 43. Jean-Marie Straub, ‘Sur  Chronique d’Anna Magdalena Bach’, Cahiers du cinéma,  193 (September 1967), 56–58, at 58. 44. Andi Engel, ‘Andi Engel Talks to Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet Is There Too’, Enthusiasm 1 (1975), 1–25, at 7. 45. Kailan Rubinoff, ‘Authenticity as a Political Act: Straub-Huillet’s Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach and the Post-War Bach Revival’, Music and Politics 5(1) (2011), 1–24. 46. In his detailed study of the film, Barton Byg argues that ‘the central question posed by the film . . . is how the music of Bach . . . can at all be connected to the physical life of a historical individual’ and ‘how can anyone, artist or not, know what will be remembered as essential to one’s character of valuable to the lives of others (contemporaries or posterity?)’. See Barton Byg, Landscapes of Resistance: The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), pp. 62–63. 47. See, for example, Horst Knietzsch, ‘Von der Liebe zur Kunst und zum Leben’, Neues Deutschland, 17 October 1976. 48. Horst Seemann reports that many viewers at postscreening discussions commented that the film was ‘the best contemporary film DEFA had ever made’. See ‘Stenografische Niederschrift. Gespräch über den Film “Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben” in der HV Film beim Ministerium für Kultur am 3. Juni 1977’, p. 26 (BArch DR 1-Z/198B). 49. Klaus Wischnewski, ‘Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben’, Kulturpolitik – Kunst. DEFA Filme 1976–1977. Analysen Teil 2 [= Aus Theorie und Praxis des Films, 2/1979], 123–39, at 127. 50. Rudolf Bahro, Die Alternative: Zur Kritik des real existierenden Sozialismus (Frankfurt: EVA, 1977). 51. Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung, 3 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1959). 52. See Thomas Elsaesser, New German Cinema: A History (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), pp. 48–52. 53. On Kleist’s reception by West German filmmakers, see Seán Allan, ‘Kleist, 1968 and the New German Cinema’, German Life and Letters 64(3) (2011), 472–87.

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54. Georg Lukács, ‘Hölderlins Hyperion’, Internationale Literatur, June 1935, 96–110. 55. For a detailed account of Hölderlin’s reception in the FRG and GDR up until the early 1970s, see Helen Fehervary, Hölderlin and the Left: The Search for Dialectic of Art and Life (Heidelberg: Winter, 1977). 56. John David Pizer, Imagining the Age of Goethe in German Literature, 1970–2010 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011), p. 62. 57. In her analysis of Hälfte des Lebens, Daniela Berghahn argues that the film ‘follows Gerhard Wolf’s interpretation of Hölderlin in Der arme Hölderlin as an allegory of the writer’s dilemma in a society that affords him just one type freedom, namely that of isolation’. Daniela Berghahn, Hollywood behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p. 129. 58. Fehervary, Hölderlin and the Left, p. 124. 59. Pierre Bertaux, ‘Hölderlin geisteskrank?’, Sinn und Form 6 (1978), 1107–28. 60. See in particular Renate Reschke, ‘Aspekte einer Hölderlinischen Ästhetik’, Weimarer Beiträge 6 (1973), 73–94. 61. The film was first broadcast on 6 October 1991. 62. See, for example, the report of DEFA Aussenhandel, ‘Stellungnahme zur Staatlichen Zulassung des Films Hälfte des Lebens’, 4 December 1984 (BArch 1-Z/871), which noted that there was always demand for films of this genre and rated the film’s potential for Western export very highly. The West German premiere of the film took place on 16 July 1987. 63. See Christa Kożik, ‘Hälfte des Lebens. Film über den Dichter Hölderlin. Skizze Februar 1977’ (BArch DR 117/8226). 64. Dieter Schiller, ‘Bemerkungen zum Treatment. Hälfte des Lebens. Eine Liebesgeschichte von Christa Kożik’ (BArch DR 117/12500), p. 2. 65. See also the evaluations by Evelyn Radczun, ‘Gutachten zum Treatment von Christa Kożik Hälfte des Lebens’ and by Günther Mieth, ‘Gutachten über das Treatment “Hälfte des Lebens – eine Liebesgeschichte” von Christa Kożik‘ (BArch DR 117/12500). 66. Lektorat, ‘Bemerkungen zu “Hälfte des Lebens”. Szenarium 2. Fassung von Christa Kożik. 13.07.1982’ (BArch DR 117/12503). 67. On the impact of Tarkovsky’s landscapes on Kipping, see Herwig Kipping, ‘Poesie und Film’, unpublished Diploma dissertation (Babelsberg: Hochschule für Film und Fernsehen, 1982), especially p. 127. 68. Kelly, Composing the Canon, p. 159. 69. For a detailed analysis of the discussions surrounding Herwig Kipping’s film at the Filmhochschule, see Elisabeth Miltschitzky, Hölderlin  – ein traumatisierter Dichter als Filmheld (Marburg: Tectum, 1999). 70. Helmut Ullrich, ‘Nachwuchsbewährung in der Öffentlichkeit. Filme von Studenten der Potsdamer Hochschule in der Akademie vorgestellt’, Neue Zeit, 3 February 1984. 71. F[rank]-B[urkhard] Habel, ‘Zwischen Wille und Wirkung’, Sonntag 8 (1984), 5. 72. Reinhild Steingrover, Last Features: East German Cinema’s Lost Generation (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014), p. 87. 73. Kipping, ‘Poesie und Film’, p. 162. 74. Ibid., p. 239. 75. Steingrover, Last Features, p. 87. 76. The interview (with Erika Richter und Rolf Richter) was published in  Film und Fernsehen (6–7/1991). 77. Novalis, Mathematische Fragmente, Kapitel X: ‘Das höchste Leben ist Mathematik’ and ‘Reine Mathematik ist Religion’.

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78. For further evidence of the impact of Nietzsche on Kipping, see Dietmar Hochhuth, ‘Die Wechselbäder zwischen Anpassung und Ausstieg; ein Gespräch mit Herwig Kipping’, in DEFA NOVA – nach wie vor? Versuch einer Spurensicherung [= Kinematek No. 82, vol. 30, December 1993], pp. 93–105, especially p. 97. 79. Renate Reschke, ‘Kritische Aneignung und notwendige  Auseinandersetzung’, Weimarer Beiträge 29 (1983), 1190–1213. 80. Bathrick, The Powers of Speech, p. 216. 81. Ursula Heulenkamp, ‘Die Ahnungen des Novalis’, in Hess and Liebers, Arbeiten mit der Romantik heute, pp. 28–32. See also Ursula Heulenkamp, ‘Diskurse über den Irrationalismus in der SBZ/DDR zwischen 1945 und 1960’, in Howard Gaskill, Karin McPherson and Andrew Barker (eds), Neue Ansichten. The Reception of Romanticism in the Literature of the GDR (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), pp. 98–113. 82. Hans-Joachim Mähl and Richard Samuel (eds), Werke, Tagebücher und Briefe Friedrich von Hardenbergs. 3 vols. (Munich, Vienna, Hanser: 1978) vol. 2, p. 334. As the film unfolds, the viewer is presented with an oblique (and anachronistic) collage of allusions to moments in world history where revolutionary aspirations have been crushed. 83. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 561. The original reads: ‘Vom Glauben hängt die Welt ab. Glauben und Vorurteil ist eins. Wie ich eine Sache annehme, so ist sie für mich.’ 84. Sigrid Nieberle sees the film’s closing sequence as an allusion to Stanly Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). See Sigrid Nieberle, Literarhistorische Filmbiographien: Autorschaft und Literaturgeschichte im Kino (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), p. 195.

Epilogue Art, Exile and the Socialist Imaginary

The drive to embrace ever more radical concepts of Romantic subjectivity of the kind Herwig Kipping explores in his films of the 1980s and 1990s reflected the frustrations of a new generation of artists and filmmakers who viewed their predicament through the lens of Hölderlin’s verses and saw themselves as strangers within their own home. In portraying Hölderlin’s existence as a life of inner exile, Kipping’s Hommage à Hölderlin also anticipates the underlying thrust of Egon Günther’s post-Wende production Stein (1991). Günther’s film, his first for DEFA since leaving the GDR in the wake of the Biermann affair, tells the story of a (fictitious) actor Ernst Stein, who, as we discover during a flashback to a performance of King Lear in the spring of 1968, has abandoned his stage career in protest following the arrival of Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia. The parallels with Kipping’s Hommage à Hölderlin extend well beyond the casting of the same actor (Rolf Ludwig) in the title role of each film. Having abandoned the external world for a life of inner exile, this latter-day King Lear now inhabits an aestheticised world fashioned from a complex montage of literary and musical quotations from Shakespeare, Petrarch, Brahms and Bach. Throughout the film, Stein is urged to write down his memoirs, but his reluctance to engage with the past is such that he never succeeds in committing a single word to paper, and when a representative from the Akademie der Künste visits him with the intention of enlisting the help of this well-known dissident in the now-changed and changing times of the

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Wende, she steals his dossier, only to discover that all it contains are empty pages. As Reinhild Steingröver has argued, Günther’s film presents us with a portrait of an individual who ‘is unable to free himself from the utopian concept of socialism’, but one ‘paralysed by the lack of alternatives’.1 Unable – or perhaps unwilling – to seek a way out of the impasse in which he finds himself trapped, Stein – like so many of the protagonists in the films made by DEFA’s last generation of directors – increasingly turns inwards into a solipsistic world of his own making.

Expressionism Revisited: Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens (1986) It is important to remember, however, that not everyone at DEFA endorsed the extreme version of Romantic subjectivity that we encounter in Hommage à Hölderlin, Novalis – die blaue Blume and Stein. While the films of Kipping and Günther are packed with allusions to an often complex – and sometimes impenetrable – montage of literary and artistic motifs, other filmmakers (especially those of the older generation) gravitated towards the idiom of the New German Cinema in their analysis of the role of art in the stagnating GDR of the late 1980s. Perhaps the clearest example of such a tendency is to be found in Ralf Kirsten’s Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens (1986), a film that builds upon the legacy of the much earlier film Der verlorene Engel about Kollwitz’s near-contemporary Ernst Barlach and that deploys a complex system of multiple temporalities in order to make a case for the enduring importance of perhaps Germany’s most prominent female artist of the pre-1945 period. As we saw in Chapter 2, during the late 1940s Kollwitz had been cited by Semjonov as an example of an artist whose work strayed too far from the conventional categories of socialist realism. However, as attitudes softened following Stalin’s death, there were a number of exhibitions of her work and several important documentaries made about her life and work. Götz Oelschlägel’s 1959 documentary Kämpfende Kunst [Art as a Weapon] features three key antifascist artists: Otto Dix, Käthe Kollwitz and Otto Nagel. There Kollwitz’s art is presented as the link between the pre-1949 antifascist art of Dix and the post-1949 proletarian art of Otto Nagel. Although in Kämpfende Kunst Kollwitz is seen as a transitional figure who bridges prewar and postwar art, the ambivalent light in which her work was still seen by some is evident even in the late 1960s. Kurt Tetzlaff’s 1967 documentary Saatfrüchte sollen nicht vermahlen werden [Seed Corn Should Not Be Ground], for example, stops

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short of an uncritical endorsement of her work, and focuses instead on her initial ‘error’ and subsequent journey to a position of greater political awareness. The error to which the documentary alludes is, of course, her failure to safeguard her son from the catastrophe of the First World War – an error that stems from her misplaced faith in the politics of the Social Democratic Party (SPD)  – and the years of remorse she subsequently endures as she strives to produce a monument adequate to his memory. Although Kirsten’s film draws extensively on diaries and letters by Kollwitz that, at the time of production, had not been published, Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens does not make any attempt to present a conventional chronologically structured account of the artist’s life. Instead, its treatment of Kollwitz is built up around what might be described as four ‘movements’ covering the three decades of her life from 1914 to her death in 1944. The film’s complex temporal structure is further disrupted by the inclusion of multiple flashbacks and a series of sequences set in the GDR of the mid 1980s, in which we see the East German actress Jutta Wachowiak (Figure 7.1) developing her understanding of the character she is about to play and visiting a number of key sites of memory as she traces the stations of the artist’s life: the cemetery in Berlin-Friedrichsfelde where the graves of not only Kollwitz but also Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg are to be found; in Paris, Heinrich Heine’s grave in the district of Montmartre and Rodin’s sculpture of Le Penseur outside the Panthéon; the Vladslo German War Cemetery (near Diksmuide) in Belgium, where the grave of Kollwitz’s son is now located, as is her memorial Die trauernden Eltern [Grieving Parents, 1932]; and, finally, Hermann Noack’s Fine Art Foundry in West Berlin, in which a new cast of the sculpture Mutter mit Zwillingen [Mother with Twins, 1932–36] is being prepared.2 Despite the fact that some twenty years lie between the making of Der verlorene Engel and Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens, there are a number of moments where Kirsten alludes to his earlier film about Barlach.3 This is most clearly the case in the sequence where Kollwitz sketches Barlach lying in his coffin and we see her own face mirrored in the background in the form of a bronze relief on the studio wall – a tacit reference to the Güstrow memorial that lies at the centre of Der verlorene Engel. Although Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens does not have quite the same radical agenda as Der verlorene Engel, it too deploys a complex temporal structure in order to provoke the viewer into an active contemplation of its subject matter.4 By presenting a series of images in accordance with what Kirsten terms a ‘principle of

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Figure 7.1 Jutta Wachowiak prepares her role in Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens. © DEFA-Stiftung/Norbert Kuhröber. Published with permission.

association’, the film strives to open up a new perspective on an artist who, over the years, had been gradually assimilated into the GDR canon of socialist art.5 As the director himself put it in an interview of 1986: ‘The images of her memories are like the pieces of a mosaic that the viewer has to reassemble in his or her own mind.’6 Likewise, the sequences set in the GDR of the 1980s (which were far more extensive in the original script than in the completed film) are an invitation to the viewer to reflect on the place of Kollwitz’s antifascist art in the contemporary socialist canon. As the production files reveal, the decision to abandon any attempt at a chronological approach to Kollwitz’s life was, in part, necessitated by the sheer volume of material at the filmmakers’ disposal.7 Nonetheless, as the dramaturge Dieter Wolf notes, the inclusion of sequences set in the present was heavily debated: ‘Given the potential of our historical and biographical material to furnish us with such a rich supply of images and metaphors we need to resist falling into the trap of exploiting this for didactic purposes. We need to let our viewers reach their own conclusions.’8 The resulting sense of alienation is further heightened by Peter Gotthard’s unconventional soundtrack, which consists of popular songs of the

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historical period in which the film is set, punctuated by stretches of avant-garde electronic music. When Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens was released in 1986, it met with a mixed reception in both the GDR and the Federal Republic. While Horst Knietzsch, writing in the mainstream East German daily Neues Deutschland, praised the film on account of its subtlety,9 others were less forgiving; Detlef Friedrich, for example, writing in the Berliner Zeitung, saw Kirsten’s filmic collage as a sign of indecision in handling biographical material and felt that the sequences revolving around the actress playing the part of Kollwitz were unnecessary and should have been left out.10 Likewise, Heinz Kersten’s review for the West Berlin broadsheet Der Tagesspiegel, ‘Im Material ertrunken’ [‘Drowning in Material’], pointed out that anyone without a detailed knowledge of Kollwitz’s biography would struggle to put together the pieces of Kirsten’s mosaic-like work.11 However, what is particularly striking is the fact that Kirsten’s exploration of Kollwitz’s life and work prompted comparisons with the New German Cinema of the Federal Republic and underlined the extent to which East German tastes were increasingly being shaped by developments over the border; for example, in her regular column ‘Kino-Eule’, the GDR journalist Renate Holland-Moritz suggested that there were lessons that Kirsten could learn from the film Rosa Luxemburg (1986) by the West German director Margarethe von Trotta.12 Some thirty years after its release, Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens remains a complex film, and its oblique allusions to figures and events from the 1920s and 1930s are, if anything, more difficult to decode today than at the time of its release. Even so, it remains a key document for an understanding of the complex history of the relationship between realism and expressionist art in the construction of the socialist imaginary. What links both Ernst Barlach and Käthe Kollwitz, at least as mediated in Kirsten’s cinematic project on their aesthetic legacy, is their capacity to resist crude ideological appropriation during the Cold War and to provide symbolic forms of human suffering with which citizens from both East and West could identify. When Helmut Schmidt met Erich Honecker in 1981, the choice of venue – Barlach’s hometown of Güstrow – was anything but coincidental, and the Bishop of Güstrow’s comments that Barlach’s Der schwebende Engel represented a symbol of ‘that which we have in common’ elicited Schmidt’s response that it might become a symbol of ‘our common future’. Likewise, the capacity of Kollwitz’s humanist aesthetics to bridge ideological divisions is reflected in the installation of her Pietà, Mutter mit dem toten Sohn [Mother

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with Her Dead Son, 1937–39] as the centrepiece of the Neue Wache, the remodelled Central Memorial of the Federal Republic of Germany for the Victims of War and Dictatorship in post-unification Berlin.

Questions of Gender Kirsten’s film Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens highlights a particularly problematic aspect of the films discussed in this study, namely the marginalisation of both female directors and female artists. Although the GDR liked to present itself as a society in which great strides had been made to bring about gender equality, the preponderance of male directors at DEFA suggests that, in the realm of film production at least, the state’s emancipatory rhetoric fell some way short of reality. Only three women (Ingrid Reschke, Evelyn Schmidt and Iris Gusner) directed mainstream feature films for DEFA and, for the most part, the films they produced focused primarily on the experiences of East German women in their everyday lives. Other female directors such as Bärbl Bergmann and Hannelore Unterberg worked almost exclusively on producing films for children. Yet to focus exclusively on the role of directors is to overlook the significance of the studio’s decision to develop artistic ensembles (Künstlerische Arbeitsgruppen or KAGs) from the late 1950s onwards and thus to downplay the important contributions made by the female members of those collectives who worked in the departments of dramaturgy, editing and design. Alice Ludwig, the editor of Kurt Maetzig’s Ehe im Schatten, had worked in the same capacity on Hans Steinhoff’s Rembrandt (1942), while Lena Neumann, the editor of Roman einer jungen Ehe, also had a string of prewar credits – including G.W. Pabst’s Paracelsus (1943)  – and went on to carve out a highly successful career at DEFA working on such classics as Slatan Dudow’s Frauenschicksale [Destinies of Women, 1952], Konrad Wolf’s Lissy (1957) and the groundbreaking science-fiction film Der schweigende Stern [First Spaceship on Venus, 1960]. Likewise, Evelyn Carow, one of the team of editors working on Ralf Kirsten’s Der verlorene Engel, went on to enjoy a long and successful career for DEFA, as did the film’s costume designer Elli-Charlotte Löffler. Last but not least, the importance of Doris Borkmann’s contribution in her capacity as assistant director on Konrad Wolf’s artist-films Goya, Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz and Solo Sunny is hard to overstate. Female directors were much better represented in the field of documentary, and films such as Helke Misselwitz’s Aktfotografie – z.B.

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Gundula Schulze [Nude Photography – Gundula Schulze, 1983], Stilleben – eine Reise zu den Dingen [Still Life – The Quest for the Object, 1984] and Tango-Traum [Dream Tango, 1984], Petra Tschörtner’s Das freie Orchester [The Free Orchestra, 1988] and Andrea Ritterbusch’s 1988 film about Hanns Eisler, Komm ins Offene Freund! [Come out into the Open, My Friend!, 1988] underline the depth of female talent in the DEFA documentary studio during the last years of its existence. Increasingly, features of this kind (many of them under 30 minutes) were designed for release on East German television and the growing importance of television for female directors in the GDR is most clearly reflected in the career of Gitta Nickel, who produced a series of documentaries on major figures from the world of socialist art, including Gret Palucca (1971), Walter Felsenstein (1971), Paul Dessau (1974), Gisela May (1977) and Konrad Wolf (1977). But despite coverage of such important female practitioners as the photographer Gundula Schulze, the dancer Gret Palucca13 and the singer Gisela May, the artists featured in both documentary and feature film production were predominantly male. A notable exception in this respect was Käthe Kollwitz, who, as we have seen, appears not only in Ralf Kirsten’s feature film, but also in documentary productions of the late 1950s and late 1960s.14 Although it is tempting to account for the preponderance of male artists and writers on screen in terms of the patriarchal character of real existing socialism in the GDR, that is only part of the story. As Marc Silberman has observed, ‘the GDR always struggled with the issue of whether it was committed to a modern, internationalist form of socialism or whether it was the true inheritor of a humanistic German tradition’.15 As we have seen, throughout its history, East German cultural policy oscillated between two poles: on the one hand, the desire to portray itself as the contemporary embodiment a long-established tradition of German classical humanism; and, on the other, as the realisation of a new kind of political entity that had broken with the bourgeois traditions of the prewar period and was committed to a modern, internationalist form of socialism. In part, the polemical character of many of the cultural debates that took place over the forty years of the GDR’s existence is a reflection of the impossibility of reconciling two such contradictory projects. In attempting to draw on the legacy of German classical humanism, East German cultural theorists of the late 1940s and early 1950s were looking to a model inspired by the thought of the Enlightenment and a notion of gender relations in which the two sexes were, at least in theory, regarded as equals with each complete in themselves. Such

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a view was, of course, diametrically opposed to that of the German Romantics, for whom man and woman existed in a relationship of complementarity in which each was in some way ‘incomplete’ without the other. Underpinning the Enlightenment’s theory of anthropology was the notion of an individual (or Mensch) as a being that, in terms of its essential humanity, transcended conventional concepts of gender. Needless to say, adopting such an approach hardly ruled out the invention of conventional fantasies of femininity serving the needs and desires of their (predominantly) male creators, and in looking back to the late eighteenth century, it was almost inevitable that East German cultural theorists would draw their inspiration from the works of male writers such as Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, and essentialist concepts of femininity (such as the ‘eternal feminine’) in support of their notion of classical humanism. The restorative power of this conceptualisation of ‘femininity’ is perhaps most obviously embodied in the figure of Susanne Wallner in Wolfgang Staudte’s Die Mörder sind unter uns [The Murderers are among Us, 1946], but is equally evident some fourteen years later in Fünf Tage, fünf Nächte in the figure of Katrin, whose intervention inspires Paul Naumann to resume his career as an artist. Such feminine interventions, of course, chimed well with the postwar crisis in masculinity identified by scholars such as Erica Carter16 and Heide Fehrenbach.17 However, an unfortunate consequence of such ‘enlightened’ thinking was (as is also the case in Helmut Spieß’s Tilman Riemenschneider) the reduction of woman to the role of the (male) ­artist’s (female) muse. The work of Kurt Maetzig, however, underlines that not everyone at DEFA subscribed so uncritically to such bourgeois notions of femininity. Whereas in Ehe im Schatten, Elisabeth Wieland is portrayed as a passive figure whose victimhood symbolises the defeat of humanity at the hands of the Nazi regime, in his later film Roman einer jungen Ehe, Agnes Sailer’s role consists primarily in recognising the limitations of bourgeois humanism and then educating her male counterpart, Jochen, to an understanding of the same. As such, her characterisation is consistent with that of a number of strong-willed independent female leads in DEFA productions of the 1950s and early 1960s, such as Anna Drews in Bürgermeister Anna [Mayor Anna, 1950], Barbara Berg in Frauenschicksale [Destinies of Women, 1952] and Annegret in Schlösser und Katen [Castles and Cottages, 1957], who are presented as enlightened women struggling against the enduring legacy of essentially bourgeois and patriarchal structures. Yet, ironically, the transition from conventional models of German classical humanism to a concept of art rooted in socialist

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realism meant that it became increasingly difficult to create a context in which the work of Germany’s best-known female artist, Käthe Kollwitz, could be presented. On the one hand, Kollwitz’s modernist idiom – and the aesthetics of ugliness underpinning it – were clearly at odds with the conventions of German classical humanism, but on the other, the absence of a clear-cut optimistic teleology made it almost impossible to assimilate her work into a tradition of socialist realism. Although initially accepted as an iconic figure of the international left during the second half of the 1940s, her modernist style made her an easy target for the Tägliche Rundschau in the early 1950s, and despite the documentaries Kämpfende Kunst (1959) and Saatfrüchte sollen nicht vermahlen werden (1967), the story of her reception in East German Film culture is, as Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens underlines, ­essentially one of belatedness. As modernist approaches to art and culture started to gain a foothold in the GDR during the 1960s and 1970s and, increasingly, socialist realism came to be seen as a phase in aesthetic history rather than as a prescriptive tool for the creation of a work of art, the rigid set of binary underpinning the genre was subjected to greater critical scrutiny. At the same time, the questioning of such a doctrinaire approach went hand in hand with a more general critique of patriarchal culture and a greater willingness to embrace the voice of the female Other. This is particularly evident in the films made in the GDR in the mid 1960s that fell foul of the Eleventh Plenum, where female protagonists are presented as agents of progress and social change. Rita Seidel in Der geteilte Himmel [Divided Heaven, 1964], Maria Morzeck in Das Kaninchen bin ich [The Rabbit is Me, 1965] and (the off-screen persona of) Käthe Kollwitz in Der verlorene Engel (1966/1971) are all examples of protagonists whose grasp of a socialist future stands in marked contrast to the sense of uncertainty that both characterises and cripples their male counterparts. This sense of being trapped in a world between a world that is clinging to the past and as yet unable to embrace the future is also played out within the field of gender in the work of Konrad Wolf and the crisis of masculinity that is explored in both Goya and Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz. Indeed, the progressive character of Wolf’s films is to be explained not simply in terms of an exploration of intergenerational conflict, but also in terms of a sustained interrogation of masculinity and its discontents. In Goya, the Spanish painter, inspired by his female muse the Duchess of Alba, rejects the classical (masculinist) fantasies of Jacques-Louis David and resorts instead to a proto-expressionist

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aesthetic in order to capture the vibrancy of the Spanish Volk and articulate the contents of his imagination. For his part, Herbert Kemmel’s commission to produce a nude male figure for his local football club, his visit to Will Lammert’s memorial to the female victims of the Ravensbrück concentration camp and his discussions with the female photographer force him to reassess not only his own preconceptions as a male artist in the GDR of the 1970s, but also the obstacles to communicating with an audience of ordinary people who associate great art with socialist realism and larger-than-life presentations of heroic masculinity. With the revival of Romanticism in the GDR during the 1970s and early 1980s, we can discern a rather different approach to questions of gender. While Wolf’s artist films remained within a paradigm that is, for the most part, still shaped by the discourse of the Enlightenment and underpinned by a concept of objective truth, the films of Herwig Kipping and, albeit to a lesser degree, Herrmann Zschoche look to the more subjective dimension of Romantic aesthetics and, through their critique of instrumental reason, open up a space in which a plurality of different voices – including that of the female Other – become audible. In Hälfte des Lebens, for instance, Christine Kożik’s script mobilises the female protagonist, Susanne Gontard, in order to deliver a powerful critique of the obstacles placed by patriarchal culture in the way of a genuinely radical transformation of society; and by building on the sensitivity of Ulrich Mühe’s performance of Hölderlin, Zschoche’s film distances the viewer from the instrumental rationality of the film’s patriarchal setting. By contrast, in Kipping’s more radical Hommage à Hölderlin, the poet’s rejection of rational discourse and subtly tempered masculinity is presented in such a way as to render questions of gender secondary to the main protagonist’s utopian quest. Because Kipping’s film was a final-year project at the Babelsberg film school, it received little exposure. At the same time, it serves as a reminder that, for more radical conceptualisations of the relationship between gender and art in film, it is necessary to look beyond the mainstream structures of the DEFA studio. During the 1980s, many avant-garde practitioners working in the visual arts exploited both 16mm and the newly available Super 8 technology in order to create what are perhaps best described as instances of performance art on film. As Claus Löser has noted, Jürgen Böttcher’s cameraman Thomas Plenert was just one of a number of DEFA employees who helped the likes of Lutz Dammbeck and others gain access to the studio’s equipment.18 However, precisely because the type of Super 8 work pioneered

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by Helge Leiberg and female artists such as Cornela Schleime and Christine Schlegel was not subject to the same type of scrutiny as mainstream feature and documentary film production (and, indeed, was tolerated to a degree by the state on the grounds that it was confined to a very restricted group), it offered a much more radical deconstruction of gender relations. Just how far the work of these artists can be integrated within an international tradition of avant-garde filmmaking remains something of an open question and, at the same time, challenges what we understand by the term Künstlerfilm. Nonetheless, the network of visual artists working within this underground milieu in the GDR of the late 1970s and 1980s is so diverse and complex – and more rooted in the traditions of East German painting than cinema – that to do justice to it would go beyond the scope of the current volume.19

The Presence of the Past: Jürgen Böttcher’s Konzert im Freien (2001) For artists and filmmakers working in the post-Wende era, the legacy of East German culture opens up a range of complex and controversial issues. Perhaps the most striking attempt to date to rework elements of socialist modernism in the context of the postmodern aesthetics of the new millennium is Jürgen Böttcher’s film project Konzert im Freien [A Place in Berlin, 2001]. As I suggested in Chapter 5, Böttcher’s 1981 project, Verwandlungen is a crossover work in which the film stock functions as both an artistic medium in its own right manipulated by filmmaker and, simultaneously, as a cinematic canvas onto which Strawalde’s painterly fantasies are projected. Released twenty years later, Konzert im Freien  – featuring the East German jazz musicians Günter ‘Baby’ Sommer (on drums) and Dietmar Diesner (on s­ axophone) – also reflects the improvisational and dialogic quality of Böttcher’s filmmaking and Strawalde’s painting.20 The resulting film is a collage comprising of footage shot on 35mm between 1981 and 1986 and new material shot on video more than a decade after the demise of the GDR in 2001. Focusing primarily on the monumental statues of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels created by the East German sculptor Ludwig Engelhardt that are on display in Berlin’s Marx-Engels Forum, Konzert im Freien invites contemporary viewers to reflect on the dynamics of public art commissioned by state authorities (the so-called Auftragskunst) and the impact of that art once the regimes whose values those works embody are overtaken by history.

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Discussions about a memorial to celebrate the legacy of Marx and Engels had been initiated in 1972, some four years before the completion of the Palast der Republik, the East German seat of government that the memorial was intended to complement.21 Although not approved until 1978, the new monument was originally to be located in front of the new Palast on the same site where the Kaiser-WilhelmNationaldenkmal had once stood. In 1950, the bomb-damaged remains of the Berliner Stadtschloss and the equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm had been demolished by the SED regime. In addition to Engelhardt’s sculptures of Marx and Engels, the new memorial was to consist of a marble relief Alte Welt [Old World] by Werner Stötzer, two bronze reliefs Würde und Schönheit freier Menschen [The Dignity and Beauty of Free Human Beings] by Margret Middell, and a series of four metallic stelae onto which a series of photographs chosen by Arno Fischer and Peter Voigt and reflecting ‘Der weltrevolutionäre Prozess seit Karl Marx und Friedrich Engels bis in die Gegenwart’ [‘The World Revolutionary Process, from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to the Present’] had been etched. As the site originally proposed for the project proved unworkable for a variety of reasons, the decision was taken to relocate the ensemble to what is still its current location in the Marx-Engels Forum, and the opening ceremony, conducted by Erich Honecker, took place on 4 April 1986. In addition, the DEFA documentary studio was commissioned to make a documentary featuring the artists at work – a task that it entrusted to Jürgen Böttcher. However, because of the project’s lengthy gestation and the rapidly changing political landscape brought about by Gorbachev’s new policies of glasnost and perestroika, by the time of its completion in the mid 1980s, its conceptual underpinning was already out of date. As a result, the opening ceremony was a relatively low-key event and there was no longer any interest on the part of the SED in seeing the accompanying documentary film through to completion. Put together using old footage from the original 1980s project, Böttcher’s Konzert im Freien explores the diverse reactions of contemporary tourists and the two jazz musicians Sommer and Diesner to an ensemble that now seems both anachronistic and out of place in the context of the new post-1990 Berlin Republic. (The film’s German title conveys the sense not just of an open-air concert, but of a concert in the freedom of post-unification Germany.) In the booklet produced to accompany the film, Böttcher refers to his project as both an ‘experimental documentary’ in which the two musicians provide a ‘commentary’ on the aesthetics and historical processes embodied in the series

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of sculptures and reliefs.22 What makes the film so typical of Böttcher’s work generally is its focus not on the actual works of art, but rather on the diverse responses of all the tourists, passers-by and the two musicians themselves. At the same time, the blatant contradiction between the socialist realist aesthetics underpinning the two figures of Marx and Engels and the anarchic free jazz improvisations of Sommer and Deisner is both a commentary and a critique of the monolithic interpretation of Marxism in the GDR, and it is in this sense that Konzert im Freien should be understood as both a visual and acoustic collage. As we jump back and forth between the video footage shot in 2000 and interpolated sequences from the original documentary material shot in the 1980s, the sequence featuring the sculptor Werner Stötzer underlines the new possibilities brought about by a greater acceptance of socialist modernism: ‘It’s not a question of content, but of form’, Stötzer argues. ‘The content is the form.’ Seen from this perspective, Stötzer’s modernist relief stands in the sharpest possible contrast to the monolithic monumentalism of Engelhardt’s figures. As the camera takes us into the artist’s studio, the presence of a domestic cat meowing between the oversized figures of Marx and Engels and the almost comic dismantling of sections of the statues as they are prepared for casting already anticipates the humorous process of alienation to which these larger-than-life icons of socialism will be subjected by curious tourists and passers-by in the post-Wende world of Berlin.23 Just as the musicians Sommer and Deisner look to the silent figures as a source of inspiration for their free jazz riffs, so too the graffiti-covered stelae of Fischer and Voigt reflect a similarly irreverent reception of these artefacts from the past. Nonetheless, it would be a serious mistake to see Konzert im Freien as a simplistic repudiation of socialist ideals per se. In the sequence shot during a thunderstorm, the drops of rain that settle on the etched images depicting the exploitation of ordinary working people and human suffering in military conflicts  – Böttcher refers to them as Regentränen (raindrop tears)24 – imbue the film with a profound sense of melancholy (Figure 7.2). This stark change of mood is itself reflected on the soundtrack where, almost for the first time, saxophone and drums fall silent and the pathos of the images is underscored by a series of prolonged discordant music produced by a blend of stringed and wind instruments. Like Böttcher’s Verwandlungen of the 1980s, Konzert im Freien  – which might be seen as a cinematic deconstruction of East German Auftragskunst of the 1980s  – offers us a glimpse of what a more radical Künstlerfilm in the GDR might have looked like had it had the

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Figure 7.2 ‘Regentränen’ in Konzert im Freien. © DEFA-Stiftung/ Thomas Plenert. Published with permission.

opportunity to flourish. However, it is striking that even Böttcher’s earliest films, from Drei von vielen, and Im Pergamonmuseum through to the later documentaries such as Im Lohmgrund, Ein Weimarfilm and Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner cannot simply be categorised as conventional films about art and artists, and transcend the genre of documentary itself. Common to all his films is an acknowledgement that artistic production is a labour-intensive activity that unites both artists and artisan. In Konzert im Freien, for instance, the connection with films such as Im Lohmgrund and Konrad Wolf’s Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz is maintained through the extended sequences shot in the foundry and by showing the casting of the gigantic figures. Most importantly, however, all of Böttcher’s films argue that the creation of a work of art is a dynamic process and one that outlasts the lifespan of its creator. Just as the objects of display in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum are subject to a process of continual reinterpretation as generations of new visitors view the art of these ancient civilisations from new and changing perspectives, so too Engelhardt’s monumental Auftragskunst will stand as a provocation for subsequent artists (such as Sommer and Deisner) who, like Strawalde in Verwandlungen, will engage with it in an attempt to create new works of art in the future.

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Conclusions As I suggested in the introduction, during the founding years of the GDR, many aspects of cultural policy were developed in exile by a group of theorists whose approach to art and literature was heavily influenced by the Expressionism Debate of the late 1930s. Nonetheless, focusing on the East German Künstlerfilm serves as an important reminder that cultural policy was constantly changing and developing in the GDR and that, as Stephen Brockman has argued, ‘it is too easy to overlook such shifts and changes and instead to imagine East German politics as a unified monolithic entity’.25 During the early 1940s, the likes of Becher and Kurella sought to promote a concept of German classical humanism as a means of bringing about a revival of national culture in the postwar period. Performances of works such as Lessing’s Nathan der Weise bear witness to the zeal with which the classics were mobilised as a means of re-educating Germans, while at the same time ‘protecting’ them from certain forms of ‘cosmopolitan’ art that were seen as presenting art and literature as an autonomous sphere, but did so in order to bring about an ‘Americanisation’ of culture. However, in his film Roman einer jungen Ehe, Kurt Maetzig argued that bourgeois notions of tolerance and liberal humanism of the kind we encounter in the work of Lessing were powerless in the struggle against those who, in their efforts to promote capitalism, regard art as an essentially nonpolitical activity. Yet in advocating socialist realism as the only acceptable form of modernism, Maetzig’s film falls back on a schematic approach to cinema grounded in political affect that, paradoxically, he had earlier rejected as inimical to the production of high quality art. The contradictions of such a reliance on affect are also exposed in a film such as Helmut Spieß’s Tilman Riemenschnieder, which, in its attempt to embed the progressive traditions of the wood-carver and his work within a new and evolving concept of the socialist imaginary, falls into the trap of recycling the cinematographic conventions of the 1940s Geniefilm. The rise of new wave cinema in both Western and Eastern Europe during the 1960s made it impossible for filmmakers at DEFA to ignore the relationship between left-wing politics and modernist cinema. At the same time, the impact of Pablo Picasso, together with his explicit support for left-wing causes, meant that it was becoming increasingly difficult for those steering cultural policy to claim that modernist aesthetics were incompatible with the implementation of a radical political

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agenda. As Jürgen Böttcher’s Drei von vielen demonstrates, modernist painting was not as inaccessible to the working classes as the proponents of the Bitterfeld project may have liked to believe. Nonetheless, attempts to offer an alternative perspective on the legacy of the prewar Expressionism Debate were, as the fate of Kirsten’s Der verlorene Engel underlined, premature. The Eleventh Plenum was a catastrophic moment in the history of East German filmmaking, and probably only a figure with as much symbolic and cultural capital as Konrad Wolf could have rescued the situation. Yet while both his films Goya and Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz bear witness to a desire to reposition DEFA within the evolving traditions of European nouvelle vague cinema, the difficulties he experienced in engaging contemporary audiences with his work revealed the extent to which, increasingly, an appreciation of art and modernist aesthetics was becoming an activity for an intellectual elite in the GDR. During the 1970s and 1980s, however, the binary logic underpinning the outmoded cultural politics of the first two decades of the GDR’s existence was beginning to be replaced by a more pluralistic approach to art and aesthetics. In part, this was due to the GDR’s increasing self-confidence and a recognition that it was possible to see the development of cultural policy (especially the antiformalist campaigns of the 1950s) in historical terms and as a historical phase that lay in the past. In this respect, the importance of the 1979 retrospective Weggefährten – Zeitgenossen. Bildende Kunst aus drei Jahrzehnten cannot be over-­emphasised. As we saw in Chapter 5, evidence of the way in which modernist aesthetics were gradually being assimilated in a quite new conceptualisation of the socialist imaginary is to be found in the documentary work of Jürgen Böttcher during the 1970s and 1980s. But it is also to be found in the revival of interest in Romanticism generally and the use of Romantic aesthetics in particular to launch a critique of the marginalisation of art, the alienation of the individual, and the concept of instrumental reason underpinning the ‘real existing socialism’ of the GDR in the 1980s. However, as was sugested in the previous chapter, it is one of the ironies of East German cultural policy that, having initially been developed during the 1940s by antifascist intellectuals forced to live in exile, during the final phase of the GDR it led to a situation in which East German artists and writers saw themselves as ‘strangers in their own home’. Yet, as Jürgen Böttcher’s hybrid pre- and post-Wende project Konzert im Freien demonstrates, there is one further coda to this tale of exile, namely that brought about by the collapse of the GDR itself in 1989. As monuments to a state that no longer exists,

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Engelhardt’s figures of Marx and Engels have also become ‘strangers in their own home’. Accordingly, what Böttcher’s film underlines is that the socialist imaginary is a constantly evolving concept, and that these figures, like those of the sculptor Peter Makolies, will outlive their creators, only to be rediscovered and reinterpreted by the Winckelmanns and Schliemanns of the twenty-first century and beyond. Focusing on the East German Künstlerfilm not only throws light on the development of the careers of directors such as Kurt Maetzig, Konrad Wolf, Ralf Kirsten and Herwig Kipping, but at the same time opens up new perspectives on how we might approach DEFA and GDR culture generally. At an individual level, it is clear that for many East German directors at the DEFA studio, the Künstlerfilm was a means of reflecting on, and articulating, their own positions as filmmakers in the new state. In the case of Maetzig, almost all of his early films, whether about scientists, politicians or artists, revolve around questions of ethical autonomy and, in particular, the moral responsibility of intellectuals during the Nazi era. In a letter of 7 March 1947 to close family friend, Maetzig anticipates starting work on Ehe im Schatten in terms that underline his personal connection with the material: ‘finally I can embark on the realisation of this great task which I regard not only as my duty to the German people, but also to my mother, my relations, and all of you’.26 Maetzig’s mother, Marie, had been a victim of Nazi race laws and in 1944 had taken her own life in order to evade deportation. It is not hard to see how the experience of her death impacted upon Maetzig’s approach to Ehe im Schatten and goes some way towards explaining the film’s overreliance on precisely those elements of affect that so irritated Brecht. Likewise, although quite different in style and tone, Maetzig’s next artist-film, Roman einer jungen Ehe, is grounded in a series of identifiable events in the immediate aftermath of the war during which artists and intellectuals, like Maetzig himself, found themselves called upon to make a moral ­judgement in respect of the emerging political fronts. By the mid 1960s and throughout the 1970s, the existence of the Berlin Wall meant that the ethical dilemmas with which the protagonists of Roman einer jungen Ehe were confronted were no longer as pressing. Accordingly, Ralf Kirsten’s investment in the genre is perhaps most easily understood in terms of a desire to exploit the relative stability of the post-1961 era to embark on an experiment in cinematic modernism and to translate his own experience of the 1951 Barlach exhibition into a film that would demonstrate that modernist aesthetics and antifascism were not incompatible. Together with the much later film Käthe Kollwitz –Bilder eines Lebens, Kirsten’s artist films reflect a desire

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to resolve the supposed contradiction between Idealist aesthetics and progressive politics. Looking back at the film, Dieter Wolf notes that Kirsten’s overriding aim in making Der verlorene Engel had been to find a way of translating Franz Fühmann’s interior monologue into an appropriate cinematic form.27 Likewise, in an interview published in Film und Fernsehen to mark the release of Käthe Kollwitz  – Bilder eines Lebens, Kirsten underlines how the constant stream of self-portraits that Kollwitz had produced over the course of her life offered him the perfect opportunity to explore his enduring interest in rendering time in the medium of film.28 For Konrad Wolf, by contrast, the attraction of the genre of the Künstlerfilm seems more personal and bound up with his own situation as a second-generation artist in the GDR, and one whose connections to the Politburo meant that he found himself compelled to mediate not only between generations, but also between the state and its filmmakers. In Feuchtwanger’s characterisation of Goya as a painter whose desire to embrace a more radical aesthetic brought him into conflict with his position as a court painter, it was not hard to see an artist whose predicament closely resembled his own. Likewise, as Wolfgang Jacobsen and Rolf Aurich have noted in their biography of the filmmaker, the difficulties that the fictitious second-generation East German sculptor Kemmel experiences as he finds it increasingly hard to communicate with the ordinary members of society clearly struck a deeply personal chord with Wolf.29 Last but not least, for the final generation of filmmakers at DEFA whose careers had stalled almost before they had even begun, the genre of the Künstlerfim and the rehabilitation of the Romantic genius on screen perfectly mirrored their own predicaments as marginalised and misunderstood artists in the final years of the GDR. Although it is possible to discuss the East German Künstlerfilm in terms of the personal motivation of individual directors, to do so is to downplay the significance of the genre in terms of what it can tell us about East German film culture generally and how it can help challenge some of the preconceptions with which DEFA scholarship is periodically confronted. Despite the case made by scholars such as Joshua Feinstein,30 Daniela Berghahn,31 Anke Pinkert,32 Marc Silberman,33 Stephen Brockmann34 and Sebastian Heiduschke,35 it is still often the case that East German films are simply seen as low-quality works that cannot stand up to sustained analysis. Indeed, in one of the very few studies devoted to the genre of the artist-film, it is striking that there is no mention of any German films, let alone East German films.36 For

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his part, Klaus Finke argues that rather than discussing the films DEFA produced as aesthetic products in their own right, we should view them primarily as products reflecting the ideology of the ruling SED.37 Such a view has led to an over-emphasis in scholarship on the allegedly ‘dissident’ character of the DEFA films that were banned by the HV Film. Yet, with the exception of Der verlorene Engel, it is remarkable that all of the artist-films discussed in this study went on general release in the GDR, even though some of them – Goya, Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz and Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben being the most obvious examples – presented a view of the artist in society that was clearly at odds with that wished for by the politicians in the Politburo. For the same reason, it is important not to fall into the trap of seeing the films uncritically as a window onto East German society.38 Focusing on the DEFA Künstlerfilm also serves as an important reminder that East German film culture was not nearly as isolated from other national film cultures (including UFA and Hollywood) as is commonly thought. David Bathrick’s observation that DEFA’s early films need to be seen in the context of the prewar productions of UFA is amply demonstrated by Ehe im Schatten and Tilman Riemenschneider, both of which attempted to recycle the traditions of prewar melodrama and the Nazi Geniusfilm, with a predictable lack of success.39 At the same time, the efforts of the studio in its attempt to integrate what it saw as progressive writers, artists and composers from the pre-1949 period into the socialist imaginary underlines the need to approach the study of DEFA in terms of what Joachim Meurer has termed Germany’s splitscreen.40 What the study of the DEFA Künstlerfilm also reveals is the extent to which East German directors engaged with multiple external influences. Directors like Konrad Wolf and Jürgen Böttcher looked not only to the East and to the Soviet cinema of Andrey Tarkovsky and Giorgi Shengelaia, but also to the West and, especially in Böttcher’s case, to key figures from the American avant garde like Stan Brakhage. What the Künstlerfilm offered in addition was an opportunity to engage not just with the rich traditions of German art and music, but also with the works of artists and writers from beyond the Eastern Bloc, including Goya, Sartre, Picasso and Moore. All of this bears out the truth of Marc Silberman and Henning Wrage’s observation that ‘GDR cinema was never just a monologue . . . its media landscape was characterized by constant dialogue, if not competition, with both the capitalist West and socialist East’.41 Last but not least, the study of the Künstlerfilm and its contribution to the socialist imaginary also raises questions that extend well

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beyond the GDR itself. For as Karen Leeder has noted, ‘the work of remembering and interpreting the GDR is also part of a larger task: that of coming to terms with the possibilities and catastrophes of utopian thinking writ large, and ultimately of the enlightenment project’.42 As we have seen, the East German state attached enormous importance to the cultivation of the arts and their role in bringing about the improvement of society. Although an initiative such as the Bitterfelder Weg may strike today’s viewers as a crude and anachronistic attempt at social engineering, (post-Wende) documentaries such as Helga Storck and Peter Goedel’s An der Saale hellem Strande – Ein Kulturhaus erzählt [On the Banks of the Saale, 2010] suggest that, for many East Germans, the attempt to make art and culture accessible to a broad section of the population was one that they valued and now miss in post-unification Germany. By the same token, on one level, the Romantic turn evident in the artist-films of the 1970s and 1980s might be seen as a critique of the alienation resulting from a crude application of instrumental reason to real existing socialism; however, on another level, its utopian aspect also offers viewers today an alternative position from which to interrogate the film cultures of neoliberal capitalism.43

Notes   1. Reinhild Steingrover, Last Features: East German Cinema’s Lost Generation (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2014), p.  27. See also Seán Allan, ‘1989 and the Wende in East German Cinema: Peter Kahane’s Die Architekten (1990), Egon Günther’s Stein (1991) and Jörg Foth’s Letztes aus der Da Da eR (1990)’, in Clare Flanagan and Stuart Taberner (eds), 1949–1989: Cultural Perspectives on Division and Unity in East and West (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 291–309.   2. The East German film team received financial support from Allianz Film in West Berlin, part of which was used to meet the costs for their travel to the renowned Noack foundry in Berlin-Charlottenburg, where Kollwitz’s figures were cast in the prewar era. For a discussion of the history of the Noack foundry and its long-­ standing association with the Arts in Berlin, see Astrid Herbold, ‘Anfassen erlaubt’, Das Magazin, January 2015, pp. 56–60.   3. The films are also linked via the actor Fred Düren, who plays Ernst Barlach in Der verlorene Engel, and Kollwitz’s husband, Karl, in Kirsten’s later film.   4. See Ralf Kirsten, ‘Idee und Realisierung des Films’, in Ruth Herlinghaus and Madina Spoden (eds), Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens. Werkstatt-Erfahrungen [Aus Theorie und Praxis des Films 5/1985], pp. 53–70, at p. 59.   5. Kirsten, ‘Idee und Realisierung’, p. 57.  6. ‘Käthe Kollwitz. Bilder eines Lebens. Ralf Kirsten im Gespräch mit Dieter Wolf‘, Film und Fernsehen 4 (1987), 2–6 , especially at 4.

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 7. ‘Konzeptionelle Gedanken, die der Filmerzählung über Käthe Kollwitz zugrunde liegen, dazu erste Überlegungen zur Realisierung’ (BArch DR 117/10550).   8. Dieter Wolf, ‘Zur Arbeit am Szenarium Käthe Kollwitz’, in Herlinghaus and Spoden, Käthe Kollwitz, pp. 49–52, at p. 51.   9. Horst Knietzsch, ‘Subtiler Versuch der Annäherung an ein Leben und eine Epoche. Jutta Wachowiak, Fred Düren, Carmen-Maja Antoni in den Hauptrollen einer DEFAProduktion des Regisseurs Ralf Kirsten’, Neues Deutschland, 25 April 1987. 10. Detlef Friedrich, ‘Das Film-Heil aus dem Essayistischem? Zum DEFA-Spielfilm Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens’, Berliner Zeitung, 25 April 1987. 11. Heinz Kersten,’Im Material ertrunken: Ralf Kirstens DEFA-Film über Käthe Kollwitz zum Berlin-Jubiläum’, Der Tagesspiegel, 10 May 1987. 12. Renate Holland-Moritz, ‘Kino-Eule: Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens’, Eulenspiegel, 29 May 1987. 13. See also Walter Merten’s short documentary Bei Palucca [Chez Palucca] of 1957. 14. Siegfried Kühn’s 1988 film Die Schauspielerin [The Actress, 1988] focuses on a fictional Jewish actress, Maria Rheine. The film is analysed by Daniela Berghahn in her essay ‘Suffering and Victimhood in DEFA’s Antifascist Films’, in Paul Cooke and Marc Silberman (eds), Screening War: Perspectives on German Suffering (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010), pp. 165–86, especially pp. 173–81. 15. Marc Silberman, ‘New Research on East Germany: An Introduction’, Imaginations 8(1) (2017): 1–7, at 7. 16. Erica Carter, ‘Sweeping up the Past: Gender and History in the Post-War German “Rubble Film”’, in Ulrike Sieglohr, (ed), Heroines without Heroes: Reconstructing Female and National Identities in European Cinema 1945–51 (New York: Cassell, 2000), pp. 91–112. 17. Heide Fehrenbach, ‘Die Sünderin or Who Killed the German Male: Early Post-War German Cinema and Betrayal of Fatherland’, in Sandra Frieden, Richard McCormick, Vibeke Petersen and Laurie Melissa Vogelsang (eds), Gender and German Cinema: Feminist Interventions, vol. 2 German Film History/Germany History on Film (Providence: Berg, 1993), pp. 135–60. 18. Claus Löser, Strategien der Verweigerung: Untersuchungen zum politisch-ästhetischen Gestus unangepasster filmischer Artikulationen in der Spätphase der DDR (Berlin: DEFAStiftung, 2011), p. 93. 19. For an introductory overview of these and other performance artists, see Angelika Richter, und jetzt. Künstlerinnen aus der DDR, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin 2009, and Sara Blaylock, ‘Infiltration and Excess: Experimental Art and the East German State, 1980–1989’, unpublished dissertation (Santa Cruz: University of California, 2017). 20. A similar dialogic process is evident in the recent joint ventures of Strawalde (Jürgen Böttcher) and the electronica musician Shackleton (see in particular Shackleton, ‘Deliverance Series Nos 1–3’). 21. For a history of the monument, see Bruno Flierl, ‘Der zentrale Ort in Berlin: Zur räum­ lichen Inszenierung sozialistischer Zentralität’, in Günter Feist, Eckhart Gillen and Beatrice Vierneisel (eds), Kunstdokumentation SBZ/DDR 1945–1990: Aufsätze – Berichte – Materialien (Cologne: DuMont, 1996), pp. 320–57, especially pp. 351–57. Bruno Flierl was the architect entrusted with the task of overseeing the monument’s construction. 22. Jürgen Böttcher (Strawalde), ‘Idee: Der Platz (Arbeitstitel). 5 March 2000’, reproduced in the booklet to accompany the DVD Konzert im Freien: Ein Film von Jürgen Böttcher (Strawalde).

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23. There is a striking similarity between the sequence depicting the figure of Engels being lifted into place by a crane and the sequences with the removal of the statue of Lenin in Wolfgang Becker’s hit comedy Good Bye, Lenin! released just two years later in 2003. 24. Ralf Schenk, ‘Ein Gespräch mit Jürgen Böttcher (Strawalde)’. The interview has been published online: https://www.basisfilm.de/Konzert/konzpdf/PM.Konzer​ tim​ Freien.pdf (accessed 1 June 2017). 25. Stephen Brockmann, The Writers’ State: Constructing East German Literature, 1945–1959 (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2015), p. 15. 26. Letter of 7 March 1947 to Professor Dr W. Leibbrandt and his wife. Günter Agde (ed.), Kurt Maetzig. Filmarbeit. Gespräche – Reden – Schridten (Berlin: Henschel, 1987), pp. 174–75, at p. 174. Werner Leibbrandt – one of the German doctors to testify at the Nuremberg trials – had (illegally) admitted Kurt Maetzig’s mother, Marie Maetzig, to a hospital in Berlin-Westend. 27. Wolf, Dieter, ‘Der verlorene Engel’, in Klaus-Detlef Haas and Dieter Wolf (eds), Sozialistische Filmkunst: Eine Dokumentation (Berlin: Dietz, 2011), pp. 150–54, at p. 152. 28. See Dieter Wolf, ‘Käthe-Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens. Ralf Kirsten im Gespräch mit Dieter Wolf’, Film und Fernsehen 4 (1987), 1–6, at 4. 29. Wolfgang Jacobsen and Rolf Aurich, Der Sonnensucher Konrad Wolf: Biografie (Berlin: Aufbau, 2005), pp. 356–57. 30. Joshua Feinstein, The Triumph of the Ordinary: Depictions of Daily Life in the East German Cinema, 1949–1989 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 31. Daniela Berghahn, Hollywood behind the Wall: The Cinema of East Germany (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). 32. Anke Pinkert, Film and Memory in East Germany (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2008). 33. Marc Silberman, German Cinema: Texts in Context (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1995). 34. Stephen Brockmann, A Critical History of German Film (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2010). 35. Sebastian Heiduschke, East German Cinema: DEFA and Film History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). 36. John A. Walker, Art and Artists on Screen (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993). 37. Klaus Finke, ‘DEFA-Film als “nationales Kulturerbe”? Thesen zum DEFA-Film und seiner wissenschaftlichen Aufarbeitung’, in Klaus Finke (ed.), DEFA-Film als nationales Kulturerbe?, [Beiträge zur Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft, vol. 58] (2001), pp. 93–108. The view that all East German art and culture was essentially state-controlled is also to be found in the TV mini-series Das war die DDR [That was the GDR, 1993], Episode 5, ‘Geist und Macht’. 38. See, for example, Harry Blunk’s study Die DDR in ihren Spielfilmen: Reproduktion und Konzeption der DDR-Gesellschaft im neueren Gegenwartsspielfilm (Munich: Profil, 1987); and Wolfgang Gersch, Szenen eines Landes: Die DDR und ihre Filme (Berlin: Aufbau, 2006). 39. David Bathrick, ‘From UFA to DEFA: Past as Present in Early GDR Films’, in Jost Hermand and Marc Silberman (eds), Contentious Memories: Looking Back at the GDR (New York: Lang, 2000), pp. 169–88. 40. Hans Joachim Meurer, Cinema and National Identity in a Divided Germany, 1979–1989: The Split Screen (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 2002).

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41. Marc Silberman and Henning Wrage, ‘Introduction. DEFA at the Crossroads: Remapping the Terrain’, in Marc Silberman and Henning Wrage (eds), DEFA at the Crossroads of East German and International Film Culture: A Companion (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 1–22, at p. 2. 42. Karen Leeder, ‘Introduction’, in Karen Leeder (ed.), Rereading East Germany: The Literature and Film of the GDR (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 2. 43. April Eisman makes a similar case for the ways in which the study of East German painting can enhance our understanding of the development of art in the West. See April A. Eisman, ‘Whose East German Art is This? The Politics of Reception after 1989’, Imaginations: Journal of Visual Culture 8(1) (2017), 79–99, at 93.

Filmography

1-2-3 Corona [dir. Hans Müller, 1948] Abschied [Farewell, dir. Egon Günther, 1968] Aktfotografie  – z.B. Gundula Schulze [Nude Photography  – Gundula Schulze, dir. Helke Misselwitz, 1983] Alltag eines Poeten [The Everyday Life of a Poet, dir. Harry Hornig, 1961] An der Saale hellem Strande – Ein Kulturhaus erzählt [On the Banks of the Saale, dir. Helga Storck and Peter Goedel, 2010] Andreas Schlüter [dir. Herbert Maisch, 1942] Andrei Rublev [dir. Andrey Tarkovsky, 1969/71] Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts [From the Life of a Good for Nothing, dir. Celino Bleiweiß, 1973] Battleship Potemkin [dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1925] Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben [Beethoven – Days from a Life, dir. Horst Seemann, 1976] Begnadete Hände. Tilman Riemenschneider, seine Zeit, sein Leben, sein Werk [Blessed Hands. Tilman Riemenschneider, His Epoch, His Life, His Oeuvre, dir. Alfred Ehrhardt, 1954] Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser [Berlin – Schönhauser Corner, dir. Gerhard Klein, 1957] Berlin um die Ecke [Berlin Around the Corner, dir. Gerhard Klein, 1966/1990] Brief Encounter [dir. David Lean, 1945] Bürgermeister Anna [Mayor Anna, dir. Hans Müller, 1950] Caspar David Friedrich – Grenzen der Zeit [Caspar David Friedrich – The Limits of Time, dir. Peter Schamoni, 1986] Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach [Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, dir. JeanMarie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1968] Das Beil von Wandsbek [The Axe of Wandsbek, dir. Falk Harnack, 1951] Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari [The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, dir. Robert Wiene, 1920] Das Erdbeben in Chili [The Earthquake in Chile, dir. Helma Sanders-Brahms, 1975] Das Fräulein von Barnhelm [dir. Hans Schweikart, 1940] Das freie Orchester [The Free Orchestra, dir. Petra Tschörtner, 1988] Das Kaninchen bin ich [The Rabbit is Me, dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1965] Denk bloß nicht ich heule [Just Don’t Think I’m Crying, dir. Frank Vogel, 1965] Der Auftrag Höglers [Högler’s Mission, dir. Gustav von Wangenheim, 1950] Der Fall Gleiwitz [The Gleiwitz Affair, dir. Gerhard Klein, 1961] Der Frühling braucht Zeit [Spring Takes Time, dir. Günter Stahnke, 1965] Der geteilte Himmel [Divided Heaven, dir. Konrad Wolf, 1964]

264 Filmography

Der Golem [The Golem, dir. Paul Wegener and Carl Boese, 1920] Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz [The Naked Man on the Playing Field, dir. Konrad Wolf, 1974] Der Student von Prag [The Student of Prague, dir. Stellan Rye and Paul Wegener, 1913] Der verlorene Engel [The Lost Angel, dir. Ralf Kirsten 1966/71] Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel [The Adventures of Till Ulenspiegel, dir. Gérard Philippe, 1957] Die Buntkarierten [Girls in Gingham, dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1949] Die drei Codonas [The Three Codonas, dir. Arthur Rabenalt, 1940] Die Elixiere des Teufels [The Devil’s Elixirs, dir. Ralf Kirsten, 1973] Die Entscheidung des Tilman Riemenschneider [Tilman Riemenschneider’s Decision, dir. Bodo von Schweykowski, 1954] Die große Liebe [The Great Love, dir. Rolf Hansen, 1942] Die Hexen von Salem [The Witches of Salem, dir. Raymond Rouleau, 1957] Die Legende von Paul und Paula [The Legend of Paul and Paula, dir. Heiner Carow, 1973] Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Young Werther, dir. Egon Günther, 1976] Die Mörder sind unter uns [The Murderers are among Us, dir. Wolfgang Staudte, 1946] Dog Star Man [dir. Stan Brakhage, 1964] Drei von vielen [Three of Many, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1961/89] Earth [dir. Alexander Dovzhenko, 1930] Ehe im Schatten [Marriage in the Shadows, dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1947] Ein Weimarfilm [A Film about Weimar, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1977] Eine Berliner Romanze [A Berlin Romance, dir. Gerhard Klein, 1956] Entreaty, The [dir. Tengiz Abuiladze, 1967] Eroïca [dir. Walter Kolm-Veltée, 1949] Frau am Klavierchord [Interior with a Woman at the Virginal, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1981] Frauenschicksale [Destinies of Women, dir. Slatan Dudow, 1952] Friedemann Bach [dir. Traugott Müller, 1941] Friedrich Schiller – Der Triumph eines Genies [Friedrich Schiller – The Triumph of Genius, dir. Herbert Maisch, 1940] Frühlingssinfonie [Spring Symphony, dir. Peter Schamoni, 1983] Fünf Patronenhülsen [Five Cartridges, dir. Frank Beyer, 1960] Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte [Five Days – Five Nights, dir. Leo Arnstam and Heinz Thiel, 1961] Georg Friedrich Händel [dir. Wernfried Hübel, 1960] Genesung [Recovery, dir. Konrad Wolf, 1956] Gisela May [dir. Gitta Nickel, 1977] Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis [Goya, or the Hard Road to Knowledge, dir. Konrad Wolf, 1971] Gorky Trilogy [dir. Mark Donskoy, 1941] Gret Palucca [dir. Gitta Nickel, 1971] Hälfte des Lebens [Half of Life, dir. Herrmann Zschoche, 1985] Heinrich [dir. Helma Sanders-Brahms, 1977]

 Filmography 265

Hitlerjunge Quex [dir. Hans Steinhoff, 1933] Hommage à Hölderlin [dir. Herwig Kipping, 1984] Ich klage an [I Accuse, dir. Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1941] Im Lohmgrund [In the Lohm Quarry, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1977] Im Pergamonmuseum [In the Pergamon Museum, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1962] In Georgien [In Georgia, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1987] Ivan the Terrible [dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1944] Jahrgang 45 [Born in ’45, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1965/90] Johann Sebastian Bach [dir. Ernst Dahle, 1950] Jud Süß [dir. Veit Harlan, 1940] Kämpfende Kunst [Art as a Weapon, dir. Götz Oelschlägel, 1959] Käthe Kollwitz  – Bilder eines Lebens [Käthe Kollwitz  – Images of a Life, dir. Ralf Kirsten, 1986] Kolberg [dir. Veit Harlan, 1945] Komm ins Offene Freund! [Come out into the Open, My Friend!, dir. Andrea Ritterbusch, 1988] Komödianten [The Comedians, dir. G.W. Pabst, 1941] Konrad Wolf [dir. Gitta Nickel, 1977] Konzert im Freien [A Place in Berlin, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 2001] Kuhle Wampe [dir. Slatan Dudow, 1932] Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner [A Short Visit to Hermann Glöckner, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1985] La Terra Trema [The Earth Trembles, dir. Luchino Visconti, 1948] Lissy [dir. Konrad Wolf, 1957] Ludwig van [Mauricio Kagel, 1970] Ludwig van Beethoven [dir. Max Jaap, 1954] Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König [Ludwig – Requiem for a Virgin King, dir. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, 1972]. Magnificent Rebel, The [dir. Georg Tressler, 1962] Metropolis [dir. Fritz Lang, 1927] Monolog eines Taxifahrers [A Taxi Driver’s Monologue, dir. Günther Stahnke, 1962] Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück [Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness, dir. Piel Jutzi, 1929] Nackt unter Wölfen [Naked amongst Wolves, dir. Frank Beyer, 1963] Naked Maja, The [dir. Henry Koster, 1958] No Path through Fire [dir. Gleb Panfilov, 1968] Novalis – Die blaue Blume [Novalis – The Blue Flower, dir. Herwig Kipping, 1993] October [dir. Sergei Eisenstein, 1928] Paracelsus [dir. G.W. Pabst, 1943] Paul Dessau [dir. Gitta Nickel, 1974] Pirosmani [dir. Giorgi Shengelaia, 1969] Potters Stier [Potter’s Bull, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1981] Rembrandt [dir. Hans Steinhoff, 1942] Robert Mayer – Der Arzt aus Heilbronn [Robert Mayer – The Doctor from Heilbronn, dir. Helmut Spieß, 1955] Roma città aperta [Rome Open City, dir. Roberto Rossellini, 1945] Roman einer jungen Ehe [Story of a Young Couple, dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1952]

266 Filmography

Rosa Luxemburg [dir. Margarethe von Trotta, 1986] Saatfrüchte sollen nicht vermahlen werden [Seed Corn Should Not Be Ground, dir. Kurt Tetzlaff, 1967] San Domingo [dir. Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, 1970] Schlösser und Katen [Castles and Cottages, dir. Kurt Maetzig, 1957] Schlußakkord [Final Chord, dir. Detlef Sierck, 1936] Shine, Shine, My Star! [dir. Alexander Mitta, 1970] Solo Sunny [dir. Konrad Wolf, 1980] Spur der Steine [Trace of Stones, dir. Frank Beyer, 1966] Stars of the Day, The [dir. Igor Talankin, 1968] Stein [dir. Egon Günther, 1991] Stilleben – eine Reise zu den Dingen [Still Life – The Quest for the Object, dir. Helke Misselwitz, 1984] Tango-Traum [Dream Tango, dir. Helke Misselwitz, 1984] Tschaikovsky [dir. Igor Talankin, 1970] Thomas Müntzer [dir. Martin Hellberg, 1956] Tilman Riemenschneider [dir. Helmut Spieß, 1958] Umberto D [dir. Vittoria De Sica, 1952] Un grand amour de Beethoven [Beethoven’s Great Love, dir. Abel Gance, 1936] Und wieder 48 [1848 Once Again, dir. Gustav von Wangenheim, 1948] Unser kurzes Leben [Our Short Life, dir. Lothar Warneke, 1981]. Unusual Exhibition, An [dir. Eldar Shengelaia, 1968] Venus nach Giorgione [Venus after Giorgione, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1981] Verwandlungen [Transformations, dir. Jürgen Böttcher, 1981] Walter Felsenstein [dir. Gitta Nickel, 1971] Wen die Götter lieben [Whom the Gods Love, dir. Karl Hartl, 1942]

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Index

1-2-3 Corona (1948), 22 Abusch, Alexander, 63, 78, 88, 93, 95, 103, 109, 223 Abendroth, Hermann, 69 Abschied [Farewell, 1968], 207 Abuiladze, Tengiz, 172n Ackermann, Anton, 48, 143, 158 Adenauer, Konrad, 80 Akademie der Künste (Berlin), 87–88, 109–112, 139–40, 152, 155–6, 224, 229 Aktfotografie – z. B. Gundula Schulze [Nude Photography – Gundula Schulze, 1983], 244–5 Alfonso XIII, 145 Alltag eines Poeten [The Everyday Life of a Poet, 1961], 96 An der Saale hellem Strande – Ein Kulturhaus erzählt [On the Banks of the Saale, 2010], 258 Anderson, Benedict, 4–5 Andreas Schlüter (1942), 71, 77 Andrei Rublev (1969/71), 5, 152–153, 168 Appassionata (1806), 206 Arnstam, Lev Ostarovich, 207, 234n Asriel, André, 117, 124 Auf der Galerie [Up in the Gallery, 1916], 99–100 Auf der Sonnenseite [On the Sunny Side, 1962], 115 Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts [From the Life of a Good for Nothing, 1973], 201, 203

Aus einem neuzeitlichen Totentanz [From a Modern Dance of Death, 1916], 106 Axen, Hermann, 54 Bach, Johann Sebastian, 66, 67, 73, 188, 200 Baierl, Helmut, 153 Baigneuse endormie (1850), 192 Balázs, Béla, 19–20, 229 Balden, Theo, 128 Balzac, Honoré de, 8 Barber, Samuel, 18 Barlach, Ernst, 2, 62, 104, 105–132, 135n Barlog, Boleslaw, 46, 57n Bartók, Béla, 17 Bathrick, David, 8, 10, 202, 231 Battleship Potemkin (1925), 20 Bauernkrieg [The Peasant War, 1901–8] Bayon, 190, 197n Becher, Johannes R., 14, 16, 19, 21, 30, 42, 43, 74, 79, 88, 199 Beck, Werner, 128 Beckmann, Max, 133n, 192 Beethoven, Ludwig van, 5, 15, 66–70, 73, 200, 205–220, 234n Beethoven – Tage aus einem Leben [Beethoven – Days from a Life, 1976], 2, 5, 203, 205–220 Begnadete Hände. Tilman Riemenschneider, seine Zeit, sein Leben, sein Werk [Blessed Hands. Tilman Riemenschneider, His Epoch, His Life, His Oeuvre, 1954], 73

284 Index

Behn-Grund, Friedl, 32, 38 Benjamin, Walter, 6, 12, 13, 97, 131 Benn, Gottfried, 11, 114 Bergholz, Olga, 151 Berlin – Ecke Schönhauser [Berlin – Schönhauser Corner, 1957], 88 Berlin um die Ecke [Berlin Around the Corner, 1966/1990], 126 Betrachtung der Kunst und Kunst der Betrachtung [Viewing Art and the Art of Viewing, 1939], 164 Beweinung [Lamentation, 1958], 92 Beyer, Frank, 125 Biermann, Wolf, 116, 176, 215, 221, 229, 239 Bitterfelder Weg, The, 70, 87–91, 95–96, 101–104, 202, 254, 258 Blind Man’s Buff (1789), 194 Blinder Russischer Bettler [Blind Russian Beggar, 1906], 105 Bloch, Ernst, 6, 11, 12, 88 Bogdanov, Alexander, 7 Bolshevik Revolution, 6, 105, 107 Bolz, Lothar, 80 Bondarchuk, Sergei, 234n Bongartz, Heinz, 69 Bonk, Hartmut, 179–81 Borgmann, Hans-Otto, 22 Borries, Siegfried, 53 Bosch, Hieronymus, 61, 73 Bosse, Robert, 63 Böttcher, Jürgen (aka Strawalde), 91–103, 128, 129, 168, 175, 179–196, 200, 249, 252 Brakhage, Stan, 195 Brancusi, Constantin, 18 Brando, Marlon, 143 Brandt, Willy, 157 Brauner, Arthur, 143 Braque, Georges, 18, 168 Brecht, Bertolt, 6, 12–14, 31–33, 37, 38, 96, 112, 153, 164, 167, 168, 200 Brentano, Clemens, 199 Brief Encounter (1945), 24 Breugel, Pieter, 73, 164 Brezhnev, Leonid, 157

Bruk, Franz, 124, 127, 139, 143 Bürgermeister Anna [Mayor Anna, 1950], 246 Busch, Ernst, 21 Butting, Max, 17 Buxtehude, Dieterich, 69 Büchner, Georg, 35 Bürger, Annekathrin, 75, 81, 82 Cadars, Pierre, 71 Caprichos, Los (1797–98), 146, 150, 154 Caritas (1534), 190 Carlos IV and His Family (1800), 144, 145, 146, 147 Carow, Heiner, 202 Caruso, Paolo, 48 Caspar David Friedrich – Grenzen der Zeit [Caspar David Friedrich – The Limits of Time, 1986], 201 Cassirer, Paul, 106 Chassériau, Théodore, 192 Chez Le Père Lathuille. En plein air (1879), 192 Childhood of Maxim Gorki, The (1938), 24 Chocolate Girl, The (1743), 194, 198n Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach [Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, 1968], 207 Classical Humanism, 1, 12–16, 21, 29–51, 53–69, 111, 125, 142, 188, 191, 200, 245–7, 259 Constructivism, 19, 90, 178–79, 182–186, 190 Copland, Aaron, 18 Corinth, Lovis, 63 Cosmopolitanism, 55, 61–71, 73, 82, 87, 253 Courtade, Francis,71 Cranach, Lucas, 5, 17, 61, 189–191 Cremer, Fritz, 102, 103, 113, 158 Cremer, Ludwig, 44 Crossing at the Schreckenstein (1836) Dahl, Johan Christian, 185 Dahle, Ernst, 66, 70



DaDa, 198n Da Vinci, Leonardo, 73, 184 Das Beil von Wandsbek [The Axe of Wandsbek, 1951], 47 Das Cabinet des Dr Caligari [The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, 1920], 21 Das Erdbeben in Chili [The Earthquake in Chile, 1975], 201 Das Fräulein von Barnhelm (1940), 32 Das freie Orchester [The Free Orchestra, 1988], 245 Das Kaninchen bin ich [The Rabbit is me, 1965], 124 Das siebte Kreuz [The Seventh Cross, 1942], 44 Das schlimme Jahr [The Terrible Year (sculpture), 1937], 107, 112 Das schlimme Jahr [The Terrible Year, (novella), 1963], 108, 114–115 Das wohltemperierte Klavier [The WellTempered Clavier, 1722], 67 David and Bathseba (1526) David, Jacques-Louis, 154 Denk bloß nicht ich heule [Just Don’t Think I’m Crying, 1965], 124 De Sica, Vittoria, 94, 95 De Witte, Emanuel, 192, 194 Degenerate Art (‘entartete Kunst’), 10, 60, 77, 80–81, 92, 104, 107, 182 Departure (1932), 192 Der Auftrag Höglers [Högler’s Mission, 1950], 25n Der Berserker (1910), 109 Der Bettler [The Beggar, 1912], 118 Der blaue Boll [Squire Blue Boll, 1926], 118 Der Fall Gleiwitz [The Gleiwitz Affair, 1961], 116 Der Frühling braucht Zeit [Spring Takes Time, 1965], 124 Der geteilte Himmel [Divided Heaven, 1964], 140 Der Geistkämpfer [The Fighter of the Spirit, 1928], 107 Der Golem [The Golem, 1920], 23

Index 285

Der Hauptmann von Köpenick [The Captain of Köpenick, 1931], 46 Der nackte Mann auf dem Sportplatz [The Naked Man on the Playing Field, 1974], 2, 5, 157, 158–169, 175, 200 Der Rächer [The Avenger, 1914], 106 Der Rat der Götter [Council of the Gods, 1950], 39 Der schwebende Engel [The Floating Angel, 1927], 107, 119, 120, 131 Der Student von Prag [The Student of Prague, 1913], 24 Der verlorene Engel [The Lost Angel, 1966/71], 2, 105, 108, 115–132, 139, 141, 153, 240, 244, 247, 254, 256, 257 Der Zweifler [The Doubter, 1937], 118, 119 Des Teufels General [The Devil’s General, 1947], 46–47, 50 Deutscher Verband für Volksbildung (VBB), 15, 29–30 Die Abenteuer des Till Ulenspiegel [The Adventures of Till Ulenspiegel, 1957], 88 Die Buntkarierten [Girls in Gingham, 1949], 32, 39 Die drei Codonas [The Three Codonas, 1940], 22 Die Elixiere des Teufels [The Devil’s Elixirs, 1973], 201, 204 Die Entscheidung des Tilman Riemenschneider [Tilman Riemenschneider’s Decision, 1954], 74 Die gefesselte Hexe [The Fettered Witch, 1926], 118, 119 Die große Liebe [The Great Love, 1942], 21 Die Hexen von Salem [The Witches of Salem, 1957], 88 Die Juden (1754), 42 Die Komödianten (1941), 78 Die Kraut-Pflückerin [The Cabbage Picker, 1894], 105 Die lachende Alte [The Laughing Crone, 1937], 122

286 Index

Die Legende von Paul und Paula [The Legend of Paul and Paula, 1973], 203 Die Leiden des jungen Werthers [The Sorrows of Young Werther, 1976], 201 Die Mörder sind unter uns, [The Murderers are among Us, 1946], 22, 75, 82, 83 Die Nibelungen [The Nibelungs, 1922], 109 Die Wandlung [The Transfiguration, 1918], 118, 123 Dieckhoff, Herman, 74 Dimitrov, Georgi, 10 Disasters of War, The (1810–20), 153 Dix, Otto, 19, 91 Dog Star Man (1964), 195 Doktor Faustus (1947), 68 Donskoy, Mark, 21, 24 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 105 Dove of Peace (1949), 93 Dovzhenko, Alexander, 21, 94 Drei von vielen, [Three of Many, 1961/1989], 91, 92, 95–104, 179, 192, 252, 254 Dudow, Slatan, 20, 2, 51, 69, 244 Düren, Fred, 118, 128, 129, 258n Dürer, Albrecht, 5, 17, 61, 73 Dymschitz, Alexander, 15, 48, 61 Earth (1930), 21, 94 Ebbrecht, Tobias, 162 Eckmann, Sabine, 71 Ehe im Schatten [Marriage in the Shadows, 1947], 2, 29–38, 39, 40, 43, 46, 51, 52, 53, 244, 246, 255, 257 Ehrhardt, Alfred, 74, 85n Eichendorff, Joseph Freiherr von, 201, 203 Eick, Felix, 111 Ein Weberaufstand [‘Weavers’ Revolt’, 1893–97] Ein Weimarfilm [A Film about Weimar, 1977], 188–191, 200, 252 Eine Berliner Romanze [A Berlin Romance, 1956], 88

Eine Steppenfahrt [Journey across the Steppes, 1912], 105 Eisenstein, Sergei, 19, 20, 22, 3, 133n Eisler, Hanns, 6, 11, 17, 96 Eleventh Plenum, 94, 108, 116–130, 140, 152, 154, 157, 200, 215, 247, 254 Elsner, Hannelore, 201 Emmrich, Irma, 178 Enlightenment, The, 1–3, 16, 72–3, 83, 145, 186–91, 200–205, 210–211, 221–223, 229–223 Engels, Friedrich, 37, 189 Entreaty, The (1967), 172n Erdmann, Otto, 31 Ernst, Max, 177 Eroïca (1949), 206 Expressionism, 6–24, 110, 116, 199, 240–244 Expressionism Debate, 9–15, 19, 34, 109, 200, 253–4 Eylau, Hans Ulrich, 33, 77 Farner, Konrad, 93 Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ), 49, 67, 105, 158 Fehling, Jürgen, 48 Feist, Peter, 177, 178 Feuchtwanger, Lion, 141, 142, 144, 145, 153, 156, 157, 170n Feuchtwanger, Marta, 141, 142, 14, 156, 170n Fidelio (1805), 68 Fischer, Carel, 158 Fischer, Adolf, 21 Franciosa, Anthony, 141 Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters [Questions of a Reading Worker, 1959], 173 Frau am Klavierchord [Interior with a Woman at the Virginal, 1981), 191, 194–195 Frauenschicksale [Destinies of Women, 1952], 244 Freitag, Manfred, 128 Friedemann Bach (1941), 21, 71, 72



Friedrich, Caspar David, 185 Friedrich Schiller – Der Triumph eines Genies [Friedrich Schiller – The Triumph of Genius, 1940], 21, 71, 72 Fruits of Jealousy, The (1535), 191 Frühlingssinfonie [Spring Symphony, 1983], 201 Fühmann, Franz, 113–15, 124, 204, 205 Furtwängler, Wilhelm, 3, 53, 69 Fünf Patronenhülsen [Five Cartridges, 1960], 116 Fünf Tage – Fünf Nächte [Five Days – Five Nights, 1961], 78–83, 246 Gardner, Ava, 141 Gaul, August, 106 Gärtner-Scholle, Carola, 91 Georg Friedrich Händel (1960), 69–71, 200 Genesung [Recovery, 1956], 75 Gerlach, Ingeborg, 91 Gillen, Eckhardt, 90 Giorgione, 192, 193, 197n Girnus, Wilhelm, 65, 66, 73, 102, 111 Glöckner, Hermann, 178, 183, 184, 185, 196n Goebbels, Joseph, 77, 122 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 5, 16, 64, 73, 188, 189, 191, 201 Gordon, Wolf von, 55 Gorky Trilogy (1941), 21 Gorvin, Joanna Maria, 56n Goldschmidt, Harry Goya, Francisco de, 2, 144, 145, 146, 150, 154, 157, 193, 194 Goya, oder der Arge Weg der Erkenntnis (novel, 1951), 141 Goya, oder der arge Weg der Erkenntnis [Goya, or the Hard Road to Knowledge, 1971], 2, 5, 117, 139–158, 159, 162, 168, 200, 203, 220, 244, 247, 254, 256, 257 Graf, Peter, 92, 95, 96, 98, 100, 101, 103 Gret Palucca (1971), 245

Index 287

Griffiths D. W., 20 Grohmann, Will, 18 Gropius, Walter, 190 Große Sitzende [Large Sitting Female, 1977], 180 Grosz, Georg, 91, 198n Grotewohl, Otto, 65, 66, 70 Gründgens, Gustaf, 48 Grünewald, Matthias, 61 Gruppe 47, 27n Guernica (1937), 92–93 192 Günther, Egon, 201 Haacker, Carl, 21 Haberfeld, Hans, 44, 45 Hager, Kurt, 88, 143, 154,175 Hälfte des Lebens [Half of Life, 1985], 201, 203, 224–27, 229, 237n, 248 Hamburger Ehrenmal [Hamburg Memorial, 1931], 107 Handel, Georg Friedrich, 66, 70, 200 Hansen, Rolf, 21 Harich, Wolfgang, 88, 113, 231 Harlan, Veit, 32, 4, 54 Harnack, Falk, 47, 51 Hartl, Karl, 71 Heartfield, John, 102 Hebbel, Christian Friedrich, 109 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 189 Heinrich (1977), 201 Heise, Carl Georg, 79 Heisig, Bernhard, 176–77 Hellberg, Martin, 38 Henselmann, Hermann, 38, 39 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 189 Herlinghaus, Hermann, 154 Hermlin, Stephan, 67, 69 Herrmann, Peter, 92, 95, 98, 101, 103 Heymann, Stefan, 63 Hindemith, Paul, 17 Hitler, Adolf, 10, 12, 16, 23, 68, 107, 109, 114 Hitlerjunge Quex (1933), 22 Höffer, Paul, 17

288 Index

Hölderlin, Friedrich, 201, 203, 205, 221–225 Hoffmann, Ernst, 65 Hoffmann, E.T.A., 201– 205 Hogarth, William, 71 Hommage à Hölderlin (1984), 203, 224, 227–233, 239, 240, 248 Hoppe, Rolf, 201 Howley, Frank, 47 Holtzhauer, Helmut, 108 Honecker, Erich, 157, 158, 175 Hornig, Harry, 95 Hübel, Wernfried, 69, 70 Huillet, Danièle, 207 Huiskens, Joop, 95 Hauptverwaltung Film (HV Film), 52, 101, 116, 125–27, 130, 141–3, 154–6, 191, 195, 214–8, 257 Ich klage an [I Accuse, 1941], 21, 32 Ich war 19 [I was 19, 1968], 140, 154 Im Lohmgrund [In the Lohm Quarry, 1977], 179–82, 186, 252 Im Pergamonmuseum [In the Pergamon Museum, 1962], 186–89, 252 In Georgien [In Georgia, 1987], 168 Innocent Eye Test, The (1981), 197n Intolerance (1916), 20 Ivan the Terrible (1944), 22 Jaap, Max, 67, 68, 69, 70, 205 Jahrgang 45 [Born in ’45, 1965/1990], 94, 96, 128–129 Jahrow, Franz, 125, 126, 127 Jakob der Lügner [Jacob the Liar, 1974], 125 Janik, Elizabeth, 18 Janka, Walter, 88, 142, 156, 170n, 171 Johann Sebastian Bach (1950), 66–67 Joyce, James, 8 Jud Süß (1940), 32, 43 Jutzi, Piel, 21, 24 Kämpfende Kunst [Art as a Weapon, 1959], 240, 247 Kafka, Franz, 8, 91, 99, 100

Kagel, Mauricio, 207, 217–18 Kaiser, Georg, 123 Kannapin, Detlef, 41, 57n Kandinsky, Wassily, 101, 110, 17, 182, 185, 190 Käthe Kollwitz – Bilder eines Lebens [Käthe Kollwitz – Images of a Life, 1987], 105, 130, 240–44, 247, 256 Käutner, Helmut, 32 Kellermann, Bernhard, 16 Kelly, Elaine, 200, 206, 228 Khrushchev, Nikita, 52, 82, 186 Kipping, Herwig, 203 Kirsten, Brigitte, 204 Kirsten, Ralf, 108, 113–132, 139, 141, 201, 203, 240–256 Kisch, Egon Erwin, 190 Klagemann, Eugen, 75 Klee, Paul, 182, 185, 190, 196n Klein, Gerhard, 88, 116, 126 Kleiner Dampfer [Little Steamer, 1928], 183 Kleist, Heinrich von, 199, 201, 205, 221–23 Klering, Hans, 21 Klingender, Franicis D., 145, 171n Koch, Helmut, 70 Kohlhaase, Wolfgang, 159, 161– 169 Kokoschka, Oskar, 91 Kolberg (1945), 43, 44 Kollwitz, Käthe, 61, 62, 63, 104–105, 107, 109–111, 118–120, 131, 132, 240–47, 255–56 Komm ins Offene Freund! [Come out into the Open, My Friend!, 1988], 245 Komödianten [The Comedians, 1941], 71 Konrad Wolf (1977), 245 Konzert im Freien [A Place in Berlin, 2001], 218, 249–255 Koster, Henry, 141 Konwitschny, Franz, 69 Kraus, Agnes, 121 Krug, Manfred, 95, 115 Küchenmeister, Wera, 128 Kuhle Wampe (1932), 21, Kunert, Günter, 203



Kulturbund zur demokratischen Erneuerung Deutschlands, 15–23, 42–43, 66, 103–105, 128 Kulturnation, 4–5 Kurella, Alfred, 9–14, 90–91, 101, 103, 104, 113, 140, 148, 199, 205 Kurzer Besuch bei Hermann Glöckner [A Short Visit to Hermann Glöckner, 1985], 179, 182­–186, 197n, 252 La Terra Trema [The Earth Trembles, 1948], 94 La Venus del espeyo [The Rokeby Venus (1647–51)], 146 Lachnit, Wilhelm, 91, 92 Lammert, Will, 248, 173n Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (1558), 164 Lang, Fritz, 21 Langhoff, Wolfgang, 47 Lauren, Henri, 181 Lean, David, 24 Leben des Galilei [Life of Galileo, 1943], 153 Lehmann, Christian, 187 Leiberg, Helge Leistikow, Walter, 63 Lenin, Vladimir, 206 Les mains sales [Dirty Hands, 1948], 60 Les mouches [The Flies, 1943], 47, 48 Lessing, G.E., 32, 42 Liebeneiner, Wolfgang, 21, 32 Liebermann, Max, 63, 106 Lindemann, Alfred, 23 Liotard, Jean-Étienne, 194, 198n Lissy (1957), 75 Liszt, Franz, 189 Löser, Claus, 195 Lüdecke, Heinz, 93, 110 Ludwig – Requiem für einen jungfräulichen König [Ludwig – Requiem for a Virgin King, 1972], 201 Ludwig van (1970), 217–18 Ludwig van Beethoven [1954], 67, 205

Index 289

Lukács, Georg, 6, 10, 11, 12, 13, 8, 108, 110, 199, 200 Lumumba, Patrice, 98 Macke, August, 99 Maetzig, Kurt, 22– 24, 29–55, 60, 75–78, 111, 124, 160 Mälzel, Johann Nepomuk, 235n Magdeburger Ehrenmal [Magdeburg Memorial, 1929], 107 Maisch, Herbert, 21, 71, 72 Magnificent Rebel, The (1962), 208 Makolies, Peter, 92–103, 179–82 Manet, Edouard, 192, 193 Mann, Heinrich, 107 Mann, Thomas, 8, 68, 74, 143 Marc, Franz, 110 Margraf, Horst-Tanu, 70 Massacre in Korea (1951), 93 Mast mit zwei Faltungszonen [Mast with Two Folded Zones, 1974], 184 Matisse, Henri, 61, 92 Mayakovsky, Vladimir, 6, 8 Mayer, Hans, 88 McCloy, John, 64 Meadow of San Isidro, The (1788), 146 Mellinger, Frederic, 47 Menuhin, Yehudi, 69 Menzel, Adolph, 66 Metaphors on Vision (1963) Metropolis (1927), 21 Meurer, Hans Joachim, 5 Minna von Barnhelm (1767), 32, 42 Mitta, Alexander, 151, 152 Mittenzwei, Werner, 200 Monolog eines Taxifahrers [A Taxi Driver’s Monologue, 1962], 129 Moore, Henry, 177, 182, 196n Mückenberger, Jochen, 124, 139 Müller, Hans, 22 Müller, Traugott, 21, 71, 72 Müncheberg, Hans, 74 Music Lovers, The (1970), 235 Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück [Mother Krause’s Journey to Happiness, 1929], 21

290 Index

Nackt unter Wölfen [Naked amongst Wolves, 1963], 116 Nagel, Otto, 110 Naked Maja, The (1958), 141 Nathan der Weise (1779), 42–43, 50 Nehrlinger, Oskar, 18 Nestler, Jochen, 128 Neuber, Caroline, 71, 78 Neue Lebensansichten eines Katers [New Life and Opinions of a Tomcat Murr, 1974], 204 Neumann, Claus, 129 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 10, 34, 56n, 117, 121, 230–31 No Path through Fire (1968), 172n Nolde, Emil, 108 Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk (NWDR), 44–45 Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg), 199, 205 Novalis – Die blaue Blume (1993), 231–33, 240 October (1928), 21 Offenbach, Jacques, 30 Oistrach, David, 69 Pabst, G.W., 71, 78 Panfilov, Gleb, 172n Paracelsus (1943), 244 Paul Dessau (1974), 245 Pechstein, Max, 18 Penck, A.R., 92, 99, 101, 192, 196n Pergamon Museum, 82, 186–188 Persephone, 187 Petley, Julian, 71 Pfeuffer, Anne, 78 Philotas (1759), 42 Picasso, Pablo, 18, 61, 79, 91–94, 96, 168, 176, 192–94, 253, 257 Pieck, Wilhelm, 14, 17 Pilgrimage to San Isidro, A (1819–23), 146 Pirosmani (1968), 5, 168–9, 174n Pirosmani, Nikolo, 168, 169 Plenert, Thomas, 180, 183, 185, 193

Poro (1731), 70 Potter, Paulus, 192, 194 Potters Stier [Potter’s Bull, 1981], 191–192 Poussin, Nicolas, 194 Praetorius, Michael, 70 Prokofiev, Sergei, 26n Quandt, Bernhard, 128 Queen Maria Luisa on Horseback (1799), 146 Quinn, Anthony, 143 Rabenalt, Arthur, 22 Rade, Karl, 182 Rangierer [Shunters, 1980], 197n Ratgeb, Jörg, 73 Raum, Hermann, 178 Realism, 5–6, 8–9, 10, 13–14, 23–24, 30, 73, 76–80, 91, 93–4, 106, 111–112, 113, 116, 130–32, 144, 146–8, 150, 159–68, 176–79, 194, 203, 220, 243. See also Socialist Realism Reed, Dean, 201 Rembrandt (1942), 71, 244 Riemenschneider, Tillmann, 5, 73, 74, 75, 83 Reisch, Günter, 55, 156 Richter, Horst, 82 Richter, Ludwig, 194 Rilla, Paul, 47 Robert Mayer – Der Arzt aus Heilbronn [Robert Mayer – The Doctor from Heilbronn, 1955], 75 Rodiles, Ignacio Márquez, 93 Rodin, August, 18, 63 Roma città aperta [Rome Open City, 1945], 24 Roman einer jungen Ehe [Story of a Young Couple, 1952], 2, 38–55, 60, 78, 244, 246, 253, 255 Romanticism, 6, 9, 200–205, 219, 221–224, 226, 248, 254, 258 Romanze in Moll [Romance in a Minor Key, 1943], 32 Rosa Luxemburg (1986), 241, 243



Rosenberg, Ethel, 48 Rosenberg, Julius, 48 Rosenfeld, Gerhard, 96 Rossellini, Roberto, 24, 95 Rousseau, Henri, 96, 168 Russian Formalism, 6–8 Russian Futurism, 6–7 Russian Question, The, (1947), 46–7 Russische Bettlerin mit Schale [Russian Beggarwoman with Bowl, 1906], 105 Saatfrüchte sollen nicht vermahlen werden [Seed Corn Should Not Be Ground, 1967], 240, 247 San Domingo (1970), 201 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 47, 48, 60 Schamoni, Peter, 201 Schiedermair, Ludwig, 67 Schiller, Friedrich, 16, 35, 36, 66, 189, 191, 226 Schlegel Friedrich, 199, 202 Schleime, Cornelia, 195 Schlösser und Katen [Castles and Cottages, 1957], 246 Schlußakkord [Final Chord, 1936], 68, 69 Schmerzensmutter [Mater Dolorosa, 1922], 106 Schmidt, Werner, 182 Schnurre, Wolfdietrich, 23 Schück, Werner, 49, 58n Schulte-Sasse, Linda, 71 Schulz, Ilona, 109 Schumann, Clara, 201 Schweikart, Hans, 31, 32 Schweykowski, Bodo, 74 Schwitters, Kurt, 91, 198n Seemann, Horst, 5, 201, 203 Seghers, Anna, 44, 190 Semjonov, Vladimir, 62, 63, 92 Seurat, Georges, 99, 193 Shandley, Robert, 33 Shengelaia, Giorgi, 5, 152, 168 Shine, Shine, My Star! (1969), 151, 152 Shklovsky, Viktor, 7, 15,

Index 291

Shostakovich, Dmitri, 26n Sierck, Detlef, 68 Silberman, Marc, 5, 245, 256, 257 Simonov, Constantin, 46–7 Sitte, Willi, 176 Sitzende [Seated Woman, 1954], 92 Sitzender Junge [Boy Sitting, 1955], 173n Slánský, Rudolf, 171n Sleeping Venus (1510) Socialist Realism, 3, 6–15, 25–26, 39–40, 48–53, 61–63, 69, 88–94, 98–99, 102–104, 109, 113–14, 126–7, 139–41, 155, 158–63, 175–78, 200–202, 218, 248–53 Socialist Imaginary, 3–5, 30, 79, 83, 200, 239–58, 255 Socialist Unity Party (SED), 40, 49, 78–79, 88–91, 104, 130, 157–58, 175, 186, 216, 257 Söderbaum, Kristina, 43 Solo Sunny (1980), 203, 244 Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, 151 Sorge, Reinhard, 118 Spieß, Helmut, 72, 75, 76, 77, 83 Spur der Steine [Trace of Stones, 1966], 125, 137n Stahnke, Günter, 124, 129 Stalin, Joseph, 8, 48, 51, 52, 64, 65, 78, 87, 89, 93 Stars of the Day, The (1968), 151 Staudte, Wolfgang, 22 Stein (1991), 239–40 Steinhoff, Hans, 22, 71 Steppat, Ilse, 33 Stern, Jeanne, 145 Stern, Kurt, 77, 145 Stilleben – eine Reise zu den Dingen [Still Life – The Quest for the Object, 1984], 245 Stöhr, Emil, 75 Stoph, Willi, 234 Stötzer, Werner, 159, 173n, 250, 251 Strache, Wolf, 73 Straub, Jean-Marie, 207 Strauß, Botho, 174n

292 Index

Strawalde (aka Jürgen Böttcher), 94, 193, 192, 194 Strauß, Franz Josef, 80 Stückenschmidt, Hans Heinz, 17 Syberberg, Hans-Jürgen, 201 Talankin, Igor, 151 Tancred and Erminia (1634), 194 Tansey, Mark, 197n Talankin, Igor, 151, 207, 216 Tango-Traum [Dream-Tango, 1984], 245 Tarkovsky, Andrey, 5, 152, 194 Tauromaquia (1816), 150 Taylor, Charles, 4 Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich, 15 Tchaikovsky (1970), 216–217 Telemann, Georg Philipp, 70 Ter Borch, Gerard, 194 Thiessen, Heinz, 17 Third of May 1808 (1814), 153 Thomas Müntzer, (1956), 74 Thomasius, Christian, 70 Three Pairs of Lovers (1537) Tiepolo, 73 Tilman Riemenschneider (1958), 72, 73–78, 80, 83, 246, 257 Titian, 73, 193 Toller, Ernst, 62, 118 Toscanini, Arturo, 69 Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri de, 99 Trilogie des Wiedersehens [Trilogy of Reunions, 1977], 174n Trotsky, Leon, 7 Tschaikovsky (1970), 207, 216 Tübke Werner, 176 Tulpanov, Sergei, 15, 21 Turm der Mütter [Tower of Mothers, 1938], 62 UFA (Universum Film AG), 17, 21–23, 30–32, 37–39, 51, 53, 75, 257 Uhse, Bodo, 39, 40 Ulbricht, Walter, 14, 66, 88, 89, 90, 92, 104, 157 Umberto D (1952), 94

Un grand amour de Beethoven [Beethoven’s Great Love, 1936], 208, 213 Unbändiges Spanien [Unruly Spain, 1962], 145 Und wieder 48 [1848 All Over Again, 1948], 25n Unser kurzes Leben [Our Short Life, 1981], 203 Unser Täglich Brot [Our Daily Bread, 1949], 20, 203 Unusual Exhibition, An, (1968), 152 Urang, John, 40 Van der Rohe, Mies, 108 Van Gogh, Vincent, 96, 150, 193 Velásquez, Diego, 146 Verband Bildender Künstler (VBB), 102, 109, 169, 176–8, 179 Verband der Film- und Fernsehschaffenden, 169 Venus nach Giorgione [Venus after Giorgione, 1981], 191–5 Venus of Urbino (1538), 193 Verwandlungen [Transformations, 1981], 19–5, 249, 251, 252 View of Dresden by Moonlight (1839), 185 Visconti, Luchino, 94 Vision (1959), 94 Vitruvian Man (1490), 184 Vogel, Frank, 124 Von Morgens bis Mitternachts [From Morning until Midnight, 1912], 123 Von Stein, Charlotte, 191 Wagenstein, Angel, 144 Wagner, Siegfried, 127 Wagner, Richard, 189 Walter Felsenstein (1971), 245 Wandel, Paul, 15, 21, 66 Wangenheim, Gustav von, 11 War and Peace (1952) Warneke, Lothar, 203 Wegener, Paul, 23, 42 Weidner, Klaus, 178



Weimar, 19, 21, 34, 57n, 148, 188–191 Weinert, Erich, 14 Wen die Götter lieben [Whom the Gods Love, 1942], 71 Werzlau, Joachim, 75 Wiechert, Ernst, 30 Wieck, Friedrich, 201 Wiene, Robert, 21 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 189 Wilhelm II, Kaiser, 63, 186 Wilkening, Alfred, 51 Williams, William Carlos, 6, 164 Winkler, Ralf (aka A.R. Penck), 92, 99, 101, 133n, 192 Wischnewski, Klaus, 116, 124, 143, 169 Wiste, Fritz, 42 Witt, Günter, 142, 154 Wölfel, Ute, 35 Wolf, Christa, 140, 18, 202, 204, 205 Wolf, Friedrich, 14 Wolf, Gerhard, 224

Index 293

Wolf, Konrad, 5, 75, 116, 117, 125, 129, 139 –169, 175, 200, 203, 220, 244, 247, 248, 252, 254–7 Woman Peeling an Apple (1650), 194 Young Bull, The (1647), 192, 197n Zadkine, Ossip, 181 Zahlbaum, Willi, 101 Zander, Erich, 75 Zeller, Wolfgang, 32, 38 Zervos, Christian, 94 Zhdanov, Andrei, 8, 9, 51 Ziegler, Adolf, 198n Ziegler, Bernhard (aka Alfred Kurella), 11 Zille, Heinrich, 61 Zinner, Hedda, 44 Zschoche, Herrmann Zuckmayer, Carl, 46, 47 Zweig, Arnold, 110