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The German Genius

The German Genius

Titel: The German Genius Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Peter Watson
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Hungarian uprising in 1956, after which stricter censorship was introduced, until the closing of the border, in 1961, when topical issues were again allowed. Konrad Wolf’s Der geteilte Himmel ( The Divided Heaven ; 1964), based on a novel by Christa Wolf, looked at the division of Germany from an Eastern point of view and stimulated mildly critical films by younger directors, examining such themes as the conflict between the generations and corruption in the legal system. This relative freedom came to an end again with the Eleventh Plenum of the Central Committee of the SED in 1965, as a result of which no less than half a year’s production was binned. 50 These so-called Verbotsfilme (forbidden films) were vivid evidence that a new generation had become critical of the old. Matters changed yet again after Erich Honecker’s notorious speech in 1971, already referred to, in which he condemned taboos in the arts. One immediate consequence was Heiner Carow’s Der Legende von Paul und Paula ( The Legend of Paul and Paula ; 1972), a big success, based on the popular novel by Ulrich Plenzdorf. This explored a couple’s search for individual happiness within the East German system, in the process introducing sexuality as a means of achieving freedom and modernity. Frank Beyer’s Jakob der Lügner ( Jacob the Liar ; 1974), also based on a novel, told the story of a Jew in wartime who pretends he has a radio and makes up the “news” for his friends to keep their spirits high. It was the only DEFA film nominated for an Academy Award. 51
    In West Germany, though “rubble” films were also produced immediately after the war, the Germans’ own work was overwhelmed by a flood of American films, usually dubbed. Otherwise, the period was characterized by Heimatfilme —safe, escapist romances that raised no ghosts.
    There are two views about the effect of American film on Germany. One is that they trivialized German culture but another is that Germans willingly embraced American culture as a means of breaking with the Nazi past. 52
    In fact, so weak was the (West) German film industry at this time that, in 1961, at the Berlin Film Festival, the Federal Film prize was not awarded. This gesture seems to have had some effect and only a year later, at the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, a group of twenty-six young directors signed the founding document of Das neue Kino, the New German Cinema. Known as the Oberhausen Manifesto, the document resulted in an organization to subsidize new films by young directors, the Kuratorium junger deutscher Film. But in practice it wasn’t until the late 1960s and 1970s that German film experienced its real renaissance and, like most renaissances, this had to do with a constellation of genuine “stars” maturing at much the same time.
    In 1968, Werner Herzog released his first feature, Lebenszeichen ( Signs of Life ), the first in a series of works inhabited by bizarre loners and outcasts but redeemed with caustic humor. Herzog’s films seek to show, he says, “ecstatic truth” rather than the “accountant’s truth” of cinéma verité . They explore solitude, inner states, “inner landscapes”—Caspar David Friedrich is a favorite artist. “Tourism is a sin,” says Herzog and the twentieth century a “catastrophic mistake.” His loathing of “technological civilization” is reminiscent of Heidegger’s, though he lives in—and loves—Los Angeles for its “collective dreams.” 53
    At much the same time, Rainer Werner Fassbinder produced his trilogy of gangster movies, also examining the inner worlds of loneliness and isolation ( Liebe ist kälter als Tod [ Love Is Colder than Death ] introduced Hanna Schygulla to the world). Herzog and Fassbinder were quickly followed in 1970 by Wim Wenders and his celebrated road movies, also inhabited by rootless, haunted loners, most notably Summer in the City . 54
    Directors such as Fassbinder, Alexander Kluge, Margarethe von Trotha, Volker Schlöndorff, and Reinhard Hauff were by no means blind to the evils of National Socialism but, like Martin Walser, they preferred to deal with late twentieth-century issues such as immigrant workers (Fassbinder’s Angst essen Seele auf [ Fear Eats the Soul ; 1974]), and terrorism (the collective film Deutschland im Herbst [ Germany in Autumn ], and Reinhard Hauff’s Messer im Kopf [ Knife in the Head ], both 1978). The division of Germany was left largely unexplored by this generation of

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