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  • The Axe of Wandsbek (Das Beil von Wandsbek)
  • Scott Weiss
The Axe of Wandsbek (Das Beil von Wandsbek) (1951). Directed by Falk Harnack. Distributed in the U.S. by First Run Features. www.firstrunfeatures.com. 111 min.

Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft - abbreviated DEFA - was the lone film production, exhibition and distribution association of the former German Democratic Republic between 1946 and 1992. Contemporary viewers can never experience the DEFA films as they were experienced by their initial audiences, nor can they ever truly identify with the frame of mind a director must have constructed working under the ideologically-driven bureaucracy of the DEFA with its checks, constraints and proscriptions. In the former German Democratic Republic a creator was always one misstep from having his work suppressed and finding himself exiled from his craft... or worse. The ideological tethers having long since withered for audiences, viewing the films produced by the DEFA is today largely an academic exercise. In order to fully comprehend their significance, one must possess historical familiarity with the post-war period in of both Germanys, with the tensions between the two newly formed states promoting competing ideologies and also, with the dangers of the superpower standoff and its effects on the re-forming of national consciousness, both in the East and the West. In the GDR, this meant a stringent adherence to Socialist orthodoxy in media production. Thus, it is difficult to see many of the DEFA films as more than quaint, provincial, often pretentiously melodramatic artifacts of an insular culture cut off from the comparably more free and diverse artistic practices of the West. This in mind, it nonetheless does not prevent these films from making fascinating viewing, with sundry rewards for the patient viewer and the occasional re-discovered masterpiece, as the fates then and the passing of time now will have it.

The Axe of Wandsbek (Das Beil von Wandsbek), a 1951 film directed by Falk Harnack, considers the role that lower middle class citizens played in Nazi crimes, while at the same time portraying a social climate of conflict [End Page 138] and contestation. The film is an adaptation of Arnold Zweig's novel of the same name, set in 1934, and depicts the story of a local butcher, Albert Teetjen, who accepts money from the Nazis to serve as a public executioner, and the moral issues which eventually haunt him, driving him to a ruinous end. The narrative is partially based on a true story read by Zweig in a newspaper.

Indispensible to a current viewing of the film is the back-story of the production. As with many of the DEFA films, the viewer can almost feel the breath of the state censors in every frame. To ensure as contextualized a viewing as possible, the meticulous and devoted scholars at the DEFA Film Library at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (http://www.umass.edu/defa/) have included fascinating and absolutely essential extras to the DVD release. Indeed, I would recommend first examining these before viewing the film.

Among the supplemental offerings there is an excellent from-book-to-film essay, "The Axe Affair," which outlines how Arnold Zweig came to write the original novel while exiled in Palestine. It is a compelling portrait of the cultural alienation and economic complexities faced by many of the German intellectuals exiled during Hitler's rule, particularly in Palestine. After the war Zweig returned to Berlin where he for a time became President of the East German Academy of the Arts. He was closely involved with the making of the film, which he considered a success, both artistically and politically, but Soviet censors had issues with the drawing of the character of Teetjen which they felt elicited too much empathy from the audience (due no doubt to a moving performance by Erwin Geschonneck, a renowned stage actor and a member of Brecht's Berliner Ensemble). To Zweig's deep frustration and regret, the original film was shelved and, despite a heavily edited version released in 1962, was not released for over 40 years.

Also included in the DVD release is a reprint of a 1993 interview with Käthe Braun from Neues Deutschland...

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