Becoming a Nazi Town: Culture and Politics in Göttingen between the World Wars

5. National Products That “Serve the Public Good,” 1920–29

127 Chapter 5 National Products That “Serve the Public Good,” 1920–29 Almost immediately after the November 1918 Revolution that created the first German republic, revolutionary leaders realized the unique problems that cinema posed for Germany and searched for ways to control it effectively. In January 1919, the Worker and Soldier Council of Dortmund asked the Prussian Ministry of Justice in Berlin “whether cinema owners couldn’t be forced to keep children away from unsuitable movies through some existing or to-bewritten regulations,” given that cinema owners “exercise a harmful influence on children’s minds.”1 The August 1919 Constitution that created the Weimar Republic reiterated this concern by excepting cinema from the otherwise liberal right to free speech in Germany. Article 118 stated that “every German is entitled, within the bounds set by general law, to express his opinion freely in word, writing, print, image or otherwise. . . . There is no censorship, but in case of the cinema, other regulations may be established by law.”2 Three months later Germany’s Minister of the Interior concluded that it fell to local police to enforce this constitutional mandate. He wrote, “local police are authorized without hesitation to shut down inappropriate films before they are screened” and indeed “it is the duty of local police directories to do so.”3 Finally, the May 1920 Motion Picture Law, which served as the basis for all cinematic regulation until 1945, enshrined this setup in Germany: national regulation through local policing.4 As the mass culture par excellence after World War I, cinema drew the attention of politicians from all parties. Its regulation in interwar Germany was more centralized than that of any other cultural activity. Still, the burden of enforcement fell to local police in both the Weimar and Nazi regimes. National offices might determine if a film could play in Germany, but police in Göttingen enforced the decision. And, equally important, local statutes shaped the price of tickets and the context in which a given movie played. Moreover, local 128 Becoming a Nazi Town newspapers introduced Göttingers to films, movie stars, and the film industry generally. Since Göttingers’ experiences with cinema involved much more than just going to movies, these cultural arbiters helped mold perceptions about cinema in Göttingen.5 This part uses the development of cinema between the world wars to illustrate the important role that local institutions, ideas, and individuals played in shaping mass cultural consumption. More than sharpshooting or opera production (or playing sports or any other cultural activity), moviegoing involved the local consumption of national (or international) products. Cinema made imagery that had been created elsewhere a part of Göttingers’ daily lives. At the same time, local conditions—regulation and media discourses—mediated Göttingers’ readings of mass culture. And cinema’s ubiquity, popularity, and power to deliver ideas made it a political issue. Indeed, mass cultural consumption and mass political participation required large numbers of Germans to behave similarly: to watch the same films in dark movie theaters and to vote for the same list of political parties and candidates on election days. Yet in both cases, it was in their own towns, neighborhoods, and streets that Germans behaved thusly. Studying the function and reception of film in Göttingen highlights the impact of local experience on mass culture and politics. Ultimately the cultural space in Göttingen that developed over the course of the 1920s enabled more conservative voices in town to make cinema a popular tool for strengthening their ideas and politics. The year 1930 marked an important shift in the history of German cinema , something other scholars have noted at the national level.6 These two chapters will demonstrate that perceptions about cinema in Göttingen did in fact change in 1930 in ways that reinforced the growing popularity of Nazism. Specifically, cinema owners, government officials, and newspaper critics created an atmosphere in Göttingen favoring safer films that reinforced rather than challenged the status quo. Reactions to three movies that year—The Blue Angel,Westfront 1918, and All Quiet on the Western Front—especially illustrated how cinema helped bolster Nazi ideas about nation, society, and cultural life. Likewise, the ways in which cinema functioned in the Third Reich after 1933 drew from these developments that came together around 1930. This chapter therefore traces the development of cinema as the most important form of mass culture in Göttingen after World War I. Its regulation served to animate and emulate...