-
4. "A Great National Deed"
- The University Press of Kentucky
- Chapter
- Additional Information
157 4 “A Great National Deed” Thälmann’s life was the topic of several East German feature films and television movies, the most important being director Kurt Maetzig’s two epics Ernst Thälmann—Sohn seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann—Son of His Class, 1954) and Ernst Thälmann—Führer seiner Klasse (Ernst Thälmann —Leader of His Class, 1955). Both films played a vital role in establishing the parameters of the Thälmann myth and securing its place in the GDR’s legitimizing narrative.1 East German cultural authorities inherited the traditions and institutions of Germany’s famous pre–Second World War studio Universium-Film Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa). Established in 1917 to produce propaganda films during the Great War, Ufa became during the 1920s one of the world’s most influential movie-making concerns. Widely respected for its artistic achievements, Ufa produced many landmark silent films that remain classics even today, including Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). The studio also made several important sound pictures, most famously Lang’s M (1931) starring Peter Lorre, before the Nazi seizure of power. In National Socialist Germany, film was Joseph Goebbels’s favorite medium. His propaganda ministry oversaw the production of numerous movies, such as Jüd Süß (Jew Süss, 1940) and Ich klage an (I Accuse, 1941), designed to justify Hitler’s policies on the “Jewish Question ” and euthanasia, respectively. Soviet cinema, however, was the most important influence on film making in the GDR. Russia’s Bolsheviks made extensive use of film as a propaganda tool, even building portable cinemas that could be loaded on trains and transported to the most remote regions of Russia. In 1922, Lenin reminded A. V. Lunacharskii , chairman of the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, “that for us the most important of all arts is the cinema.” Hence, productions such as Sergei Eisenstein’s The Battleship Potemkin (1925), which sought to legitimize the Bolshevik seizure of power, received top prior- 158 HITLER’S RIVAL ity and generous budgets. The message of this and other Soviet films could be understood even by the most uneducated peasant, making film the most powerful propaganda tool at the regime’s disposal. The Bolsheviks went to extensive lengths to produce and distribute motion pictures that justified their policies. As a product of a Marxist–Leninist German state, the GDR’s film industry was naturally the heir of the earlier Weimar, National Socialist, and Soviet traditions.2 The Soviets began the reconstruction of the film industry in their sector of Eastern Germany with the establishment of Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft (DEFA) in 1946. Colonel Sergei Tulpanow, chief of propaganda for the Soviet Military Administration, granted DEFA its license in an elaborate ceremony on 17 May. He ordained the new organization to be part of the “struggle for the democratic reconstruction of Germany and the elimination of the remnants of Nazism and militarism from the consciousness of every German.” DEFA, which took over the old Ufa studio in Babelsberg in 1947, would play a vital role in “[e]ducation . . . , especially of youth, in the ideas of true democracy and humanity.” In other words, the Soviets gave DEFA a mandate to justify occupation policies as well as those of the German Communists. DEFA’s staff consisted mostly of long-time Communists—such as production chief Alfred Lindemann, producer Adolf Fischer, and director Kurt Maetzig—with experience in the prewar German film industry. From the outset, it was clear that DEFA would play an important role in the political education of the German people, and under the guidance of Lindemann and his successors—Walter Janke (1948–1949), Sepp Schwab (1949–1952), and Hans Rodenberg (1952–1956)—film became an important component of the propaganda apparatus in the Soviet zone and later East Germany. During DEFA’s early years, the studio, manifesting Ufa’s traditions, produced a number of interesting films possessing a great deal of artistic merit. Among them were Die Mörder sind unter uns (The Murderers Are among Us) and Ehe im Schatten (Marriage in the Shadows), both released in 1946, as well as Die Affäre Blum (The Blum Affair) from 1948, each of which candidly confronted Germany’s National Socialist past. During the early 1950s, however, the SED leadership began openly to criticize the “formalism” of many of DEFA’s films, calling for the rejection of art for its own sake and the introduction of the principles of socialist realism...