Kunst der Propaganda. Der Film im Dritten Reich (review)

Manuel Köppen and Erhard Schütz's edited volume Kunst der Propaganda. Der Film im Dritten Reich is the product of a seminar at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Situating close readings within historical discourses, turning occasionally to relevant secondary literature and theory, the authors examine the Third Reich's emphasis on the emotional appeal of film both as art and propaganda, National Socialist uses and understandings of the media, the construction of space in relation to Nazi expansionism, and the building of a Volksgemeinschaft. Although the authors cover a range of topics and films, the thematic and methodological consistency in this volume is noteworthy: common concerns and references to a shared body of primary and secondary literature and films provide a connecting thread throughout the work.

Much has been written about the use of film as propaganda in the Third Reich; nevertheless, the essays in this collection make some interesting contributions. Marian Kaiser provides a solid foundation for the rest of the volume, outlining fundamental principles in Third Reich film theory, which treated film as an art form using technology and sensory appeals to reveal essential German truths, form German identity and community, and expand German space. Simon Roloff couples 1920s and 1930s German theories of propaganda, which purported to turn enemies' tactics of contagion, circulation, and conspiracy upon them, with films well-known for such motifs (Jud Süß, Ohm Krüger, La Habanera, Robert Koch, Germanin, and Paracelsus), arguing that the methods of infection and conspiracy represented by the enemy are inverted by the heroes to become antidotes. Manuel Köppen shows how the subgenre of artist biopic reflected not only the propaganda ministry's artistic ambitions but also a progression, related to wartime conditions, in the depiction of the genius-leader and his proximity to insanity and catastrophe. Erhard Schütz's detailed history of the representation of the air war reveals evolving effects of narrative and style, which include, among other things, the glorification of the new technology and masculinity associated with it, the distancing of cause and effect, justification of the air war abroad, and the promotion of German culture and community and their need to endure. Wolfgang Kabatek argues clearly and engagingly that the negative image of the metropolis, which had been juxtaposed to the traditional provinces by conservatives in the Weimar Republic, needed to be developed into a positive image more suitable to the capital of the Third Reich. Kabatek illustrates the beginnings of this development and how it reshapes Weimar discourses in close readings of Schleppzug M 17 and Hitlerjunge Quex. Geesa Tuch uses readings of Romanze in Moll, La Habanera, Das unsterbliche Herz, Schwarze Rosen, Die goldene Stadt, Damals, and Die große Liebe to outline a genre of "ermächtigte Melodramen" in the Third Reich that disciplined desire in service of the community. Rebekka Hufendiek discusses Wunschkonzert, Die große Liebe, and Fronttheater as examples of the Heimat-Front film, which reflected upon and exemplified the use of technology to connect homeland and front politically and emotionally. Astrid Pohl argues that, as a melodrama with a male protagonist produced late in the war (and shown only after the war's end), Große Freiheit Nr. 7 spoke to the decline of the National Socialist male ideal, pointing towards realities of retreat, resignation, and survival. In his discussion of the Nazi-era works of youth author and director Alfred Weidenmann, Rüdiger Steinlein shows how the narratives bring together a young male collective under a youthful leader figure, integrating outsiders and overcoming challenges. While drawing in part on models predating the Nazi era, the films also emphasize a range of National Socialist values and stylistically can be characterized by activity, mechanization, and fetishization of Nazi symbols. In Manuel Köppen's concluding essay, analysis of a panorama of films shows the evolution of the conceptual binary Heimat-Fremde through the Third Reich and into the 1950s in the Federal Republic...